Part 6

To the Weymouth of that day these eighteen men were the equivalent of about one hundred and thirty now; and they were raised to take part in the unfortunate Canada campaign under Arnold and Montgomery. How many of them ever returned we cannot tell, but the weary sons of Weymouth in 1776 doubtless found final resting-places in the wilds of Maine or beneath the snows of Canada, as more recently they found them in the swamps of the Chickahominy or beneath the torrid sun of Louisiana. By December of that year twenty-two more men went into the continental service, under Lieutenant Kingman; and now the bounty was three pounds per month for three months.[95] It was shortly before this time that a Weymouth-born woman, writing from the next town of Braintree, thus described the aspect of affairs: “I am sorry to see a spirit so venal prevailing everywhere. When our men were drawn out for Canada a very large bounty was given them; and now another call is made upon us, no one will go without a large bounty, though only for two months, and each town seems to think its honor engaged out-bidding the others. The province pay is forty shillings. In addition to that this town voted to make it up six pounds. They then draw out the persons most unlikely to go, and they are obliged to give three pounds to hire a man. Some pay the whole fine, ten pounds. Forty men are now drafted from this town. More than one-half, from sixteen to fifty, are now in the service. This method of conducting will create a general uneasiness in the Continental army. I hardly think you can be sensible how much we are thinned in this province.”[96]

And now a new difficulty, with which our generation has been sadly familiar, was added to the heavy load under which the unfledged nationality was compelled to stagger. The value of its paper currency had hitherto been sustained; but at last, in the face of ever-increasing new issues, it began to depreciate, and by the close of the year 1776 it had fallen one-sixth in value. In vain does Congress enact that whoever pays or receives the currency at a rate less than its nominal value shall not only be accounted a public enemy, but shall forfeit the amount involved in such unpatriotic transaction. In defiance of law prices steadily rise. In January, 1777, the Legislature of Massachusetts went even further, and passed a measure entitled “An Act to prevent Monopoly and Oppression.” Under this the selectmen of Weymouth, aided by a committee of their townsmen, proceeded to fix a tariff of prices at which articles were to be sold. It is a sad record. The effort was, of course, a futile one, but it was made; and there it stands “as a perpetual memorial,” beginning with Indian corn and ending with cedar-posts, a monument of the wretched expedients to which sensible men will resort in troublous and unsettled times.

The call was now for three-year men, and the town bounty was eight pounds per annum. But some of the enlisted men had deserted, under the discouragement of the Long Island reverses, and none the less they claimed their bounties. The action of the town meeting seems to have been hardly consistent with the usually received ideas of military discipline, for it was voted to pay “those who deserted and came home before their times were up” four pounds apiece, on the report of a committee, to which the town added a further sum of forty shillings. But the whole story is told in the following extract from the record of May 21st, 1777: “Voted that Col. Solomon Lovell, Lieut. E. Cushing & Deaⁿ Samuel Blancher be a Committee to go out of Town to Hire men for the Contenential army for the Term of three years,--and that they be directed to git them as Cheep as they can,--and that noe one of them be allowed to give more than Thirty pounds for a man without the advise of another of the committee.”

Throughout the long war the people would not consent to a draft. They resorted to every expedient and makeshift, but they could not bring themselves to the one single expedient by which only can war be made decisive. In September, 1777, a draft was suggested,[97] but the idea met with no favor: again recourse was had to bounties, which were now £100 in lawful money, or forty shillings a month in produce at prices which ruled before the war.

