F 74 
 .G7 G6 
 Copy 1 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 DELIVERED AT THE 
 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 INCORPORATION OF THE TOWN OF 
 
 GRAFTON, MASS., 
 
 APRIL 29, 1885. 
 
 FRANK P. GOULDING 
 
A D D E E S S 
 
 PKI.IVEKED AT THE 
 
 CELEBRATION 
 
 ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 INCORPORATION OF THP: TOWN OF 
 
 GRAFTON, MASS., 
 
 APRIL 29, 1885. 
 
 By FRANK p! GOULDING 
 
 P R t: S S OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
 
 311 Main Street. 
 
 18 8 6. 
 
- 1 ^- 
 
 I 
 
 0-' ^ 
 
 q^ 
 
A D 1) R ESS. 
 
 The love of kindred is a sentiment large enough to 
 include and account for that reverence and affection which 
 we feel for those of our ancestors whose forms vanished 
 from earth long before our own time. That sentiment 
 is not altogether dependent upon personal presence, nor 
 upon the mutual exchange of kindly offices, but abides 
 with us as a permanent and elementary principle of our 
 nature. We find it impossible, therefore, to repress a 
 feeling of deep and intimate concern in the history of a 
 community of which our ancestors formed a part; and 
 if, perchance, the characters with whom we are dealing 
 were cast in a heroic mould, or were great and happy in 
 their fortunes and achievements, they become in a 
 peculiar sense, — 
 
 " The dead, but sceptred sovereigns, who still rule 
 Our spirits from their urns." 
 
 One hundred and fifty years have now passed since 
 the incorporation of this town. You select this as a fit- 
 ting occasion to recall the memory of the fathers who 
 laid the foundation of these institutions into which you 
 were born. You would revert once more to the early 
 scenes in which they played their part; would remem- 
 ber their virtues; would sympathize with their patient 
 toils, and admire the courage and fortitude with which 
 
they encountered the perils and endured the hardships 
 of frontier life; would applaud the clearness with which 
 they saw, and the dauntless resolution with which they 
 maintained their rights; would recognize, with gratitude, 
 their steady and unswerving devotion to the principles 
 of civil liberty, and the constancy with which they per- 
 severed, against every discouragement, in establishing 
 those principles upon the secure basis of public educa- 
 tion and public morality. But, upon this occasion, the 
 historical theme which irresistibly attracts, at the same 
 time, from obvious considerations, strongly repels me. 
 The field has been so recently traversed and so amply 
 covered, that, in attempting to recite anew any part of 
 the familiar story, I shall appear to repeat a thrice-told 
 tale. In 1835, at the centennial celebration of this event, 
 an eminent native of the town skilfully gathered the 
 scattered and scanty materials which constitute its origi- 
 nal early history, and presented them in an address, 
 which is at once the best authority upon the subject it 
 treats of, and an able and statesmanlike survey, not only 
 of the historical facts of the period covered, but also of 
 the underlying forces and principles which made possi- 
 ble the great progress it recorded. 
 
 And, at the centennial celebration of the nation's birth, 
 in 187(5, another son of the town reviewed the same 
 ground, and, in fluent narrative and eloquent speech, 
 brought down the history to the present time, and ren- 
 dered superfluous any further treatment of the subject. 
 And, later still, in his excellent history, composed for the 
 county history, in 1879, Rev. Mr. Windsor told again the 
 
simple, but interesting story, and placed in permanent and 
 easily accessible form all that can be known of the events 
 which marked the dawn and early progress of civiliza- 
 tion within the territory of Grafton. Besides these trea- 
 tises there remain the fine historical discourse of Rev. Mr. 
 Wilson, preached in 1846, covering the ecclesiastical 
 history of the town, — no unimportant part of the early 
 liistory of any Massachusetts town, which can boast a 
 hundred years of life, — as well as the town history of 
 Mr. Pierce. From these various essays in the annals of 
 this venerable municipality you must have derived such 
 familiarity with the initial steps and later advance of this 
 community that I shall feel at liberty to select such parts 
 of our history, without regard to consecutive narrative, 
 as shall seem best to subserve the general purpose I have 
 in view, to wit: to attemjDt some estimate of the character 
 and environment of the early fathers of the town, and to 
 assign some of the causes which made them what they 
 were. But it may be of interest to repeat some portion 
 of the history of the region prior to the settlement by 
 the English. 
 
 At what time tlie first white man's eye ever gazed 
 upon, or the first white man's foot ever pressed this ter- 
 ritory, abounding in " rich land and plenty of meadows," 
 it is wholly impossible to tell. It certainly requires some 
 exercise of the imagination to conceive that Governor 
 Winthrop and his party, who, on January 27, 1631, as- 
 cended a high rock only eight miles westerly of Water- 
 town, " where they might see all of Neipnett and a very 
 high hill due west about forty miles," could see from 
 
that point any part of the present territory of Grafton ; 
 and as for tlie supposition that the company of English 
 who, in 1035, emigrated from Massachusetts Bay to Con- 
 necticut, traversed this territory, the probabilities are 
 strongly against it. For the road to Connecticut, soon 
 after existing, certainly lay to the north, though near the 
 territory of Hassanamesitt, and passed north of Lake 
 Quinsigamond, and there is little reason to suppose that, 
 when that road was established, a new trail was struck 
 out, instead of following the route of the first explorers. 
 But, however that may be, the territory emerges out of 
 the darkness of barbarism into the view of history many 
 years before its corporate name was conferred upon it, 
 in honor of the second Duke of Grafton. In the middle 
 of the preceding century, when the royal grandfather of 
 that nobleman was skulking, crownless, on the continent 
 of Europe, and before he had formed his scandalous 
 alliance with the beautiful but profligate Barbara Villiers, 
 Duchess of Cleveland, who was our namesake's grand- 
 mother, and while the imperial sceptre of England was 
 held in the firm grasp of Oliver Cromwell, the general 
 court of the province, on the petition of Eliot, set apart 
 the territory of Hassanamesitt for the use of the 
 Indians. Here was formed the third of the towns of the 
 praying or Christian Indians, Natick and Pakemitt or 
 Punkapoag (a part of Stoughton) being the first two; 
 and here, in 1071, was organized the second Indian 
 church. Ui^on the organization of the church, a meet- 
 ing-liouse was erected, the site of which, near the old 
 Indian burying-ground, in the vicinity of Mr. Frederick 
 
Jourdan's place, is still pointed out. A school was also 
 established, where youth were educated to preach the 
 Gospel to the Indians in the neighboring towns. Of 
 course the services of the church were conducted in the 
 Indian language, and there is ample proof in the writings 
 of Eliot, as well as in those of Major Gookin, the Indian 
 commissioner of those days, that, under the dusky skin 
 of those primitive congregations, lurked traits of human 
 nature common to all complexions. I cannot stop to 
 give more than a single example of the numerous shrewd 
 and difficult questions which his Indian disciples put to 
 the pious Mr. Eliot. In his letters to the corporation es- 
 tablished in London for the propagation of the Gospel 
 among the Indians, he gives, in great abundance, exam- 
 ples of these queries ; but he does not give his answer to 
 the following, among others : — 
 
 " If God made hell in one of the six days, why did 
 God make hell before Adam sinned?" 
 
 Gookin says of these Indians, whom he saw attending 
 upon the preaching in the churches: "And for my part 
 I have no doubt, but am fully satisfied, according to the 
 judgment of charity, that divers of them do fear God 
 and are believers; but yet I will not deny but that there 
 may be some hypocrites that profess religion and yet are 
 not sound-hearted. But things that are secret belong 
 to God, and things that are revealed unto us and onr 
 children." 
 
