bBz7 Class Book . Copyright N° COPYHIGHT DEPOSIT. HAVERHILL 1640-1915 HISTORY IS THE WITNESS OF THE TIMES, THE TORCH OF TRUTH, THE LIFE OF MEMORY, THE TEACHER OF LIFE, THE MESSENGER OF ANTIQUITY. —Cicero. Copyright, 1915, by Albert L. Bartlett. Privately printed and limited to Three Hundred Copies, of which this is No. / HAVERHILL AN HISTORICAL ADDRESS BY THE HONORABLE ALBERT LEROY BARTLETT MAYOR OF THE CITY Given at the Exercises Commemorative of the Two-Hundred-and-Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Settlement of the City, on Sunday, October the Tenth, Nineteen Hundred and Fifteen. HAVERHILL MCMXV .H6 ■ Wise was the choice which led our sires To kindle here their household fires, And share the large content of all Whose lines in pleasant places fall. More dear, as years on years advance, We prize the old inheritance, And feel, as far and wide we roam, That all we seek we leave at home. -Haverhill: Whittier. FEB -7 1916 HAVERHILL 1640-1916. HAVERHILL. AM going to tell you as well as I can in the time that your patience allows me, in simple lines, the story of this old city that was named Haverhill at the very beginning of its settlement, two-hundred-and-seventy-five years ago, and that occupies the site of an Indian vil- lage, called Pentucket, long abandoned when the white settlers first came here. So rich is this history, so full of traditions, so abounding in delightful and eventful by-ways is this story, that were I to relate it all, the night would fall and the morrow come and the morrow's morrow before I reached the end. Much, therefore, that I would tell you I must leave untold; or, better, I must invite you to read it yourselves in the abundant literature that contains it. However imperfectly I may perform my task, I hope to help you to appreciate thoughtfully the high purpose, the courage, the indomitable will, that planted a home here in the wilderness, that bore hardship and fatigue, that braved dangers, that withstood tyranny, that fought for freedom, that gave sacrifices of its dearest for national honor and unity, that painfully planted the seed of industries and prosperity, and left the price- less inheritance of it all for our enjoyment. [7] Haverhill 1640-1916 TO ALL THOSE WHO HERE HAVE LIVED WORTHY AND USEFUL LIVES-STURDY MANHOOD AND BRAVE AND HELPFUL WOMANHOOD.-I OFFER FIRST THE TRI- BUTE OF GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE. Three centuries ago the Merrimac,--the river of the swift current,— springing from a little tarn far up on the side of one of the White Moun- tains, joined by many a lesser river and stream, flowing through meadow lands and rushing adown rocky falls, saw in its course to the ocean only the few and rude villages of the Indians by its banks, and bore on its surface only their bark or log canoes. No dam sought to check its waters, no bridge crossed its flood, no hum or whir of wheels broke upon the music of its flow. The deer drank from its waters, the wolf stole from out the forests on its borders, the myriad fish lived in its depths. The salmon, leaving in the spring its ocean home, swam in great numbers against its tide and leaped its falls to seek in quiet and remote pools places where safely it might lay its spawn. In the fer- tile plains along its course the Indians planted the maize, scratching the earth with a clam [8] An Historical Address shell to receive the seed and leaving the up- springing grain to grow without care. Where the deer or other game seemed abundant the Indians had their hunting grounds, and at the river falls where the salmon could be caught most easily they placed their weirs. They set their villages where grain or game or fish could be procured with little effort. These villages were merely groups of wigwams,— circular tents made of poles covered with skins. The places where these villages were set were named from some characteristic of the locality,— Penacook, the crooked river; Amoskeag, at the fish place; Nashua, the land between the rivers; Wamesit, the place for all, because in the season of abund- ant fish all of the tribes would gather there; while to the river they gave two names, Merri- mac, the river of the swift current, and Mono- mack, the river of many islands. The Merrimac was the great river to these Indians, and into this great river at Pentucket there flowed a smaller stream which we know as Little River, winding then with many a turn between beautiful wooded banks, falling over a rocky ledge where the woolen mills now are, and still farther up stream offering in quiet pools [»] Haverhill 1640-1915 homes for the salmon and the trout. The plains eastward of Little River were fertile, the woods supplied game, fish were abundant in all the waters,— and so the Indians in the village of Pentucket, the place by the winding river, found here the easy living that suited their indolent nature. Their wigwams were grouped beside the winding stream, just east of where Little River joins the Merrimac, where now Emerson street comes into Washington Square. So the first picture of the place that we call Haverhill and that the Indians called Pentucket must be of a little group of wigwams, perhaps no more than twenty or thirty in number, with the great river in front of them, the smaller winding stream west of them, and the forest east and north and west beyond. Through that forest there were only the narrow paths by which the Indians passed in single file when they wandered north and west. For the Indians were a roaming people, moving from one place to another as their desires led them. These earliest dwellers here wore the skins of animals in winter, but in summer they went almost naked. They painted their bodies and ornament- ed themselves with feathers, they wore bracelets [10] An Historical Address of shells and bones, and from their ears and noses were hung rings. In person they were straight and strong and lean; their hair was coarse and black; their eyes were deep-set and small; and their lips were protuberant. Their tools were very simple,— their hatchet of stone, their hoe a clam shell or the shoulder blade of the moose, their fishhook a sharpened bone. They were silent and indolent, passing long periods of time in smoking or sleeping or sitting without speaking. Their lives were as useless as those of the beasts that they hunted, and their claim to the land no more tenable. In the years 1616 and 