Danvers Town (part 8 of 12)

Among the minerals of the town are pyrites, often seen in the diorite ledges. Limonite, or bog iron, occurs in most of the meadows or streams ; calcite, or limestone, in crystals and cleavage pieces ; and small quartz and vein quartz crystals, in, or in contact with, other forms or substances. The flora of the town is much the same as in Essex County generally. There are several varieties found in Danvers that are not known to the surrounding region. (See Botanical lists by S. P. Fowler and Dr. George Osgood in Hanson's History, pp. 10-12.)

Such, for the most part, was the territory once roamed from immemorial time by the untutored Indian, until two or three hundred years ago, but which then became the heritage of the white man. There was no settlement by the latter on the shores of what is properly regarded as Massachusetts Bay, previous to that of Roger Conant and his associates, at Cape Ann, in 1624, or shortly after. His fishing and trading plantation, which was under the general direction or patronage of Rev. John White and certain merchants and others in the west of England, was unsuccessful, and accordingly with some of his party he removed, in the autumn of 1626, to Naumkeag, or Salem, as a more promising place. These were afterwards known as the " Old Planters," and Conant was still their Governor, while such men as John Woodbury, John Balch, and Peter Palfrey, were of their number. Soon a company of London gentlemen became interested in their plans, proposed to " erect a new Colony upon the old foundation," raised a large fund for the purpose, and on the 19th of March, 1628, obtained from the " Council for New England," a grant of land, extending in breadth from a line running three miles north of the Merrimac to a line three miles south of the Charles, and in length from the - Atlantic to the " South Sea," or Western Ocean. The company appointed, as Governor of the " New Colony,"

John Endicott, who was one of the patentees, and who was " a worthy gentleman " and " well known to divers persons of note." Sailing from Weymouth, June 20, 1628, in the ship Abigail, with his wife, and with Richard Brackenbury, Richard Davenport, Charles Gott, William Trask and other emigrants, he reached his destination at Naumkeag, Sept. 6, 1628. The " Old Planters" very naturally disputed at first the claims of the new comers, but the controversy was speedily adjusted, with Endicott as the acknowledged Governor instead of Conant ; and in token of the general harmony that thus prevailed, the place was given its present name, Salem, the Hebrew word for peace, or peaceful. The Colony now numbered some fifty or sixty persons, and on the 4th of March, 1629, the above grant of territory was confirmed to them by a royal Charter, making them a body corporate and politic, under the name of the " Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England ;" and the principles and provisions contained in this Charter were destined vitally to mould the future Constitution, and influence the longconiinued rule and legislation of the Commonwealth. Other ships arrived during the year and brought fresh and welcome accessions to the plantation, as harbingers of the greater immigrations that were soon to be. It was a Colony of Puritans or "Nonconformists," in contradistinction to that of the Pilgrim " Separatists" at Plymouth. The former were, nominally at least, adherents to the Church of England, but were stoutly opposed to its corruptions and superstitions, and refused to observe its prescribed forms of worship. The latter cut loose entirely from the Establishment, disowning all allegiance to it, and renouncing its practices as well as its authority. Hence their name. But both were still essentially one in faith or creed, and both, driven from their native land by the iron hand of oppression and cruelty, were inspired by the same strong and passionate love of civil and religious liberty. Once beyond the reach of persecution. Non-conformists in most cases quickly became Separatists, and Emigration was made to mean more thorough

Dan Vers

Endicott ruled affairs at Salem with rare strength and wisdom, promoted peace and maintained order as often as troubles arose, and held just and friendly relations with the Naumkeags, or the Indian tribe who inhabited the region round about and to whom Danvers and its adjacent towns of today were once familiar ground. Numerous and powerful long before, they had now become greatly reduced by war and disease as the English came ; and they were still a dwindling race, appealing to the white man for protection from their fierce enemies, the Tarrantines, far away at the north-east. The settlers bought of them whatever land they wished to own and occupy, and gave them generally a fair compensation for it; and when, in 1686, Kmg James II proposed to wrest it from its new proprietors, the fast disappearing natives of the soil gave them a deed of it as their last will and testament. Ere long the tribe was extinct.

Until Oct. 20, 1629, the supreme government of the colony was vested in the company at London, but at that time it was transferred to Salem ; and as it was deemed wise, that, under such circumstances, new officers should be chosen, John Winthrop was appointed as Governor ; John Humphrey as Deputy Governor ; and Sir Richard Saltonstall, Thomas Dudley and sixteen others as Assistants. The ArhcUa, sailing from Yarmouth with three other ships and having on board Winthrop and many others, arrived and anchored in Salem harbor, June 12, 1630. "Seven vessels made their voyage three or four weeks later. Seventeen came before winter, bringing about a thousand passengers." The new Governor, who, like Endicott, was for many long years to render illustrious service to the nascent, rising Commonwealth, entered at once upon his official duties. Yet there was much dissatisfaction with the place, especially among the later immigrants ; and on account of this and other discouragements it was decided to remove the seat of government to Charlestown, whither a considerable number of settlers had already gone from Salem. The

Endicott and the great body of the colonists remained behind and were the pledge of the future success and ultimate fame of the earlier seat, even though large numbers of its vigorous and intelligent people should gradually push their way into the wilderness about them and there in due time form communities and towns of their own ; Wenham, incorporated in 1643; Manchester, 1645; Marblehead, 1649; Topsfield, 1650; Beverly, 1668; Middleton, 1728; and Danvers as a district, in 1752, and later, as a town. Only portions of Topsfield, Manchester and Middleton, however, were included in the original township of Salem. Lynn, it is said, was never formally incorporated, but a section of her territory, also, belonged to Salem at first.

It is interesting to follow Mr. Upham as he tells us of the pioneers who struck out into the yet inhospitable wilds of Danvers, and as he locates for us the land grants they received from the General Court or the mother town. The first of these, under date of July 3, 1632, was the

Endicott Grant

Orchard Farm of Governor Endicott, which consisted of 300 acres and was situated between Duck or Crane river as its northern boundary line, and Cow-house or Waters river as its southern. At once he proceeded to occupy and clear his land, erect buildings and construct roads and bridges, and till the soil and plant trees and vineyards. His own house, whose site is still pointed out, stood on highly elevated ground that commands a fine view of the surrounding country, while at a short distance from it is the famous

Pear- Tree which an unbroken tradition of his descendants affirms "was brought over with his dial in 1630," and which may first have been in his garden at Salem until he later transplanted it where it is now, and where it yet bears fruit from year to year. This country home was a favorite place with him. Here he often welcomed the great men of the colony and not seldom he thence skimmed with his shallop the rivers close by, as often as he made his visits to Salem and Boston. To the land which he had thus received from the General Court the town added by grant, on its western side, 200 acres more, which were called the " Governor's Plain." The " Orchard Farm," whatever the changes which either part of the whole estate may have undergone in the course of subsequent time, is now in the possession of the direct genealogical line, being the property of Mr. William C. Endicott, Jr., whose family residence is with his parents at the charming old Peabody mansion on Ingersoll street, while with them occasionally sojourn, whenever they come to America, the British Colonial Secretary, the Right Honorable Joseph Chamberlain, and Mrs. Chamberlain, Judge Endicott's daughter.

As the first grantee of land within the present limits of Danvers, Governor Endicott has well been called the " father of the town." Of the many grants - several by the General Court and the rest by Salem - made to others during the first twentyfive or thirty years and within the Danvers of the past or today, the follovvmg, as indicated by name and place, may be enough to show how and by whom most of the land was covered ; John Humphrey, partly in South Danvers and partly in Lynnfield, with Humphrey's pond and its island ; Thomas Read, on whose estate is now the fine residence, in Peabody, of the late Hon. Richard S. Rogers, and of his son, Jacob C. Rogers, Esq. ; Emanuel Downing, west of the Read grant ; and the celebrated Hugh Peters, north of the Plains and east of Frost-fish Brook. But Read, Downing and Peters returned to England and came not back. Grants were also made to Rev. Samuel Skelton (worthy associate pastor with Rev. Francis Higginson, of blessed memory, in the First church of Salem), "Skelton's Neck," afterward New Mills, and now Danversport, lying between Crane and Porter's rivers ; Francis Weston, a little distance west of the site of the First church ot Danvers ; Townsend Bishop, his house still standing west of the Plains and in Tapleyville, and noted as the home of Rebecca Nurse, sainted martyr of the witchcraft persecution ; Richard Waterman, on the Wenham road leading from Putnamville, his habitation occupying the spot where lived the late Joel Wilkins ; and William Alford, Cherry Hill, on the Beverly side, sold to Henry Herrick. Weston, Bishop, Waterman, and Alford, however, were driven into exile on account of their obnoxious political and religious opinions. Grants also to Richard Ingersoll, on the east side of Porter's river, opposite Danversport ; Robert Cole, south of Felton's hill and including Proctor's corner in Peabody ; Elias Stileman, north of Townsend Bishop ; Thomas Gardner, in the western part of the town ; Daniel Rea, near the northern line of the Plains ;Richard Hutchinson, Whipple's hill and land around it ; John Putnam and his three sons, Thomas, Nathaniel and John, along or near Beaver Brook, and in another direction from Hathorne hill to the Wenham line ; William Hathorne, who was greatly distinguished and who lived on Asylum hill, which his grant included ; Richard Davenport, also of great prominence and reputation, Davenport hill, now Putnam's hill, in Putnamville ; Samuel Sharpe, at the Plains, later called Porter's Plains from John Porter, who was the next proprietor, though Judge Timothy Lindall early owned the northerly part ; Job Swinnerton, west of Townsend Bishop; Robert Goodell, west of Swinnerton ; Jacob Barney and others, the land covering the north part of Leach's hill, or Browne's hill, and territory north of that, in East Danvers ; Lawrence, Richard and John Leach, immediately south of Barney; Charles Gott and others, the " Barley Farm," now owned and occupied by George Augustus Peabody, Esq., whose handsome resilience commands a beautiful prospect ; Allen Kenniston, John Porter and Thomas Smith, east of Putnamville and as far north as Smith hill on the Topsfield line ; Emanuel Downing again, east and southeast of Smith's hill, the land being afterward sold to John Porter, whose son Joseph settled upon it and made the old house of today the home of his family and of four or five generations of his descendants of the Porter and Bradstreet names.