 Wattascompanum, the chief ruler of the whole Mp- 
 muck country, resided here. He was said to be "a 
 grave and pious man." It is propably no impeachment 
 
8 
 
 of his gravity or piety that he was executed in Boston 
 in June, 1G77. For his crime was that he had been in- 
 duced or forced to join the party of his countrymen in 
 a desperate and futile attempt to drive from their an- 
 cient domain the ever-encroaching pale-faces, in whose 
 insidious advance the prophetic souls of the natives 
 read the doom of their own race. And popular feeling 
 ran so high against the Indians at the close of that san- 
 guinary war, that small measure of justice was likely to 
 be meted out to a native who had yielded to the bland- 
 ishments or threats of the foe. 
 
 In proof that these obscure natives who once occupied 
 this vicinity were not destitute of all the amenities of 
 civilized life, I must not omit to mention that here, tw^o 
 hundred and fifteen years ago, occurred the first seizure 
 of liquor in this county, under process of law, of which 
 I have discovered any record. It appears that Petavit, 
 otherwise called Robin, was one of the magistrates or 
 rulers here at Hassanamesitt, and he was, evidently, a 
 magistrate not easily deterred from the performance of 
 his ofiicial duty. Major Gookin gives an account of the 
 seizure of the liquor, as follows : " I remember sundry 
 years since a Sagamore that lived up in the inland coun- 
 try came to Hassanamesitt, and brought with him a 
 rundlett of strong liquor — [it was more than three per 
 cent, alcohol, and could not be palmed ofl' for Schenk 
 beer], and, lodging in his house, Petavit, in the morn, 
 sent for the constable, and ordered him, and, according 
 to law, seized the rundlett of liquors. At which act the 
 Sagamore drew a long knife and stood with his foot on 
 
9 
 
 the rundlett, daring any to seize it. But Petavit there- 
 upon rose up and drew his knife, and set his foot also to 
 the rundlett, and commanded the constable to do his 
 office. And the Sagamore — " 
 
 Here the ancient manuscript breaks off, like a serial 
 novel, in the very crisis of a thrilling scene. We see a 
 sudden flash of long knives in the morning sun, and the 
 curtain falls. We shall never know with certainty what 
 the issue was. But, considering the divinity that doth 
 hedge a magistrate, and the dauntless and resolute temper 
 of Mr. Justice Petavit alias Eobin, I hasten to assure 
 you that, in my opinion, the Sagamore from the inland 
 country, after growling out sundry phrases in the Indian 
 dialect, not strictly in accordance with the discipline of 
 the church then established at Hassanamesitt, restored 
 his long knife to his belt, removed his moccason from 
 the rundlett, and yielded to the inevitable. 
 
 The war with King Philip was disastrous to the prom- 
 ising enterprise of bringing the ^N^ipmucks under Eng- 
 lish and Christian influences, and upon no part of the 
 extended and undefined domain of that people did it fall 
 more fatally than upon Hassanamesitt. Two engage- 
 ments were fought in this territory,— one not certainly 
 located, and the other on Keith Hill. The first engage- 
 ment resulted in a repulse of the company of English un- 
 der Capt. Henchman, with a loss of two of his men. Mr. 
 Brigham says, on the authority of the Gookin manu- 
 script, published by the American Antiquarian Society, 
 tliat upon the return of the English the next morning to 
 the scene of the conflict, they discovered the heads of 
 
10 
 
 their two men who had fallen in the attack placed on 
 crotched poles before the wigwam, and facing each 
 other. But, as given in a note to Drake's edition of 
 Hubbard's narrative, Gookin's account of it is as fol- 
 lows : " Capt. Henchman told me he judged several of 
 the Enemy were slain in the wigwam, but the certainty 
 is not known; but it was certain he lost two of his men, 
 whereof his Lieutenant was one, Philij) Curtice of Rox- 
 bury, a stout man. His Hands they cut off and placed 
 upon a crotched Pole at the Wigwam Door, faced each 
 other, which was seen a few days after." It may not be 
 of much importance, but if the note in Drake's Hubbard 
 is authentic in its citation of General Gookin's manu- 
 script, it would appear certain it was the hands of the 
 stout (^. e. valiant) Lieut. Curtice, and not the heads of 
 the slain, which were the subject of the ghastly humor 
 of the savages. There is some confusion and contradic- 
 tion in the original authorities respecting the battle on 
 
 • 
 
 Keith Hill. According to Hubbard it occurred on May 
 6, and according to Drake, on May 5, 1676. The Eng- 
 lish were accompanied by some Natick Indian allies, 
 and these allies came upon the hostiles who were pursu- 
 ing a bear. They did not perceive at first that the Na- 
 tick Indians were not of their own party, which gave 
 the English some advantage. From eleven to sixteen 
 Indians were slain. Dr. Mather says "our Forces had 
 probably destroyed many more of them had not an Eng- 
 lishman unhappily sounded a Trumpet, whereby the ene- 
 my had notice to escape."* 
 
 * Mather, Brief Hist., 143. This was the first time the Natick Iiidiaus 
 were employed in any such number by the Government. — Drake, 257. 
 
11 
 
 But while the devastation of battle cannot be said to 
 have swept the place with special violence, in other 
 ways the desolate track of war was left deeply imprinted 
 on its soil. For, through the intrigue and force of the 
 hostile savages, the little Indian town whose bright 
 promise had filled the inspired Eliot, and the resolute, 
 but humane Gookiii, with such high hopes, was com- 
 pletely broken up and dispersed. The church and school 
 were never rehabilitated, and only a few of the surviving 
 natives, after an interval of many years, straggled back 
 to the desolate scenes of the old settlement, and took up 
 again their abode on the land of their fathers. 
 
 In 1718, a single white man had acquired title to some 
 lands in the town, and in 1727-8, the title to the whole 
 original territory of Hassanamesitt resided in seven 
 individuals, who were descendants of the original native 
 proprietors under the reservation of 1654, and in nine 
 English families, who, under permission of the general 
 court, had jDurchased lands and settled here. In that 
 year was granted by the general court the petition of 
 forty English families, preferred some time before, to 
 purchase the entire reservation of 7500 acres from the 
 Indians, with certain restrictions. And, thereupon, a 
 deed was given, dated March 19, 1727, old style, and it 
 is executed by the seven proprietors and the husband of 
 one of them. It reserves the previous grants to the ear- 
 lier white proprietors, and to the Indian grantors an 
 equal dividend of land with each of the grantees, and one 
 hundred acres besides for the use of the Indians. It is in 
 the nature of a strict entailment, for it is, by its terms, a 
 
12 
 
 grant for the settlement of forty English families of the 
 petitioners or their posterity, and no others. By an act 
 of the general court, passed at the same time, certain 
 conditions were coupled with the grant, the most im])or- 
 tant of which were, — 
 
 That within the space of three years they build and 
 furnish a meeting-house for the instruction as well of 
 the Indians as English children; that they settle a 
 learned Orthodox minister to preach the gospel to them, 
 and constantly maintain and duly support a minister 
 and schoolmaster among them, and all this without 
 charge to the Indians. 
 
