HfSTORIC PRIORITIES i:^r LYJNTN AN AlJliKi ^s^> < . i SOCIETY HOUSE L\^NN HISTORICAIi SOCIETY ocTomurt ;>, ioj3 C J. H. WooontJRY, A. M.. Sc. D.. Prbsidenx Reprintf.l iidin tlu- KiL'ister ot the Socioty, Voi\mic X\'II 1013 HISTORIC PRIORITIES IN LYNN AN ADDRESS fcJIVKN AT THE DEDICATION SOCIETY HOUSE LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY OCTOnBJR n, 1J>13 C. J. H. WoonnuRY, A. M., Sc. D., President Reprinted from the Register of the Society, Volume XVII LYNN, mXHH. 7^- Gin C»rn«;:l«' lost* ^ 1914 HISTORIC PRIORITIES IN LYNN An Address Given at the Dedication OF THE Society House LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY C. J. H. WOODBURY. A. M.. Sc. D.. President OCTOBER 9, 1913 When the five pioneers with their families set out from Salem and landed at Deer Cove between Red Rock and the bastion of the Boulevard about June, 1629, they found " a faire playne " for their homes. Montowampate (Sagamore James), whose wigwam was on Sagamore Hill, tradition says near the crossing of Newhall and Sagamore Streets, hospitably granted them the privilege of occupying the land comprised in the greater Lynn, and he ever lived in peace with the white men, the only known point of difference (a serious one) being his refusal of the catechism. It is true that the selectmen of Lynn later obtained a deed of this same territory from four Indians, which was acknowledged May3i,i687,andputon the recordwhich had been established in 1645 ; but this purchase was not made to obtain possession of the land, for they already had that, but to show Governor Andros, and through him to the Crown, that they had a title by direct purchase from the Aborigines, irrespective of that of the King's territory granted by Royal Charter. This address was given in abstract at the dedicatory exercises. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY THEIR WOMEN SUFFRAGE. The suffragettes and suffragists of to-day may find a comforting precedent in that when the colonists came here they found this part of the country, including Essex, Suf- folk, and portions of Middlesex County, ruled by Tahat- tavvan, the squaw Sachem, who succeeded to her first hus- band's authority, which she did not abdicate to her second husband, the medicine-man of the tribe, who had expected to wed the sachemate as well as the squaw. Is it possible that this feminine potentate so impressed the Puritans that they conferred upon women in the colon}' of Massachusetts Bay additional civic rights beyond what they held in England, from the first until their modification in 1789 by the adoption of the federal constitution? GROWTH OF THE SETTLEMENT. The Lynn 'Colonists builded better than they knew, for what prophetic phrensy or flight of imagination, cer- tainly not logical judgment, could have foretold that this settlement would develop into a municipality whose popula- tion numbers one-tenth of one per cent, of that of the United States ; a town whose assessed valuation amounts to about one thousand dollars for each man, woman, and child, and the skill of whose artisans has made it the third city of the Commonwealth in the gross value of its manufactured products, out-stripping in this respect six other towns of greater populations. The material Lynn is indeed a topic worthy of any assemblage, but on this occasion your consideration is asked for the more important historic Lynn and the many initi- ative acts by its people in establishing precedents which have been fundamental in their far-reaching influences upon many lives beyond the boundaries of the town. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 5 The Lynn Historical Society has for its jurisdiction the greater Lynn with its five adjacent towns which were portions of the original tract, and its membership approach- ing 750, includes many of its loyal sons and daughters spread from the Pacific coast even to foreign lands, making it the largest secular organization in the city. A PICTURESQUE CITY. Lynn is one of the most picturesque cities in this country, beautiful in that infinite variety of mountain, vale, and plain, which passes description, its forests gemmed with lakes and rivulets, its farms and gardens, its littoral of headlands and beaches. It is the only incorporated city along the Atlantic coast, outside of seashore resorts, whose peopled zone fronts directly upon the ocean. The range of hills on the west, hardly suited for advan- tageous cultivation, retains its forests ; and the great tract set apart as the Lynn Woods, of which the original instru- ment was recorded December 6, 1881, is undoubtedly the first instance in this country where the movement for forest conservation resulted in the legal ownership of land for the purpose. This great work was initiated by the versatile Lynn naturalist, Cyrus Mason Tracy, and made legally possible by the first president of this Society, Philip Augustus Chase, to whom the Commonwealth is also indebted for the establishment of forest reservations throughout its territory. Nahant, jutting a league into the ocean, with its fertile gardens set in nature's framework of ledge and beach, environs with foaming billows one of the majestic pictures along the New England coast. 6 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY Its alternation of forest with fertile spaces, especially valued by the Puritans for its pasturage in common, was followed by the sterilization of its soil, resulting from the felling- of its forests, until the land became as worthless to its owners as it was to the Indian whom tradition relates sold it for a jewsharp, and it was abandoned to squatter fishermen for years enough to confer titles through undis- puted occupancy, and finally the restoration of the fertility of the soil through tree planting. This story of Nahant was the only instance of the cycle of sterilizing rich lands by removal of the forest growth and the subsequent renewal of the fertility of the soil by tree planting which was sub- mitted at the congressional hearings on the subject, and undoubtedly had a profound influence in securing federal legislation on forest conservation, the greatest economic problem before this extravagant American people. The Lynn Boulevard, a unique highway along the Atlantic Coast, affords an unobstructed view of the ocean's ever changing moods of calm and storm throughout the year, and furnishes a shrine for the worship of nature in temples not made with hands, by the adoring millions of towns-people and visitors. It is with especial pride that we can assert that this vista of the ocean was forever assured to the public through the efforts of the first Secretary and Founder of the Society, Mr. Howard Mudge Newhall. On meeting him, only a few days before his last sickness, I mentioned the obligations which the people of Lynn bore to him for numerous acts of public spirit, and he modestly disclaimed being anything but a sharer in those events, because he was always associated with others who gave ample and efficient cooperation ; ex- cepting that in the suggestion for the Boulevard, laying out the route and the tentative arrangements with owners LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 7 of real estate, he asserted that he was entirely alone, until the project had been developed in detail and had received a general public endorsement. It is to be hoped in the near future that it may be feasible that this Society, as one of its functions of erecting memorial tablets, shall be able to make arrangements for the erection of a memorial tablet at some point of vantage along the route of this celebrated highway. It may be worth while to note that the revetment wall of concrete which resists the furious impact of