In connection with this list may be mentioned, also, William Nichols, whose grant of 1638 was located in North Salem, but who bought the present Ferncroft district in Danvers (whence the name of Nichols Brook), and bequeathed it to his son John, whose descendants of our own century, Dr. Andrew Nichols and his brothers, John and Abel, were born on the estate ; William Haynes, who jointly with his father-in-law, Richard Ingersoll, purchased the Weston grant, and then, with his own brother Richard, a part of the Bishop farm ; Joseph Houlton, who owned and lived near the First Church and south of it, and near also to the spot where his eminent and noble descendant, Dr. and Judge Samuel Holten, passed his extended, useful life in a house still standing ; Thomas Preston, whose distinguished line of descendants has long and notably given its name to the neighborhood of the Harris (formerly Massey's) estate, and some of whose representatives are yet to be mentioned ; and Joseph Pope, who established his home south of the Danvers and Peabody line, where, long afterward, a fair maiden of the family name and stock, Hannah Pope, won the heart and became the wife of the hero of Bunker Hill. These, or such as these, with their sons and daughters, were the first settlers of Danvers and they stamped their impress on its character and life for centuries to come. Says Upham. : " There never was a community composed of better material, or better trained in all good usages."

For obvious reasons, the early settlers of Danvers, as they grew in numbers, more and more desired to be, in some degree at least, an independent community. Hence the vote of the town, Dec. 31, 1638, " that there should be a village graunted to Mr. Phillips and his company uppon such condition as the 7 men appointed for the towne affaires should agree on." This is supposed to have been the origin of the name, " Salem Village." The plantation was also familiarly called " The Farms," and the inhabitants were known as " The Farmers " ; or, as Mr. Upham states, these designations often had a wider application, being used with reference to the region north of Waters River, as it stretched from Reading at the west to the sea at the east. The Mr. Phillips above mentioned is said to have been the Rev. John Phillips, who was received as a townsman in 1640 and who returned to England in 1642. No marked results appear to have followed his brief leadership or the municipal vote.

For many years afterward the villagers doubtless held religious meetings at one or more private houses in the neighborhood, meanwhile often deviating among themselves the increasing need of a parochial organization and other privileges of their own, that they might not be too dependent upon the church or people at Salem. In 1670, they asked to be set off as a separate parish, and the request was complied with, however reluctantly, in March, 1672, the General Court confirming, Oct. 8th, of the same year, the action of the town. The eighth of October, 1672, was thus the birthday of the First Parish of Danvers, whose two hundredth anniversary was fitly celebrated on the same day, in 1872, and whose history for the two centurie-;, as carefully written by Dr. Rice, himself one of its noted line of ministers and its pastor at the time, was published two years later in connection with the Proceedings of that memorable occasion and constitutes a very important part of the general history of Danvers.

Though this territory of Salem Village was substantially the same as that of North Danvers at a later time, or of Danvers in our own, yet the boundaries of the two were quite different. Thus Danvers now includes, as the Village did not, Endicott's Orchard Farm, Skelton's Neck or Danversport, and a considerable tract on the Beverly side of Porter's River, while a remote northwestern portion of the Village area, formerly known as the " Bellingham Grant " and constituting a large, square and somewhat isolated projection, was afterward set off to Topsfield. Moreover, a certain section of the southwestern part of the Village was subsequently included in the town of South Danvers and now belongs to Peabody. At this time the Village population probably numbered somewhat more than five hundred.

At a meeting of the Farmers, held Dec. 10, 1672, it was voted to build ameetinghouse. It was completed only after much delay, and stood on the flat, at a little distance east of the more elevated site of its successors on VVatchhouse hill. The thirty years of its existence were to witness sore troubles for the villagers. They had not been strangers to trial in earlier years.

The old log-house on Watch hill reminded them of dangers, past and present, from the savage foe. Ever and anon were tales of fresh barbarities, near and far, that gave them a constant sense of insecurity. But from the first the Farmers were ready to bear their part in the common defence, however distant the scene ; as when

Old Meeting House Road

Richard Davenport, Thomas Read and William Trask were the three commissioned officers in Endicott's expedition of 1636, against the Manisseans of Block Island for their murder of John Oldham and party from Boston ; or, as when the same Davenport, with numerous volunteers from the neighborhood, again marched to battle the Indian, nowjoining the Massachusetts troops sent under Israel Stoughton to aid Connecticut in the Pequot war of 1637. But a far greater peril threatened the settlements of New England, when, in 1675, while Rev. James Bayley was the first minister of the Village church. King Philip's war broke forth in all its fury and made the wide frontier for three hundred miles the scene of dreadful atrocities. The wholesale massacre of the brave Capt. Thomas Lothrop, of Beverly, and his company - the " Flower of P2ssex " - at Bloody Brook, near Deerfield, on the i8th of September of that year, only aroused Mass ichusetts more than ever to a sense of the peril and duty of the hour. Nine men from the Village are said to have shared in the awful sacrifice. But a far greater number from within the parish limits went forth with the thousand Massachusetts soldiers who, in the following bitterly cold December, marched through snow and amidst nameless hardships into the swamps of Rhode Island, and there, on the 19th, fiercely attacked the Narragansetts at their islanded stronghold, killing a thousand of the warriors and wounding and taking prisoners hundreds of others. " The pride of the Narragansetts," says a historian, "perished in a day." Of the three officers who gloriously fell in the strife, two were from Salem Village, or the Danvers that was to be : Capt. Joseph Gardner and Capt. Nathaniel Davenport, sons, respectively, of Thomas Gardner and Richard Davenport, already referred to as of honorable distinction. Of the two captains, the former raised his company in his own neighborhood, and Joseph HouL

The town of Danvers, in the summer of 1894, set a huge boulder on the green, and dedicated it, June 30th, with a suitable inscription and with public ceremonies, to the memory of the thoughtful and patriotic donor, and of the valiant men who, during two hundred years, had " gone hence to protect their homes and to serve their country."

Mr. Upham's comprehensive and masterly treatment of the witchcraft delusion of 1692, with numerous more or less popular books or pamphlets on the same

Old Training Field

These soldiers, with others from the Farms, had drilled on the field or common at Danvers Centre, which, down to our own day, has served the same purpose, especially as subsequent wars have required the needed military discipline ; for in 1694, Nathaniel Ingersoll, son of Richard IngersoU and magnate of the Village, made the lot of land a free gift to the inhabitants as " A Training Place forever."

subject by other authors, makes unnecessary any extended account of it here. The first outbreak of the strange phenomena occurred in the family of Samuel Parris, then minister of the Vdlage church, and successor of James Bayley, George Burroughs, and Deodat Lawson, Of the awful tragedy, Parris was the one persecuting demon, from the beginning to the end. But the house in which he lived ; the mansion of Nathaniel Ingersoll, which stood just north of the present church and league with Satan, were brought by grim officers and amidst great excitement, as a preliminary to more cruel scenes ; the modest meeting-house that witnessed their further shameful examinations ; and some of the scattered homes from which they were so ruthlessly torn away for their menaced doom, - have long since disappeared. Only the dwellings of Rebecca Nurse, George Jacobs, Sen., and Sarah Osburn remain within the present town of Danvers. That of Ann Putnam, one of the accusers, is also standing. Of the large number of men and women who were condemned and who were executed on Gallows Hill, between Peabody and Salem, the Village victims, or those who lived in what was afterward " old Danvers," were Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, George Jacobs, Sen., John Willard, and Martha Corey. Rev. George Burroughs, who perished with them, had been, about twenty years before, minister of the Village church. Giles Corey, husband of Martha, was pressed to death.

firmly mute to the wicked accusaagainst him ; and John Proctor, who first to last exposed and denounced the whole terrible business, fearlessly went to meet his doom. There on the mount, Christ had his martyrs, as well as his murderers. But the reaction came apace. The year of 1692 saw the beginning and the end of the great delusion and ini- ([uity, and there has since been no more peaceful, industrious, intelligent and christian community or parish, than the one within whose ancient bounds the evil first ap- ])eared and was most rampant and destructive.

