Shrewsbury Town

Early Land Grants

Thk history of Shrewsbury properly begins with certain land grants of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay, in New England, located within the territory of which the town was afterwanls formed. These grants, called farms, named after the grantees and five in number, were: (1) Davenport's Farm, 650 acres; (2) Haynes' Farm, otherwise called Quinsigamond Farm, 3200 acres; (3) Maiden Farm, 1000 acres ; (4) Rawson's Farm, 500 acres, and (5) Sewall's Farm, 1500 acres. But the quantity of land in these grants was, in fact, greatly in excess of the number of acres named, and the aggregate was, doubtless, more than 10,000 acres,

1. The Davenport Farm, granted to Captain Richard Davenport, commander of Castle Island, in Boston Harbor, in consideration of public services, was laid out to him in the valley of the Nashua River, in that part of Shrewsbury now West Boylston and BoyUton, and included very valuable millsites, as well as the finest parcel of intervale land lying in a body to be found in Massachusetts east of Connecticut River. Its final confirmation to thegrautee was May 28, 1659.' Capt. Davenport came to Salem with Gov. Endicott in 1628, and after many years of public service was killed by lightning (" tooke away by ye solemne strooke of Thunder''), while sleeping by his magazine, w-ith only the wainscot between him and the powder. His son Richard, with his two sons, William and Nathaniel, came to Shrewsbury about 1736 and settled upon this grant.^

2. The grantees of the Haynes' Farm, who did not themselves give their own name to their grant, but called it by the more euphonious title gii'en by the Indians to " ye Greate Pond that lyeth West Pointe to ye sd farm," were the brothers John and Josiah Haynes, of Sudbury, and their brother-in-law, Nathaniel Treadway, of Watertown. The Haynes brothers, with their sisters, Sufferance and Mary, were the children of Walter Haynes, a Wiltshire linenweaver, who, with his wife E izabeth and children, all under sixteen years, came in the good ship "Confidence'' from England in 1038, and settled in Sudbury. This grjnt was originally made to Isaac Johnson in consideration of " £400 adventured by the said Mr. Johnson in the comon stock of The Governor and company of ye Massachusetts Bay in New England," which, to begin with, was little else but an incorporated trading company founded on the East India plan. Johnson dying, this grant, as yet unlocated and accounted personal estate, came into the possession of his executor, Increase Nowell. .Johnson and Nowell were both original patentees of the colony charter of 1628 and had part wiih Winthrop in importing it to New England. Nowell also dying before location of the grant, his executor sold it to John Haynes and his brother Josiah and their brothers-in-law - Nathaniel Treadway, who married their sister Sufferance and Thomas Noyes, who married their other sister, Mary. It was finally laid out to the Haynes brothers and Treadway (Noyes having died), and confirmed by the General Court May 27, 1664.' The southwest corner of Haynes' Farm was at the going out of the Nipnapp River from the southernmost end of Quinsigamond Ponds, and both the islands there belonged to the farm and so to the town of Shrewsbury to this day. Another corner was where the town bound between Northborough and Shrewsbury now stands, by the Great Road near the house of Mr. William U. Maynard. The northwest and southeast corners of the grant cannot be fixed with exactness, but cannot have been very remote from where the two school-houses, Nos. 3 and 5, now siand. The northern boundary curved northward and crossed the Boylston road near where Mr. Lowell Walker now lives, and thence passed on to the Northborough line. I have been thus particular to trace the origin and show the location of the Haynes Farm, because it was much the largest of the five grants, because it was the owners of this large tract of land that formed the nucleus of the Marlborough colony that settled Shrewsbury, and because the facts are not well known.

3. One hundred of the one thousand acres of Maiden Farm were in Worcester. Its southern boundary line was three hundred and seventy rods long, and the southernmost point of West Boylston was the centre of this line, and the line running northerly for about two miles from this point, bet.ween the two towns of Boylston and West Boylston, divided this farm into two equal parts. Its northwest c.iruer is said in the lay-out to be about a mile distant from the Davenport Farm. The original grant to the town of Maiden, made May 9, 1662, was on condition that "ye ministry of Maulden do cause it to be bounded out and puc on improvement wiihin three years next ensewing." The location of the grant by metes and bounds was duly made and confirmed within the time prescribed. May 3, 1665, but the only improvements made were marking forest trees, at the corners, with the letter M.^ On this ground, want of improvements within three years, the validity of the grant was disputed by the proprietors of Shrewsbury, and their records contain frequent references to this grant as the "pretended Maiden Farm." In 1736 Rev. Joseph Emerson, of Maiden, and minister of God's Word there, brought suit in the Worcester Common Pleas against Ephraim Wheeler and David Crosby, of Shrewsbury, for possession of the nine hundred acres of this grant which lay in Shrewsbury. This suit was defended by the proprietors, by whose direction Wheeler and Crosby had taken possession of the land, and Nahum Ward, one of the proprietors, acted as their counsel in the suit. On trial in the Common Pleas the verdict and judgment were for the defendants, but Mr. Emerson appealed and prevailed in the Superior Court, final judgment for the plaintiff, October Term, 1736. But the proprietors were not content, and the next year Mr. Ward was sent to the Great and General Court to re-open the question determined in the suit, and for four years Mr. Ward continued to press petitions for a new trial and for re-location of the grant, in vain. Maiden Hill and Maiden Brook were both named from this grant, though neither hill nor brook is in it. From uncertainty about the location of the grant, it may have been supposed or claimed that its location was so as to include the brook and hill.