the ocean gales served in its design as the precedent for a similar wall at the extreme of the coast boundary of this country in defending the city of Galveston, Texas, against a rep- etition of history. LYNN HARBOR. Lynn Harbor is one of the latest chapters in physical geograph}' and undoubtedly dates from a storm which tore away a point of land extending oft' the site of the present state bath house and built the beach to Nahant, between the years 1614 and January, 1629. During the earlier year, Captain John Smith not merely visited these shores, but mapped Nahant, which he describes in his book as the " lies of Mattahunts were like the Pieramides of Egypt, a league in the sea from the maine," and he relates his fight with the Indians and their retreat by canoes, a method of flight which the savages certainly would not have taken if a beach aftorded a more speedy escape from the arquebuses of the Englishmen. Furthermore he gives additional evidence of their isolation, through his proposition to fortify them and to lay the Indians under tribute. The deed of the Georges grant, which included 8 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY Nahant, January 20, 1629, to Sir William Brereton included "Cape Nahaunte," but specified the islands to the south. The origin of Long Beach is evidently similar to the sand bar which has been built by storms above low water mark from Little Nahant to Egg Rock at least three times. In June, 1907, when two houses were moved from the northerly end of Long Beach to Winthrop on lighters, the small tug grounded at this place where deep water was expected, and the outside route was taken on the second trip. The frequent breaking of the ocean over Nahant Beach gave rise to serious apprehensions, and the various attempts to provide a remedy were failures, until about i860, when a supply of tufts of shore grass, which thrives in sand, was shipped from Barcelona, Spain, in a United States Naval vessel and brought to Lynn, packed in barrels, and planted above high water mark. This grass thrived and spread, and caught the sand drifted by the wand, and in this manner the beach has been raised. This Lynn precedent has since been applied to the preservation of sandy tracts in many places. From lack of tidal scour since the formation of the Beach, Lynn Harbor has been filling with the detritus washed from the shores, except as deepened by dredging, and the day is past when a ship could dock in the upper harbor as was the case of the three prizes taken during the War of 181 2. SOME HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS. The lack of a deep harbor or falling w'ater courses prevented Lynn from having either maritime commerce or the early types of manufacturing wdth their resultant LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY g instances of opulence, caused the people of early Lynn to rely on their personal resources, and has evidently been the cause of the many instances of marked individualism. Mere antiquity is not history : The wolf-pits of 1630 in the Lynn Woods are undoubtedly the oldest unchanged works of man in the Colony ; they are curiosities but not historical. Mere recitals of gone-by isolated ocurrences are annals and not history, and it is better for mankind that most of them are forgotten, otherwise the world would be overburdened with chaff. The actions of former days in such logical relations that their gleanings become cumulative and furnish illumi- nating precedents to helpfully guide later generations is history. The strongest living forces are the thoughts of those whose lives are of the past. It is not that we love our ancestors better than our neighbors, but we must recognize that out of the thousands of preceding lives there were a few who made helpful sug- gestions for the present time. It is worth while to cite a few instances of the creation of precedents by our townspeople which appear to have been of such potency as to modify the lives and actions of others. THE FIRST ACTS OF INDEPENDENCE. The inability of the English Government, impover- ished by wars, to give the people of Massachusetts Bay in the early days of the Colony that assistance which "the pioneers felt that they had reason to expect, caused the colonists to inscribe upon their flag the Macedonian cry, "Come over and help us!" and also developed through their conditions of privation intrinsic self-reliance, and this conscious strength aroused a spirit of liberty and independ- lO LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY ence, which gave rise to serious apprehensions in the mother country, where these sentiments became as well known as on this side of the Atlantic. John Evelyn, one of the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, wrote in his diary May 26, 1671 : "There was a fear of their break- ing away from all dependence on this nation" (England), and later, on August 3, 167 1, "the Council voted to send a Deputy to this colony on an ostensible mission, but secretly to learn whether they were of such power as to resist His Majesty and declare for themselves as independent of the Crowne." The first overt act of independence was not by resolu- tion or rebellion, but by the issuance of coinage without the essential reference to the King b}^ Grace of God. The dies for the Pine Tree coinage were made at the Saugus Iron Works from designs furnished by Esther Jenkes, the wife of the superintendent. That she was a woman of taste is certainly not evi- denced by the coins, but by the fact that she was presented (prosecuted) for wearing silver lace, which was beyond the legal bounds of her husband's estate, in which respect the Colony adopted the English law, and therefore her extravagance, instead of being the subject of domestic altercation, became that of a public prosecution. It is said that some of these coins found their way to Charles II at the hands of some enemy of the Colony, and the King showed them to Sir William Temple with, "They tell me that the New England colonies are minting money. What do you say to these?" And Sir William, who was a friend of the Colony said, "That is the oak which sheltered Your Majesty at Boscobel." "Oh, the honest dogs!" and the expected proceedings for this act of high treason were never taken. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY II This minting began in Boston in 1652 and continued until 1706, but the canny colonists undoubtedly realized that they were committing one of the most serious trans- gressions possible under the English law, and for obvious reasons never changed the date from that of 1652 on the original dies which were made at Saugus. The practical independence of the Colonies which had been developed by geographical isolation and ill-advised acts of the mother country gave rise to a wish for independ- ence of authority on the part of an aggressive minority throughout the Colonies, and this minority ruled, as minor- ities always do rule, in the face of a meek majority who remained loyal to the Crown. This agitation for separation was intense and wide- spread, as is instanced by the plea for independence by Major Samuel Appleton of Ipswich given at Celemount Rock, Saugus Center in 1687, ^^^^ the effect of his unre- ported eloquence was so permanent that the story was passed from father to son and held in remembrance, and is now commemorated by a bronze tablet on this nature's rostrum. All along the fringe of sea coast which comprised the Colonies this agitation flourished, but the earliest instance of recorded legislative action advocating independence, of which I have been able to learn, occurred at Lynn, where a town meeting passed resolutions on December 16, 1773, vigorously asserting their "Right to Freedom." The traditional Declaration of Independence at Mech- lenburg. North Carolina, was made May 31, 1775, and the great declaradon at Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. President John Adams stated that the movement for American independence started when the Puritans set sail for New England. 