Ann Putnam House

During most of the period we have thus f.ir passed in review, the early settlements of what was called the " Middle Precinct " (Peabody), also once known as " Brooksby," from the convergence of Goldthwaite's and Proctor's brooks, had steadily increased in population. In March, 1709- 10, the inhabitants petitioned Salem for a lot on which to erect a meeting-house of their own, and, the appeal having been successful, they voted, Nov. 28, 17 10, to

George Jacobs House

17 1 2, as the first minister of the new church or parish. An entire separation of the Village and the Midlde Precinct from Salem proper, so as to unite them in a new and distinct township, was a matter that long continued to be agitated. After much appeal from the two parishes and much delay on the part of Salem, the latter finally consented to the proposed plan, Oct. 23, 1751, provided it should meet with the approval of the Legislature. The Legislature, however, on the 28th of January, 1752, incorporated the two parishes, under the name of Danvers, as a district, rather than as a town, royal instructions having been sent to the Governor to restram thus the increase of the popular branch of the Government. But the District still pressed its rightful claim, and on the 19th of June, 1757, the bill was passed which erected Danvers into a town and entitled it to its own deputy, Hutchinson, who was now a member of the Council, and afterward Governor, entering his earnest protest, and saying that " the action was unnecessary for the public good." The name of Danvers, he should have regarded as a better omen. It seems to have come, originally, from Anvers, or Antwerp, the name of a famous city in Belgium, which, as Dr. Braman pointed out in his very interesting remarks at the Centennial Celebration of 1852, means, etymologically, addition, accession, progress r Mr. Felt says that it was given to Danvers " through the influence of Lieut. Gov. Phips, from gratitude to one of his patrons." This friend is supposed to have been Sir Danvers Osborne, Bart., of England, who was appointed Governor of New York, in 1753, and died shortly after his arrival in this country, and who was probably a descendant of Roland D'Anvers, companion in arms of William the Conqueror. But the name of Danvers was legally given to the District the year before Sir Danvers Osborne was appointed Governor, and we are told that the inhabitants had freely applied it to the tract as far back as 1745. Perhaps a better explanation of the matter is Hanson's : " Among the original settlers of Danvers, the Osborne family was conspicuous, as it has been in the subsequent annals of the town. This, coupled with the fact recorded ^bove, that the Osborne and Danvers families had intermarried, seems to account for our name. Doubtless the Osbornes suggested the name out of love for their cousins across the seas." Mr. Eben Putnam, however, dissents from this view, in an instructive article, entitled " How Danvers became a Town " and contained in his " Putnam's Historical Magazine," Oct. 1897. He expresses the opinion that the Governor conferred the name at the instance of his friend, Capt. John Osborne of Boston, who was a member of the Council from 1731 to 1763 and probably knew about the intermarriages of the Osborne and Danvers families.

As Dr. Rice says : Danvers, as thus constituted, embraced, along with the Village, the territory which lay towards the south and southeast and extended to the present northern boundary of Salem, and which was then known as the " Middle Precinct." And he adds, " It should be borne in mind, however, that not all of the territory now belonging to Peabody was embraced in the former Middle Precinct, since a large section in the northwestern part of the present town of Peabody was included within the original limits of the Village Parish." Danvers now had an area of about 17,000 acres and a population of probably more than 1700 inhabitants.

In 1754 began the early history of the village of Danversport, when, near the site of the store of the late Messrs. Warren and at the head of tide-water of Crane river, Archelaus Putnam located for himself the first house in that immediate vicinity. Here the next year was born to him the first white child, native to the place ; while about the same time he and his brother John, built, close at hand, a wheat mill which was the beginning of a needed and profitable business for the future town. To this point a road from the Plains (the present square) w-as laid out in 1755, and in 1760 it was extended from Crane river across the Endicott grant and over Waters river, and so on to the North Bridge in Salem. More wheat mills were built in 1674 and afterward, one of them being situated at the neighboring bridge across Porter's river, where also were located the Danvers and Beverly Iron Works, incorporated in 1803. As early as the year 1798 the Salem Iron Company established its works at the bridge across Waters river, and here, as at the head of Crane river, there grew up a considerable commerce, so that, as Mr. Hanson tells us in 1847, there were, during 1846, thirty arrivals at the former place, with cargoes of coal, wood and lumber, etc., and one hundred and twenty-seven arrivals at the latter, with the same importations, and with flour and corn and a great variety of other commodities. From April 15 to November 30, 1848, there were at this point as many as 172 arrivals, and in the year 1876, there were about 250. Here, moreover, many vessels were constructed at different times, especially privateers and gun-ships during the Revolution. What with these varied and vital interests, and the subsequent morocco factories of Major Moses Black and sons, the tanneries of Samuel Fowler and sons, and other kinds of business that ere long appeared in the village. New Mills or Danversport became a very notable part of the town. The names of some of its leading families were Black, Fowler, Pindar, Page, Endicott, Putnam, Cheever, Porter, Bates, Hutchinson, Breed, Hunt, Kent, Jacobs, Hood, and Warren.

In the year 1754, also, the people of Danvers were called, like their predecessors of the same and the former century, to consider the more serious matter of war. After the Narragansett fight, some of the Farmers had been soldiers in King Wilham's war of 1689-97, Queen Anne's war of 1702-13, and King George's war of 1744-48 ; but it was what we know as the French and Indian war of 1754-63 that enlisted a much greater interest and service on the part of the District, there being five companies, at least, in which it was represented. The five captains were W. Flint of Reading, Andrew Fuller of Middleton, Israel Herrick of Boxford, John Tapley of Salem, and Israel Davis of Danvers, - all familiar family names. Davis and his men engaged in the expedition to Louisburg, and the others marched to meet the foe at Crown Point and Fort William Henry, and " in and about Maine." Israel Hutchinson, Samuel Flint and Ezra Putnam, of whom we shall hear again, were in the war, and so were nearly 140 others from the old " Training Place," while two sons of Danvers served as surgeons in the army, Dr. Amos Putnam, a noted citizen, and Dr. Caleb Rea, the latter in the expedition against Ticonderoga in 1758. Concerning the Danvers company, just mentioned, Dea. Samuel P. Fowler, in some excellent remarks which he made at the Centennial Celebration, in 1852, on the service which the women of the town had rendered in connection with the Revolutionary and other wars, related the following : " When their sons were called upon by Governor Shirley, in 1755, to form a company of volunteers to reduce the forts of Nova Scotia, they cheerfully furnished them with clothing and other articles necessary for their comfort. After they were equipped, and about to join their regiment at Boston, these patriotic women of Danvers accompanied the volunteers to the Village church, where a long and interesting sermon was delivered by Rev. Peter Clark. His subject upon this occasion was : ' A word in season to soldiers.'" From Dr. Rice's amusing account of Mr. Clark's usual Sunday deliverances, it may well be supposed that his discourse to the soldiers on this occasion was sufficiently " long." His pastorate, it may be added, was also of great length, covering fifty-one years. Dr. Wadsworth, who immediately succeeded him, was minister for the still more protracted term of fifty-four years. He was followed by Dr. Braman, whose pulpit ministrations for nearly thirty-five years were the ablest and most impressive known to the history of Danvers. Thus, it is seen, the well nigh continuous service of these three eminent clergymen extended over about 140 years.

But another momentous struggle was not distant ; and in no town of Massachusetts or the colonies did the arbitrary and oppressive measures by which England was soon seeking to crush out the spirit of liberty and the rights of the people on these western shores meet with a braver or sterner resistance than in Danvers. When her citizens heard of the infamous Stamp Act of 1765, they assembled themselves together and enjoined Thomas Porter, their member of the General Court, to do all in his power to obtain its repeal, and declared that taxation and representation must go together ; and when Parliament levied a tax on tea and other articles that should be imported, and even after it was obliged materially to modify the law, they voted overwhelmingly that neither they nor their families would purchase or use any such goods, brought from Great Britain, and pronounced any one who should do it an enemy of his counters, thinking to overawe and suppress the rising and "rebellious" spirit of the inhabitants ; but finding his stay useless and uncomfortable, he returned to Boston with his soldiers early in the following September. Alarm lists, or companies of minute men were organized for whatever emergency might next appear. Gun-carriages were lodged on Gardner's farm in North Salem and some were later taken to New Mills and to Lindall's hill in Danvers. This soon became known in Boston, and on Sunday, Feb. 26 th, 1775, a detachment of British troops, sent in a transport, and commanded by Col. Leslie, landed at Marblehead and marched through Salem to try. As time went on and outrages continued, patriotic feeling grew more intense. Town meetings were held, flaming speeches were made, and strong committees were appointed to direct the popular will. All the signs betokened that a crisis was near. In June, 1774, Gen. Thomas Gage, the royal Governor of Massachusetts, attended by two companies of British troops, came from Boston to Danvers and made the fine old " King " Hooper House (built in 1754 and long known also as the "Collins House;" now " The Lindens," the elegant residence of Francis Peabody, Esq.), his head-quarthe North Bridge, on their way to capture the secreted cannon. The alarm was given far and near, and as they reached the river, they found themselves confronted by a sturdy crowd of patriots of Salem and Danvers, who, after much parley and various demonstrations, compelled them to return and go their way, so far compromising the matter as to allow them to cross the bridge, but to recross it as quickly ; and thus ended the quite " bloodless battle," in which, however, there were examples of true American heroism, even as tffere were examples of " the wisdom that is from above."