4. Secretary Edward Rawson received from time to time grants of several parcels of land to eke out his pitiful salary, and among the rest a rectangle of five hundred acres lying between Marlboro', Lancaster and Worcester, about half a mile north of Haynes' Farm, and Deacon John Haynes located it for him. It was one mile (three hundred and twenty rods) long by two hundred and fifty rods wide. Rawsoii's Hill, called in the grant by its Inilian name of Ashant's Hill, was in it and Cold Harbor Brook ran through it. Some years before this grant to him the secretary had spent some money to no profit in experiments with saltpetre or something he thought was saltpetre, and the General Court, to encourage such patriotic experimenting and compensate him for his los<es thereabout, granted him five hundred acre-s of land " near Pequot,'' but afterwards gave him thirty pounds instead oi" the land. As no consideration is expressly named in the grant which was located in Shrewsbury, and the quantity is the same, it is probable tiiat this grant was a renewal of the other, modified so that it might be "layd out in any free place not prejudicing a plantation." The lay-out and confirmation of this grant was May 13, 1(386.'

5. Sewall's Farm lay on the westerly side of Shrewsbury, with a narrow strip between it and Worcester line. Its south boundary line was a little south of the Great Road, its southwest corner near the head Quinsigamond Pond. Its given dimensions were seven hundred and eighty rods long, south to north, and three hundred and forty rods wide, east to west, or not quite two miles and one-half long by a little more than a mile wide - extending from its south line, before mentioned, beyond and including Grass Pond, (once so-called, but for three generations last past known as Sewall's Pond), in Boylston. It was bounded for a considerable distance on its west side by Maiden Farm, and also for a less distance on the east by Haynes' Farm, and so connected the two. It had on it two mill-sites, - one a little below Sewall's Pond, where Banister's Mills were built, and the other, now unoccupied, but much the better water-power of the two, near the house of Mr. Frederick E. Abbott, where once stood Harlow's Mills, burned nearly forty years ago. Sewall's Hill, as well as Sewall's Pond, is within the farm limits, and both took their name from the grantee, Samuel Sewall, chief justice of the old Superior Court of Judicature, one of the judges who tried the Salem witches and the only one of them that is known to have repented thereof; author of Sewall's Diary, etc.

The south part of Sewall's Farm - one thousand acres - was laid out and confirmed November 20, 1695, to James Russell, sometime colony treasurer, to whom the grant (originally made to Deputy-Governor Francis Willoughby, in consideration of public service) came, unlocated, by descent from his father, Richard Russell, also sometime colony treasurer, who had bought it of the Deputy-Governor. Chief Justice Sewall's title to this part of his farm in Shrewsbury was by purchase of Treasurer James Russell. His title to the north part - five hundred acres - was in right of his wife, who was the only daughter of Miutmaster John Hull, who "by minting made a mint of money " for himself, as well as for the colony, and became the richest man of New England. Hannah Hull married Samuel Sewall long before he was chief justice, or hung the witches, or had made much progress in his famous diary, or was famous for anything, and brought her husband a marriage-portion of £30,000, all duly counted out to him on the weddingday in "pine-tree" shillings, fresh from her father's mint.' This grant, which had come to Madam Han. nah Hull Sewall through her father, in some way that I have not yet been able to trace, was CDnfirmed to her and her husband, May 27, 1696. A rude plan of Sewall's Farm may be seen in the Worcester Registry of Deeds,^with a deed, dated June 1, 1732, of a moiety thereof from William Pepperell, of Kiltery, et ux. et ah. to Nahum Ward, of Shrewsbury. This was thirteen years before the famed exploit of Louisbourg, and the thrifty trader of Kittery was then only a hero in posse, and tenant, in common with others, of fifteen hundred acres of real estate in Shrewsbury, in right of his wife, who was Mary Huist, and one of Chief Ju.stiee Sewall's three granddaughters, and so coparcener of the real estate aforesaid. This plan was made, as appears from the deed, from a survey made in November, 1714, by David Haynes, youngest son of Deacon John, of Sudbury, and one may read in the Sewall Diary the following entry, under date " 1714, 8' 6. Mr. David Hayns dines with us. . . . Gave him the Bounds of Quanssicamon Farms, that he may review and refresh them." Whereby one may note that the Indians' name for Long Pond (whatever may be the Indians' spelling of it) was once applied to Sewall's Farm, as well as to Haynes'. Probably it was to distinguish the two that at a later period they were called after their respective grantees.^

Chapter

It will aid to a better understanding both of what precedes and what is to follow to give a brief account of the road through Shrewsbury anciently called the Connecticut Road, - in later times the Country Road, the Stage Road, Post Road and Great Road. The original road from Massachusetts Bay to the Con-

^So HutchiDSon i. 1G5, to which tradition adds that the bride, being set io tlie scalt-s, exiictly balanced the silver pine-trees. Blerely suggesting to the reader that a pine-tree shilling's prescribed weight was Ihreo pennyweights, Troy, I leave bini to compute "exactly" what was Mrs. Sewall's weight on her wedding-day.

*Since the above was in the hands of the publishers, I have discovered, under date of June 20, 171.'5, another gl'ant of si-vteen hundred and eighty-three acres to the heirs of John Haynes, lying in the southerly part of Shrewsbury and adjoining "Haynes' Old Farm " on the south side. Tins is what is ciUed in the I'roprietors' Records "RobUins' Farm," so named from .Toseph Robbins, a " Praying Indian" of Ilassanimisco, whose title Deacon Haynes in his life-time had bought, of which title this grant was a contirmation. See Court Records, 1715, and Maps and Plans, Vol. 5, page 3, Secretary of State's oflice. See also a plan of the original grant to the Shrewsbury Proprietors, vol. 16, paso 518, on which this grant, under the name of " Haynes' Indian Farm," is laid down.

necticut River did not pass through Shrewsbury at all, but to the south of it. It was merely the old trail of the Indiana. The new Connecticut Road was laid out by Major John Pynchon, whose father William had founded a town at either end of it.' The " worshipful " major's authority was an order of the General Court, under date March 30, 1G83, in these word.s :

"Whereas the way to Kornecticut, now used, being very hazardous to travelers hy reason of one deepe river that is passed fower or tive times over, wliicli may be avoided, it is referred t > Major Pynchon to order ye said way to be layd out & well marked. He having hyred two injins to gu de him in tlie way for filty rfhillinge, it is ordered that the Treasurer pay them the same in country pay towards effecting this workc."-