12 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY LYNN MEN AT ARMS. Lynn is without battlefield shrines, for she had no deep harbor to defend, nor any river at a time when the sea power was even more essential as a world power than in later years. Her hills command no strategic passes, and armies have never had cause to meet upon her plains. Her only fort was the two blockhouses built in the middle of the town in 1642 as a defense against the Indians. This fortification is not near Central Square, but about four miles distant on Vinegar Hill, near the Saugus line, whose site is now owned by this Society. A declaration of Lynn's part in the affairs of the day from the earliest settlement is a record of brave deeds intelligently wrought, whose full annals would require a paraphrase of New England history, for if the fortunes of war never brought any arbitrament of arms upon its terri- tory, her brave sons engaged in thirteen wars, with the possible exception of the short war with France in 1800, which was limited to sea engagements, and not including the various Indian wars in distant parts of the country, nor the Barbary war in the Mediterranean, which were with- out declaration and not given to the conditions prevailing among civilized nations. It is not known that any Lynn men were engaged in the twenty-year civil war between Connecticut and Pennsyl- vania known as the Pennamite- Yankee War which ended in 1788; but on account of the extensive early migrations from Lynn to Connecticut, it is probable that descendents of Lynn men were enlisted in that peculiar struggle. These various wars may be worth recounting, as some of them are not included in general histories, showing the possibilities of Lvnn's share in historic material to be saved from oblivion. The Pequot War, 1636; King Philip's LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 13 War, 1675 ; King William's War, 1689 ; Queen Anne's War, 1702; King George's War, 1744; French and Indian War, 1754; Civil War between Connecticut and Pennsylvania, 1768; Revolution, 1775; Shay's Rebellion, 1786; War w^ith France, 1800; Mexican War, 1846; Civil War, 1861 ; Spanish War, 1898. Ex-President George H. Martin has given this Society the benefit of his thorough investigations into the early Indian wars, but Lynn's part in the French and Indian wars is yet to be written, and the same omission exists in regard to the War of 181 2 and even the Mexican War. Lynn people were not rich enough to furnish any Tories at the time of the Revolution. Howard K. Saunderson, by years of intelligent research upon Lynn's part in the struggle for independence, found that out of a population of 465 polls in 1774, Lynn furnished 483 soldiers in the war of the Revolution and this city has 196 known graves, which is said to be the greatest number of Revolutionary graves in any city of the United States ; and it is but consistent with this patriotic record that Old Essex Chapter of the Sons of the Ameri- can Revolution should be the largest organization of this body of patriotic sons of valiant sires. The records of the Church at Lynnfield contain the information that the first death in the War of the Rev- olution was that of Joseph Newhall of Lynn on March 9, 1775, resulting from a cold caught at the North Bridge skirmish, Salem, on the twenty-sixth of the previous February. The old First Church was far from quiescent in those days, and only one item from the parish records will be cited from the many showing the preparedness of the peo- ple. The innocent vote passed at the parish meeting held 14 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY in the Old Tunnel. June 30, 1775. authorizing the sale of the ^^'indo^vs "for what thev \^-ould fetch." contained a deeper meaning, as these ^^"i^do^vs were glazed with lead vrhJch would be useful for bullets in the forthcoming con- flict. A quantity" of powder was stored for emergency under the pulpit of the Old Tunnel in 1744. and a funher suppjY was added in 1774. Whether this last powder was a pan of the lot obtained in the nrst and bloodless contest of the Revolution in the looting of Fort William and Mary a: Portsmouth. December 14. 1774. under the direction of Paul Revere, when a hundred kegs were taken, is only a subject of conjecture, but there was no other known avail- able large supplv at the time. Such movements were necessarilv wrapt in secrecv as far as possible and the avoidance of direct record limits the establishment of facts to circumstantial occurrences, but I believe that this powder from Portsmouth was dis- tributed in various places, and that the powder at Shirley, whose seizure was the purpose of the futile sortie which resulted in the r.vo battles of Lexington and the repulse at Concord, was like that at Lvnn. a portion of the Ports- mouth loot. The storage at Lynn was a well kept secret, for if Lord Percy had any suspicions he could have brought his men under cover of night bv water and obtained the powder with but linle difficult^-, and Lvnn would thus have changed the face of histor}-, but not its ultimate results. It is well established that some of this powder was used at the battle of Bunker Hill in accordance with the purpose of Paul Revere in directing its capture at Portsmouth to pro'ride for the inevitable conflict. The Embargo caused such intense sufferincj" in Mas- sachusetts that the feeling against the fc:'.-r:- .'. jivernment became so bitter that secession was widelv advocated, but LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY I5 when the the War of 1812 was declared, the people lovally supported the nation. This war 1 '.ed Lynn nearer tr rr in its history- whe:. . _ attle between the S._:_::. _;--l the Chesapeake was fought off Xahant June i, 1S13. and Colonel John Nichols, an eye witness, related to me that the vessels in their manoeuvres wc: ^ roach as near to Eastern Point as the distance to E__ . -.. which is about three-quarters of a mile. It shc„" ' " ":-e forgotten that the fricrate Constiiution and other :_..„. . essels were built by Edmund Hartt of Lynn at his shipvard in Boston, on the present site of Constitution \\'harf. This celebrated vessel was desigrned by Joshua Humphreys of Philadelphia, and not by Ham. as has been claimed by some writers of Lynn histon.