'' Through Salem straight, without delay, The bold battalion took its way; Marched o'er a bridge, in open sight Of several Yankees armed for fight ; Then, without loss of time or men, Veered round for Boston back again, And found so well their projects thrive That every soul got home alive."

The greater opening event of the Revolution was less than two months later. In the night of April i8th, 1775, a detatchment of 800 British soldiers, commanded by Lieut. Col. Smith, set out from Boston for Concord, to destroy certain military stores supposed to be there, all unmindful of the baffled ventures of Gage and Leslie. Advanced troops, having arrived at Lexington early the next morning, and there on the village green a ttacked and dispersed the brave yeomanry summoned to meet and oppose them, confidently pressed on about six miles further, to a more humiliating encounter at their destination. The news of the sally from Boston reached Danvers about 9 o'clock that morning; and instantly, as it were-, eight companies of the minute men and militia of the town, numbering about 330 men, and led by Captains Samuel Flint, Samuel Eppes, Jeremiah Page, Israel Hutchinson, Caleb Lowe, Asa Prince, John Putnam and Edmund Putnam, hurried across the country to face the foe, those who received the alarm soonest starting first, " running half the way," and arrivmg, at the end of four hours and sixteen miles, in time to intercept the retreating " Red-coats " at West Cambridge, now Arlington. In the battle which here ensued, Danvers made her great sacrifice, others of her troops probably coming up in season to harass the enemy in their flight to Charlestown. The names of her fallen heroes are these : Samuel Cook, BenjaiTiin Daland, George Southwick, Jotham Webb, Henry Jacobs, Kbenezer Goldthwaite, and Perley Putnam. In 1835, a proud and grateful people erected an appropriate monument to the honor of these men in the main thoroughfare uf the present town of Peabody, dedicating it to their memory with fitting ceremonies on the 20th of April of the same year. Hon. Daniel P. King, one of the most distinguished and revered of all the sons of Danvers, delivered on the occasion a most eloquent address, accompanied by very interesting remarks from the brave old veteran, Gen. Gideon Foster, who was also in the fight at West Cambridge, as a Captain of a company of minute men, taken, it is said, from the company of Capt. Eppes. Israel Hutchinson, who had gallantly served in the French and Indian war and rose to high military distinction during the Revolution, and who was afterward greatly honored in civic life, had his home at New Mills ; and hither the bodies of some of the Danvers soldiers, slain in the battle, were brought fresh from the scene of their death, to await the care of mourning kindred. On this sacred site the town, in 1896, likewise placed and dedicated a chaste and beautiful monolith, commemorative of his noble character and deeds, and of the young and blood-stained patriots who rested here awhile on their way to the grave.

Danvers was also conspicuous at the Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775. Cien. Israel Putnam, who commanded the American forces, was a native of the town, though he came to the seat of war from his home in Connecticut. Israel Hutchinson was not in the actual fight, but was on duty ne ir at hand, faithful to his post, and ready as always for whatever service might be required of him. Asa Prince, who was a son of Dr. Jonathan Prince, said to have been the first resident physician of the town, was the same good soldier of liberty on Charlestown Heights as when he led his company on the day of Lexington. Major P>zra Putnam, whom we have met before and shall meet still again, w is also of the host. And Moses Porter, at the age of nineteen, here first won his spurs, only to go hence and for nearly half a century to defend his country in all parts of its territory, rise to exalted rank, and win the honor of being the prince of artillerists and disciplin a r ia n s, and the hero of forts arid frontiers. But if Danvers had such officers or commanders as these in the battle by which Englan I " lost her colonies forever," who shall tell of the far greater number of her braves, titled and untitled, who served under them and were there to con tend for freedom to the death ; or shall adequately teli ot the deeds of her more multitudinous sons who went forth from Bunker Hill or fresh from their homes, after that great conflict, to peril all for the glori ius cause and say with Capt. Simuel Flint, soon to lay down his life at Stillwater, " Where the enemy is, there you will find me?" More than 300 Dan vers men, as we have seen, marched to meet the foe, April 19, 1775, and it is es- timated that not less than 300 men from the town were in the war of the Revolution on and after the' still more eventful seventeenth of June that so quickly followed. The figure is somewhat short of one seventh of the population of Danvers at that time.

As the " Soldiers' Record " relates : During the next twenty years many of these veterans obtained commissions in the militia as colonels, majors, captains, lieutenants, etc. : Gideon Foster, Ebenezer Goodale, Jethro Putmm, Andrew Nichols, Daniel King, Andrew Monroe, Jonathan Porter, Johnson Proctor, Sylvester Osborne, Daniel Preston, and many others, a large nvimber of them being afterward promoted. The first two became Major-Generals.

Mr. Proctor, in h i s Centennial' Address, while recounting the names of the most prominent Revolutionary heroes of the old town, made mention of General Putnam, General Moses Porter, Col. Jeremiah Page, Col. Israel Hutchinson, Col. Enoch Putnam, Capt. Jeremiah Putnam, Capt. Samuel Page and Capt. Levi Preston, all of North Danvers ; and General Gideon Foster, Major Caleb Lowe, Major Sylvester Osborn, Capt. Samuel Eppes, Capt. Samuel Flint, Capt. Dennison Wallis, and Capt. Johnson Proctor, all of South Danvers. Several of the entire list had served in the French and Indian war, and several others were to live to take part in another war with England, in 1 81 2. No better service was rendered in the great struggle for Liberty

For some years after the Revolutionary war, the times were hard and there was much discontent, especially in Western Massachusetts. Large numbers of men in that section grew insubordinate and rebellious, and formidable military forces, under Shay and other desperate leaders, were at length in defiant array against the constituted authorities and alarmingly menaced the order and peace of society. The insurgents having concentrated their strength at Springfield, the state government, early in 17S7, sent thither a strong body of troops, under the command of Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, to crush the dangerous movement. The enemy, defeated in the engagement that followed, fled to Pelham, where they were again touted and whence they betook themselves to Petersham, at which place they were finally dispersed by their pursuers and the trouble was brought to an end. The only reference to this chapter of events which we find in Hanson's History, is the simple statement : " Col. Benj. Tup])er raised a company the same year (1786), in Beverly and Danvers, to suppress Shay's Rebellion." It was not however. Col. Benjamin Tupper, but John

Gen. Moses Porter

Francis, of Beverly, who raised the company, and who, as E. M. Stone's history of that town further tells us, marched in Col. Wade's Regiment. Fourteen soldiers, at least, of the company, belonged to Danvers, though Mr. Stone does not name them, or give the number. They were Daniel Needhatii, lieutenant; Daniel tiell, drummer ; Josiah White, sergeant ; Moses Thomas, corporal ; Isaac Dempsey, and nine others.

About the same time there was another enterprise, of a far different character, in which not a few of the people of Danvers were interested. A t various times in the history of the town her children have shown a marked spirit of emigration and colonization ; as when, in 1724, Joseph Houlton, grandson of the original settler of that name, removed with others of Salem Village to Franklin county in Western Massachusetts and there founded New Salem, with its A c a d e m y ; whence, long afterward, a goodly number of their descendants and others, led by a later Joseph Houlton, wandered to the wilds of Maine and there formed a settlement to which they fittingly gave the name of Houlton, and which is now the flourishing shire town of Aroostook County. So, too, in 1738, several families of the names of Putnam and Dale migrated to New Hampshire and there planted a settlement, which became the town of Wilton. Thus it was, also, that the first division of the pioneer band that originally colonized the great Northwest, at Marietta, O., started from their rendezvous at Danvers, Dec. 1787, under the lead of Major Haffield White, and, having crossed the wintry wastes and mountains, met the other division of twenty-six men who had left Hartford, Conn., Jan. i, 1788, at Sumrill's Ferry on the Youghiogheny, where all proceeded to build their boats, and then in April sailed down the rivers until they reached the junction of the Muskingum with the Ohio and there landed to found the future city, named in honor of the illfated Marie Antoinette, friend of America. Major White was himself a Danvers man, and among the twenty-two members of his party (the whole company numbering forty-eight), were Amos Porter, Allen Putnam, and Capt. William Gray, all from his own town. The list also includes Capt. Jethro Putnam and Josiah White, familiar Danveis names; and the same might be said of others, Hildreth's " Early Settlers of Ohio,'" referring to Capt. Gray, says : " His family was left in Danvers, and did not come out until 1 790, in company with Major Ezra Putnam, from the same place." The war veteran. Major Putnam, is said to have lived in Middleton, near the Danvers line, but Marietta authorities generally claim him as of Danvers and his belongings seem to have been chiefly there. Col. Israel Putnam, a native of Danvers, like his father, Gen. Israel Putnam, went from his Connecticut home with his two sons and settled at Bel pre, near Marietta, where he bought a large farm and became a leading and influential man, his descendants of our own century and to-day being prominent and honored, not only at the parent colony, but in many parts of the west and south besides. Of like distinction have been the descendants of Gen. Rufus Putnam, the " Father of Ohio," who was also of Danvers stock, and who, when the Ohio company, of Boston, purchased of the Government 5,000,000 or more of acres of territory on which these emigrants settled with himself and others, was appointed the general Superintendent for colonizing the region, bemg the prime mover and soul of the great enterprise. Senator Hoar, in his recent remarkably interesting sketch of the life, character and services of this soldier, statesman, and patriot, has said : 'llf there be in the annals of this republic, save Washington and Lincoln alone, a benefactor whose deeds surpass those of Rufus Putnam, I have read American history in vain." In view of the founding of Marietta and of its results, and in view of the connection which Danvers had with it as thus indicated, it is not too much to say, that, aside from manifold other and similar contributions during the century, the town has done no mean part in helping to develop the mighty West.