1617 disease fell upon the Indians of New England, and great numbers of them died. Whole villages wasted away, and the tribes were reduced to feeble remnants of their former strength. Whether the Indians of Pentucket were destroyed by this epidemic or removed to join some other village we do not know, but the place was deserted before the white settlers came up the river in 1640, and no traces of the red men existed except some stone arrow heads, fragments of stone tools, the bones of their dead, and—so tradition says— a single abandoned wigwam in the East meadow. So [ii] Haverhill 1640-1916 of Pentucket, the Indian village, there remained only its name. Its beautiful site by the great river and the winding river, its fertile lands and sparkling streams and lakes that lay like silver sheen amid the sombre forests, were destined to attract a far different people,— a little company of English Puritans, high in character, dauntless in courage and strong in Saxon will, who here, amid dangers and privations, laid the founda- tions of Haverhill. The foundations of New England, of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts, were laid by men of remarkable character. Some of them were representatives of the patrician blood of Eng- land, some were of the middle class of craftsmen and tradesmen, many of them were graduates of the English universities and profound students of the moral and political subjects of the times, and all were men of strong judgments, stern wills and unyielding purposes. Neither Boston nor Salem better exemplifies the strength of character, the untrammeled spirit and the puis- sance that formed Massachusetts, than does Ipswich, whose child Haverhill is, and whose earliest years felt the impulse of the intellectual strength of the Winthrops, the Dudleys, the [12] An Historical Address Saltonstalls, the Bradstreets, and that Nathaniel Ward to whom is due the settlement of Haver- hill. Born in Haverhill, England, educated at Emman- uel College, Cambridge, and in Heidelberg, enjoying the friendship of such eminent scholars as Sir Francis Bacon and David Pareus, the famous German theologian, turning from the law to the church, excommunicated in 1633 by Archbishop Laud because of his unyielding Puritanism, bereft of his wife and lonely and despairing of any usefulness in England, emi- grating to Massachusetts in the sixty-fourth year of his age, Nathaniel Ward settled in Ips- wich in 1634, writing over the fireplace of his home the Latin legend, "Sobrie, Juste, Pie, Laete,"—soberly, justly, piously, gladly,-- as the motto under which he took up the labors of life in the new world. The richness of his legal learning, his knowledge of civic administration in the old world, and the ripeness of his judgment caused the General Court to request him to draw up a code of written statutes for the Colony, and to this work he gave the constancy of his labors for three years. This code of a hundred laws was completed in 1641, submitted to the discus- [13] Haverhill 1640-1915 sion of every town in the Colony, and adopted under the title of the Body of Liberties. Of the Preamble to this document it has been said, "It has the movement and the dignity of a mind like John Milton's or Algernon Sidney's, and its theory of government was far in advance of the age. A bold avowal of human rights, and a plea for popular freedom, it contains the germ of the immortal Declaration of Independence." The eldest son of Nathaniel Ward, the Reverend John Ward, born in Haverhill, England, Novem- ber 5, 1606, educated in the University of Cam- bridge, married in the church of St. Leonard in Foster Lane, London, in June, 1636, to Alice Edmonds, came with his young wife to New England in 1639, and for a while acted as assist- ant to his uncle, the Reverend Ezekiel Rogers, in the church in Rowley. Being not fully accept- able to some of the people of this parish he joined his father and his brother-in-law, Gyles Firman, a physician, in Ipswich. Thinking the hamlet of Ipswich overcrowded with ministers and doctors, Nathaniel Ward planned a new set- tlement in which his son and his son-in-law might have greater promise of support. He therefore wrote letters and prepared petitions to [M] An Historical Address his kinsman, Governor John Winthrop, and to the General Court, and in May, 1640, there was granted to him and his fellow petitioners a plantation on the Merrimac, "provided they build there before the next General Court." When in acceptance of this grant the pioneer settlers came up the river to establish their homes at Pentucket,--just when we do not know, but we like to think that it was in the beauti- ful month of June, 1640,—they moored their pinnace where a brook,~Mill Brook,— came purling down to join the Merrimac, and they chose the land close by, stretching west along the river from the present location of Pentucket Cemetery, for their dwellings. They found no red men living in the locality, no wigwams standing there. But though no one appeared to dispute their possession, the colonists recognized the proprietary rights as belonging to Passa- conaway's tribe, and as soon as they could meet the representatives of the great chief,— the deed is dated November 15, 1642,— they bought the tract extending eight miles west from Little River and six miles east from the same bound, and six miles north, for three pounds and ten shillings. The document, a precious possession [15] Haverhill 1640-1916 of the Haverhill Historical Society, is signed by John Ward, Robert Clements, Tristram Coffyn, Hugh Sherratt, William White, who wrote the deed, and Thomas Davis, for the colonists; and by Passaquo and Saggahew, by their mark of a bow and arrow, for Passaconaway. So by the great river and near the Mill Brook these earliest settlers,~they were Abraham Tyler, Daniel Ladd, James Davis, John Robin- son and Joseph Merrie, who possibly came in 1640; John Ward, John Fawn, Hugh Sherratt, Job Clements, William White, Samuel Guile and Richard Littlehale, who probably settled here in 1641 ; and Robert Clements and Tristram Coffyn who were dwellers here in 1642; and each year thereafter brought new men,— built their homes, rude houses of logs, no doubt, with the crevices filled with clay, each with its lot of a few acres, and placed in friendly and protective neighbor- hood. About the house they planted their orch- ards and made their gardens, and