*. As this paper relates to initial acts by Lynn citizens, the most striking Lvnn deed of this nature during the War of 1S12 appears to have been that of the Quaker guns, whose season-cracked threats ser\-ed efficiently in intimi- dating hea\-ier armaments. These were devised at the Charlestown Na\-A- Yard by Captain Joseph Floyd, the Lvnn pumD builder, who showed that it was no: a far cry from a towr. v. v : . menacing broadside armament. The Civil War is so near that it is a remembrance and will not have the judicial perspective of history while veterans ''shoulder the crutch and tell how nelds were won :" ing this struggle. L\-nn maintained her patriotic rcpuiation and furnished 3.270 men. or 230 more than its full quota, of whom 2S9 are known to have been lost. Their Grand Army of the Republic. Post 5. at one rime had a membership of 1.030. being the largest in the countrv . l6 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY It is sincerely hoped that in the near future the Society will be able to have a memorial list of the names of all Lynn men who had fallen in defence of their country in the various wars, placed upon the wall in the entrance hall of this building. INDUSTRY AXD INVENTION". The varied conditions of necessity were a stimulus to the fertility of mental resources and the development of mechanical skill which appears to have been unusually active in the early settlement, and for the succeeding gen- erations, and it is worthwhile to consider a few, at least, of the occurrences which were precedents in their nature. Francis Ingalls,'one of the pioneer settlers, built a tan- nery which was the lirst in the Colonv. but was not the first in New England as has been claimed by several local writers, as there were several tanneries in the Plymouth Colony at earlier dates : and it was situated on the site of the car stables on Humphrey Street, near to the Swamp- scott line where its vats remained until thev were taken up in 1825. Edmund Ingalls, his brother, and fellow-pioneer, built a brewery at about the same time to the west of Gold Fish Pond, but the colonists in Salem had either been more progressive, or more thirsty, for they had anticipated the one in Lynn. The Saugus Iron Works is worthy of a history in itself as the pioneer establishment of its kind in the country, beginning to make iron from the deposits of bog iron near to the present site of Prankers Mills, in 1642, and after- wards making wrought iron and steel and casting brass and iron, as well as having the first machine shop. The house which was erected for the men is still occupied, LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 1 7 although there is at this time a hazard of its beino- torn down to make way for other changes. Lynn's only shrine is the kettle which was the precursor of the great iron industry and is now in the Public Library, well-kno\\Ti as ha\-ing been given to Thomas Hudson for about twenty acres of land for the iron works between the present sites of the Scott and the Pranker's Woolen Mills, in which the consideration was to be the first article cast in the iron works . The Puritans in common with all nations of that day were believers in slavery- and lived up to their belief. Their attempts with the Indians were unsuccessful, as the red men would not stay put. Their use of negro slaves lasted for about one hundred and fifty vears ; and their white slaves, termed redemptioners, consisting of Scotch and Irish prisoners of war, whom Cromwell captured and sent to this country, were used in large numbers at the Iron Works where a number of them lived in what was known as the Scotch house, which was burned a few vears aso. There has been virtually nothing published relative to this peculiar form of slavery and there is not vers- much in the records about them, save in that of court proceedings where the natural belligerency between these tvvo races required judicial adjustment. The first superintendent for the L'ndertakers of the Iron Works was Joseph Jenkes, a remarkable inventor, and the progenitor of a line eminent to this day in manu- facturing, invention, and mechanical science. He was the inventor of the American scythe which doubled the length of the blade, reinforced by a longitudinal rib, which took the place of the short, broad, bush-whack scythe : and also of a water wheel for which he was the recipient of the first patent granted on this continent, May lO, 1646. The l8 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY original copy was found a few years ago by his descend- ant, William J. Jenks of New York, and the Society has a photographic copy hanging in this hall, accompanied by what is almost a necessity, the transcription of the archaic script into modern type. The Town of Boston authorized the building of a fire- engine at the Saugus Iron Works in 1654 ; but a careful search has failed to reveal any more of the story beyond the Boston town records ; such a fire engine if built was another example of priority. Lynn did not have any fire engine until 1796, but the fire wards with buckets and bags continued until the memory of some now living. Governor Winthrop directed the colonists to develop their water powers for grist mills and John Elderkin of Lynn was the first millwright to whom the construction of these grist mills was entrusted, and it is claimed that he built twenty-eight of them before 1650, none of which are now standing, because on the introduction of the power carding and spinning machinery, a second story was built of wood and all of them were burned. John Elderkin went to New London in 1650 to build a mill for John Winthrop, Jr., the Governor of Connecticut, in New London, where it is still in operation. The mill and the surrounding land are preserved as a part of the park system of that city. The abundant legislation by the very paternal General Court reveals the existence of the medieval guilds at the first, but always by indirect reference, such as entrusting the execution of such acts to the master workmen. Twenty years later, when these guild ofiicers had grown past active labor and the organizations were not maintained to provide for the succession, the enforcement of similar laws was assitrned to the selectmen or to other civil officers. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY I9 Shoes were not articles of commerce, and all of the early settlers were obliged to rely upon themselves or some of their neighbors for their shoes, and men would alternate that craft in the winter with their farming in the spring and fishing during the summer. The oft repeated story of John Adam Dagyr, the Welsh shoemaker, a master workman who improved the quality of the goods by obtaining some French shoes, dis- secting them and after learning how to make them, instruct- ing his shop companions, and when they had mastered the art and mystery of this cordwaining, he sent them forth to work in other shops and pass the art along, and in this manner he established virtually a trade school which was undoubtedly the cause of the establishment of the high grade shoemaking in this cit3^ But the enterprise in producing a supply of shoes as an article of commerce beyond a local consumption was established by Ebcnezer Breed who not only found mar- kets for American shoes which were packed in barrels and sent as far as Philadelphia ; but it was to his efforts at the age of twenty-three that the protecting clause was inserted in the first tariff law, passed July 4, 1789, following the preamble : " Whereas it is necessary for the support of government, for the discharge of the debts of the United States, and the encouragement and protection of manufactures, that duties be laid on goods, wares and merchandise imported." Lower down is specified : "On boots, per pair, fifty cents. "On all shoes, slippers or goloshoes made of leather, per pair, seven cents. " On all shoes or slippers made of silk or stuff, per pair, ten cents." 