The year 1779 must, however, have been much the gloomiest year of all to Weymouth, for it was in this year that the State of Massachusetts undertook the unfortunate Penobscot expedition. The land forces were commanded by the brave and popular Solomon Lovell, and naturally must have numbered in their ranks many Weymouth men. It encountered only disaster and loss, and added heavily to the already grievous burdens of the war. The commander of the naval contingent was court-martialled, but no question was made as to General Lovell’s conduct. Meanwhile prices were rising, and now $4,500 was voted, wherewith to raise nine men. It had also become very evident that the tariff of prices fixed by the selectmen and the committee of the town, two years and a half before, was somewhat out of date, as, its provisions to the contrary notwithstanding, butcher’s meat was now a dollar a pound, corn twenty-five dollars per bushel and labor eight dollars per day. Still the good people were not discouraged, but a new committee was set to work, and again, by a large majority, a tariff of prices was established; but at the same town meeting which adopted it $9,000 was voted to procure recruits. Indeed, the figures now become colossal, and in September, 1780, the town votes £5,000 for the support of schools and £15,000 “to pay the three months men, if wanted for that purpose, if not, for other town charges.” Nor was this all. The new State government was now organized, and John Hancock had been elected Governor, receiving, in Weymouth, twenty-nine votes to eleven for James Bowdoin; but one of the first acts of the Legislature was to allot among the various towns a quota of beef to be supplied as well as men, so the year 1780 closes with these two melancholy entries in the records of this poor little town, casting forty votes at the annual election:--

* * * * *

“_Voted_ to raise one hundred and thirty thousand dollars of the old currency to procure the beef set on the town by the General Court.”

“_Voted_ to give fifty hard dollars a year for any one or more men that shall engage for this town for three year in the Continental Servis.”

“Gen. Lovell, Capᵗ Nash, Capt. Whitman & Lt Vinson chosen a Comᵉᵉ to hire the Nineteen men set on this town.”

* * * * *

Of course the Continental currency was now almost wholly discredited, having fallen to seventy-five for one, and Weymouth instructed its representative to use his influence “that the act called the Tender Act should be repealed.” But its repeal was of little consequence; the country had gotten back to hard money by the radical course of rendering all other money worthless. In 1781 Weymouth had also returned to the old tax figures, raising £60 for the support of schools and £160 for all other expenses; but the burden of recruiting grew heavier and heavier, and in October, 1781, it was “Voted to give the committee for hiring soldiers discretionary power to hire them upon the best terms they can,” and $2,500, “hard dollars,” were appropriated for the purpose.

Fortunately the long trial now drew near its close. The towns of Massachusetts were thoroughly exhausted and neither men nor money could be procured. In spite of the large sums offered, recruits were no longer forthcoming, and finally Weymouth as one of many delinquent towns, became liable to a heavy fine. The wonder, however, was not that the towns were delinquent, but rather where they found so many able-bodied men as they then supplied. Weymouth, at that time, could not well have mustered over two hundred men of the age of military service. The record would seem to establish the fact that more than one-tenth of these were annually called for. Such a strain could not long have been sustained; but the dogged tenacity of the people was equal to the burden they were called upon to bear, and it is pleasant to find, almost before the struggle was over, the process of recuperation begun, and the town on the 20th of November, 1782, voting £300 for the purpose of partly paying its debts.

* * * * *

With the close of the long struggle for independence ends the second period in the history of Weymouth. More than ninety years have since passed away, carrying with them three generations of the children of the soil. They have been years of great development and of healthy growth,--not such development nor such growth as is often seen in this country,--nothing, indeed, which in our age may be called remarkable, for almost any active and bustling railroad centre in the Western States can boast of greater census figures; but the growth of Weymouth has been that of a thrifty, industrious New England town, and when, after the long lapse of ages, the final account is rendered, who shall say that the former growth will be found better than the latter?

In 1782 Weymouth was still an agricultural community,--its people were scattered over its wide territory and it scarcely contained within its limits any cluster of houses worthy of the name of village. In the state election of that year fifty-one votes were cast, and the sum raised by taxation to defray the annual expenses of the town was the equivalent of $1,230. It contains now four separate villages within its limits, each one far more populous and more wealthy than the entire town then was; its annual levy exceeds $85,000, and at its elections it casts 1,200 votes.