the Black- stone and russet apples grew there, and the dear English flowers, heartease and mignonette, rue and rosemary,— for all these were brought in the ships that sailed from the Old England to the New. [i«] An Historical Address But the grass lands and the grazing lands and the planting lands were farther away and often widely separated. Daniel Ladd's "accommoda- tions," for instance, were scattered from East meadow,~near Whittier's birthplace,— to the Spicket meadows in the present confines of Methuen. Surely only the Saxon will could conquer the difficulties and wrest a living from the soil when there was not only the work of clearing and planting the land, but also the effort of reaching the "accommodations" through roadless forests and over bridgeless streams, with packs of roaming wolves eager to attack the solitary settler or his flocks. The first winter in the new settlement, 1640- 1641, was one of terrible severity. Boston Har- bor was frozen over and for six weeks passable for oxen and loaded carts, and the depth of the snow was great. The hardships of those earlier years is pathetically told in the death of thirteen children in the little hamlet before the year 1644, —frail flowers of the wilderness too delicate to endure cold and privation,— and of twenty-seven other children and seven adults before the year 1663. Stern in the faith the colonists worshipped [17] Haverhill 1640-1916 under the leadership of their "Learned, Ingen- ous and Religious" minister, John Ward, at first in the houses of the settlement or under a great spreading oak, and later in the little log meeting house that was built in 1648 "on the lower end on the Mill lot,"— a tiny structure twenty-six feet long and twenty wide. The sound of the drum or the horn on Sunday morning summoned them to the long service, the men ov- er eighteen carrying muskets and fire arms, and sentinels watching lest the dread foe, the Indian, attack them unawares. On the front of the church the heads of marauding wolves were often nailed, and on the door the laws and public notices were always posted. Too often after the services there followed the trial of offenders, or the penitent confessions of those who had trans- gressed. Although the settlement was not incorporated as a town until 1645, the principle of the town meeting was active from the first, and there were public meetings for the discussion of all public business, matters relating to land divisions, the regulating of who should be permitted to join the town, the minister's salary, the encourage- ment of industries, and all else that pertained to [18] An Historical Address the government or security of the settlement. If the beginnings of Haverhill were made in days of privation and toil,— "Slow from the plough the woods withdrew, Slowly each year the cornlands grew, Nor fire, nor frost, nor foe could kill, The Saxon energy of will,"— they were made in days of dread and danger, also. The little cleared spaces where their rude houses were built were bounded north and east and west by the far-reaching forests. And the forest was the place of fear, for out of it might steal— the wolf : the panther?— possibly; but more surely a foe stealthier, more treacherous, more cruel than these beasts of prey,— the Indian. The lone traveler, the farmer in the field, the wife and children in the home, might at any time be attacked by the dread enemy. In single file and noiselessly the Indians tracked the forests. The arrow or the shot from some covert, the rush of the painted, hideous foe from some hiding place, the awful fiendish yell of the sav- ages, marked the sudden attack. The red men felt no compassion; they knew no mercy. They [19] Haverhill 1640-1915 killed and tortured and scalped their victims; they burned their homes; they massacred the women and children, or bore them away as captives. They made the attack and did their bloody and lurid work with great swiftness, and as speedily and as silently as they had come they made their retreat. Undoubtedly the fear of the red men dwelt ever in the hearts of the colonists, but within the first thirty-five years of the life of the settlement,— 1640— 1675,— there were no signs of Indian hostility, and the stock- ade around the meeting house was even allowed to fall into decay. Then fear quickened and became acute; and in the years following the ruthless Indian did not spare the town. Indeed the dread and terror became so oppressive that in March, 1690, the town in public meeting seriously considered abandoning the settlement and removing to some less exposed place. The history of those days is full of dramatic incidents, and there are pages lurid with flame and red with the blood of the victims. Notable is that attack on March 15, 1697, when the savages, falling upon the place, plundered and burned nine houses, killed twenty-seven persons, of whom thirteen were children, and carried away [20] An Historical Address thirteen captives. The attack is memorable not alone for the havoc wrought, but also because of the heroism of Hannah Duston, one of those captured in the foray. Two miles northwest from the centre of the village was the farm of Thomas Duston. Here, probably where Eudora street is now, he had built a cottage in 1677 to which he brought his bride, Hannah Emerson, whom he married in December of that year. Twenty years later, in 1696, because the little house seemed too small for his growing family,~there were seven chil- dren living then, and four had died previously,— selecting a site still farther west, he began to build a larger and stronger house of brick. On the eighth of March, 1697, a twelfth child was born to Mrs. Duston, and to care for the mother and the infant Mrs. Mary Neff, whose home was a mile nearer the village, had come to act as nurse. It was the fifteenth of March. The wood fire on the hearth in the kitchen of the little cottage of the Dustons threw its glow over the few and simple furnishings of the humble home. It flickered over the bed on which Mrs. Duston lay weak and ill; it gave faint color to the piece [21] Haverhill 1640-1915 of linen still in the loom, which she had been weaving before her illness; it shone on the week-old baby in her arms, to whom she had given the name Martha. With no apprehension of danger, Thomas Duston had started to go on horseback to a distant part of his farm. He had gone but a little distance when