20 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY There are those who believe tliat the tariff Laws of the United States began more wisel}' than they have ended. The cordwainer is of the past and has been supphmted by the shoe manufacturer, but the so-called shoe manu- facture as conducted for many years was not worthy of the term, being merely the concurrent work of many persons for one "shoe boss," and it was impossible for the manu- facture in its modern sense to be established until certain essentials of operative machinery were developed. This began with the introduction of the sewing machine for the uppers, soon followed by the sole sewing machine which with other machines was invented in Lynn by Lyman R. Blake, and as the proverbially essential awl of the cord- wainer was displaced, the shoe manufacture was begun. Seth Dexter Tripp with marked fertility of inventive resource followed these by a number of machines which continue as essentials in the long series of complex machines necessary to the thirty or more processes attended by as many persons in the manufacture of a shoe. The lasting machine of Jan Ernest Metzeliger of South American birth furnished such an important element in the establishment of the shoe manufacturing industry, that he enriched the country of his adoption. The variety of styles and sizes of shoes produced by any one factory has prevented the development of machinery to that automatic stage reached in many of the metal working processes, and shoe machinery requires the services of skilled artisans. The result of this sub-division has been the develop- ment of a more highly expert handicraft than would be possible for the average man to apply to the whole making of the shoe, but as a matter of economics, the dexterit\' obtained by practice upon detail is such that the value LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 21 of the output is so augmented that the wages in the shoe manufacturing industry are on a far higher basis than would ever be possible in shoe making. It is said that sub-divided labor in manufacturing was originated in the old mill on Commercial Street, which was the first steam mill in this country, by Jeptha Porter Woodbury who substituted specialized operatives on wood working machinery in place of journeymen carpenters hitherto employed in the production of building supplies. In its broader and more material aspect, two Lynn men have established precedents in business administration which have wrought great changes in the methods of life to both personal and commercial relations. The one, John Elbridge Hudson, the solidarity of whose work in developing the telephone system into a national unit has been such that the property created has been unquestioned and continues as a basis for a permanent conservative type of investments. He made an analysis of the common law which is now used in all the standard digests of law in the country. The clearness of this analysis and the simplicity of the classifications founded upon it have been of the highest value. The other instance is that of Charles Albert Coffin, the shoe manufacturer, who temporarily took charge of the Thomson-Houston electric works until somebody else could be found, which great unknown has not as yet been dis- covered ; whose work in many original methods can be summed up in the single statement that of all the establish- ments devoted to manufacturing electric light and power apparatus, these works at Lynn remained for years as the solitary instance of the profitable use of capital invested in this line of manufacture, and it may not be too much to intimate that some of the remunerative subsequent occur- 22 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY rences at least, may have been examples of enterprise as copyists. It would hardly be expected that this lack of condi- tions requiring great works would develop anything out of the ordinary in engineering construction, but the floating bridge on the turnpike is a unique structure differing from the prehistoric pontoon bridges which are sustained upon floating foundations of boats, but in this bridge the structure is not merely floating, but made flexible to conform to the varying heights of the water. It is claimed that the laying out of the highway from Lynn to Marblehead, authorized at a town meeting, July 5, 1659, although it was then declared that the highway had existed for thirty years, is the first record of the laying out of a public highway on this side of the Atlantic, and that this action was the precursor of the authority given to town surveyors of highways as the most potent despot under American law. Colonel John Emery Gowen was one of the most eminent civil engineers that this country has ever produced along the lines of his specialty of sub-marine engineering, and the boldness and originality of his operations furnished an adequate warranty for his reputation, which was such that in 1851, although only twenty-six years of age, he was sent by the United States government to Gibraltar to remove the United States sloop-of-war Missouri, which had burned and sunk in the bay. Young as he was, his selection was warranted by work not onl}' in this country, but at Toulon, France, which had given him a world-wide renown. As the European and Continental engineers had been unable to remove the wreck, the United States government was called upon by Great Britain to remove that obstruction and menace to navigation. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 23 When young Gowen called upon the Governor of Gibraltar to state the purpose of his visit and request ofiicial permission to proceed, the functionary said, "Young man, are you aware that the greatest engineers of Great Britain and the Continent have attempted this task and failed?" " May I inquire of Your Excellency," was his rejoinder, "if any of those engineers were Yankees?" And without any reply, the permit was made out and given to him. He removed the vessel by original methods whose descrip- tion would be more appropriate for a technical paper. In 1856, at the request of the Russian government, transmitted through its embassy at Washington, he went to Sebastopol and raised the Russian battleships sunk in the Black Sea during the Crimean War. After that time he made his home in Europe, the latter part of his life in Paris, where he held an official position for many years. This career undoubtedly furnished a greater number of priorities in American history than that of any other of our townspeople. Thrones lavished rewards for his remark- able achievements ; he was decorated by the Czar, the Sultan, Victor Emmanuel and Louis Napoleon, while Qiieen Victoria gave him the conventional snuff box encrusted with diamonds. But amid all his prosperity and the pomp of foreign courts he never forgot his humble Lynn cottage and declined to entertain any proposition for the sale of his boyhood's home on Center Street until informed that it stood in the way of progress of the great electric works, when he reversed his decision and declared that he would not obstruct anything which contributed to the prosperity of his native town, and consented to the disposal of the property. During one ot" his visits to Lynn, he presented to the 24 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY Lynn Light Infantry a Russian twelve-pound gun, which was at the time the only cannon of that country in foreign lands, excepting in France. He also gave to the Park Club a large carved figure- head of the Imperial Russian eagle, of which one of the distinctive double heads has unfortunately been removed in a vandal attempt at naturalization, and this eagle, it is understood, was then absolutely unique as an instance of that royal emblem being in a foreign country. People of Lynn do not appear to have excelled in any form of agriculture at home. Rev. Samuel Whiting brought the first fruit trees to Lynn in 1636, and the onl}^ instances of his example being followed appear to have been those of Ephraim Ingalls, for many years the head of a large express business, who was one of the pioneers to California and carried the first apple trees to that country, and was to that extent the progenitor of the great fruit industry of the Pacific coast; and Charles F. Mudge, who moved to Kansas and carried the seeds of the dandelion to that territory and taught the people its use. Andrew Mack Haines, who moved from Lynn to Galena, Illinois, where he became a dry goods merchant, carried the barberries to that state, but was