The principal change of the old way consisted in passing north instead of south of Quinsigumond Pond, and so through Shrewsbury. Departing from the old way, it passed northerly of Little Chauncey Poud in Northborough into Shrewsbury exactly where the Great Road enters the town to-day, and thence through the town to the head of Quinsigamond Pond, on substantially the same line as the present road. But in 1726 it was re-located by a jury sent out by the Middlesex Court of Sessions, whose accepted return, so far as relates to the re-location in Shrewsbury, is as follows (what immediately precedes relates to the way in Worcester): "And thence in Shrewsbury, keeping the old nay, crossing the Brook, running into Long Pond, and so keeping the old way south of Gershom Wheelock's house, and between the house and barn of Daniel How, & so still keeping the old road till it comes out of the woodland east of said How's, on the edge of the Great Rocky Plain, and so keeping very nigh a straight line a little south of Mr. Cu^hing's house, on the east side of the aforesaid Plain, and then in the old way till it come to Capt. Keyes' fenced land, and so crossing a small corner of said Keyes' fenced ground, and then in the old way running between said Keyes' house and barn, and so keeping the old road south of Widow Blair's, and so to the Westborough ' line in the old road, passing between Daniel Barnes' house and barn," etc.

That is to say, the re-located road crossed the town line in exactly the same place where the old road crossed it, nor has there been any change had, either in the road or the town line from that time (1726) to this day, and the town bound by the road here stands precisely where it was established in 1717 by the viewing committee's report " at a heap of stones, called Warner's Corner, which is the most easterly corner of Haynes' Farm by the Country Road." Daniel Barnes occupied the sixteenth house-lot of ihe proprietors' records, " bounded easterly by the town line, northerly by Haines' old Farm . . . and" {the lot) " lyeth where Mr. Warner formerly improved." This is the place where Mr. William U. Maynard now lives, and is without doubt the earliest place in Shrewsbury occupied by a white man.*

Whoever Mr. Warner may have been, and whatever may have become of him, certain it is that he had no title to the land " where he formerly improved." His corner makes a very noticeable and unexplained jog into the boundaries of Haynes' Farm laid out in 1664, and he was probably some daring pioneer who was either driven out or perished during King Philip's War. Widow Mary Blair, mentioned also in the relocation of 1726, lived with her children on the place where Mr. Samuel Johnson now lives. It was houselot No. 12, " situated near where Warner formerly improved, bounded northerly on Haines' old Farm, easterly by the 16th House-Lot,'"' etc. The widow's hu.-ibaud, William Blair, died shortly after coming to Shrewsbury, and the Barnes and Blair families both certainly here in 1726, not long afterwards returned to Marlb(jrough.

The germ of the movement for settlement of Shrewsbury is described in a deed of pv.rtitiou' of Haynes' Farm, dated April, 1717, which, after reciting the "orderly" meeting of the owners, twenty-three ia number, heirs and purchasers of the rights of Deacon John Haynes, Lieutenant Josiah Haynes and Mr. Nathaniel Treadway,all deceased, the appointment of a committee to go with John Brigham, surveyor, and divide the farm into three parcels ready to draw lots, and a second meeting of said owners December 10, 1716, at David How's house in Sudbury, then sets out the committee's report that they had divided the farm by east and west lines into three parts or squadrons - whereupon, lots being drawn, the North Squadron fell to the heirs and purchasers of the right of Deacon John Haynes, the South Squadron to the heirs of Lieutenant Joshua Haynes and the Middle Squadron to the heirs and purchasers of the right of Mr. Nathaniel Treadway. Of the twenty-three signers of this deed, the following or their children settled in Shrewsbury : John Keyes, Joseph Noyes, Moses Newton, Daniel How, Elias Keye-", Samuel Wheelock, Thomas Hapguod, Edward Goddard and William Taylor.

Samuel Wheelock's sou Gershom is reputed to have been the firot permanent settler of Shrew'sbury, and the place where he settled was on the share of his lather in Haynes' Farm - on the north side of the Great Road, between where Mr. Levi Prentice and Mr. William Fitzgerald now live. Tradition represents

4 Distinguished also by a recent archwulogical iind of much interest. Ditching in his meadow in 1884 Mr. Maynard came upon the fossil molai-8 of a mastodon, and the next year, in the margin of the ditch, which it was known was to be explored by the amateurs of the Worcester Natural History Society was found a human skull, doubtless the plant of a practical joker, of which not only the amateurs, but a learned professor of Harvard became eager victims.

him as sleeping aloft in his cabin during the winter nights of 1716-17, and drawing up his ladder after him, " whistled an air did he," doubtless to keep up his courage. How long he continued to live there I have not ascertained, but certain it is that he was .still there in 172(5, as appears from the re-location of the Great Road at that time. In 1720 his father gave him a deed of this lot, and February 10, 1729, houselot No. 26, which '' lyeth near the west bounds of Hains' old Farm," was in possession of Samuel Wheelock.' Gershom Wheelock, the first settler, who had both a son and a grandson of the same name, was commonly called in his life-time Captain Wheelock, from his militia rank, and his father was called the deacon from his office in the church, of which he was one of the founders. Deacon Wheelock was a member of the first Board of Selectmen and a very active man in church and town affairs for many years.

John Keyes, whose house, barn and fenced land is referred to in the re-location of 1726, son of Elias Keyes, of Sudbury, and grandson of Robert Keyes, of Watertown, who came from England in 1633, had his share of Haynes' Farm assigned to him on the south side of the Great Road, nearly opposite where the currier's shop stands in the Lower Village. In 1723 he built a new house a few rods east of the rude and primitive cabin that he first lived in, but before it was finished both houses were burnt in the night and Mr. Keyes' three sons and two apprentices of Ebenezer Bragg, the carpenter, who was building the new house, perished in the flames. Mr. Bragg, aUo sleeping in the same hou e, barely escaped. The old house was also burned, but the inmates, Mr. Keyes and wife and four daughters, were awakened by Mr. Bragg just in time to flee out of it.