But other matters invite attention. Next to agriculture, several kinds of manufacturing industry have been of chief interest and profit to the town. Its shoe business began as early as 1786, if not earlier, in what for a long time has been called Putnamville, from the name of many of the former inhabitants of the district. The first to engage in it was Zorobabel Porter, whose house and home - the birthplace of his brother. Gen. Moses Porter - is still standing near the northern line of the Plains, and whose shop stood very near to it, on the old stage road leading from Salem to Topsfield, while, also, a tannery belonging to the estate was not far away. The brick basement of the shop was used for currying leather, and the rooms above for the ** gentle craft " and for the sale of the shoes they made. Here, it has been said, was the " first shoe manufactory in the United States." However that may be, it was certainly the first in Danvers. Account books, still preserved, show that Zorobabel, who was a prominent and intelligent citizen, was quite briskly engaged in the business in 1786, and afterward; and it was in that same year that his cousin, Jonathan Porter, also of Putnamville, came to learn of him there the Cris- pin art, accompanied or followed by Samuel Fisk, Caleb Oakes of New Mills, Moses Putnam and others. Thomas Meady became an adept and somewhat later taught the trade to Elias Putnam and Nathaniel Boardman in the same place. For the first year, the proprietor sold shoes to the people of Danvers and neighboring towns alone, but from about 1792 he sent his wares in barrels to more distant points also. Ere long his apprentices and some others began the business on their own account and shipped their goods afar, as Porter had done before them; Moses Putnam from 1797, and Caleb Oakes, for whom Putnam had worked for a year, probably a little earlier; ?>lias Endicott, about the year 1800 ; chases, Putnamville, during most of the first half of the century, was a busy and noted part of the town as regards these interests, little as one might credit it now in view of its present changed and quiet aspects and condition, l.ate in the thirties and early in the forties, Joshua Silvester and Elias Putnam removed to the Plains, where they built larger factories and homes, and where Samuel Preston, Capt. ?^ben Putnam and others had been in the business for some or many years. Mr. Preston had invented a machine for pegging shoes, and h^lias Putnam several for cutting and splitting leather, both receiving patents therefor. These inventions were the first beginnings of the far more wonderful machinery and processes

First Shoe Manufactory

Elias Putnam in 18 12-13; Nathaniel Boardman in 181 6 ; Samuel Putnam perhaps about the same time ; and Joshua Silvester, Aaron Putnam, Daniel F. Putnam, Joseph Black, Elbridge Trask, George A. Putnam and others, later ; all, except Mr. Oakes, having their shops or factories at intervals along the Danvers and Topsfield highway in the old school district. No. 3, for a distance of two miles. What with these establishments and Samuel Fowle's shop for the making of shoe boxes, together with the frequent visits of dealers from Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and other remote cities, and the regular rumble of the big covered wagons for the transportation of purwhich have since changed and increased, so astonishingly, the whole system of shoe manufacture and trade. Among the earlier representatives of the business in Danvers were Daniel Putnam, John Preston, James Goodale and Otis Mudge, at or near the Centre ; and for a time it was carried on at Tapleyville by Col. Gilbert Tapley, who afterward established there a carpet factory, by means of which, with other ventures of his ever industrious and enterprising spirit, he gave employment to many persons and built up the village that bears his honored name. Otis Mudge commenced operations about the year 1835, and the skilled work and extensive traffic of Messrs. Edwin and Augustus

Mudge, and Edward Hutchinson (E. & A. Mudge & Co.), at the Centre and in Boston, in our own generation, as well as various other conteiiiporaneous or subsequent shops and stores of Danvers men, in town or city, like those of John R. Langley and William E. Putnam, have further shown how largely this interest has contributed to the growth and prosperity of the town. The Village Bank, now the First National Bank, of Danvers, was established in 1836, and its existence for 63 years, with Elias Putnam, Moses Putnam, Daniel Richards and Gilbert Augustus Tapley as its successive presidents, has been a great means of encouraging and aiding continuously these and other local, industrial developments. Perhaps the quarter of a century that immediately followed the year 1836, witnessed the highest degree of success in this particular department of practical pursuits. Dr. Rice's book states that, in 1854, there were as many as thirty-five firms that were here engaged in the manufacture of shoes, making, during the year, 1,562,000 pairs, valued at $[,072,258, and giving employment to about 2,500 persons. The tanneries and factories of South Danvers or Peabody, which have been such a source of wealth to citizens or families of that town, have likewise been benefited by its Danvers Bank, incorporated in 1825, and by its Warren Bank of 1831.

Interesting, also, is the history of the pottery art and trade, so long known to South Danvers, and to some extent, in early times, to North Danvers. The business seems to have been introduced in the "Middle Precinct" by the Osbornes, Southwicks and others of the first settlers ; and this manufacture of many varieties of earlhern ware appears to have been a thriving and spreading form of industry in that locality, until a comparatively recent period. - Another important occupation to be mentioned in this connection is that of brick-making. Dr. George Osgood, formerly and for a long time a well known physician of Danvers, with wide practice, wrote in 1855 : " For more than eighty years the manufacture of bricks has been successfully and profitably carried on at Danvers Plains ; " and he adds that Deacon Joseph Putnam, and Israel, his brother, nephews of Gen. Israel Putnam, made bricks in the pasture east of the centre of the village, toward Frostfish brook. x'\.long this brook, and Porter's river which receives its waters, are various traces of the work that was there done at an early period. Yet the wellinformed doctor believed that Col. Jeremiah Page, who was in the Revolutionary war and lived until 1806, was "the first person that manufactured bricks in Danvers." After his decease, his son, John Page, Esq., " continued the business with great profit to himself, and benefit to the community, to near the close of his life, and accumulated a handsome independence." He is said to have been the first in Massachusetts to make what were called clapped bricks ; and his trade, we are told, extended to all the principal cities and towns in New England, and to New York and even as far as Florida, the material thus supplied being much used for the construction of forts as well as for more common purposes. The Page yards were principally situated midway between the Plains and New Mills, on the western side of the road that connects the two villages, while opposite was that of Nathaniel Webb, who also found the occupation a lucrative one. Various yards have since been opened from time to time, and later brickmakers have continued to supply, with their products, the steady and growing need. - The lumber business, particularly the extensive operations of Mr. Calvin Putnam and his successors for many years past, and other establishments for boxmaking and for the manufacture ot leather and articles of wear, and also attractive gardens and greenhouses for the growth of vegetables and fruits and flowers for the markets - may well receive a passing notice here, whatever fuller accounts of them may or may not appear in later pages of this volume.

The war of 181 2 encountered a vehement opposition in Danvers. At a town meeting, held in the summer of that year, the inhabitants vigorously denounced it, for various reasons which they set forth, as " dangerous to the union, liberty, and independence of the United States." Yet alleged wrongs of the mother country against our own people, but particularly the frequent, undeniable, and outrageous impressment of our seamen into the British naval service year after year, had aroused in many citizens a spirit that demanded satisfaction and that was ready for hostilities. At all events, military companies were formed in the town for the common defence. One of them was organized at New Mills, and was commanded by Capt. Samuel Page, a hero of the Revolution. Another was raised in South Danvers and was under the indomitable Gideon Foster. There was also a company of artillery, of which Jesse Putnam was captain and Warren Porter was sergeant, and which was stationed at Salem. Putnam and Porter were both afterward promoted to be colonels. These officers and men saw but little active fpservice, but were surely ready for it, whenever or wherever was the need ; and Kossuth once said that they who are ready are as good as they who fight. But among those who were charged with sterner duty was General Moses Porter, mentioned before, who was uncle of Warren, and who, during the three years' war, won undying laurels on the Niagara, and at Fort Norfolk, in Virginia. And to this it may be added that many other Danvers men enlisted elsewhere and served in various scattered scenes.