with horror he saw stealing forth silently from the woods on the north a band of Indians, moving stealthily but swiftly towards his house. He turned his horse, galloped back, shouted to his children to flee, and tried to get his wife from the bed that he might help her to escape. There was not time. Urged by his wife to save the children, he seized his musket, leaped on his horse, and rode to overtake them. At first, thinking it was im- possible to save all, he planned to seize one or two from the group and ride rapidly away. But when he came to his children the father's heart could make no choice, and he resolved to de- fend all and bring them to safety or die with them. Dismounting, he placed his horse be- tween his children and the enemy, rested his musket across the back of the animal, and bringing it swiftly to bear on any Indian who came into the open—for they skulked behind [22] An Historical Address trees— he kept the foe at bay and brought all in safety to the garrison house of Onesiphorus Marsh, a mile from his home. In that home the nurse, Mary Neff, had hastily cut the woven cloth from the loom and wrapped the infant in it, and was starting in flight when the Indians reached the door. They siezed her and the child, dragged Mrs. Duston from the bed, set fire to the house with fagots from the hearth, and immediately started with the cap- tives on the retreat. The baby cried, and the mother saw a savage snatch it from the arms of the nurse, and dash it to death against a tree. Her eyes were dry, but in her heart grief for her child was rivalled by hatred for its mur- derers. With the Indians to whom these Haver- hill captives were given was an English boy, Samuel Leonardson, who had been captured in Worcester in the autumn of 1695, and who had learned the language and customs of the Indians in his captivity. Through him Mrs. Duston and Mrs. Neff learned what their fate was to be,~ that they were to be made to run the gauntlet, naked, and then sold into captivity. Cool and undaunted they planned a different fate. Under their directions the boy asked of the unsuspect- [23] Haverhill 1640-1915 ing Indians how they struck to kill with a single blow, and how they took the scalp lock. While they were encamped on a small island in the Merrimac, a few miles above Concord, on the night of March 30, just before dawn and while the sleep of the savages was soundest, the three captives arose and gliding among their enemies killed ten of them by striking them as the boy had been taught. A wounded squaw escaped, and an Indian boy was spared. Then the three captives gathered what provi- sions were in the wigwam and, scuttling all the canoes but one, embarked on the freshet-swollen waters of the river. Hardly had they pushed off from land when Mrs. Duston bethought herself that the story of so remarkable a deed might not be believed without proof. So they turned back, scalped the Indians whom they had slain, wrapped these grim proofs of their deed in the piece of linen that had been about the infant when it was killed, and once more pushed out into the river. The frail canoe brought the fugitives safely down the river to Haverhill, and they landed where Bradley's Brook joins the Merri- mac. With what surprise and joy must they have been received ! how, in her captivity and [24] An Historical Address flight, Mrs. Duston must have wondered what fate had befallen the family she left! what tales must have been told at the reunion! what plans were to be formed for the future ! Thomas Duston took the returned ones past the ashes of the old home to the new brick house, where a garrison had been established. Mrs. Duston lived long after her adventure, dying in 1736 at the age of seventy-nine. In her letter asking admission to the church, in 1724, she quaintly says: "I am Thankful for my Captivity; 'twas the Comfortablest time I ever had, "--meaning that God made His word and promises of the utmost comfort in her direst distress. Mrs. Mary Neff, the nurse and companion of Mrs. Duston, was the eldest of the seven daugh- ters of George Corliss and was born in a log house on the Corliss grant in the West parish, the estate long known as "Poplar Lawn." After her escape she returned to her home on the southern side of Pecker Hill, and there lived until her death in 1722. A part of her farm now constitutes Passaquo Park. The boy cap- tive, Samuel Leonardson as his name is written in the chronicles of the time, was kidnaped by the Indians near Lake Quinsigamond, in Wor- Haverhill 1640-1915 cester, in September, 1696, when he was twelve years old. No tidings of his fate came to his family until he escaped with Mrs. Duston and Mrs. Neff. His mother had died of anxiety and grief during his absence; and after his return he lived almost in obscurity in Connecticut, never willingly conversing on the events of his capture and escape, possibly because of fear of vengeance on the part of the Indians, or possibly affected by the horror of the occurrences. He died in Prescott, Connecticut, in May, 1718. The last and most disastrous Indian attack was made on August 29, 1708, just before sunrise. In the hostilities of Queen Anne's War an at- tack was planned by the French in Canada on New England. It was the intention to destroy Portsmouth first, and then to spread desolation on the whole frontier. The English were warned, scouts and soldiers were set to protect the New Hampshire towns, and the original plan was frustrated. Then the French and Indians, two hundred or more in number, turned their plans to an attack upon Haverhill, a hamlet of less than thirty houses, and defended by very few soldiers. On this August morning just as the first flush- ings of light shone in the east, John Keezar, an [26] An Historical Address eccentric man, a great walker and leaper,~it was told that he had walked to Boston and back in a single night, and that with a heavy pail of milk in each hand he could leap over a cart,~return- ing from Amesbury saw the savages emerging from the woods close by the village and near where the Soldiers' Monument now stands. At full speed he rushed down the hill to the heart of the village, shouting the alarm, and at the meeting house he discharged his musket to alarm the town. The people were asleep and unguarded. Awakened by Keezar's shouting and the report of his musket, they heard imme- diately following it the terrific yell of