John Keyes held commissions as captain and major in the militia, and is traditionally known as the famous Major John Keyes. He is not to be confounded with Deacon John, his cousin, who settled in the North Parish. In 1726 he evidently had built another house, as the relocated Great Road passed between it and his barn. A very active and energetic man, member of the first and many subsequent Boards of Selectmen. He bouglit a moiety of Sewall's Farm, and thus became tenant in common with Nahum Ward, who was his uncle, of that large tract of land.

» Ward, pp. 20 and £6fi-2fi8, and Fee the deacon's deed of 1720 to his son in " Worcester Registry," Book 23, page 214. Mr. Ward is very wide of the fiict in supposing tliis deed to relate to lioiieelot No. 2G of the proprietoi's' records, and in supposing this lot (26) to he the place where Erastus Wheelock, greatrgreat-grandB(}n of the tirst deacuD, now lives.

his cousin's, but, in 1741, with his family, joined another colony that swarmed out of the Marlborough hive and followed the star of empire on its westward way to New Marlborough, in far-off Berkshire. The surname of Keyes is now extinct in Shrewsbury. But the Flaggs, of Boylston, are descendants of famous Major John, by his daughter Hannah, who married Gtrshom Flagg.

Daniel Noyes, of Sudbury, who settled on the South Squadron of Haynes' Farm, was descended both from Ensign Thomas Noyes and Lieutenant John Haynes. He was the son of Joseph, who signed the partition deed. His grandfather, also named Joseph, was the son of Ensign Thomas, and his grandmother was Ruth Haynes, daughter of Lieutenant Joshua.

Neither of the Newtons, Moses nor Thomas, settled in Shrewsbury. They sold their shares in Haynes' Farm to Nahum Ward, who was their cousin, but their children came to Shrewsbury at an early day and settled here. Elisha Newton, son of Moses, was grandfather of the late Calvin Newton, of this town, and settled on the place, part of Sewall's Farm, where Peter Gamache now lives, where also Mr. Newton (Calvin), whose three sons, still living in this town, were all born there, lived and died. Elisha Newton's brother, Aaron, also settled in the North Parish (Boylston), and .so also did Thomas Newton, son of Thomas, who signed the partition deed.

Nahum Ward, who bought the Newtons' share of Haynes' Farm, though not one of the twenty-three owners in 1717, was one of the first comers here and his purchase, a large tract, lay on the south side of the road opposite the Cummon, extending thence both easterly and westerly. His great-grandson, author of a history of Shrewsbury, supposes he was here before 1718, and living near the Jonas Stone house (now owned by Mr. Frederick Stone, of Boston), but William Taylor at that time owned the land where that house stands, and Mr. Ward owned no land nearer than the south side of the Great Road. Mr. Ward was colonel of a militia regiment in the Provincial Line, and chairman of the first and member of many subsequent Boards of Selectmen ; many times representative to the General Court, and a justice of the Worcester County Court of Common Pleas, 1746-62. He was admitted to the Worcester bar in 1731, but I have not found a case of his acting as coun.-el except in tbe Maiden suit elsewhere mentioned. He was father of General Artemas Ward and ancestor of all who ever bore the ^Va^d name in Shrewsbury. William Ward, who came from York, England, to Sudbury, about 1640, was his grandfather. The Ne«tons, of Shrewsbury, also are descended from William Ward.

bury Poor-House formerly stood, on land now belonging to Mr. George H. Harlow. He was son of Josiah How, of Marlborough, and grandson of John How, who came from England and settled in Sudbury in 1G3S, or earlier, and on his mother's side he was grandson of Deacon John Haynes, one of the original grantees of Haynes' Farm. His mother, whose maiden-name was Mary Haynes, was in 1713 owner of a share of the " farm at Quinsigamond," and under the name and addition of Mary Prescott, of Lancaster, conveyed it to " her true and well beloved son, David How, of Marlborough." The North Squadron, by lot, ^ as we have seen, fell to the heirs and purchasers of the right of Deacon John. In explanation of his mother's name and addition, it should be added that her first husband, Josiah How, Daniel's father, dying young, she afterwards married John Prescott, of Lancaster, son of the famous blacksmith, miller and Indian fighter, who was the first settler and founder of the first town in the county of Worcester. Daniel How was the first town treasurer, and held the office several years, and he was many years a member of the selectmen, and let the reader note the re-location, in 1726, of the Great Road between his house and barn as showing where he lived and kept tavern, and also where the road then was. From his militia office he usually went by the name of Captain How.

Thomas Hapgood was great grandson of Nathaniel Treadway, one of the original grantees of Haynes' Farm, to whose heirs fell the Middle Squadron, and he settled in Shrewsbury and built his house near where Mr. Albert, Clai)p now lives, and Mr. Clapp's farm is part of Thomas Hapgood's share of the Middle Squadron. He was son of Thomas Hapgood, of Marlborough, who lived to see his great-great-grandchildren, and had three hundred and thirteen descendants living at his death, and his (the said Thomas, of Shrewsbury) grandfather was Shadrach Hapgood, of Sudbury, who married Treadway's daughter Elizibeth, and was killed in the Indian fight at Brookfield, in 1675. Thomas Hapgood's name is twice signed to the partition deed with a cross - once for himself and again as attorney for another. He was a militia captain, and commonly called Captain Hapgood, town treasurer ten years and often a selectman. His three sisters, Mary,' Elizabeth and Hepzibah, who were, of course, of the same descent with him, married and settled in Shrewsbury.