It is now fifty years since the learned editor of Governor Winthrop’s History of New England remarked that “a careful history of Weymouth is much needed.”[98] The want is still felt. To me the preparation of this hasty sketch of the earlier days has been a work of great enjoyment. I have had to deal with Mount Wollaston and with Weymouth, those twin settlements in the first infancy of New England life, and in the history of each I could not do otherwise than take a deep hereditary interest. It was at Mount Wollaston, close to the spot where once stood the May-pole of the wild Morton, that John Quincy lived and died,--it was in the old parsonage of Weymouth, almost within a stone’s throw of the site of Weston’s plantation, that John Adams was married to the grand-daughter of that John Quincy. Nevertheless, no degree of personal interest can convert a hurried sketch into a careful history, and Weymouth deserves no less. Nor should the story of later development remain untold. It necessarily lacks, indeed, those elements of strangeness, of remoteness and of mystery, which lend their charm to the earlier periods which we have considered to-day, but the record is none the less of sufficing interest.

The children of Weymouth, during the present century, have gone forth in peace and in war, and are now scattered all over the common country, and, indeed, over the civilized world. Her children, too, remaining at home, have altered and diversified the old town until the fathers would know it no longer. It must be for others to recount these changes of the later years. I prefer to leave the narrative on the threshold of the new era and before the old order of things had yet begun to pass away,--while a fresher and a purer air still hung around the Great Hill, and while a certain fragrance of the primeval forest gathered about Whitman’s pond. I prefer to leave it while Joshua Bates, newly come back from the continental army, a colonel of artillery at twenty-eight, was meditating those busy enterprises which were destined to infuse a new life into his native town; and I shall not seek to follow that other Joshua Bates, then unborn, whose destiny it was to migrate back to the mother country, and there in fullness of time to die at the head of the first commercial firm of London or the world. We leave Weymouth just emerging, weak but alive yet, from the long ordeal of an eight years’ war, and entering on a more prosperous career; we leave it while brave old Brigadier Lovell yet viewed his broad acres from the summit of King-Oak Hill,--while Dr. Cotton Tufts still served the town whether at the bedsides of the sick or in the councils of the State, and ere yet the grass had grown over the new-made grave of the good old Parson Smith. Two centuries and a half of municipal life are now completed, and in celebrating the event of to-day may we not fitly close with the earnest hope that the succeeding years may be as blessed as those which are past,--that unity, virtue and good-will may long find their abode within the limits of the ancient town, and that, even more in the future than in the past, “may peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Winslow’s Good Newes; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 291.

[2] Phinehas Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, p. 478.

[3] Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, pp. 478, 487.

[4] Bradford; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 3, p. 107.

[5] Levett’s Voyage; III. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 8, p. 190.

[6] “So base in condition (for yᵉ most parte) as in all apearance not fitt for an honest mans company.” _Letter of John Peirce in Bradford_ (p. 123). Thomas Morton describes them as “men made choice of at all adventures.” _The New English Canaan_ (p. 72), _Force’s Hist. Tracts_ (v. 2). In the preface to his Good Newes, Winslow speaks of them as “a disorderly colony, ... who were a stain to Old England that bred them in respect of their lives and manners amongst the Indians.” _Young, C. of P._ (p. 276). Weston himself speaks of them as “rude fellows,” and proposes to reclaim them “from that profanenes that may scandalise yᵉ vioago,” etc. _Bradford_ (p. 120). Robert Cushman in a letter to Governor Bradford, gives the following hint: “if they borrow anything of you let them leave a good pawne.” _Ib._ (p. 122).

I have stated that Thomas Morton came over as one of Weston’s company. This has been denied, _Young’s C. of P._ (p. 334, n.), but Morton himself twice states in the New English Canaan, that he came to New England in 1622, and in one of the two cases fixes the time as in June of that year. _The New English Canaan_ (pp. 15, 41), _Force’s Hist. Tracts_ (v. 2). Winslow states that the Charity and Swan arrived “in the end of June or beginning of July,” 1622. _Young’s C. of P._ (p. 296). Now no other ships from England came to Plymouth that year, and no company such as Morton describes his to have been, except Weston’s, arrived in Massachusetts between 1622 and Wollaston’s arrival in 1625. Morton, however, not only positively says that he arrived at the very time the Weston company arrived, but he shows throughout his book a remarkable familiarity not only with the events which occurred in the Weston settlement, but with the people composing it. A connection with that settlement was not a thing which Morton would have been likely to boast of in subsequent years; but, judging by internal evidence, I should feel inclined not only to venture a surmise that Morton was one of Weston’s colony, but also that it was Morton himself who proposed to the Wessagusset “Parliament” the vicarious execution presently to be described. The whole tone of his account of that affair is highly suggestive of a close connection with it, and of great sympathy with the real culprit and his ingenious counsel.