scarcely able to carry out his purpose of making the New England conserve yclept " shoe-pegs," on account of the great demand by the ladies for their use as floral decorations for the hair. The largest farm in the world, exceeding in area that of a county, and I believe, approaching that of the smaller states, is what is known as the Dalrymple Farm, being a tract of land obtained by foreign holders of Northern Paciiic securities, who converted this personal property into land scrip, wliich has been managed by the two Dalrymple brothers, formerly of Lynn. The great won- I.YNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 25 der of this farm is not merely its unequalled area, but the great skill of its managers in applying modern methods of business administration to the successful operation of this enormous tract. Although without any claims to being a maritime town, its shipping having been coastwise, with the excep- tion of a hardly successful venture in whaling, many Lynn people have followed the sea and risen to prominent positions. Lynn furnished the greatest New England merchant of the early portion of the last century in William Gray, who spent his boyhood in his native town, but whose busi- ness career was established in Salem whence he removed to Boston, on account of a dispute with the assessors. Although rather short, below middle height, he was powerfully built and was always in dread of consumption but lived to the age of seventy-five. My grandtather, who built several of his warehouses at Salem, related that while the work was in progress Mr. Gray would climb over the building and grasping the lower edges of adjacent floor joists, raise himself and with bended knees swincr to and fro m the gymnastic feat of "ringing the church bell," a difficult task even when grasping Roman rings in a gymnasium. He thought that he had reached his ambition of own- ing over one hundred vessels, but shipwreck and the fortunes of war kept his fleet to below that count, and ninety-eight sail was probably the largest number at any time. His estate was said to have been the largest ever pro- bated up to that time in this country, exceeding by a slight amount that of George Washington, who had died twenty- six years earlier. 26 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY As pioneer navigators we can only cite Captain Clement P. Jayne, master of the clipper ship Game Cock, which was the tirst American merchant ship to enter a Japanese port after the treaty of Commodore Perry ; and the great number of early Japanese curios which he gener- ously distributed among his Lynn friends are now cherished as prizes of high archaeological value which cannot be reproduced. Another was Edward Appleton Haven, who, as first officer of the Zeigler Arctic exploring expedition, pene- trated to the Far North, and made some discoveries of record. Lynn furnished about two hundred pioneers to Cal- ifornia after the discovery of gold many of whom failed to reach that promised Eldorado, some of them being unable to withstand the hardships and paying the penalties by their lives. As an example of these hardships, David S. Boynton was fourteen months sailincj for San Francisco around Cape Horn, on a voyage whose severity is indicated by its unusual delays. Henry A. Breed, whose portrait hangs in this hall, went to California in 1849, and accomplished wonders in the early development of San Francisco ; and associated with him was Benjamin Sprague, who still remains with us as the senior member of this Society, enjoying in his mature years the rest well-earned by a career of efficient business activity. Joseph Dixon, mentioned below, organized a company of twenty-one men, armed and clad in gray uniforms, to march overland to California. This company was dis- banded on arrival at St. Louis and it is not known that any of them ever completed the journey in tlie manner contem- plated at the outset. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 27 A particular romance of commerce was the transpor- tation of ice to the tropics, tirst to the West Indies and later to India, by Frederick Tudor of Nahant, who showed a masterly ability in overcoming obstacles from owners of vessels and the prejudices of the people of those warm countries. The tirst cargo was attacked by a negro mob and thrown overboard. Physicians were retained and soon used it in their practice. Bar keepers were subsidized by being paid the price of a drink for every glass of free ice- water taken at their bars. Buffets were established for the serving of iced drinks, both temperance and otherwise, with all the arts of the mixologist. In connection with the ice- houses, and to this day, throughout the West Indies, although refrigerating machines have taken the place of natural ice, yet the old name still continues and the signs remain in English, " Ice-House-Sippings," as a place where cooled drinks may be obtained. Some details of this remarkable adventure in mer- chandising, which are believed not to be in any of the histories, may be of interest. His father, William Tudor, Judge Advocate General of the Army of the Revolution under General Washington, built a residence in Saugus, on the Newburyport Turnpike, which was purchased b}' the town in 1815, and is now known as the Saugus Home. William Tudor built an artiticial lake on this estate which was supplied by a canal leading from Long Pond, over a mile distant. In the winter of 1805, Frederick Tudor cut 130 tons of ice from his father's pond and teamed it to Gray's Wharf, Charles- town, where it was loaded on the brig Favorite and shipped to St. Pierre, Martinique, since destroyed by a volcanic eruption. It required ten years to develop the West India trade, 28 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY and in 1810 he began to send ice to southern seaports in this country. By experience in these shipments, he learned how to pack ice so as to endure the three months' voyage to India. He found that the ice from Wenham Lake would not melt as rapidly as that from other ponds, for this lake is fed by springs, and not aerated, as is the case of lakes fed by streams, and the ice did not contain as many air bubbles. He moved from Saugus to Nahant, where he built his residence in 1827, now occupied by the Nahant Club, and devoted many years to horticulture and tree planting. It is surprising to note the number of new and impor- tant lines of invention and construction which have origi- nated in this city, but there is opportunity to cite only a few of them. The three Merrill brothers of Lynn were coadjutors with Samuel Downer in the derivation of kerosene oil from the hitherto worthless Nova Scotia shale and later applying modified processes to the refining of petroleum, after the discovery in Pennsylvania that it could be obtained in large quantities by artesian wells. Petroleum had been known for many years as it issued from the earth in small quantities and was used only as a liniment. When kerosene was first produced, the expense of its preparation was so great that it cost seventy-five cents a gallon, and the millions who use this form of illumination throughout the globe should gratefully remember the cooperation of chemical skill and the merchandising system which has reduced its cost to about one-sixth of its former price. Joseph Dixon, was an inventor in many lines, chief among which was that of the first utilization of graphite deposits in this country, making in his laboratory on Wash- ington Street, first stove blacking, then plumbago crucibles, LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 29 after that lead pencils and later the preparation of graphite for the lubrication of journals under