Edward Goddard, who married the said Hepzibah Hapgood, was born in Watertown, where his father and grandfather - both also named Edward - lived, and where the latter, who married Elizabeth Miles and came with her from England about 1650, first settled. He settled in the North Squadron, on the place which Edward Howe now owns, and built the house in which Mr. Howe still lives, and which, under its modernized exterior, I suppose, retains the frame of the oldest house in Shrewsbury. The Goddard farm extended to and was bounded on the northernmost boundary line of Haynes' Farm. Mr. Goddard, who is distinguished from most of the other new-comers to Shrewsbury by having no military title, was an active man in church and town, held the office of selectman and other town officers, and was a man of considerable means-

William Taylor, who married Captain Hapgood's other sister, Elizabeth, was also a man of considerable means for his day, but did not wholly escape, like his brother-in-law, militia honors. His name in town and church-records, I believe, has the uniform prefix of sergeant. He settled on a lot of the North Squadron, adjoining Goddard's, being the place where Mr. Charles A. Holman now lives, and where the late Amasa Howe, great-grandson of Taylor, lived ; where lived also Amasa's father, Nathan, and his grandfather, also named Nathan, who was son of Captain Daniel How, and married Sergeant Taylor's daughter, Hepzibah. The house which William Taylor built was taken down by Amasa Howe in 1849. The Taylor farm or share which he had in the North Squadron extended south to the Great Koad, and included the site of the house in which his great-greatgrandson, Thomas Harlow, now lives, and all the other land to and including the Common and the site of the Sumner house. The Great Koad was substantially on the line between the North and Middle Squadrons, and this was Taylor's south line. The name Taylor as a surname died in Shrewsbury with the first comer, but his descendants, by six daughters, are very numerous. His father and grandfather both lived in Marlborough, and were both named William Taylor. He was many years a selectman of Shrewsbury.

It was during Dr. Sumner's time that division of Congregational Churches into Trinitarian and Unitarian took place. In the last years of his ministry he had repeatedly suggested to his people the expediency of selecting a colleague pastor, and January 18, 1820, the church chose Rev. Samuel B. Ingersoll as colleague to Dr. Summer, and the parish concurring, the ordination took place June 14, 1820. This ordination being a sort of milestone in the history of the Congregational schism then in progress, I must give a brief account of it. Of the fifteen ministers who formed the ordaining council, five - namely : Dr. Aaron Bancroft, of Worcester ; Rev. John Miles, of Grafton ; Rev. Ward Cotton, of Boylston ; Dr. Joseph Allen, of Northborough ; and Rev. William Nash, of West Boylston - were Unitarians. At the examination of the candidate it appeared that he was a pronounced Calvinist. To his ordination on this account the Unitarian members of the council made no objection, but asked if he would fellowship with Unitarians. Mr. Ingersoll's reply was " I would not trust a Unitarian in my pulpit one hour." This was explicit enough for Dr. Bancroft, who arose and was followed by all the Unitarian members of the council, pastors and lay delegates, nine in number, down the long aisle out of the meeting-house. A majority of the council was still left, and the ordination proceeded. Such is the account of this ordination given to the writer nearly forty years ago by Dr. Eleazer T. Fitch, professor of divinity in Yale College, who was a member of the council.

Jlr. Ingersoll, after his ordination, preached but one Sunday, and died of consumption, November 14, 1820, at Beverly, where he was born in 1787. He graduated at Yale College in 1817, and was thirty years old at the time. He was at his death thirtythree. Before going to college he had been a sailor and shipwrecked at sea. It is said that as he lay floating and perishing on a piece of wreck in mid-ocean he heard a call to go and preach the gospel, and answered it with a solemn vow that if he were saved from perishing then he would obey the call. A funeral service was held simultaneously at Beverly and at Shrewsbury. " I preached and Dr. Bancroft and Mr. Cotton prayed." Such is Dr. Sumner's brief entry in the church records. I wonder if prayer or sermon contained any allusion to the drama played within the same walls only five months before. This ordination of Mr. Ingersoll was followed by important consequences both in Shrewsbury and elsewhere. In Shrewsbury, as we shall see later, a portion of the parish withdrew and formed a new S(jciety. Dr- Sumner was greatly annoyed at what had taken place- Doubtless he had hoped, by bringing together the clergy of the vicinity who were of opposing views, to do something towards healing the schism that was dividingand weakeningthe chuichesof New England.

After Mr. Ingersoll'* death Rev. Edwards Whipple was settled as a colleague to Dr. Sumner. He had previously been ordained and settled in Charlton, and dismissed at his own request. His installation took place September 20, 1821. He died September 17, 1822, of a fever after a sickness of only seven days, aged forty-four years. He was born in Westborough, November, 1778, graduated at Williams College in 1801, and studied his profession with the famous Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, of Franklin. Dr. Sumner continued in his ministry in Shrewsbury till his death, which occurred December 9, ]824, a period of more than sixty-two years, being at the time of his death nearly eighty five years old. His funeral sermon was preached by his life-long friend, Dr. Bancroft, pursuant to an understanding between them that whichever might die first, the other should preach his funeral sermon.

But before Dr. Sumner's death still another colleague to him had been settled in Shrewsbury. Rev. George Allen was ordained here November 19, 1823. He was the son of Hon. Joseph Allen, born at Worcester, February 11, 1792, and graduated at Yale College in 1813. He remained in his pastorate at Shrewsbury till June 18, 1840, when he was dismissed by advice of an ecclesiastical council. For sixteen of the seventeen years of his life here Mr. Allen's relations with his church and parish were exceptionally pleasant and amicable. At his funeral said Rev. Dr. Buckingham, of Springfield, formerly settled in MiUbury : "Years ago, when Mr. Allen was pastor of the church at Shrewsbury, we" (meaning the clergy of the vicinity) "remember to have thought that parsonage an ideal one. Looking off from that hill-top with his wife and chi dr^n about him and a large and intelligent congregation listening to him, it seemed as if such love and influence and happiness ought to satisfy any mortal. They did satisfy him so long as he was permitted to enjoy them." But in the seventeenth year of his ministry there arose in Shrewsbury one of the most implacable minister quarrels in the history of New England. It had its origin in a scandal about Mr. Allen's family, of which want of space, if no other reason, would forbid detail here. Indignantly denying the truth of the scandalous stories in circulation, Mr. Allen in the pulpit and out of it castigated their circulators with a severity of language such as few men can equal and none ever exceeded, and his unsparing denunciations of all who had talked about his family, which included probably the entire inhabitants of the town, had the efl'ect to estrange many of his warmest friends and to cause them to become disafiected. In a few months the disaflected party grew, so as to number full one-half the parish, "signed off," hired a preacher and a hall and had religious services on Sundays by themselves. It was a bitter feud, causing enmity between old friends and near neighbors, and finally resulted in an ecclesiastical council, before which the opposition to Mr. Allen, under leadership of Mr. Henry Dana Ward, laid charges against him. The council fully vindicated Mr. Allen from all intentional wrong and recommended him to the confidence of the churches; but, on account of the widespread disaffection which had impaired, if not entirely destroyed, his usefulness in Shrewsbury, they advised his dismissal with payment of full salary for the current year. These proceedings were directly followed by a slander suit brought by Mr. Allen against Mr. Ward. At the trial of this suit in the Supreme Court at Worcester, April term, 1841, the town of Shrewsbury turned out and packed the court-house. Nor was interest limited to the town. No trial at Worcester, for years, had excited such general interest. Verdict for plaintiff', damages $700, which, at the time, was regarded as heavy and exemplary.