 The expense of building the meeting-house and 
 school-house was imposed, by the same act, four-fifths 
 u])on the purchasers and one-fifth on the prior English 
 settlers, who were likewise required to contribute to the 
 maintenance of the minister and schoolmaster. The 
 English purchasers under this deed immediately pro- 
 ceeded to execute its conditions, and, almost before the 
 ink was dry upon the parchment, and months before it 
 was recorded, the proprietors made provision for the lo- 
 cation of the meeting-house and school-house, and only 
 a little later began the allotment of lands, and as early 
 as 1730, the meeting-house was completed, and a large 
 portion of the forty families had removed here, and, in 
 the following year, the church was regularly organized 
 and a minister duly installed. 
 
 Although the day we celebrate, April 18-29, 1735, is 
 the date of the legal incorporation of the inhabitants 
 with the powers and privileges of a town, the true era 
 
13 
 
 of the permanent settlement of the place by the English 
 must be referred to the years 1730 or 1731. AVe have 
 now reached the period when first came upon this scene 
 the men and women by whose characters and deeds the 
 first bias and direction was given to the history of this 
 community. There is a certain unity and individuality 
 of type belonging to every community, if we only had 
 the art to discover it. And it will be found to be a re- 
 production of the type of character which predominated 
 in the leading founders of the community. Of course 
 there will be no community without concurrence of sen- 
 timent, and the masses will finally concur with the minds 
 of the strongest and most positive cast of character. 
 The first settlers of a town, surviving for a generation, 
 will generally set the current of popular thought and 
 feeling, and establish the polity of that town for genera- 
 tions to come. 
 
 In that view, and in all views, it will be of interest to 
 inquire who these emigrants were; what they did and 
 what they aimed to do; what they thought; what they 
 hoped; what they beheved; and, in short, what manner 
 of men and women they were. It will be of interest to 
 inquire what were some of the causes which enabled 
 them to establish so goodly a heritage for their children, 
 and to instil principles into the minds and hearts of their 
 successors, which made of them heroes in their turn, and 
 enabled them, in common with the inhabitants of other 
 towns and States, to set examples of wisdom in counsel 
 and courage in action, not surpassed by anything in the 
 annals of man. 
 
14 
 
 They were forty English families, who, with the nine 
 who had but a short time preceded them, made up about 
 fifty families. Most of them, perhaps nearly all, were 
 born in the province, and were, therefore. Englishmen 
 in the sense that they were born of English parentage 
 in the English provinces of Massachusetts Bay and Ply- 
 mouth. If I should repeat their names many of you 
 would hear your own names, and I should probably 
 name few, if any, who have not some lineal descendant 
 within sound of my voice. They came unheralded by 
 any noise of trumpets, blazon of fireworks, or other 
 demonstration of human interest. When their creaking 
 carts, loaded with the scanty supply of furniture which 
 was all-sufiicient for the simple wants of their lives, 
 rolled slowly up these hills and into these valleys, guid- 
 ed by marked trees through the primeval forests, with- 
 out doubt the wolves and bears regarded the invasion as 
 very important and revolutionary, and the owls peered 
 down at night upon the fires of the settlers with looks 
 of ominous conjecture. 
 
 But the human owls, seated in the high places of 
 England, could not see so far, and had no idea of what 
 was taking place here, and in some hundred other places 
 where the like things were transpiring. Outside the 
 few towns whence they came (Sudbury, Concord, Wen- 
 ham, Stow, Mai'lboro), the event had absolutely no sig- 
 nificance. When three or four years later the town was 
 incorporated and christened with an English name. Gov. 
 Belcher may have mentioned, in a letter to the Duke of 
 Grafton, that he had named a little township after him 
 
15 
 
 up in the woods of central Massachusetts Bay, and his 
 grace may have jocosely told it to his friend, Sir Robert 
 AValpole, the prime minister, of whose son Horace, the 
 great letter-writer, the Duke of Grafton was the god- 
 father. There is a remote possibility that the king him- 
 self, the " snuffy old drone from the German hive," may 
 have mentioned it to the Duchess of Kendall as an item 
 of news from the distant province. But the advent of 
 our fathers to these fields had about as much signifi- 
 cance to the people of England, who supposed they 
 themselves were making the history of the time, as the 
 movements of a nomad tribe in central Asia for a change 
 of pasturage would have to us to-day. l^ov have the 
 circumstances of their coming attracted the attention of 
 mankind since. The poet and the orator have not found 
 in their special history a theme worthy their efi'orts. They 
 did not flee from religious or political persecution, nor 
 traverse wide and stormy seas to find, on a desolate 
 coast, an asylum in which to worship God according to 
 the dictates of their own conscience. At the end of the 
 first third of the eighteenth century, religious persecu- 
 tion of protestants had ceased in England, and the first 
 settlers in this town were in full sympathy and entire 
 accord with the people of the communities they left, 
 both in politics and religion. If they endured hardships, 
 they endured them in common with the early settlers of 
 one hundred and twenty-five other towns in the prov- 
 ince, settled and incorporated before ours. I shall not, 
 therefore, claim that these early settlers of Hassaname- 
 sitt are to be selected and set on any pedestal over the 
 
16 
 
 heads of the primit'ne inhabitants of other towns. The 
 greatness I claim for them they shared in common Avith 
 many other similar communities of the same race and 
 time, and it is sufficient glory that they are eminent 
 among equals. But it detracts nothing from the intrin- 
 sic interest of their characters that the chief features 
 they present are repeated in a hundred other communi- 
 ties. It detracts nothing from the importance of the 
 experience they went through that it is not dissimilar to 
 that of other neighboring peoples who settled other 
 towns. The fact is, representative constitutional gov- 
 ernment was first invented and put into practical opera- 
 tion in this province, and it first manifested itself in the 
 little autonomies of the towns. It is the people of one 
 of these towns to which I would call your attention, and 
 one where I believe will be found a remarkably pure and 
 jierfect type of the kind of communities which were then 
 taking root everywhere in New England. They were 
 representative ^N^ew Englanders of the first half of the 
 eighteenth century, and as such were enacting the most 
 important history which was then transpiring on this 
 round earth. Indeed, what human interest attaches to 
 the quarrels of Walpole and Bolingbroke, or to the cor- 
 rupt sway of the former after his full accession to power; 
 to the history of the South-sea Bubble; to the intrigues 
 and uprisings of the exiled Stuarts to regain their an- 
 cient throne; to the petty wars of the first Georges, or 
 to the endless plots and counterplots of whigs and tories, 
 as compared with the scenes which were unfolding on 
 this continent, and mainly within these old provinces, 
 
17 
 
 now Massachusetts, from 1720 to 1789 ? The men and 
 women who came to Grafton to settle were, like then- 
 neighbors, the heirs and successors of those heroic men 
 and women who, in the preceding century, had encoun- 
 tered the first perils attendant on establishing a foothold 
 for civilization on this continent. 
 