My explanation of Morton’s statement as to his arrival is, that in it, with his usual recklessness as to facts, he confounded two events which occurred at different dates. He says, _The New English Canaan_ (p. 41), “In the Moneth of Iune, Anno Salutis: 1622. It was my chaunce to arrive in the parts of New England with 30. Servants, and provision of all sorts fit for a plantation.” Here are two facts distinctly stated;--one as to the date of his arrival, exactly coinciding with that of the Weston company;--the other as to the number of “servants,” etc., answering to the description of Wollaston’s company. Morton, I think, therefore, came out with Weston’s company, and left Wessagusset in March, 1623, with them; he then, more than two years later, returned there with Wollaston, probably acting as his guide. When, seven years later, he printed his book, desiring to make his American experience date as far back as possible, he simply confused his two arrivals, and quietly ignored his connection with the Weston company, which had left a very unsavory reputation behind it as being made up of the refuse of mankind.

[7] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 297.

[8] “A correspondent in Quincy thus describes the place: ‘It is about three miles south-east of the granite church in Quincy, at a place locally called Old Spain.’ Weston’s colony sailed up Fore River, which separates Quincy from Weymouth, and then entered Phillips Creek, and commenced operations on its north bank.” _Russell’s Guide to Plymouth_ (p. 106, n.).

[9] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 299. Bradford, p. 130.

[10] Bradford, p. 128.

[11] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 302.

[12] Bradford, p. 130.

[13] Pratt’s Petition; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, pp. 486, 7. Bradford, p. 130. Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 332.

[14] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 328.

[15] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 329.

[16] Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, pp. 479, 489. New English Canaan, p. 18; Force’s Tracts, v. 2.

[17] Winslow, in his Relation, states that Pratt told them of this execution on his arrival at Plymouth. _Young’s C. of P._ (p. 332); _see, also, Bradford_ (p. 130). But Pratt, in his own Narrative, distinctly says that “we kep him (the malefactor) bound som few days,” but does not mention the execution. _IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._ (v. 4, p. 482). In his Relation by Mather, however, he states that the real delinquent was put to death. _Ib._ (p. 491).

[18] The New English Canaan, p. 74.

[19] Hudibras, Part II, Canto II, ll. 409-36.

[20] Hist. of Mass., v. 1, p. 6, n.;--for a curious traditionary account of this execution see, also, _Uring’s Voyages_ (pp. 116-18), and _Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1871_ (p. 59).

[21] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 336.

[22] _Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._ (v. 4, pp. 483-7), can be accepted as authority only with very decided limitations. Prepared for a specific purpose, long subsequent to the occurrence of the events to which it relates, it is neither consistent with itself nor with the Plymouth authorities. He dwells at length on the apprehension of an attack by the Indians felt by the Weston colony, and the precautions they took against it (pp. 482-3). Standish, on the contrary, reported that he found them living in reckless disregard of every precaution. _Winslow, in Young’s C. of P._ (p. 336.) Pecksuot’s famous speech to Standish, which Pratt must often have heard discussed at Plymouth, finds a place in his narrative as having been made to him long previously (p. 481). Finally, if the terror at Wessagusset was such as he asserts it to have been, the settlers there could have gone on board the Swan and sailed to Plymouth in search of aid, quite as well as Standish could come to them or they go subsequently to the eastward. Pratt himself was unquestionably both alarmed and hungry, but he probably fled to Plymouth as a refugee. When he got there, having doubtless encountered enough of danger and hardship on the way, he found Standish already starting for Wessagusset. His own sense of the dangers he had run and the heroism he had displayed, both before and during his flight, probably grew with each succeeding year. I have adopted only such of his statements as are corroborated by others, or seem to wear an aspect of inherent probability.