Eev. George Allen was unquestionably the ablest man whom Shrewsbury can boast to have ever had fbr a citizen. After his dismissal he returned to Worcester and lived there till his death, which occurred March 31, 1883. His age was ninety-one years. He had long survived his wife and children, of whom he once had four, two of whom had died within a year and a half before his dismissal at Shrewsbury, and one of whom was the subject of the scandal before referred to. For about thirty years Mr. Allen was chaplain of the State Lunatic Hospital at Worcester. A man of great learning and accurate scholarship, and holding the pen of a ready writer, he became in Worcester a public and influential man. He was interested in and performed efficient service in all the reformatory movements of the times. In the anti-Masonic movement which followed the murder of Morgan in Western New York, where he preached a few years before he came to Shrewsbury, he took an active and prominent part. He was one of the earliest and most pronounced anti-slavery men, and on formation of the Free-Soil parly in 1848 he gave valuable aid to his brother, who, more than any other ' man, must be regarded as founder of that party. Though maintaining his connection from first to last with the Orthodox Congregational Church, he was a man of extremely liberal views, and had the honor to have his orthodoxy challenged many times in his life. Before settlement in Shrewsbury he was rejected by an ordaining council at Aurora, N. Y., where he had received a call, for " unsoundness on original sin.'' All his life he publicly repudiated the Westminster Catechism, and in 1865 at Plymouth, where the National Council of his denomination met, in eloquert words he solemnly protested against its reaffirmation as being too sectarian for the catholic spirit of the Pilgrim Fathers, over whose ashes they had met, and too narrow to comprehend the breadth of their principles of religious freedom.

Mr. Allen's successor in the ministry at Shrewsbury was Rtv. James Averill, who was born at Griswold, Conn., May 2'.\ 1815. He graduated at Amherst College in the class of 1837, studied his profusion at the Yale

Theological School and was ordained over the church and parish in Shrewsbury, June 22, 1841. He was dismissed at his own request November 15, 1848. Mr. Averill died in 1863 in the service of his country, chaplain of a Connecticut regiment.

Rev. Nathan Witter Williams was the successor ot Mr. Averill. He was the son of Rev. Joseph Williams, and born at Providence, R. I., March 12, 1816; graduated at Yale College in 1842; studied theology with Rev. Albert Barnes, of Philadelphia; was ordained at Shrewsbury, February 28, 1849, and dismissed at his own request April 27, 1858. After Mr. Williams' dismissal he was elected Representative from Shrewsbury to the General Court and served as a member of that body in the session of 1859.

The next minister of the Congregational Church and Parish iu Shrewsbury was Rev. William A. Mc- Ginley, who was ordained June 2, 1859, and dismissed by his request July 27, 1865. He was an accomplished scholar and eloquent preacher. He had originally selected the law for his profession and had read a year or more for admission to the bar before he studied divinity. He is now settled in Portsmouth, N. H.

Rev. Ebenezer Porter Dyer was the successor of Mr. McGinley. He was born at Abington, August 15, 1813, graduated at Brown University in the class of 1833, studied divinity at Andover and was first settled and ordained at Stowe, where he began preaching in 1835, and where he remained till 1846. Installed atHingham in 1848, he remained there till 1864. He was again installed here November 7, 1867, and resigned his pastorate June 19, 1877. Beginning at Stowe in his youth, afterwards at several other places, Boston, Winter Hill, Somerville and elsewhere, he performed missionary labor, founding, it is said, by his direct efforts, three churches, and indirectly cans- j ing to be founded three others. He was author of \ several books, among others a metrical version of " Pilgrim's Progress," published by Lee & Shepard, Boston, iu 1869, while he was in Shrewsbury. He died 1 at Abington, August 22, 1883, aged seventy years.

Scudder was a missionary of the American Board. He graduated at Y'ale College in 1874, and pursued his professional studies at Union Theidogical Seminary. Ordained here December 26, 1877, he remained till March, 1882, when he requested a dismissal and went to accept a call to Minneapolis. He is now settled at Jersey City.