 They had drunk deep of the spirit of the great conflict 
 with the Stuarts, which ended with the revolution of 
 1688, whereby the liberties of Protestant Englishmen 
 everywhere, as they believed, were forever established. 
 In the first place, they were men of eminently sound, 
 practical common sense. You cannot open a page of 
 their records, or trace the faded leaves of the church pro- 
 ceedings without receiving the impression at the outset 
 and carrying it with you to the end, that first of all here 
 was a race of men perfectly sound-minded, level-headed, 
 and intent upon the practical aifairs of life. This Saxon 
 good sense and business capacity is the chief feature of 
 their character, subordinating all others. I know it is 
 common to ascribe to colonial settlers of pre-revolution- 
 ary days, and to these our fathers, as the predominant 
 trait of their characters, devotion to religion. I do not 
 dissent from the estimate which gives that element a 
 prominent and controlling place. But in rehgious zeal 
 they have been surpassed by many races. I believe our 
 o-ood friends the Catholics of the Irish race have, on a 
 thousand fields, shown a devotion to the faith of their 
 fathers as great as any the early settlers of this country 
 ever displayed. And Spaniards and Frenchmen and 
 Netherlanders and Germans and Turks and Africans 
 
18 
 
 have, in all times, displayed a zeal which would rival 
 and eclipse that of our fathers who settled here. When 
 Mr. Wilson in the excellfent discourse I before referred 
 to says that these "grave pioneers, cherishing the same 
 religious zeal which characterized the primitive colonists 
 of New England, made it their first care to provide for 
 the worship of God; that their first vote at their first 
 meeting relates to the selection of a proper situation for 
 the house of prayer," he tells but half the story, and the 
 impression conveyed is misleading. They do first attend 
 to the building of a meeting-house. The fact is so. 
 But it is also a fact that precisely that was the first con- 
 dition in their deed, to wit: that they complete a meet- 
 ing-house in three years. Their whole title depended 
 upon that strict condition. Like business men, therefore, 
 they set about doing the thing necessary to be done at 
 once to prevent a forfeiture. It was an act most char- 
 acteristic. But it was characteristic of sensible men of 
 affairs, who exactly understood the nature of their grant, 
 and went about complying with its conditions. It was a 
 practical business transaction, and the record of the sec- 
 ond meeting of the proprietors at the house of Nehemiah 
 How, here in Hassanamesitt, on April 19-30, 1728, one 
 hundred and fifty-seven years ago to-morrow, when they 
 adjourned once and again, and examined. and re-exam- 
 ined the proposed sites and shifted from one to the other 
 until, after mature consideration, they were satisfied 
 that the location would be "accommodable," furnishes 
 a strong illustration of the very trait of character I am 
 now insisting on, a sturdy practical sense, the faculty 
 
19 
 
 to adapt means to ends. I should be sorry to be mis- 
 understood. These pioneers, as a general thing were 
 professors of, and profound believers in, religion. The 
 conditions on which their grant was made undoubtedly 
 received their hearty concurrence. But none of them 
 were religious zealots, and they were not all of them 
 saints, and they knew their own hearts too well to pre- 
 tend to be, and neither they nor the general court felt it 
 to be safe to trust the institution and maintenance of re- 
 ligious worship to anything less secure than the express 
 and rigid condition of the deed itself. The policy of 
 maintaining the ordinances of religion, as well as public 
 education, was the settled policy of the provinces, and 
 these emigrants believed in it. There was nothing im- 
 pulsive or sensational in their conduct, but all was well 
 considered, deliberate, and eminently worldly wise. 
 
 They were, moreover, an industrious people. They 
 came here as a chief end to better their material wealth ; 
 to get on in life.* Mr. Brigham has noted at how extrav- 
 agant an estimate they held their lands, and how they 
 gloried in the idea that they should leave so valuable an 
 inheritance to their children. He reckons ill who leaves 
 out of the account of the early Kew England settlers 
 the fact that they were intent upon honest gain. They 
 desired and expected to increase their stores, and to ac- 
 quire moderate independence. Love of money is said to 
 be the root of all evil, but the hope of acquiring it has 
 sustained many brave hearts in the midst of trials. The 
 
 * See curious pamphlet on New England, by Rev. Iligginson ; 1 Mass. 
 
 Hist. Coll., First Series, 117. 
 
20 
 
 early settlers in this town, like most of their contempo- 
 raries, had a dim consciousness of the coming greatness 
 of this country. Of course, they knew nothing of the 
 vast resources that lay slumbering in the heart of the 
 continent, and had no correct notion of the real wealth 
 in store for the succeeding generations. But they be- 
 lieved in the boundless productiveness of the soil, and 
 indulged visions of remuneration for their toil of a kind 
 and degree destined never to be realized. They were, 
 indeed, a deeply religious people. They were Puritans 
 without being fanatics. They were Congregationalists 
 and Calvinists. It is evident, however, as well from 
 their church covenant as from the dissensions and differ- 
 ences of opinion which arose within a few years, that 
 they held the tenets of their creed with liberality and a 
 tolerant spirit, and with some conception of the rights of 
 others, as well as their own, to private judgment in mat- 
 ters spiritual. They were, for the age in which they 
 lived, progressive. I am strongly inclined to think that 
 there was a greater degree of liberality of views among 
 the original settlers in respect to religious matters at 
 first than later. After the divisions which arose in 
 1745 and 1746 in regard to Mr. Prentice, the first pas- 
 tor, that happened which usually happens in case of re- 
 ligious schism. Each sect draws the lines of its peculiar 
 belief more rigidly than before, and the minor differences 
 which occasioned the division become the principal and 
 sacred essentials of doctrine. 
 
 At any rate, we know that the church creed was re- 
 vised and made more definitely Calvinistic under the 
 
21 
 
 second minister, Mr. Hutchinson, in accordance with the 
 views of that very able and most logical and uncom- 
 promising sectarian. That these people were of a cour- 
 ageous disposition, worthy of their ancestors and of their 
 posterity, needs no evidence to verify. They inherited 
 from their fathers the courage of warriors, and it is not 
 unlikely that some of the first founders of the town had 
 faced the enemy in battle. The war of the Spanish suc- 
 cession, or Queen Anne's war, which broke out in 1702, 
 and continued a number of years, so far as this country 
 is concerned, fell with especial fury upon the colony of 
 Massachusetts Bay. The neutrality of the Five Nations 
 protected New York and the central colonies. The prov- 
 ince of Massachusetts Bay was desolated, and for her 
 (says Bancroft) " the history of the war is but a cata- 
 logue of miseries." 
 
 All along the borders of Maine, then a part of Massa- 
 chusetts, the cloud of war hung black as death. And, 
 nearer home, Deerfield was burnt and its inhabitants 
 massacred in 1704, and Haverhill shared the same fate in 
 1708. For eleven years the war raged till the treaty of 
 Utrecht in 1713. The troubles respecting the eastern 
 boundaries of the province, which arose about 1720, with 
 the tribe of Abenaki Indians, lasted about four years, 
 and the Indians who had embraced the Catholic faith 
 under the teachings of the Jesuit Rasles, waged a war 
 with Massachusetts, animated on both sides with much 
 religious zeal (a circumstance which does not often mit- 
 igate the severities of war), which resulted in the suc- 
 cess of our colony. These conflicts may have engaged 
 
22 
 
 the personal participation of some of our settlers, and at 
 any rate had made tliem familiar with the wrinkled front 
 of grim-visaged war from their youth. 
 
 We can know but little of the personal appearance 
 and daily life of these ancient pioneers, who first bore 
 into your fair territory the seeds of civilized life. jSTo 
 photographer's art has preserved the lineaments of a sin- 
 gle face. For the most part they were too poor to em- 
 ploy the brush of a painter to fix on the canvas the fleet- 
 ing lines of their features, even if an artist had ever vis- 
 ited the region. I am bound to believe, however, that 
 the men were of well-knit and vigorous frames, and pos- 
 sessed of no small share of manly beauty, and the 
 women well endowed with the comely graces and endear- 
 ing charms of their sex. If asked the grounds of this 
 belief, standing among the descendants who bear their 
 features by inheritance, I should answer ^^8i monumen- 
 tum quaeris, circumspicey If you want the proof look 
 about you. It would be instructive and curious, if time 
 permitted, to go into an examination of their daily lives, 
 as afl'ected by the implements, appliances and facilities 
 they could command in the performance of their labor, 
 and in providing the necessities of existence. 
 