[23] The whole number of Indians in that vicinity was not computed at over fifty. _Young’s Chron. of Mass._ (p. 305). _Winslow; Young’s C. of P._ (p. 310).

[24] The Courtship of Miles Standish, Part VII. See also Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, p. 481, and Young’s C. of P., p. 338.

[25] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 331. Bradford, p. 164.

[26] Bradford, p. 132.

[27] Pratt’s Narrative; IV. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 4, p. 486. New English Canaan, p. 76; Force’s Tracts, v. 2. Young’s C. of P., p. 344.

[28] Bradford, p. 164.

[29] Winslow; Young’s C. of P., p. 344. The New English Canaan, p. 73.

[30] Young’s C. of P., p. 477, n.

[31] Bradford, p. 148.

[32] Bradford, p. 154.

[33] Ecclesiastical History of Massachusetts; I. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 9, p. 6.

[34] Both poem and translation are to be found in I. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., v. 1, p. 125.

[35] Bradford, p. 154.

[36] The New English Canaan, p. 84.

[37] Records of Mass., v. 1, p. 366.

[38] Savage’s Winthrop, v. 1, p. 91.

[39] Wood’s New England’s Prospect; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 395.

[40] Records of Mass., v. 1, pp. 174-9.

[41] Hazard’s Hist. Coll., v. 1, p. 391.

[42] As respects Blackstone, see _Young’s Chron. of Mass._ (p. 169), but the best account of this singular and interesting man is found in Bliss’ History of Rehoboth. It is another point of some importance as identifying Blackstone with the Gorges settlement, that he had received Episcopal ordination in England. _II. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._ (v. 9, p. 174.) Now the Gorges settlement was a distinct and the only attempt to plant Episcopacy in early Massachusetts. Morell and Blackstone were both educated and studious men of somewhat similar cast of minds and thought. The obvious and natural explanation of their presence in the wilderness would be that they came there together, influenced by the same inducements.

[43] A statement to this effect has crept into the generally accepted accounts of the settlement of Weymouth, on the high authority of Prince’s Annals. _Emery Memorial_ (p. 88). The entry in Prince is at the close of 1624, and reads as follows:--“This Year comes some Addition to the few inhabitants of Wessagusset, from Weymouth in England; who are another sort of people than the Former (_mst_) [and on whose account I conclude the Town is since called Weymouth.]” To this entry the compiler appended the following foot-note: “They have the Rev. Mr. Barnard their first Non-conformist Minister, who dies among them: But whether He comes before or after 1630, or when He Dies is yet unknown (_mst_) nor do I anywhere find the least Hint of Him, but in the Manuscript Letters, taken from some of the oldest People at Weymouth.” _Annals_ (p. 150).

Prince compiled his work more than a century after the events here alleged to have taken place. He carefully gives his authority, as was his custom, for his statement, and himself discredits it. It seems, so far as the date was concerned, to have been a mere “oldest inhabitant” tradition, which wholly lacked corroboration by the contemporaneous authorities. The party from Weymouth, in England, settled at Dorchester in July, 1633. _Prince_; _II. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._ (v. 7, p. 96). In 1635, Massachiel Barnard, an elder not a minister, came out with the party mentioned by Winthrop and in the Records of Massachusetts as being placed at Weymouth. This party included not only the Rev. Mr. Hull, but the original bearers of several of the names now most common in Weymouth, such as Bicknell, Lovell, Pool, Upham, Porter, &c. See _N. E. Gen. Reg._ (v. 25, p. 13). It is safe to say that the date of 1624 given in Prince is wholly erroneous. If the permanent settlement of Weymouth does not belong to 1623, no precise date for it can be assigned; but I cannot see any room for doubt as to September, 1623.