Before and after the Revolution the evil of African slavery was on the wane at the South, but especially at the North, where natural conditions and other circumstances were so unfavorable to its existence. In 1758, there were but 25 slaves in Danvers. By the adoption of the new Constitution in 1780, Massachusetts abolished the institution throughout the state in a single day, and then of course there were none. 1 he subsequent revival of the African slave trade aroused the North to a sense of fresh dangers which threatened the country and of the duty of the American people to let the oppressed go free. In 1819 Danvers addressed a noble letter on the subject to Hon. Nathaniel Silsbee, then member of Congress from Essex County, urging emancipation by congressional action. The men who signed the letter should not be forgotten. They were : Edward Southwick, William Sutton, Thomas Putnam, Andrew Nichols, and John W. Proctor. Soon after William Lloyd Garrison entered upon his great abolition crusade, he found many ardent sympathizers with his work, and also subscribers for his " Liberator," in North and South Danvers. At New Mills an Anti-Slavery society was organized as early as 1833-34, and among its members were Richard Hood, Joseph Merrill, Hathorne Porter, John Cutler, William Endic ot t , James D. Black, and Dr. Ebenezer Hunt. It was about the same time that the first three remembered lectures on the great subject were given in the neighborhood, one by Oliver Johnson at the First church (Dr. Braman's), and the other two by James I). Black, and Rev. Cyrus P. Grosvenor, in the Baptish church, where also an address was delivered in the same interest, in 1835, by the celebrated George Thompson, of England. The ranks of the reformers soon grew in numbers, both men and women uniting in urging on the cause. In 1838 the society was reorganized and received a large additional list of members. For many years meetings for discussion or lectures - not seldom the scenes of much excitement - were held in the old engine house at the Port and in various school-houses, vestries and churches of the vicinity, and were addressed by such peerless champions of the slave as Mr. Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Parker Pillsbury, Stephen S. Foster, Abby Kelly, the Misses Grimke, of South Carolina, Charles Lennox Remond, Nathaniel P. Rogers, of Concord, N. H., Frederick

Douglass, and other noted leaders of the movement. Many of the New Mills abolitionists withdrew their connection with the churches on account of the general pro-slavery spirit of the members and were stigmatized as " Come-outers " or were called by more opprobrious names. Yet to the end they courageously bore their faithful testimony to the right as they saw the right and asked not the favors or honors of the world. The town has never seen higher or more heroic moral purpose and fidelity than theirs.

The same may be said of their colaborers in South Danvers, where also, in 1833-34, first appeared a very earnest and singularly estimable and unselfish band of emancipationists - the Southwicks and Winslows, Abner Sanger, Dr. Andrew Nichols, Andrew Porter, Alonzo P. Phillips, and many more. In 1837, a" Danvers Female Anti-Slavery Society " was formed for the whole town, with Mrs. Isaac Winslow as president ; Mrs. Richard Loring as vice president ; Miss Harriet N. Webster as corresponding secretary ; Miss Emily W. Taylor as recording secretary and Mrs. Elijah Upton as treasurer ; and with Mrs. Abel Nichols and others as councillors. Many of the abolitionists of both parts of the old town afterward joined the Liberty Party, which ere long was to swell the ranks of the Free-soil Party, until the mustered hosts of Freedom from all the parties, with Abraham Lincoln at their head, should cut up the overshadowing upas tree by the roots and destroy it forever. The older political organizations, whatever their past, were to prove unworthy the lead and must needs give way before the march of progress. The Liberty Party, like its legitimate successors, was a power in Danvers, and such members of it as Dr. Nichols, Mr. Phillips, Abner Sanger, and others like them, in South Danvers, and Dea. Frederick Howe, Col. Jesse Putnam, John A. Learoyd, Francis P. Putnam, Winthrop Andrews and many more, in North Danvers, no longer relying on moral teaching alone, as the Garrisonians had done, but now also on the strong hand of government, had caught the secret by which the the vast problem was to be solved and the

Yet it was not without desperate struggles or measures of the South to stem the tide and prevent the consummation. The war with Mexico (1845-48) was waged to gain new territory for the spread and growth of slavery. Its success was its failure. Man meant it for evil, but a higher power defeated its purpose. According to Hanson, five men of Danvers enlisted in the service. The " Soldiers' Record " mentions eight in all, four of whom belonged to Capt. Charles B. Crowninshield's company, in Col. Caleb Cushing's regiment of Massachusetts volunteers. But the citizens of the old town condemned the war in unmistakable terms.

The Massachusetts Society for the Suppression of Intemperance, formed in 181 2, and consisting of about 125 members, among whom were Joseph Torrey,Dr. Samuel Holten and Rev. Dr. Benjamin Wadsworth, is said to have been the first organization of the kind in America, if not in the world. In the town itself, the first was the " Danvers Moral Society," of 1 8 14. Dr. Holten was chosen its president, and associated with him, as its other officers, was a numerous array of wellknown and most worthy citizens. Their earnest work had such a salutary effect upon the community, that by and by the names of drunkards were posted in conspicuous places and offenders against the license laws were prosecuted, till it was finally voted, in 1833, that no license should be granted at all, so that in 1848 it was somewhat significantly stated that " no intemperance has been manufactured by law for fifteen years." In 1836, eight hundred females of the town petitioned the legal voters " to ac^ as well as to think,'' and the next year John W. Proctor requested the authorities of Salem " not to locate their dram shops on the immediate borders of Danvers." The popular movement of the " Washingtonians " followed, in 1842, when large and crowded assemblies in Danvers were addressed by reformed inebriates and by the famous Dr. Jewett and others, and songs of gladness and the gospel of " moral suasion " filled the air. Later societies and meetings, particularly the Catholic Total Abstinence Society and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and other kindred organizations of the town, have also been marked by deepest earnestness and untiring activity in the service of the tempted and fallen. Nor should we fail to state in this connection what constant and efficient aid has been rendered to this sacred cause by the very able, earnest and consecrated minister of the Maple street church, Rev. E. C. Ewing, and indeed by all the clergymen of the town, of whatever denomination. Whatever their varying creeds, these faithful teachers and pastors find in practical christian work like this a blessed common bond of union.

As to school education in the Salem Village of yore and in the Danvers of subsequent time, much could be written to show what progress has been made from the very rude, humble beginnings of two centuries ago, to the extensive and highly dev^eloped public system of to-day. Doubtless pedagogues at the outset taught the children in little groups in private houses. Thus it was with l3aniel Andrew at first and Caleb Clark afterward. Felt, in his "Annals," makes mention of the ." New England Primer " and other old text books which were used in the time of the earlier settlements, and has numerous jottings like these : " 1698, Mar. 15. The Village ask aid in support of their school;" " 1 701, May 30. The Village had chosen a committee to hire a school master for their children ; " " June 16, 17 12. It was voted that the old watch-house -should be used for a writing school;" "Dec. 16, (17 12). The people at the Village, voted ^^5 to widow Catharine Dealland for teaching school among them and invited her to do the same service, another year, for the like sum. She accei^ted ; " "1714, Nov. 8. Samuel Andrews gave a receipt as an instructer at the Village ; " " 1 724, Jan. 10. The Village school master was to instruct one month at a time, in four different places, namely, at Will Hill, (Middleton) and three positions * in the plantation.' " These " three positions " were plainly at the Village proper, at the Middle Precinct and at Ryall side, east of Porter's River, as it was with reference to schools in these places, that, during the years above indicated, grants of money were made to the inhabitants for " learning their children to read, write and cipher." As early as 1708, Rev. Joseph Green, ministerof the Village church, himself built a small school-house within the present limits of Danvers. It stood at the upper end of the common, or Training Field, at the Centre ; and it has been claimed that it was the first in town. But from an interesting article by Mr. Eben Putnam, in his " Historical Magazine " for October, 1897, it appears that one was standing, as far back as 1 701, "on the line of the old road, long since abandoned, which runs through the old ThomasPutnam farms, perhaps near the Jesse Putnam place." More and more attention was given to the matter of education as years advanced, other little nurseries of knowledge were opened from time to time, and in 1777 it was voted that " there be ten schools set up in the town for three months each, and that the selectmen regulate the schools and provide proper persons for school masters." In 1794, a district system was established. It was about that year that there were 800 children in ten districts, and in 1852 there were about 2000 in fourteen districts. At this time, the surplus revenue of 1844, invested as a permanent fund for the benefit of the schools, amounted to $10,000. In 1850 were opened the two High schools of the town, - the Holten high school in North Danvers, named for Dr. Samuel Holten ; and the Peabody high school in South Danvers, named for George Peabody. But of these, and the two Peabody Institutes which some years later the renowned London banker and philanthropist estabUshed and liberally endowed in the two sections in honor and love of the old undivided town of his nativity ; and of the churches of Danvers, and its many other institutions and societies, - suitable accounts or descriptions may be 'expected in subsequent portions of this book.

We have referred to the first highway opened through New Mills, near the middle of the last century. A much more noted one was the "Old Ipswich Road " which was in existence as early as the year 1634, and which ran from Medford into Danvers, through what are now Ash and Elm streets at the Plains, and thence on by Conant street to North Beverly and so to Ipswich (or Agawam). Of early date, also, was the direct road from Salem, leading through the Port, the Plauis and Putnamville, to Topsfield and Haverhill ; and many now living recall the stages that regularly passed over it to and fro between the termini, and how, as school children of District No. 3, they were year after year, early and late, taken aboard "without money and without price" by the ever kind and cheery old driver, Isaac Pinkham. The Boston and Newburyport turnpike, which ran through Lynnfield, Danvers, and Topsfield and was once so famous a stage-road, was incorporated in March, 1803, and the Essex turnpike, or " Andover turnpike, " which extends from New Hampshire to Salem, Mass., and also passes through Danvers, was incorporated, June 2 2d, of the same year. Thoroughfares like these have a history well worth the study, but what with new openings and other modes of travel, the inevitable change long since came, and with it vanished most of whatever charm belonged