 We, who live in this age of curious inventions and 
 elegant devices of convenience, designed and adapted to 
 facilitate labor and render delightful domestic life, can 
 with difiiculty realize the rude and scanty tools and im- 
 plements and barren facilities with which they prose- 
 cuted the labors of the house and farm. In the article of 
 dress, if we had the power to recall and materialize the 
 
23 
 
 ancient worthies who assembled in yonder old meeting- 
 house one hundred and fifty years ago ; if we could look 
 in upon them as through a window, what a source of in- 
 finite amusement and interest their quaint figures would 
 excite ! 
 
 A brilliant writer, describing a period fifty years later, 
 gives a lively picture of the dress of the ISTew-England 
 farmer: "If the food of such a man was plain so were his 
 clothes. Indeed, his wardrobe would by his descendants 
 be thought scanty in the extreme. For meeting on a 
 Sabbath and on state occasions during the week, he had 
 a suit of broadcloth or corduroy, which lasted him a life- 
 time, and was at length bequeathed, little the worse for 
 wear, with his cattle and his farm, to his son. The suit in 
 which his neighbors commonly saw him, the suit in which 
 he followed the plough, tended the cattle and dozed 
 in the chimney corner, while Abigail or Comfort read to 
 him from Edwards's Sermons, was of homespun or lin- 
 sey-woolsey." * I am inclined to think this picture 
 would be applicable to the farmers who settled Grafton, 
 after deducting the broadcloth, corduro}', and Edwards's 
 Sermons. And yet they were by no means destitute of 
 all ideas of refinement, and most of them had seen 
 glimpses of some of the elegancies of life. 
 
 It is quite likely that after a few years, at least, on 
 the Sabbath and important occasions, some of the more 
 well-to-do among them may have displayed garments 
 more attractive than the ordinary sheepskin, deerskin, 
 or coarse knee-breeches and frock. Some of the ladies 
 
 * McMaster's Hist, of the People of the United States, vol. 1, pages 18, 19. 
 
24 
 
 may even have possessed a gown of silk. At any rate 
 we shall presently see that there was one such garment 
 in town. The periwig, which so scandalized the clergy 
 of the preceding century, had established itself in fashion, 
 and doubtless might have been seen here early, if not at 
 the very first. Their education was not contemptible, 
 as the records of their proceedings amply show. They 
 had had the benefit of the long-established policy of the 
 colony, which made public education the corner-stone of 
 the State. They were familiar with Scripture and familiar 
 with learned preaching. One of the conditions of their 
 grant was that they should maintain a learned Orthodox 
 minister. They complied with the condition by calling 
 and settling in December, 1731, the Rev. Solomon Pren- 
 tice, a young graduate of Harvard in the class of 1727, 
 a classmate of Governors Hutchinson of Massachusetts 
 Bay and Trumbull of Connecticut. 
 
 In the following year the young minister married 
 Sarah Sartell of Groton, and his wife, sixteen years of 
 age, is said to have been well qualified by her learning 
 and ability to assume the important position of a pastor's 
 wife. I have unmistakable evidence that even in those 
 rude and primitive days, in the infancy of the settle- 
 ment, the minister's wife was not wholly unacquainted 
 with, nor indiff'erent to, the elegancies of refined life. 
 For, among my heirlooms, I possess an ample fragment 
 of an elegant dress which was the property of that lady. 
 One tradition in the family describes it as her own wed- 
 ding dress, but the better authenticated account is that 
 it came from an aunt of hers, and was worn by its 
 
25 
 
 former owner at the Court of George TI. However that 
 may be, it was undoubtedly worn by the fair hidy her- 
 self, who was, I imagine, as well by her position as by 
 her accomplishments, the leader of society here in those 
 primitive days. As I look upon its beautiful texture, 
 as perfectly preserved as when, one hundred and fifty 
 years ago, it graced the person of the youthful lady, 
 when I see its unfaded and lovely hues, — a bright ca- 
 nary-colored satin elegantly brocaded with flowers, — I 
 am struck with the transitory nature of the things we 
 here pursue. By the aid of this talisman I am enabled 
 to look into the — 
 
 " Dark backward and abysm of time," 
 
 and behold one of the figures that moved over these 
 scenes when the curtain of history first rolled up and 
 disclosed this section of the world's stage. For nearly 
 a hundred years, after a long life, the mother and grand- 
 mother of a numerous posterity, she has slept in yonder 
 ancient cemetery. There remain of her memory only a 
 few fleeting and uncertain traditions, scarcely more in 
 extent than the nearly obliterated inscription upon her 
 tombstone. All the rest has fallen silent and is swal- 
 lowed up in oblivion, but the frail and beautiful adorn- 
 ment which set ofi' the charms of the stately young min- 
 ister's wife remains. :N"o shade of the cunningly- wrought 
 desio-n has become, in the least, dimmed with age. Every 
 line of the delicate tracery, and every lovely variation 
 of color, lives as clear as on the day it left the loom. 
 Venerable ancestress! I salute you across the gulf of 
 
26 
 
 years ! Is it possible to believe that this delicate fabric, 
 this tegument which became so intimately connected 
 with her destiny, is all that survives of her, that all the 
 rest is exhaled like the perfume of the flowers which 
 bloomed a hundred years ago? No! at least she and 
 her contemporaries, whose lives we are now trying to 
 recall, live in the beneficent influence they exerted. It 
 is not alone by hereditary transmission that the qualities 
 and peculiarities of one generation reappear in another. 
 We are creatures of imitation. The manners and indi- 
 vidual peculiarities of a strong personality are repro- 
 duced by force of the instinct to imitate; and as some 
 individuals of every generation are contemporaries of 
 the next succeeding, the traits and habits of a vigorous 
 and original character are continued and transmitted 
 from age to age. The frail memorial, the curiously 
 wrought fabric, is but a symbol of the graces of per- 
 sonal character which do not perish even from this life, 
 when the tenement of clay dissolves, but survive — 
 
 "To the last s\'llal)le of recorded time." * 
 
 The pastoral relation of Mr. Prentice was dissolved 
 in 1747, by reason of troubles which had been brewing 
 for two or three years. I do not propose to enter upon 
 the subject of those troubles. It is enough to say that 
 no impeachment of the integrity of Mr. Prentice was 
 
 * I regret that a story so destitute of probability as that relating to the do- 
 mestic discord between Mr. and Mrs. Prentice, wliich Mr. Howe deemed wor- 
 thy of a place in his excellent address, should have received an indorsement 
 so respectable. The frequency with which the story has been applied to an- 
 cient couples, who were divided in opinion upon the special tenet of the Bap- 
 tists, renders it quite too stale for adaptation to the cultivated and refined 
 tirst pastor of Grafton, and his intelligent and spirited wife. 
 
27 
 
 attempted, but it was his orthodoxy alone which was 
 brought in question. It is essential for me to say that 
 the records of this controversy, faithfully set down in 
 the beautiful handwriting of Mr. Prentice himself, dis- 
 closes a people of great independence of thought and 
 character, desirous to do right, but by no means to be 
 deterred by authority from asserting their just privi- 
 leges and opinions. Mr. Prentice was succeeded by 
 Rev. Aaron Hutchinson, a man of great power and 
 great eccentricities, who remained till 1772, and, in 
 1774, Rev. Daniel Grosvenor succeeded him. A lady 
 friend of mine has given me a brace of anecdotes told 
 to her by Mr. Grosvenor himself, one of which well illus- 
 trates his sense of the humorous and his dislike of insin- 
 cerity. 
 