the foe. Hideous in their war paint and with demoniac shrieks they came, dividing and scattering as was their custom that they might at one time make many attacks. One party rushed to the home of the minister, Benjamin Rolfe, standing where the High School now is. Three soldiers formed the garrison of this house, but they were craven and useless by fear. Rolfe leaped from his bed to defend the front entrance of his house, but a shot through the door wounded him in the elbow. The door yielded and the foe, pursuing him through the house, killed the minister by [27] Haverhill 1640-1915 the well at the back door. The three soldiers, Mrs. Rolfe and her youngest child, were vic- tims of the tomahawks of the Indians. Two other children, however, were saved by the quickness and wit of Hagar, a servant, who carried them to the cellar and concealed them beneath two tubs, while she herself hid behind a barrel. The Indians pillaged the cellar and even trod on the foot of one of the children, but without discov- ering them. Anne Whittaker, was staying in the house, hid herself in an apple-chest and escaped. West of the meeting house stood the home of Thomas Hartshorne. The foe attacked this, killed Mr. Hartshorne and his two sons as they ran out, seized an infant that was in the attic and threw it from the window, but failed to find Mrs. Hartshorne and the other children who had concealed themselves in the cellar. The infant thrown from the window lived to be- come a man of great stature and strength. The house of Captain Simon Wainwright, on Winter street, was attacked by one of the parties and the captain was killed, but the soldiers there drove off the savages. An attack upon the house of Mr. Swan, opposite the Wainwright house, [28] An Historical Address was repulsed by the bravery of Mrs. Snow, who siezed a long spit and with great strength drove it quite through the body of the foremost Indian as he was forcing his way into the house. Another band attacked the house of Lieutenant John Johnson, standing where the Exchange Building on Water Street is now, killed his wife in the garden to which she had fled, but left alive the baby at her breast. The enemy was put to flight by a ruse. A citizen of no mean wit, Ephraim Davis, beat violently on the back of the Rolfe barn, crying out, "Come on! Come on! We will have them," and the foe, thinking that a party of soldiers were coming, fled in retreat. Meanwhile the town had been generally aroused, and the enemy were pursued. In the skirmish that ensued the score or more of Haverhill men defeated the savages who outnumbered them many fold, and sent them like harried animals into the woods. So early was this attack, so swift was the action, that the sun had hardly risen when the retreat began. It saw as it mounted the heavens the smouldering fires that had been kindled, the massacred men and women and children of the town to the number of sixteen, the captives [29] Haverhill 1640-1916 bome away to the same number, and the nine slain of the enemy. It ushered in a day of great heat and shone upon a grief-stricken and ex- hausted town. So excessive was the heat that the dead had to be to be buried at once, and so worn out were the men that they could neither make coffins nor dig separate graves. So the revered minister and his wife and child were buried together, and a single pit in the village graveyard received the uncoffined bodies of the others slain on that tragic Sabbath morning. The Indian deed of Pentucket conveyed terri- tory extending from Little River eight miles westward and six miles eastward and six miles northward. As laid out in a survey of 1666 this tract was triangular in shape, the base being the irregular line of the river, and the sides, one drawn from Holt's rocks and the other from a point three and a half miles above the present Lawrence dam, meeting in an apex in the north- western part of the present town of Hampstead. From this territory the General Court set off~ but not with the consent of the town-the large tract of land southwest from Hawkes' Meadow brook along the Merrimac, and embracing the water leaps known as the Deer Jump and Bod- [30] An Historical Address well's Falls, which was made a separate town- ship in 1725 and called, in honor of the king's privy councillor, Methuen. At these falls the great Lawrence dam was built, the first stone being laid September 19, 1845, and, exactly three years later, September 19, 1848, the last stone being put into position. So from the Methuen territory that was originally Haverhill territory, that part of the great mill city that lies north of the Merrimac was set off to form in May, 1847, the municipality of Lawrence. The boundary line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, long in dispute and occasioning a border warfare, was settled by the King and Council, August 5, 1740, and by this decision there was transferred from the Haverhill terri- tory to New Hampshire the most of the land now embraced in the towns of Hampstead, Plaistow, Atkinson and Salem. While these towns have a filial relation to Haver- hill by reason of their territory's being originally Haverhill territory, other towns bear that rela- tion by reason of their having been settled by Haverhill men. Thus the energy and restless- ness of Haverhill men led to the settlement of Pennacook, afterwards called Concord, New [31] Haverhill 1640-1915 Hampshire; for it was a party of men from this town, led by Ebenezer Eastman and his six yoke of oxen with a cart, that traversed the wilderness road through the night of May 26, 1726, and first settled the future capital of the Granite State. So, in 1660, Jonathan Buck went from the little gambrel cottage on Water street, nearly opposite Mill Street, to found the town of Bucks- port, Maine. So, in 1661, two Haverhill men, Michael Johnson and John Pattie, were sent to take possession of certain lands on the east side of the Connecticut river, and to this new settle- ment in New Hampshire they gave the name, Haverhill, in memory of the old town from which they went. Were the way to be traversed not so long it would be delightful to watch the little town and to listen to its spirited discussions in the years between the Indian depredations and the Rev- olutionary period. New churches were estab- lished in the North and West and East parishes, each of the Congregational faith, for conservatism