The successor of Mr. Scudder was Rev. Frank H. Allen, a graduate of Amherst College in the class of 1874, and a classmate of his predecessor at Union Theological Seminary. He was ordained here October 25, 1882, and resigned his office as pastor August 23, 1888, to accept a call to Milwaukee.

which covers a period of more than one hundred years, most of the lauds now in use for pasture and tillage was cleared of wood before the Revolutionary War and then used for pasture and tillage. In the earliest times all meadows whicli, without improvement or any kind of tilling, produced grass, though of the coarsest quality, were considered " valuable," and farmers often bad a few acres of " valuable meadow '' quite remote from their farms. These meadows, to begin with, were generally free from wood, or, at any rate, from large trees, and the quantity of natural meadow was much increa.sed and a much better kind of hay produced by bringing water whenever it could be done, by ditches upon uplands. Down until within the memory of living men, farm products in Shrewsbury were chiefly consumed within the town. Families were large and home consumption was large. Nor was there any market t > buy or sell in, nor much money in farmers' pockets to trade with. But early in the present century it was discovered by Shrewsbury farmers that, there was a market in Boston for butter, cheese, eggs, chickens, veal and pork, and for beef on the hoof in Brighton, and a class of middle men called drovers and market men, began to pass and repass back and forth from Shrewsbury and the market. From this time farming began to improve. Farmers were not so absolutely destitute of money. There were better tools, better methods of farming, better cattle and better crops, and with industry and economy it was possible for the Shrewsbury farmer to rise a little above the chill penury of the beginners. Rye, oats, Indian-corn and hay were the chief crops. Appletrees were planted at the very outset, and, before 1776, nearly every farm had its orchard, and if good fruit was not abundant, there was no lack of cider. About 1820 market-wagons began to run regularly every week from Shrewsbury to Boston, and returning they hauled for the storekeepers the groceries and dry-goods that they dealt in. This continued till about 1845, when it was found that the town of Worcester was a belter market than Boston as well as much nearer, and everybody could be his own market-man, and so put in his own pocket the commissions on sales. Before the use of coal became common in Worcester, the Shrewsbury farmer had a near and growing market for wood as fuel, and before the great forests of Canada and the.we=t were connected by rail with the east, the demand of Worcester ior Shrewsbury lumber was beyond the supply. But times in recent years, with the Shrewsbury farmer have greatly changed, and there is but one farm product in respect to which he is not obliged to compete with producers of remote States. On acciunt of its quickly perishable nature, milk, which is in demand the year round, is in no danger of remote competition. It is to-day the chief product that goes to market from Shrewsbury farms. Except milk, and possibly apples, of which in alternate years the orchards of Shrewsbury produce a large quantity and of famous quality, I do not suppose there is any other farm product of sufficient amount to supply more than the home market.

In recent years the salable value of farm lands in Shrewsbury has been steadily diminishing, and, in fact, they cannot be sold at all. Nobody will buy and many want to sell. There is not, probably, a farm in the town that would sell for enough to pay the cost of the buildings and fences standing on it. The reasons are not far to seek. " To diversify industry " the manufactures of Massachusetts have been so favored at the expense of agriculture that the natives of Shrewsbury have been enticed away from the homes and occupations of their fathers to enter shops. The " home markets " which the cities and manufacturing centres of the State are reputed to furnish, are flooded with the farm products of other States, and the Shrewsbury farmer has to p.ay tribute not only to other occupations for every article of clothing he wears and every tool that he uses, but even for farm products CO farmers of sunnier climes and more fertile soils than his own living within his own country. Not a pound of sugar or rice can he buy without paying the fiivored growers of these necessities of life double pricts. Protection /or everybody else's products and free trade against his have ground the Shrewsbury farmer like upper and nether millstones, and no wonder he wants to sell his farm and no wonder nobody wants to buy it.

In 1800 was formed in Shrewsbury a Farmers' Club, for the purpose of promoting the best methods of farming. The club holds occasional meetings in the winter season for discujsion of agricultural topics, and its annual cattle shows, held in October, have become lamous and the favorite resoit of the people of neighboring towns. In 181.5 was formed in Shrewsbury a like association, called the Agricultural Associates of Shrewsbury, and the next year another, with the name of the Agricultural Associates of Worcester, was formed in Worcester. In 1818 the two societies were merged in a county society and incorporated under the name of the Worcester Agricultural Society, which directly took and has ever since maintained a prominent position in the esteem, not only of the farmers, but of all the people of Worcester County of whatever occupation.

Of other branches of business, such as the manufacture of guns, of watches and of boots and shoes, which, to some extent never large, was formerly carried on here, the limits of this work do not admit of more specific mention. But I cannot omit some brief account of the famous stage business, whose founder and manager lived here, and with Shrewsbury as his headquarters, carried it on to places far remote ; nor of the tanning and currying business which, begun here in an humble way more than a century ago, has grown to a very extensive business.

in this country, moved from Boston to Shrewsbury in 1793. He was a son of Nathauiel Pease, born at Enfield, Conn., in 1739, and was by trade a blacksmith. His father was a sailor, and reported to have been lost at sea. His mother married a second husband, named Parsons, after which her first husband returned. After one glance at the situation Nathaniel Pease went off to sea, and was never heard of at Enfield again. Levi's title as captain was earned in the Continental line. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War he was living at Blandford, Mass. He served with General Thomas in Canada, and later with General Wordsworth in the Commissary Department, - often employed in perilous enterprises, to bear dispatches and obtain supplies, - a resolute and tireless man, up early and down late. After the war he kept a tavern for some years at Somers, Conn. Afterwards he kept the Lamb in Boston, whence he removed to Shrewsbury, where he bought the tavern stand of Major John Farrar.

But more than ten years before Captain Pease came here, he had projected and was running a stage line from Boston to Hartford. Farrar's Tavern in Shrewsbury had been from the beginning a night stopping-place on the line, and after becoming familiar with his route, he selected it as the best point from which to operate his business. He took into partnership with him a young native of Somers named Reuben Sykes, who was also a blacksmith. No man of capital would invest a dollar with Pease and Sykes in their visionary stage line. Said a solid man of Boston to Captain Pease : " The time may come when a stage line to Hartford will pay, but not in your day." The partners commenced business with an outfit of eight horses and " two convenient wagons," and their first trip was performed October 20, 1783. Pease drove one wagon from the Lamb, Tavern in Boston at six o'clock Monday morning, and reached Hartford on Thursday ; and Sykes drove the other, leaving Hartford at the same time, and arriving also in Boston in four days. Two of the night stoppingplaces were Farrar's, in Shrewsbury, and Pease's, in Somers. The other - when Tuesday night they met - was at Rice's, in Brookfield. And they ran in fair weather and in foul, in mud and in snow, passengers or no passengers, punctual as the stars in their courses. In two years this stage line was a great success, and was extended to New York. In 1786 Pease and Sykes established a line of stages from Portsmouth to Savannah, and carried the mails. They also had, for several years, an exclusive contract with the government to carry the malls for all New England, re-letting to numerous others, who on branch lines collected and distributed the mails. It was Pease and Sykes that made punctual as the mail a proverb.

when he was at Cambridge in 1776, wanted to buy a pair of horses, and made an appointment with Pease, who had a pair of horses to sell. Pease was a few minutes too late for the appointment, and Washington did not wait for him. It was the last time Levi Pease ever got left.