 Mr. Grosvenor was dining with a lady of his parish, 
 who was a cook of exquisite skill, and she placed before 
 the pastor a delicious pie, of some kind, and as she 
 helped him to a piece of it, she remarked that she hoped 
 he would accept a piece of her jpoor pie. The minister 
 tasted it with great gravity, and said "Poor pie! why, I 
 call it a very passahle pie." Whereupon the good lady 
 was in high dudgeon. She declared she never took 
 more pains with a pie, in the whole course of her life, 
 and she did not believe there was ever a better pie made. 
 Fishing for a compliment, she got caught with her own 
 
 hook. 
 
 On another occasion the reverend gentleman called 
 upon one of his parishoners, who, it l)eing upon a wash- 
 ing day, and her dinner not being just what she would 
 
28 
 
 desire to invite so august a personage as the minister to 
 partake of, did not mean to extend to him the courtesy 
 of an invitation. But the lady's mother, who was of the 
 family, nevertheless, asked Mr. Grosvenor to stay. He 
 accepted, and when his young hostess apologized for 
 the quality of the repast, hei- mother made the follow- 
 ing observation, which Mr. Grosvenor thought quite no- 
 table. She said there was no occasion for any apology ; 
 for, if Mr. Grosvenor was a good man^ he would be con- 
 tent and thankful even with a poor dinner, and, if he 
 was a bad man, it was good enough for him. 
 
 I have read a sermon preached by Mr. Hutchinson at 
 Newbury in 1767, and the reply by him to certain strict- 
 ures thereon, by the Rev. John Tucker, pastor of the 
 first church in Xewbury. This famous ecclesiastical 
 controversy related to the necessity of infant l3aptism 
 in order to insure salvation. It is hardly necessary 
 to say that Mr. Hutchinson maintained the affirmative 
 of that proposition. His discourses are marked by 
 great familiarity with scriptural texts, much classical 
 learning, fine controversial skill, and by a logic which 
 may fairly be described as of deadly precision. Admit 
 his premises, and you cannot escape his conclusions. 
 
 Mr. Hutchinson, like his great contemporary Dr. Sam- 
 uel Johnson, coupled with great learning and ability, 
 the manners of a bear. The president of the day,* who 
 is the repository of all the history and anecdotes con- 
 nected with the antiquities of the town, relates a story 
 of Mr. Hutchinson illustrating his manners: He was 
 
 * Henry F. Willi?, Es(|., 
 
29 
 
 dining at a conference of ministers and helped liimself 
 to so large a portion of the pudding that there was little 
 left on the platter. Thereupon one of his neighbors 
 at the table helped himself from Mr. Hutchinson's plate, 
 and when remonstrated with, remarked that he always 
 helped himself from the largest pile. 
 
 I do not find in the ancient records of the town, any- 
 thing to show whether the young settlement contributed 
 men to the expedition which resulted in the brilliant 
 conquest of Louisburg in 1745. To this enterprise, 
 which owed its conception and execution to the energy 
 of Governor Shirley, this province contributed more 
 than three thousand men, and it is probable that in the 
 ranks were found some residents of this town. 
 
 The treaty of Aix la Chapelle restored to the French 
 the fortress which New-England valor had placed in 
 English hands, and left the colonists to the long strug- 
 gle which was in store for them, with their wily and 
 cruel neighbors of the north ; and the first war, after the 
 settlement of the town, which arose to try the mettle of 
 the inhabitants, was the French war, in which hostilities 
 broke out in 1754. I have already referred to Queen 
 Anne's war of fifty years before. It is undoubtedly 
 true that the protracted struggle of the English colo- 
 nists with the French and Indians along our extended 
 northern frontier, fi'om the mouth of the Saint Lawrence 
 to the forks of the Ohio, furnished the training-school in 
 which was raised the generation of soldiers who fought 
 the battles of the Revolution. In the French war, 
 Washington won his spurs, and many of the officers and 
 
30 
 
 privates who met the British regulars on Bunker Hill, 
 or penetrated the thick forests of Canada, and crossed 
 the Saint Lawrence in canoes under the lead of Arnold 
 and Montgomery, to attack Quebec, or joined in the at- 
 tack on the Hessians at Trenton, or endured the pangs 
 of famine and frost at Valley Foi-ge, had also, twenty 
 years before, rushed upon the defences at Louisburg, or 
 under the command of Wolfe, struggled up the cliffs to 
 the Heights of Abraham, or marched with Washington 
 through the dense forests of western Pennsylvania to 
 the field of Braddock's defeat. To say that the record 
 of this town in that long struggle was distinguished 
 and honorable, is but to faintly praise where words of 
 enthusiastic eulogy are appropriate. In a period of nine 
 years, its population was more than decimated by the 
 fatalities of that war. Such a record is of great and un- 
 paralleled significance, and imports that here resided a 
 race of heroic men, whose martial virtues were not infe- 
 rior to any that ever inspired the strains of the lyric 
 muse. In 1757, the fortunes of England in America 
 reached their lowest ebb. For more than two years, 
 disasters had huddled thick upon her arms. At Fort 
 Du Quesne; at Oswego; at Fort William Henry, and 
 throughout the whole of the Saint Lawrence valley, an 
 almost unbroken succession of defeats had reduced her 
 prospects here to the verge of despair. And, at home, 
 the gloom which settled on the face of affairs was scarcely 
 less deep and rayless than that of one hundred years 
 before, when the guns of the Dutch fleet were heard in 
 the Thames. It was at this moment that the elder Pitt, 
 
31 
 
 the great commoner, seized the reins of power which 
 fell from the nerveless grasp of the "Whig aristocracy." 
 In less than fonr years, he restored the military glory 
 of his country to the pitch it had attained by the genius 
 of Marlborough, and gave to England an influence in 
 the politics of the world which she had not enjoyed 
 since the days of Oliver Cromwell. The most brilliant 
 of the series of victories by which these results were 
 accomplished was the conquest of Canada. To the con- 
 quest of Canada, no portion of the British people con- 
 tributed so much as the province of Massachusetts Bay, 
 and no portion of the people of this province contribu- 
 ted more of men and money according to their numbers 
 than the people of the town of Grafton. 
 
 When we read the astounding fact that eighty of her 
 sons out of a population of 750 died in this war, we feel 
 the intense meaning of Col. Barry's immortal speech in 
 the house of commons: "They protected by your arms? 
 They have nobly taken up arms in your defence ; have 
 exerted a valor amid their constant and laborious indus- 
 try, for the defence of a country whose frontier was 
 drenched in Mood, while its interior yielded all its little 
 savings to your emoluments." 
 
 When we turn the leaf which embalms the deeds of this 
 town in the war of the revolution, we find equal cause for 
 pride and exultation. Grafton sent forth no conspicuous 
 leader to the councils, and furnished no battlefield in 
 that great debate. She contributed no Washington, no 
 Adams, no Warren, no Ward, and it was not here that— 
 
 "The embattled farmers stood 
 And fired the shot heard round the world." 
 