frowned upon any new religious belief. It refused the use of the First Church to George Whitfield, the brilliant and forceful Methodist, and it gave no recognition to the [32] An Historical Address Quakers under the leadership of Joseph Peas- lee. But in 1764 there came a young Princeton graduate of striking manly presence, great spir- ituality, wonderful oratory, and the masterful qualities of a leader, to preach in the parish churches and to be invited to become pastor of the West Parish church. When, however, he avowed himself as one of the faith of Baptists, the church pulpits were closed to him. His per- suasiveness and charm had won, meanwhile, the sympathy and interest of men of influence and wealth in the community, and they opened their houses for his teaching. Thus the Reverend Hezekiah Smith, preaching a new faith in a com- munity largely hostile, first broke the spiritual unity that had bound the town, and won recog- nition for the Baptists. For forty years he min- istered to the church he had founded, dignifying his faith by his scholarship and winning adher- ents thereto by his personal bearing, and re- ceiving when he died in 1805 the universal grief of the town as tribute to himself as a preacher and citizen. The village that had clustered on Water and Main Streets began to expand. In 1744 Front street, renamed Merrimack street in 1838, was [33] Haverhill 1640-1915 laid out two-and-one-half rods wide through the alder-grown parsonage lands. Interest in ship building arose, and the river side of Water Street, heretofore kept open, was used for ship yards and wharves. The serenity of peace, how- ever, in these years yielded often to the alarums of war, and Haverhill men fought and made hon- orable record in all of the memorable battles of the French war. The clouds of conflict with Great Britain were arising, and Haverhill in its town meetings was not lacking in spirited denunciations of the exac- tions of the mother country. It acted, too, as energetically as it talked spiritedly. It appointed committees of inspection and correspondence; it provided for supplies of ammunition and fire arms; it added to the three military companies then existing, a fourth; and these companies were drilled that they might be in readiness for the call to arms. In obedience to instructions from the Provincial Congress a company of sixty- three minute men,— "as they are to be ready at a minute's warning,"— was raised. When the news of the fight at Lexington reached Haverhill, just after noon on April 19, 1775, these men were ready :— [34] An Historical Address "Swift as their summons came they left The plough mid-furrow standing still, The half-ground corn grist in the mill, The spade in earth, the axe in cleft," and started, minute men and militia to the number of one hundred and five, on the march to Cambridge. The summons came close follow- ing a disastrous conflagration in the village. Three days before, on the Sabbath, a fire had swept the west side of Main street and left but ruins from the Common to White's Corner. Seventeen buildings in the very heart of the town were destroyed, and some of the minute- men left their work over these smouldering embers, responsive to the orders to march. In frustrating the plans of General Gage to sur- prise Lexington and Concord, a son of Haverhill, William Baker, a youth of twenty years, played an important part. He was employed in Hall's distillery in Gile's Court, now Portland street, Boston. One mid-April day there came into this place a woman who was quartered with one of the British regiments. Being partially intox- icated, she unwittingly disclosed the designs of the British to march that night to Concord. [35] Haverhill 1640-1915 Recognizing the importance of this disclosure Baker immediately carried the information to General Warren's headquarters, passing the sentries and guards without suspicion because he was known to be an employee of the distillery. Finding Warren absent, Baker gave the informa- tion to Adjutant Devens. Immediately plans were formed for arousing the minute-men, and in those plans the duty was assigned to Baker of having a horse ready for Paul Revere on the Charlestown shore. Baker returned to Haver- hill, enlisted for the war, won by his ability in military service the rank of captain, and died a half century later in Providence, Rhode Island. Two days after the fight at Lexington,a horseman, John Tracy of Marblehead, rode excitedly into the village with the news that the British troops were on their way to Haverhill, cutting and de- stroying all before them, and would be there on the following morning. The people were panic stricken. Horses were saddled, oxen were har- nessed to carts into which household goods were thrown, and the villagers gathered on the Com- mon prepared for flight. In the East parish the people sought refuge in the sombre depths of the hemlocks by the Great Pond,~Kenoza. [36] An Historical Address The alarm proved to be a false one, sent in many directions and instigated by the British to create terror and prevent the sending of soldiers to the front. The Provincial Congress, hastily summoned af- after the Lexington fight, among other acts established post riders and post offices in order that there might be communication between Cambridge, the headquarters of the American army, and the principal towns, and then and thus the first Haverhill postmaster, Simon Greenough, was appointed. In the battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775, seventy-four Haverhill men took part, and of their number two, John Eaton and Simeon Pike, were killed. In this engagement Colonel James Brickett of Haverhill was severely wounded. As he was borne from the field he met General Warren, who stopped to greet him. Warren was without arms; Colonel Brickett proffered him his; and bearing these Warren fought and gave his life in the engagement. In the more than eight years of the Revolu- tionary struggle the town of Haverhill contrib- uted its full quota of men and its full share of expenditure. The cost of the war, the payment [37] Haverhill 1640-1915 of bounty money and the supporting of families of the soldiers placed a heavy burden upon the town, but its courage never weakened, its hope never lessened, its determination never was brok- en. In all of the town meetings the votes and resolutions showed profound interest in the patriot