One of the write'rs remarks upon the great number of burial places in old Danvers, public and private. Of these the most noteworthy are the Endicott family lot, in which repose descendants and relatives of the Governor, from an early date ; the Wadsworth burying ground, in which lie the remains of Elizabeth Parris (wife of Rev. Samuel Parris), who died July 14, 1696; the Plains graveyard, in which there are stones that date back for more than Ja century and a tasteful marble monument for the family of Capt. Benjamin Porter, a prominent citizen of New Mills; the Tapleyville burying ground, in which is the grave of Dr. Samuel Holten ; the Catholic Cemetery ; and the Walnut Grove Cemetery, which was consecrated in 1844 and is the largest and fairest of these sacred enclosures. One of the earliest occupants of the last-named was Hon. Samuel Putnam, an eminent Judge of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, of whom the land was purchased, and whose home, near by, on Holten street, was also the home of his ancestor of the second generation, Nathaniel Put- old South Burying Ground, in which are the graves of Rev. Nathan Holt and Rev. Samuel Walker, once pastors of the Second church (the original church of the " Middle Precinct"), and of Captain Dennison Wallis, and the frail, yet accomplished Eliza Wharton of fJell Tavern memory, whose sad story of the long ago touched the hearts of so many New England people ; Monumental Cemetery, " beautiful and commodious," in which is the simple, but shining epitaph of Master Pienjamin Gile, " I taught little children to read ; " Cedar Grove, whose one hundred and thirty acres, more or less, of diversified and lovely scenery are now in principal use with the families of the town for the interment of their dead ; and Harmony Grove, whose shaded and extensive slopes and levels are the resting-place of Peabody's greatest son and benefactor and of a numerous train of her departed worthies, though, not as formerly, nearly the whole now belongs to Salem. Even the dust of George Peabody himself no longer lies within the present limits of the town that gave him birth and that bears his name, but within the boundary line of the adjoining city. - Yet, most touching of all are the many, many scattered graves which, in Danvers and Peabody alike, are strewn with flowers of Memorial days and thus tell where the brave men sleep, " their country's hope and pride."

Of inestimable advantage to both parts of the old town have been the newspapers that have been published within their borders during the last fifty or sixty years. In 1844, the " Danvers Whig" was published in South Danvers for a time as a political campaign paper. From Aug. 28th, 1844 to April 1 6th, 1845, Samuel T.- Damon conducted a very spirited sheet, "The Danvers Eagle." "The Danvers Courier " was established. Mar. 15, 1845, and was edited by George B. Carleton. The first number of " The Wizard " edited by Fitch Poole, Esq. and published by Charles D. Howard, was issued Dec. 7, 1859, '^''"^ ^^'is ^ remarkably bright, humorous and entertainmg visitor at' many a shop and home. In 1869, the year after the town of South Danvers took the name of Peabody, Mr. Howard established "The Peabody Press," and was its editor as well as publisher, supplying the same paper from week to week to Danvers subscribers under the old name of the " Danvers Courier," until H. C. Cheever, as editor and proprietor, started in Danvers, 187 1, the " Danvers Mirror." Charles H. Shepard bought the Danvers Mirror and job printing business of Mr. Cheever in 1875 and conducted the same until 1890, when, with an associate for a time, the present editor and publisher, Frank E. Moynahan, came into possession. While yet he was editor of the Mirror, Mr. Shepard was for several years Secretary of the Massachusetts Press Association, and in 1889 was chosen representative in the Legislature for Danvers and Middleton ; and then from 1890 to 1893 was United States Consul at Gothenburg, Sweden. In 1895 he purchased the two newspapers then published in Peabody - the Press and the Advertiser - and consolidated them into the " Peabody Union," which sometime afterward he discontinued, to devote himself more exclusively to job printing at the old stand where books and papers have been published in Peabody for fifty years. Mr. Shepard's able care and management of the Mirror and of its accompanying work have been vigorously sustained under the energetic and enterprising superintendence of Mr. Moynahan, a native of the town and graduate of its High school, who had been associated with Mr. Shepard for six years when he succeeded to the business in 1890, and who has since supplied Topsfield with his paper under the heading of "The Topsfield Townsman," and contributed largely to several daily newspapers and various trade publications, meantime winning the prize of a gold eagle offered by the Boston Post for the best letter of less than two hundred words on " How to run a newspaper." Other sheets have been published for a brief time, in both Danvers and Peabody ; anil since these pages have been given to the printer, the first number of a daily paper, " Danvers Evening Press " (May 27), has been issued.

vice to the town. On the 25 th of August, t8oo, Robert Shillaber, Israel Putnam, and Edward Southwick were elected to purchase two engnies, one to be placed near the Bell Tavern in South Danvers and the other near New Mills, in North Danvers. " Fire-wards," six in number, were first chosen in 1801. In 1815, there were ten, and in 1840, twelve. In 1830, the Department was duly established by an Act of the Legislature. In subsequent years, additional engines were located in other parts of the town, as at Wilson's corner, the Plains, and Tapleyville. These were days of full companies, drills, fire-buckets, apparatus, miscellaneous service, rival entertainments and sportive performances, such as are quite unknown to our own time and methods. " Only certain grandfathers," says Mr. White, " remember the halcyon days." Days they were, ho^vever, which vividly call to remembrance most terrible conflagrations that defied the prowess of the brave men who dared the flames ; as the great fire of Sept. 22, 1843, which swept through what is now Peabody Square, consuming the South meeting-house, the old Essex Coiifee House, and a large number of stores, dwellings and other structures ; or the equally destructive fire at the Plains, June to, 1845, which broke out in the very heart of the village and reduced to ashes the fine residences of Joshua Silvester and Samuel Preston and their shoe manufactories, with many shops and the Post Office besides, and ruined beyond repair the old Village Bank building at the north-western corner of the immediate intersecting streets.

Danvers has been benefited greatly by its railroads, however inadequate the management and accommodation. The Essex Road was chartered in 1846 and was opened to South Danvers, Jan. 18, 1847, and through Danvers, Middleton and Andover to Lawrence, Sept. 5, 1848. was built by, and leased to, the Eastern Railroad Company and has long been the Lawrence Branch of the Eastern Division of the Boston & Maine system. Among those who were first and foremost in the enterprise was one of whom the Mirror's account of Danvers, Feb. 19, 1876, said:

" Hon. Elias Putnam was most active and influential in procuring its charter and location. He had in previous years been anxious that Danvers should have connection by railroad with Boston and other places, and various routes were surveyed and considered before the Essex road was finally located. He had hoped to see the road completed and the trains passing over it, but this was not to be, as he died in the summer of 1847." He was one of the Corporators and one of the first Board of Directors, and Joseph S. Cabot, of Salem, vvas the first President. - The Danvers and Georgetown Road was chartered. May 7, i85i,andthe DanversRoad extending from Danvers to South Reading and thus connecting with the old Boston and Maine, was chartered, Mar. 15, 1852. The present " Nestor of the Essex Bar," Hon. Wm. D. Northend, of Salem, was the president of both these roads, and with remarkable ability and energy overcame manifold difficulties, and achieved success, making the continuous Branch of the Western Division, running through Lynnfield, Danvers, Topsfield and Georgetown, to Newburyport, his lasting debtor. By an Act of the Legislature, May 2, 1853, both of his roads were authorized to unite with the Newburyport & Haverhill Road, under one company, and a year or two later they were all duly open to the pubhc. By these various lines which have been mentioned, Danvers was favored, for travel or business, with railway communication with Salem and the seaport, and with Boston and the northern and western interior towns and cities, near and far.

It was after much debate that Salem Village and the Middle Precinct had been incorporated as one District in 1752, and were constituted a Town in 1757. A full century had witnessed to their united growth and prosperity. But as time wore on, it was more and more felt and found that each of the two sections had circumstances and needs of its own and that it was quite inconvenient to hold town meetings now in one and then in the other ; so that, after much discussion and contention among the inhabitants as to the matter of separation, the petition of many of them for a division was granted by the Legislature, in " an Act to incorporate the town of South Danvers," passed May i8, 1855. North Danvers remained, as now, the town of Danvers, and of course retained the records, having a population of about 4000, while that of South Danvers was 5348. The dividing line at the east corresponded in the main with Water's river, but gave to Danvers about fifty acres south of it, near the Iron Works, while from the head of that stream it ran west, with a northerly inclination, to the boundary line of Middleton. On the 27th of April, 1857, an Act was approved, which set off to Danvers a certain part of Beverly, lying east of Porter's river and ever, to take note only of the northern town. On the i6th of April, 1861, an immense assemblage of the citizens gathered at the Town Hall and was presided over by Arthur A. Putnam, then a young lawyer of the place. After much earnest, but perhaps also rather aimless talk, a modest but unfamiliar voice reminded the crowd that " the meeting was not for eloquence, but enlistment." It was the voice of Nehemiah P. Fuller, who had already seen service in the Mexican war and who was a grandson of the Major Ezra Putnam, before mentioned as having been in the French and Indian war, at Bunker Hill and in the Revolutionary struggle, and also as an emigrant, in his including Browne's Hill, and land immediately north and on the other side of the old Ipswich road, between Cherry Hill farm-house and Frost-fish Brook. South Danvers changed its name for Peabody, April 13, 1868.