32 
 
 But no people in the colonies caught the echo of that 
 shot with more quick and responsive ear. Before the 
 sun had set on that 19th day of April, 1775, a full com- 
 pany of nearly one hundred men, with Rev. Mr. Grosve- 
 nor, their pastor, in the ranks, were in rapid march to 
 the front. On every bloody field, from Bunker Hill to 
 Yorktown, the sons of this town dared or tasted death 
 in the cause of independence. But the contest of the 
 American colonies of Great Britain with the mother 
 country was not specially distinguished by the valor of 
 the Continental troops. There was no deficiency in that 
 respect, but there have been more remarkable instances 
 of human courage and endurance than any displayed in 
 that war. The long contest of the ^Netherlands with 
 the mighty armaments of Spain, forty-three years in du- 
 ration, recorded in the glowing and eloquent pages of 
 Motley, presents an instance far more striking and won- 
 derful of a brave people, in the sacred cause of liberty, 
 maintaining an unequal contest through more than a 
 generation, and carrying it to a triumphant issue against 
 intrenched power and vast resources. It was not very 
 wonderful that three million people, situated in a coun- 
 try of such resources as this, and remote from Europe, 
 especially in alliance with one of the great powers of the 
 earth, should be able to wrest their independence from 
 the mother country, whose people were not completely 
 united in policy. But what is unexampled in this great 
 contest, what the file affords absolutely no precedent 
 for, was the calm and conservative wisdom which mark- 
 ed all the councils of the revolt. The colonists were 
 
33 
 
 not revohitionists indeed, but rather conservatives. 
 They were not fighting to establish new relbrms, bnt to 
 preserve ancient Uberties. They had no constitutions in 
 the sense in which we use the term, and yet in all their 
 public utterances and state papers they perpetually re- 
 fer to their constitutions, and appeal to the principles of 
 those constitutions. 
 
 By their constitutions the people of this province meant 
 the Magna Charta, the declaration of rights of 1G88, and 
 the bill of rights of 1G89, and all that body of law found 
 in the preambles of ancient statutes and in the decisions 
 of courts, whereby the liberties of Englishmen were de- 
 clared and secured everywhere. They believed those 
 principles were embodied by necessary implication in the 
 charter of 1629, and in the new charter of 1691. I cannot 
 develop and must not stop to dwell on this topic. They 
 were a race of constitutional lawyers. Burke said of 
 them: "In this character of the Americans, a love of 
 freedom is the predominating feature which marks and 
 distinguishes the whole. This fierce spirit of liberty is 
 stronger in the English colonies, probably, than in any 
 other people of the earth." And Chatham, in 1775, thus 
 characterized their public papers: "When your lord- 
 ships look at the papers transmitted to us from Amer- 
 ica, when you consider their decency, firmness and wis- 
 dom, you cannot but respect their cause and wish to 
 make it your own. For myself I must declare and 
 avow that in all my reading and observation — and it 
 has been my favorite study — I have read Thucydides 
 and have admired the master states of the world — that 
 
34 
 
 for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity and wisdom 
 of conclusion, under such a complication of difficult 
 circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in 
 preference to the general congress at Philadelphia." 
 Now the same characteristics which marked the emana- 
 tions of the greater bodies, and so much challenged the 
 admiration of the great statesman, will be found in less 
 degree in the humble records of the proceedings of the 
 New England towns. I have adverted to this subject 
 to say that right here, in the volumes containing the 
 proceedings of this town in 1774 and '75, will be found 
 undying evidence of the existence here of that " fierce 
 spirit of liberty" which Burke discovered, coupled with 
 the temperate wisdom and practical sagacity which com- 
 manded the applause of Chatham. A single illustration 
 is all I can allow myself. I refer to the report of a com- 
 mittee adopted by the town, January 4, 1774, and hav- 
 ing reference to a communication from Boston, sent out 
 upon the occasion of the destruction of tea in Boston har- 
 bor. Tt is in these words : " The town of Grafton, tak- 
 ing into consideration the unhappy circumstances that 
 this country are involved in at the present crisis, attempts 
 being repeatedly made infringing upon our rights and 
 privileges, which we consider justly alarming to all the 
 true friends of our happy constitution, which hath been 
 80 dearly purchased, and which we esteem to be our 
 most invaluable interest and rights as Englishmen, 
 which we have ever gloried in, more particularly at the 
 glaring injustice of the East India Company being 
 allowed to send tea to America, while subject to a duty 
 
35 
 
 payable in America, which we view as subversive of 
 our rights as Christians; as subjects, and as loyal sub- 
 jects of our most gracious King George, whose name 
 and person we ever desire to view as sacred. Therefore, 
 Resolved, as the people of this town, that any one indi- 
 vidual, or any body of men, that shall encourage, aid, 
 or assist in importing or receiving any such tea or any 
 other article while subject to a duty, the sole purpose 
 whereof is to raise money to appropriate to any sordid 
 measure, or any use whatever contrary to our just rights 
 of distributing our own property wherewith God and 
 Nature hath made us free, can but be viewed as crimi- 
 nal to our country, as well as to the mother state, and 
 must be so viewed by us. Resolved, that this town 
 are in duty bound to join with and assist our sister 
 towns and colonies in this our common cause, so as we 
 may be instrumental under God of handing down that 
 liberty to our posterity which hath been kept so long 
 inviolate and preserved by our worthy ancestors. Re- 
 solved, that the substance of the proceedings of the 
 town of Boston and other towns in their respective 
 town meetings (relative to said affair) which have been 
 published and come to our knowledge, are in our appre- 
 hension consistent with truth and our happy constitu- 
 tion, and we can but wish prosperity may attend all 
 laudable stands, so that our glorious constitution may 
 yet be handed down to posterity inviolate. But to 
 adopt any measures where private advantage or sinister 
 ends are apparently at the bottom, and who make 
 this thous:h ever so glorious a foundation for their 
 
36 
 
 avarice and e^nolument we cannot but must detest and 
 abhor." 
 
 The syntax of this document will not bear examina- 
 tion, but the record presents an interesting type of the 
 class of the counsels that prevailed everywhere. It 
 exhibits in the sons the same characteristics which pre- 
 dominated in the fathers who settled the town — clear, 
 practical common sense, a people who knew their rights 
 and the exact extent and limits and grounds of them ; 
 a people who believed that liberty was not an abstrac- 
 tion but inhered in a sensible object — a people who 
 could not be surprised nor driven into vain excesses, 
 and who proposed as their ancestors had done, to gov- 
 ern themselves, but by no means to commit society to 
 any untried and dangerous theories of abstract rights, 
 that rested not upon the solid basis of precedent. But 
 our ancestors were not always right. What Emerson 
 said of Concord is true of Grafton, '^ If the good coun- 
 sel prevailed, the sneaking counsel did not fail to be 
 suggested." You will find if you search the musty 
 records, that while most of the men whose blood Hows 
 in your veins were staunch in the just cause, others of 
 your ancestors, perhaps, were obstinate, obstructive and 
 wrong-headed. If the question came up on paying the 
 minute-men for the time they spent in learning the mili- 
 tary art and for their accoutrements, you may find some 
 of your kindred, whose names you would prefer not to 
 see in that conspicuous eminence, sullenly protesting 
 against the scheme, perhaps suspicious that it savored 
 too much of "measures where private advantage and 
 
37 
 
 sinister ends were at the bottom." But tories were ex- 
 ceeding scarce, and although I find an honored name of 
 one who was cashiered as agent to procure recruits for 
 the town, "because he was not firm and friendly to the 
 State," yet I believe he was restored within a few 
 months- And you know that when the question of the 
 adoption of the United States constitution came up, the 
 people of this town and vicinity, concurring with the mis- 
 taken views of many veteran patriots of the Revolution, 
 rejected by a very large majority that Union which, in 
 the next age, their posterity were destined so gloriously 
 to defend. I have left myself no time, nor was it a part 
 of my design, to enter upon any consideration of Graf- 
 ton's relation to the war for the Union. If the record 
 of fatalities did not reach the unparalleled extent of the 
 old French war, the roll of your volunteers was swelled 
 far beyond every requirement of the government. For 
 nearly every eight men your quota called for, you fur- 
 nished, out of the abundance of your patriotism, an ad- 
 ditional man. 
 