cause and unswerving loyalty to it. The votes passed, the resolutions and addresses adopted, were warmly discussed, but the decisions showed that the actuating principles were courageous and unselfish. The close of the war left the burden of debt and severe taxation upon the people, and, taking advantage of this condition, certain leaders,under the direction of Daniel Shay, sought to inflame the people against the restraints of law and gov- ernment. This insurrection, known as Shay's Rebellion, manifested itself strongly in the western part of the state, where mobs of inflamed men at Northampton prevented the sitting of the Court of Common Pleas, in Worcester took possession of the Court House, and in Spring- field threatened and alarmed the people until they were dispersed by a strong band of militia. The town of Boston was moved by these dis- turbances and the manifest spirit of rebellion [38] An Historical Address to send a circular letter to every town in the state "concerning the common interest of the country." To make reply to this letter Haverhill in town meeting appointed a committee of which General Brickett was chairman. The wise, patriotic, and dignified reply which this committee presented, is a document of which Haverhill may well be proud. A later age may read it with profit and apply its philosophy to the problems of its own times. When the war was over, with the spirit that it has never lacked the town set its face towards the future, and sought to rebuild its shattered industries. The shipyards took on new life; the wharves were busy with commerce. Ox teams brought in the produce of the North to be shipped by vessels which, towed by horses to Newburyport, spread there their sails to voy- age to the West Indies, to London and to other ports. Returning they brought cargoes of goods from these places to be distributed from the home port to the surrounding country by the oxen express. It was a red-letter day for the town when on November 4-5, 1789, the revered President, Washington, paid it the honor of a visit, staying Haverhill 1640-1915 over night in Harrod's tavern, "The Free- mason's Arms," where the City Hall now stands, greeting graciously the people of the village, praising the beauty of the place, reviewing the veteran troops,— "When each war-scarred Continental, Leaving smithy, mill and farm, Waved his rusted sword in welcome, And shot off his old king's arm. Slowly passed that august presence Down the thronged and shouting street; Village girls, as fair as angels, Scattering flowers around his feet. And he stood up in his stirrups, Looking up and looking down On the hills of Gold and Silver Rimming round the little town,-- And he said, the landscape sweeping Slowly with his ungloved hand, 'I have seen no prospect fairer In this goodly Eastern land.'" [40] An Historical Address Across the long vista of many years the memor- ies of this visit of Washington shine clear and golden. In the later years of the eighteenth century and the earlier years of the nineteenth the town was fortunate in the many families of refinement and culture that dwelt here and that drew as their guests refined and scholarly people from other towns. John Quincy Adams, visiting here his aunt, Mrs. Elizabeth Shaw, of whom he rev- erently said, "If the Protestant Church tolerated canonization, she would have deserved to stand among the foremost in the calendar," and in whose family he fitted for the senior class of Harvard College, found in the youth of the town delightful associates, and the plain living was accompanied by excellent thinking and sprightly wit. The spiritual summons to do missionary work in far off lands took Harriet Atwood Newell in 1812 to the Isle of France, and, from across the river, Anne Haseltine Judson to Burma. The Haverhill Academy, founded in 1827,~the building is that now occupied by the Whittier School.—brought together a group of young men and young women of unusual character. For their meeting fifty-seven years later one of [41] Haverhill 1640-1915 their number, John Greenleaf Whittier, wrote the poem, "The Reunion": "Dear comrades, scattered wide and far, Send from their homes their kindly word, And dearer ones, unseen, unheard, Smile on us from some heavenly star. For life and death with God are one; Unchanged by seeming change, His care And love are round us here and there ; He breaks no thread His hand has spun." Coincident with the new interest in education which established the Haverhill Academy in 1827, was the great temperance movement in the same year. The use of liquor was almost universal. It was served at marriages; it was of- fered at funerals; it was a gift that appeared constantly in the donations to the ministers; it went with the mechanic into the shop, and with the farmer into the field ; and in the town of 3900 inhabitants there were twenty-one places where it was sold. To combat its influence de- manded brave souls and valiant hearts. The Gazette, that led in the movement for temper- [42] An Historical Address ance, lost half of its subscribers; the men who advocated it were ridiculed, openly insulted, and drawn in effigy about the town; but in five years the cause became so strong that but one place remained where it could be purchased, and in ten years the fires of the last distillery were put out. At nearly the same time from the First Church in the town one division went forth to establish the Independent Congregational Church, now known as the Centre Church, and another di- vision to add its strength to the Universalist Church, leaving the traditions of the First Church, its location and a large share of its funds to the Unitarians, whose society still remains the First Parish. The little log meeting house built in the Mill Lot in 1638 was, after prolonged and bitter dis- cussion, succeeded by a new meeting house on the Common, built in 1698, and this was replaced by a later house, built in 1761, also on the Com- mon. Between church and state in these earlier years the connection was close, and the meeting house was the place where the town met for elections and the discussion of matters of poli- tics and public interest. [43] Haverhill 1640-1916 In the latter part of the eighteenth century changes in religious thought influenced some of the ministers of the church and many of the parishioners to dissent from the strict Congrega- tional creed, and the church was