But old Danvers, however divided by the act of May 18, 1855, or by sectional feeling before and after, was one in thought, spirit and purpose, at the fall of Sumter and in the mighty conflict which at once ensued. The fire of i:)atriotism that burned in the hearts of her people in the days of the Revolution, still lived in the souls of their descendants and burst forth anew at the first tidings of actual rebellion. It is our province here, howadvanced years, to the colony of Marietta on the Ohio. Fuller himself proposed to enlist and called on others who were present to do the same. His example, and that of Ruel B. Pray, who is said to have been the first to sign the roll, were not in vain. " Others followed that night and in six days the roll was full and ready for organization." At the election of oiificers, Fuller was chosen captain of the company which soon took the name of the Danvers Light Infantry. During the war he was promoted to be Major of the Second Heavy Artillery, and after it he removed to Missouri, but returned to Danvers to die, Feb. 3, 1881. A day or two after the war meeting of

April 1 6th, some young men of the Plains, Arthur A. Putnam, George W. Kenney and others, agreed to form another company and the law office of the first-named was opened for recruits. Says the " Putnam Guards " pamphlet, " The volunteering was at once gratifyingly brisk. In the course of a week, the requisite number of names for a company (50) was enrolled, nearly all the signers being residents of the Plains village." At the election of officers on the 30th, Mr. Putnam was chosen captain, and for weeks that ensued the company drilled in the Bank hall and in " Berry's pasture," under the direction of Major Foster of the Salem Cadets, as under that of Benjamin E. Newhall they had previously done in the unfinished first story of the grammar school house on Maple street. It was later made known to them through Mrs. Julia A. Philbrick, that a banner would be presented to them by the venerable Miss Catherine Putnam of Peterborough, N. H., on condition of their taking the name of " Putnam Guards." The condition was unanimously complied with, and at a great throng of people in the public square of the Plains village on the 2 2d of May, Mrs. Philbrick's husband, Hon. John D. Philbrick, on behalf of the donor, presented with eloquent words the beautiful and precious gift, Capt. Putnam making a fitting response and others following with appropriate addresses. On the 20th of June, the welcome government order came, to report on the 24th, as Company I, of the Fourteenth Regiment of Infantry, " at the Capitol on Beacon hill in readiness to go that day into camp at Fort Warren." After seven weeks at the fort and after much delay and discomfort in leaving it, they were at length on their way to New York and were soon at Washington and " on Meridian Hill near the war-bristling capital of the nation."

Besides the two companies of early volunteers that have been mentioned, there were thirty-two more men from Danvers who enlisted about the same time in the two Salem companies assigned to the Fifth Regiment, twenty in Company A and twelve in Company H. " They bore an honored part in the disastrous battle of Bull Run, July 2 I St, exactly three months after the regiment left F a n e u i 1 hall." The next year a third Dan- V e r s company was formed, of which Albert G. Allen was captain. It was Co. K of the Eighth Regiment, which " sailed from Boston, Nov. 7, 1862, under Col. Coffin of Newburyport for Newbern, N. C, and in June, 1863, was transferred to Baltimore, thence to Maryland Heights, and experienced hard service in the pur- "suit of Lee after the battle of Gettysburg."

But space forbids details respecting all the enlistments that went on in Danvers during the four years' war, as often as calls were made by the government; the steady and faithful encouragement and support rendered in all this time by the men and women at home to their absent ones who thus offered themselves for the Union's sake ; and the many and widelyscattered battle-fields of the country where these sons or citizens of the old town fought and suffered for the cause and so many of them gave to it their lives in courageous and holy self-sacrifice. The best history of Danvers that has yet been published is that which was written by Hon. A. P. White and was included in the History of Essex County in 1888. We take from it, also, the impressive statement, that " Danvers furnished in all seven hundred and ninety- two men for the war, which was a surplus of thirty-six over and above all demands. Forty-four were commissioned officers." The later " Soldiers' Record " says that there were " 796 separate individuals, who served in the Rebellion," credited to this town. Thirty-seven, at least, were in the naval service. One of them was Dr. Warren Porter (son of Col. Warren Porter of the war of 181 2), who, as an experienced and competent sailor, was commissioned at Washington as acting ensign, Oct. 26, 1863, and who shortly after distinguished himself while cruising in the Gulf of Mexico in the frigate Magnolia. One afternoon, about three o'clock, was discovered in the distance the rebel steamer " Matagorda," and chase was immediately given. For a time she was lost to view, but only for a time. Porter, with permanent injury to his eyes, sighted her long and intently through the hawser-hole as the pursuit was continued, until about eleven o'clock in the evening, when she was finally overtaken and when he was the first to board her. As prize master, he took the ship and its cargo to Boston where she was sold for $355,000, and the treasury of the government thus received a handsome sum of money through the vigilance and energy of this son of Danvers. He was straightway juomoted to be commander of the "Nita" and afterward captured several smaller vessels, still scouring the seas until his discharge, Aug. 26, 1865, when the war had ended.

It would be most pleasant to make particular mention of many others who thus reflected honor upon the old town in this tremendous contest. We have space for only two or three of them. - Daniel J. Preston, a well known and highly respected citizen, enlisted as ist lieutenant at the age of 45, was afterward promoted to be captain, and was later commissioned, Dec. 6, 1863, as Major of the 36th U. S. Colored Infantry, - Especially should we name in this connection, Maj. General Grenville M. Dodge, who, while he hailed from his adopted state of Iowa, was yet a native of Danvers, born in Putnamville, April 12, 1831, within a half mile of the Topsfield line and in a house that was the early home, and also the birthplace of Elias Putnam, though many years ago the part in which the former first saw the light was detached from the main and older portion of the building and now stands about an eighth of a mile south of it and on the opposite or eastern side of the road. General Dodge, having states and the vast regions between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains. At the outbreak of the war of the RebeUion, he enlisted in the Union service, rose rapidly 10 high commands and exalted military rank, was terribly wounded in the battle of Pea Ridge, in the siege of Atlanta, and in other engagements, and became the intimate and trusted friend and associate of Lincoln, Grant and Sherman. He was afterward, for two years, a member of Congress from his Iowa district, and then was very active and most indefatigable as the chief builder of the Union Pacific Railroad, while since that time, as President, Vice President or Director of great railroad companies, he has tirelessly busied himself in projecting enormous lines that now belt the immense territory of the far West and Southwest, and in thus developing its measureless resources and possibilities. - Another of the same family name is Major Francis S. Dodge (son of Francis Dodge of Danvers), who was born o n Hathorne Hill, Sept. 1 1 . 1842, enlisted in the Civil War, Oct. 9, 1861, was repeatedly promoted for meritorious conduct, received a medal from Congress for his brave rescue of Major Thornburg and his cavalry troops from the Indians in Colorado in 1879, was made major and paymaster in 1880, and is still winning fresh honors from the government.

In 1870, a noble granite monument was erected in front of the Town House to *' all Danvers soldiers and sailors who fell in the late war for the Union," it being dedicated on the 30th of November of that year. Thirty-three and one quarter feet high, and seven and three-quarters feet square at the base, it bears the names of Major Wallace A. Putnam, Lieutenant James Hill, and ninety-three others who died in the nation's defence. Around it, as often as Memorial day returns, gather the thinnmg ranks of their comrades of Ward Post 90, of the Grand Army of the Republic, and a multitude of the people of the town, in loving and tender remembrance of the honored dead and with fresh consecration to the service and weal of the Union for which they gave their lives.

Danvers had its first post-office in 1 836 ; its Savings Bank in 1850. The Town House, built in 1854 at the junction of Holten and Sylvan streets for municipal purposes, public meetings and the High School, was lengthened 25 feet in 1883, and was much reconstructed and enlarged in 1896. The original Danvers Peabody Institute building, which was dedicated in the presence of Mr. Peabody himself, July 14, 1869, was destroyed by fire, June 2, 1890, and was succeeded, t w o years later, by the moj-e clas- ^ic and commodious edifice of to-day. This was dedicated, Oct. 19, 1892, and is still surrounded by the trees and plants and walks with which its ample grounds had been so tastefully and diligently ornamented by that honored and public spirited benefactor of the town, Joshua Silvester. The State Lunatic Hospital, on Hathorne hill, began to be built in 1874 and was opened for patients in 1878. The fine system of water works for the town, with its reservoir of pure Middleton supplies, on Hathorne hill, was established in 1875. "I'he Monument to Rebecca Nurse, in the family grove cemetery in Tapleyville, was erected and consecrated in 1885, and the Tablet on the same grounds to the memory of her Forty Friends, in 1892. The electric light 53^5- tem for the streets and buildings of the town was commenced in 18S8 and completed in 1890. " Danvers," we read " was the pioneer town in this state to establish electric lighting on its own account." And, recently, the war with Spain for the emancipation of the Queen of the Antilles again appealed to the sympathy of the patriotic citizens, and the enthusiasm of the people, as Capt. A. P. Chase and his brave men of Co. K went forth in May, 1898, to join the 8th Regiment under gallant Col. \V. A. Pew, for whatever service they might render, was lost in joy at their return in April, 1899. First to volunteer, the Regiment encamped chiefly at the South, but finally at Matanzas, Cuba.

its ample apartments and admirable arrangements ; the Lexington monument, and near it the site of the old Bell Tavern, now occupied by a fine new residence built by the late J. B. Thomas ; the little house in which the great Nathaniel Bowditch passed a portion of his childhood and in which he began the studies that afterward made him so useful and celebrated ; the birthplace of George Peabody, and the homes of many a famous soldier, or citizen, or historic family. But we have not yet done with Danvers, whose other attractions are quite as nota-