 Your eminence in this particular received ample rec- 
 ognition from the commonwealth, when its chief magis- 
 trate said, in measured words : " I feel bound in truth 
 and justice to say that no other town appears to have 
 contributed to the late war a larger proportion than 
 yours of its treasures and its men." I am speaking to 
 those who helped to make the record. I know how ap- 
 propriate the theme is; but I could not adequately treat 
 it. To what examples of ancient or modern valor could 
 I refer to set in more striking light your own ? The 
 
38 
 
 mind reverts to Marathon ; to Platea ; and to the pass in 
 the Locrian mountains, where the three hundred Spar- 
 tans with their few alUes, held at bay a million barbari- 
 ans. 
 
 The literature and art of twenty-five centuries has in- 
 vested these examples of heroism with imperishable 
 glory. l!^o immortal literature has yet wrought its spell 
 upon your deeds. The long arts of sculpture and paint- 
 ing have not familiarized the eyes of seventy genera- 
 tions with your achievements. Perhaps the conditions 
 under which you and your comrades wrought and en- 
 dured are not favorable to the representations of art, 
 and the Achilles of the civil war may never find his 
 Homer. But I know of nothing in the quality of your 
 valor, in the circumstances under which it was display- 
 ed, in the motives which actuated it, or in the results it 
 achieved, to belittle it in comparison with the classic 
 models of antiquity. The Greeks, trained in war from 
 their infancy, on those renowned fields, confronted a foe 
 formidable only in numbers, to preserve for a few pre- 
 cious decades a small tract of mountainous country, until 
 their genius might create and transmit to other ages 
 and other races a body of wonderful literature, monu- 
 ments of unequalled art, and examples of politics and 
 governments, of the highest interest to mankind. You 
 fought without previous military training, against an 
 equal foe, in the cause of human liberty, inspired with 
 a lofty sentiment of national integrity, and to the end, 
 in the immortal language of Lincoln, " that government 
 of the people, by the people, for tlie people, might not 
 
39 
 
 perish from the earth." To quote the language of your 
 great military chieftain, addressed to you at the close, 
 " Your marches, sieges and battles, in distance, duration, 
 resolution, and brilliancy of results, dim the lustre of 
 the world's past military achievements, and will be the 
 patriot's precedent in defence of liberty and the right in 
 all time to come." 
 
 I have said the first settlers of the town were re- 
 markable for their sturdy sense and practical business 
 capacity, and for these their descendants have continued 
 to be distinguished. It would be invidious to name the 
 living, and difficult to select, for special mention, from 
 the long roll of Grafton's sons who have united with a 
 lofty spirit of patriotism the practical wisdom of men of 
 affairs. They are found, in no insignificant numbers, in 
 the ranks of those by whom the great business interests 
 of the country are managed. Of profound and brilliant 
 scholars, of eminent statesmen and orators, the town has 
 no list to present. In the main, heretofore, the genius 
 her children have displayed is the genius of honest in- 
 dustry, perseverance, courage, Yankee sense, the ca- 
 pacity to gain solid acquirements, and to use them about 
 the practical business of life, the genius of the true arti- 
 sans who have wrought out the great material progress 
 and prosperity of the age. And if the past of the town 
 is secure, the present and future are also luminous with 
 hope and promise. It is true that causes, which need 
 not be enumerated, tend to mass population about great 
 industrial centres, and the country town suffers an ap- 
 parent diminution of importance. If it is a question of 
 
40 
 
 valuation for the purposes of taxation; if it is a question 
 of comparative gain of population ; if it is a question of 
 relative municipal importance, your town has lost the 
 race. But the true worth of a town is not measured by 
 its valuation list, any more than the true wealth of a 
 man is measured by his weight avoirdupois. When the 
 New York Sun wanted to say the most disparaging 
 thing it could think of about General Hancock, it said 
 he was a good man and weighed 250 pounds. If it is a 
 question what opportunities are here afforded to lead a 
 rational existence ; to appreciate intelligently the great 
 pageant of human life as it moves before the eye; to 
 cultivate and expand your own powers; to furnish the 
 minds of your children with correct opinions, and fill 
 their hearts with noble sentiments; in short, to enjoy all 
 the blessings of civil liberty, at what period of Grafton's 
 history were her prospects more attractive? In 1735, 
 Grafton was what it had been in the days of Hubbard, 
 "a place up into the woods beyond Mcdfield and 
 Mendon." 
 
 The Grafton of 1885 is near the centre of a republic 
 of fifty-five millions of people. The distance of your 
 fathers of the year 1800 from their rural county seat was 
 greater than yours, at present, from the great city, then 
 a straggling town, now a vast mart of trade and the 
 " mother of arts and eloquence." Taking into account 
 the conveniences and comforts of modern methods of 
 travel, as well as the element of time, you are nearer to 
 New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, than your 
 fathers were to their provincial capital. " No pent up 
 
41 
 
 Utica contracts your powers, but the whole boundless 
 continent is yours." And it is yours in other senses 
 than that it is accessible. The old charters of Charles, 
 and of William and Mary, granted to the province of 
 Massachusetts Bay all the land lying between a north 
 line three miles north of the Merrimack and a south 
 line three miles south of the Charles, and extending 
 westward to the South Sea. There was an unconscious 
 prophecy in the vague terms of the ancient grants. 
 The royal grantors could deliver but a small part of the 
 vast region they covered by the premises of their parch- 
 ment. But what the royal signet could not give title to 
 the grantees and their children have, nevertheless, pos- 
 sessed. The great West is but a larger ^ew England 
 and a more distinguished Massachusetts. Even the 
 great South, so long shut up against the influence of 
 your free institutions, beholds the coming day. Even 
 there, — 
 
 " Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tiptoe on tlie misty mountain tops." 
 
 The new South means a South which shall yield to 
 the genial influences of New England, such as our fath- 
 ers planted here and which have created the greatness 
 of the N^orth and the West. Meanwhile, over your no- 
 ble hills and through your lovely valleys, "Heaven's 
 breath smells wooingly," your ample fields have not 
 sensibly abated their fertility, and your thriving villages 
 are vigorous as of old. Your model free schools and your 
 noble library open wide their portals and extend their 
 inestimable benefits to the rich and poor alike. No 
 
 5 
 
42 
 
 child is born within your borders in circumstances so 
 abject and miserable that the beneficent institutions you 
 have established and maintain will not unlock at the bid- 
 ding of his diligence and ability, every door that leads 
 to wealth and honorable fame. Standing at the apex of 
 the second century, reverting to the past and peering 
 into the future, we can discover only reasons for pro- 
 found gratitude to the founders of the ancient town, and 
 to their heroic successors in every generation, who have 
 preserved for us so noble a heritage. 
 
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LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 
 
 014 078 487 4