great pressure. Among his many other inventions, he made priorities in cutting files by machiner}- before he was twenty-one, and in superheated steam a year later. lie took the first portrait by the camera and originated photo-lithography, and also the printing of bank notes in different colors, which was the first impediment outside of the law to successful counterfeiting. His brother Francis, who was associated with him in his enterprises, was better known to the people in Lynn. One of the most useful inventions was the application of the pressure-bar to wood-planing machines, whose use had hitherto been limited to clear pine, free from knots, a class of lumber which is of the past, enabling the application of these machines to planing and to making of mouldings in any kind of lumber of the most irregular grain. This device was made by Joseph P. Woodbury at the old mill on Commercial Street, and has never been superseded, but continues as an essential to this day. Not all of the inventions have been received with encouragement, for when rubber tires, were made and placed upon his beach wagon by Seth D. Woodbury, the inventor, the city marshal ordered them removed on account of the hazard of a noiseless carriage, and the extenuation that this improvement did not extend to the horses' shoes was not considered ; and this inventor, after taking counsel of Lawyer Rowland, was told that the police powers in a city were absolute, and he reluctantly removed the rubber tires. He died many years ago, with- out knowing that the Egyptian archaeologists had dis- covered a small chariot, made by a Pharaoh for his daughter, so light that it could be drawn by slaves, on 30 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY which the tires of the wheels were covered by rubber, as may be seen by visitors to the museum at Cairo. Some of these inventions have been applied to purposes far afield from the original intentions, as, for example, that of Charles F. Holder, the eminent author and naturalist, born in Lynn, but now of California, who invented a glass bottomed boat for the study of the fauna and flora of the sea, which has become more widely known through its application to the entertainment of travelers at points of resort in tropical waters, in Florida, Bermuda and the Bahamas. This list might be continued almost indefinitely, if it were not for self-imposed limitations, confining this review to those of pioneer actions in which there may be many omissions. I will make only one more citation, not to add to information, but to state what is known throughout the world, and that is a reference to the versatile career of Professor Elihu Thomson, like Michael Angelo, prominent not merely in one direction, but in the many which have received his attention, especially in the applications of elec- tricity to the useful service of mankind r one of the most eminent scientists of the age. EDUCATION AND LITERATURE. The impossibility of applying material units to mea- sure mental operations furnishes an impediment to a just statement of our noteworthy contributors to education and literature. Shoemaking was a peculiar industry in that it brought small groups of men together at an occupation which did not make much noise and permitted conversation which was generally directed to a discussion of statements in the newspapers which v\'ere read in turn by some member of LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 3I the shop whenever it was not feasible to impress some vis- iting school-boy in this service. This developed a taste for reading and a high general intelligence among the people. A circulating library was established on Boston Street in 1794 and which through its succeeding organiza- tions became the progenitor of the Lynn Public Library. Lynn being neither a college town nor a county seat, lacked that attraction to scholars and jurists, but it has claims to furnishing a home for men eminent in letters. Rev. Samuel Whiting, who occupied the pulpit at Lynn from 1636 until 1679, was one of the most eminent schol- ars of his day, closely affiliated with Harvard College, and a preacher there, and on account of his strength of charac- ter and general abilities, he was one of the leading influences in the Colony. It is said that his clerical rela- tions with the Church of England were never sundered. The First Church is the only one of the early Puritan organizations which has retained both its original trinitarian faith and its original site, not indeed on the same founda- tions, for the present meeting house is the fifth structure, all of which have, however, been on the original glebe of that society. I understand that none of its early con- temporaries in England remain. Abraham Pierson of Lynn was the first President and one of the founders of Yale College. Cornelius Conway Felton, the earliest of the eminent Greek scholars in this country and President of Harvard College, was born and spent his boyhood in Saugus. Charles William Eliot, President of Harvard Univer- sit}', lived for many summers in his father's home at Nahant. Rev. William H. P. Faunce, President of Brown University, lived and married in this city. 32 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY Colonel Carroll D.Wright, for many years a resident of this city where he practised patent law and was afterwards engaged many years at the head of statistical departments tirst of the Commonwealth and then of the nation, both of which he developed to a degree of practical usefulness not hitherto reached by tabulations of facts, was for the latter portion of his life President of Clark College.* In addition to these college presidents, there was another eminent collegian, James Edward Oliver, the noted mathematician of his day, whose services as such were retained by the federal government in addition to his occu- pancy of professional chairs at several colleges. One of the greatest contributions towards standardizing the correct use of our language, ranking in importance with the work of Noah Webster upon its spelling, was the life work of Goold Brown, the grammarian, whose home was in this city for many years. The public school system founded by the Colony of Massachusetts Bay has been a corner stone of the Com- monwealth, and from the tirst unto the closing years of its third century it has never had an abler exponent of its principles always reaching to improvement, but conservative enough to hold fast to that which is good, than George Henry Martin, Ex-President of this Society, who in the fulness of years, but in the prime of his abilities, resigned the Secretaryship of the State Board of Education, and later became a member of the Lynn School Committee, like the " Old Man Eloquent " of Quincy w^ho thought it not incompatible with the dignity of an Ex-President of the United States to serve later in the lower house of Concjress. The Friends" Society established their school in I'J'J'j, and ten years later a portion of the public taxes were con- *A fortnight after the dclivcrj- ol this paper Dr. Ilollis Godtrey wa-s elected President of the Drexel Institute. LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 33 tribuled to its support and this continued for forty years, giving to Lynn the llrst and only parochial school in the Commonwealth : and this peaceful sect was strong enough politically to prevent the Methodist Church, which also had a private school of its own, from receiving any help from municipal taxes, when a town meeting passed a vote con- taining the surprising admission that "The Methodis do not have their share of the public money." At the time when the English High School was estab- lished, and instruction in stenography