The founder of stage lines was also the first projector of turnpikes. Of all the many companies chartered in Massachusetts about the beginning of this century to build turnpikes, it was the First Blassachusetts Turnpike Corporation whose charter (1796) was to Levi Pease and his associates, authorizing them to build a turnpike through Palmer and Western.' He put in his earnings and savings, and made a good road where there was a very bad one; but the turnpike never paid, and in consequence of his investments in its stock Captain Pease died a poor man. But he lived and ran his stages many years. His death took place in Shrewsbury January 28, 1824, and his age was eighty-four years. His honor and integrity, which were as famous as his punctuality, were inborn, and therein Washington himself could have taught him nothing. Often in the army, often in his business as tavern-keeper and stage-driver trusted with uncounted money, the trust was sacredly inviolate.

For many years four stages a day, two going east and two going west, passed through Shrewsbury on the Great Road. In 1806 the Worcester Turnpike Association was chartered to build a turnpike from Worcester to Roxbury. Its course was as straight as possible, and ran through the south part of Shrewsbury. After its completion in 1808, four stages - two each way also - ran daily on the turnpike. Another turnpike, having Shrewsbury for one of its termini, and Amherst for the other - the Sixth Massachusetts - sometimes called the Holden Turnpike - was built in 1800. A line of stages also ran daily on this turnpike. Both of these turnpikes were abandoned many years ago by the corporations that built them, and were laid out by the county commissioners as highways.

Col. Nymphas Pratt, whose father, Capt. Seth Pratt, was the founder of the tanning and currying business in Shrewsbury, was born April 5, 1786, in the old house owned by Henry Harlow, standing near the brick house in which he lives. The tannery was on the south side of the road opposite the houses, and was sold in 1796 with the old house then comjiaratively new, and about twenty-two acres of land, by Capt. Pratt to the writer's grandfather, Thomas Harlow, who came from Duxbury, when he was twenty-one years old, to buy it, and paid $1000 for it. Here was the place where, and Seth Pratt was the man by whom the tanning business was begun in Shrewsbury. After sale of his tannery he moved to Barre, dammed the Ware River, built woolen-mills and founded the vil- lage of Barre Plains. Deacon Thomas Harlow, who was a farmer as well as tanner, carried on the tannery for nearly fifty years in connection with his farm, which he bought piece by piece of his neighbors.

Col. Pratt, Capt. Seth's son (military titles both derived from militia commissions), about the year 1810 built a new tannery in the Loner Village in Shrewsbury, where the business or the currying branch of it has been continued to tlie present day. Here Col. Pratt did the business, both tanning and currying, till from a small beginning it grew into a very large and prosperous one, and the owner of it became a man of great influence and was accounted to possess immense wealth. People said he was worth one hundred thousand dollars, which sounded bigger than a million does now. Col. Pratt was one of the principal founders of the Citizens' Bank in Worcester, incorporated in 1836 with a capital stock of $250,000, and was its first president. In 1839 he failed in business and this bank, which had discounted a large amount of his paper, was a heavy loser. But the failure of Col. Pratt was due cot so much to his own business as a tanner and currier as to his courageous and honorable though rash attempt to sustain through such a financial crisis as that of 1837-40, the firm of S. H. Allen & Co., of which the partners were his son, William Pratt, who was a lawyer and lived in Worcester, and his son-in-law, Simon Hapgood Allen, who was the active manager of the firm business and lived in Shrewsbury. The business of this firm, which was formed in 1833 and carried on at the brick store in the Lower Village in Shrewsbury, was mainly the manufacture of ready-made clothing. Mr. Allen may be said to have been the founder of the ready-made clothing business. The firm employed a large force of tailors, who cut out the garments, which were taken home and sewed by women at their houses. Many of the sales of the firm were on credit at places far remote - in the South and West. In such a crisis as that of 1837 no wonder the firm failed. If Col. Pratt had allowed this firm to go down into its inevitable bankruptcy, probably he might have saved himself and his own proper business.

Upon the winding up of Col. Pratt's affairs in bankruptcy, Lucius H. Allen, who was his foreman, bought of his assignees the tanning business, and continued to carry it on till 1862, and Jonathan H. Nelson and Thomas Rice, who had learned the trade of curriers in Col. Pratt's shop, took the currying business. With no capital except their trade to begin business with, by industry, laboring untiringly with their own hands they, by degrees, built up a very large and profitable business. In 1862 Mr. Allen, who had also done a large and profitable business, sold out to Nelson & Rice his tannery. During the war the business of this firm became enormous and its profits immense - many times exceeding anything that Col. Pratt had ever done or dreamed of. Mr. Nelson died in 1872, leaving a large estate, and his partner, Mr. Rice, has recently died, leaving, doubtless, a much larger. The business is still carried on by Mr. Charles O. Green, who, after the death of Mr. Nelson, was associated with Mr. Rice as partner. Col. Pratt, Mr. Allen, Mr. Nelson and Mr. Rice were all men of public spirit, and deeply interested in all that concerned the town of Shrewsbury and the Congregational parish ; and they were, all of them, honored with the public trusts of selectmen and representatives to the General Court. Mr. Rice was also, in 1869, a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and, having been for many years a director of the First National Bank of Worcester and president of the Northborough Na- . tioual Bank, he had an extensive acquaintance among business men.