and typewriting was introduced at the instance of Joseph G. Pinkham, M. D., chairman of the school committee, the belief that this was the first instance of the adoption of these important courses in public schools was correct as far as the typewriter was concerned, but it was afterwards learned that instruction in stenography had been introduced into the Waltham High School many years before by Dr. Thomas Hill, chairman of the school committee and President of Harvard Univer- sity. This was in advance of due time because at that period the services of stenographers were limited almost entirely to legislative assemblies and to the higher courts. The summer colony, which occupied the ocean front of Lynn for man}^ years included many of the leading authors of this country, and need not be cited in this con- nection, as their affiliations were not with this city; but it is no disparagement to the man}^ excellent productions of authors for whom Lynn has furnished a birth-place, home, and perhaps a grave, to claim that The Jewels of the Third Plantation, by James R. Newhall has been the only distinctively literary production of that class entitling it to be called a work of genius. I am fully aware that there may be those who differ, but I believe that such opinions generally owe their origin to causes which are distinctively 34 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY personal in their nature, and the only answer which can be made is to declare that this is considered to be the only Lynn book which, notwithstanding the small editions, made itself known to historians throughout the country. The first book written in the Massachusetts Bay Colony was New England's Prospect, by William Wood, one of the five Lynn pioneer settlers, which also included his map of 1633 which was the first map of New England by a colonist. The earlier maps of Champlain, Captain John Smith, Sir William Alexander, and others, were virtually limited to the shore lines. The city is greatly indebted to Alonzo Lewis, its historian, who lived early enough to rescue from oblivion a great deal of traditional information related by his mother, Mary Hudson Lewis ; and amid conditions of poverty, without the preliminary training which is now expected of an historian, and at a time when the state records were not arranged or indexed in any manner, he wrote his history of Lynn, to which James R. Newhall later added a great number of annals. Two Lynn women have reached eminence, both of them having lived in the immediate vicinity of this Society House. Miss Maria Mitchell believed to have been the first woman astronomer of any recognized importance, whose observa- tory still remains in the yard adjoining that of this society, was a great teacher capable of imparting her enthusiasm to her pupils, and it is related that a student in one of her classes at Vassar College was narrating a lot of astro- nomical lore one eveningr to a friend whose tastes and experiences were more mundane and he replied, "I clearly see how you found out the distance of the stars from the earth and their size and the speed and direction of their courses: but how did you ever find out their names?" I.VNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 35 Although womankind is naturally the more devout of the sexes, yet it is as a worshipper and not as a propagan- dist ; and it is believed that the only system of religion ever founded by a woman was originated in Lynn on Broad Street diagonally opposite the Society House, by Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, which dates from February, 1866, and whose branches have permeated throughout the civilized world. The various societies of this creed at the last report reached the number of 1,424, but I understand that there is no close estimate of the num- ber of the adherents of this cult, whose millions throufrh the weight of numbers are an ethical force which must be considered. In summing up the various activities originated in Lynn there were two which have been a leaven whose influences have been strongly felt so far and so wide that their limitations cannot be measured or perhaps even estimated. I refer first to the separation of town and par- ish on March 5, 1722, which appears to have been the first record in all history of the separation of church and state, not as the result of struggle or controversy, but in the deliberate opinion that such a course would be for the good of both. This concurrent enactment on the part of the town and the parish was carried out in the most amicable spirit and the iown meetings were held in the Old Tunnel meeting house for eighty years after that sep- aration. This action of a little New England town, far reaching in the establishment of civic liberty and religious freedom, has been presented in such a masterly manner by Judge Nathan Mortimer Hawkes at the two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the First Church as to receive the commendation of President Taft in an auto- graph letter written while summering at Beverly. 36 LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY The second great event was of recent years in the enactment of the secret ballot law which was introduced March 2, 1888, by Elihu Burritt Hayes of Lynn, a mem- ber of the State legislature. This law stopped any domi- nating power outside of general public sentiment controlling the ballot at the polls as is shown by the diminution of majorides, whatever party maybe locally in the ascendant. These few citations of the initiatives of the relatively few men of achievement who are leaders in every com- munity, endowed with wisdom to plan and vigor to execute, are sufficient to show that Lynn has a history forming a guidance for to-day, investing its people with a local pride like unto that of the apostle of old, a citizen of no mean city. Men of Lynn were authoritatively in the councils of the Colony leading to the establishment of the Common- wealth, and inaugurated many of the fundamental measures of legislation. The extent to which the members of this little band, hemmed between the savages and the deep sea, developed their own self-reliance is shown by the manner in which within a few years they applied the principles of law, developed under generations of monarchies to the solution of problems of local self-government, and beyond that they initiated new functions of sovereignty, notably the written ballot, trade schools, industrial statistics, free public education, the town government, the separation of ciuirch and state, citizen militia, printed paper money and the record of deeds and mortgages. Well did Carlyle char- acterize the people who showed such an initiative as "the last of the heroisms." There were giants in those days. Some of these references may have appeared trite, LYNN HISTORICAL SOCIETY 37 Others not so broadly known and many important features have been omitted because not the earliest in their character- ization, but the whole indicates the opportunities for further monographs upon elements of Lynn history in continuation of the collections amassed by this Society during the past sixteen years, and it also shows the reason for this Society as an organization of to-day, applying such of the past as may be useful to the present and an indication for the future, and above all a civic centre. One lesson of a review of the past clearly shows that the ethical standards of life have become higher, inevitable legitimate differences of opinion are not to such a great extent accompanied by personal violence, there is a deeper respect for law and order, and above all that ineffable summation of moral principles termed "business honor" prevails as never before.