cleft into op- posing parties. The conditions became so acute that those of the old faith withdrew in 1832 to form the Independent Congregational Church,— the Centre Church. Those who were left were divided between the Universalist and the Uni- tarian beliefs. An agreement was reached, however, by which the Universalists received four thousand dollars of the parish fund and withdrew, in 1834, to join the church of that faith that had been established in 1823. This withdrawal left the First Parish Church to the Unitarians who since have held it. While the church was undivided its house had been used freely for the town meetings, but now a charge of thirty dollars annually was made by the parish for such use by the town. In turn the town questioned the ownership of the land,— the Common,— on which the meeting house stood. The dispute was finally settled by the town's paying, in 1837, a thousand dollars for a quit claim deed to the land, and the parish's [44] An Historical Address building a new house on the Marsh lot where the church now stands. Thus the town acquired the land now known as City Hall Park. The town meetings, however, from 1828 until the building of the first town hall in 1847, were held in the various churches and halls of the town, going as far west in 1828 as the West Parish meeting house, and as far east in the same year as the East Parish meeting house, and in later years using alternately the Christian Union Chapel at Washington Square and the First Parish Church. There is but time for me to speak of one other era in the history of the town. The prelude to the Civil War was long, and its notes, harmon- ious or discordant, were heard early and clearly in Haverhill. The American Anti-Slavery So- ciety was organized in Philadelphia in December, 1833. Of the convention effecting this organiza- tion John Greenleaf Whittier was a member. A young man, twenty-six years old, with dark, flashing eyes, square forehead, his straight form clothed in Quaker garb, he was noticeable in appearance, and his growing reputation as a poet added to the interest in him. Of his ser- vice here he said in later life, "I love, perhaps [45] Haverhill 1640-1916 too well, the praise and good-will of my fellow men; but I set higher value on my name ap- pended to the Anti-Slavery Declaration of 1833 than on any title page of any book. Looking over a life marked with many errors and shortcom- ings, I rejoice that I have been able to maintain the pledge of that signature, and in the long intervening years— 'My voice, though not the loudest, has been heard Wherever Freedom raised her cry of pain.'" The Haverhill Anti-Slavery Society was formed in April, 1834, and of this society Whittier was the corresponding secretary. His poetic power had already been dedicated to the cause of freedom in his tribute to William Lloyd Garrison, "The Slave Ship," "Expostulation," and other poems. "The clarion notes from his muse were like the inspired appeals of the Hebrew phophets, sum- moning the elect of God to do battle with the powers of darkness. All along the struggle, too, these lyrics of the meek-visaged but fiery-souled Quaker rang out their notes of warning and ap- peal. And even after rebellion had convulsed the land and civil war had summoned its legions [46] An Historical Address to the field, his strains were heard amid the din of strife, and the loyal soldiers felt their inspira- tion in the camp, on the march, and in the hour of battle." The country was aflame with discussion. In Congress the insolence of the South and the supineness of many Northern representatives caused most bitter speeches to be uttered. "Be- fore you accomplish your purpose," said Raynor of North Carolina, in relation to the abolition of slavery, "you must march over hecatombs of bodies; you must convert every one of your ploughshares into swords. Long, long, before you reach the banks of the Roanoke, every stream will run red with your blood, every hill will whiten with your bones. Attempt this wild project when you will, and if there be any truth in heathen story, the banks of the river Styx will be lined with your shivering ghosts for a hundred years to come. We will trample you under our feet, and trail your crown and sceptre in the dust." Freedom of debate and the right of petition were denied, and there was intro- duced into Congress a resolution known as the "Atherton gag," that sought to suppress these. In Haverhill a favorite place for the considera- te] Haverhill 1640-1915 tion of national and local affairs was the hatshop of Nathan Webster on Merrimac, just west of White's corner. The arrogance of the Southern representatives, the repeated threats of seces- sion by the South, and especially the obnoxious "Atherton gag," aroused the spirit of the men who met there. Consequently they drew up a petition to be presented in Congress, praying that measures peaceably to dissolve the Union should be adopted immediately. The paper was drafted by Benjamin Emerson, a man who in ap- pearance resembled Daniel Webster, and who was so uncompromising a foe to slavery and so dark in complexion that he was known as "Black Ben." The most of the signatures were obtained in the Union Evangelical Church on Winter street after the Sunday service. The petition was sent to John Quincy Adams, and by him presented in the House of Representatives on the 14th of January, 1842. Immediately a tumult arose. A resolution censuring Adams was introduced, and the debate upon it was long and fiery. After the matter had consumed twelve days, Mr. Adams was asked how much more time he would occupy in his defence. Mr. Adams reminded his hearers that when Warren Hastings was tried, Burke [48] An Historical Address occupied some months in a single speech; he hoped, however, to complete his defence in ninety days. The resolutions of censure were laid on the table, and the result was interpreted as a defeat and humiliation of Mr. Adam's enemies. The original petition was presented to the Haverhill Historical Society in 1908 by the trustees of the Adams papers. In 1861 the existing military organization of Haverhill was the Hale guards, organized by General Benjamin F. Butler in July, 1853, and with one service performed by it leading, like a little thread, back to the Revolution,~for, by order of the Governor, it had attended in full ranks the funeral of Jonathan Harrington, the last survivor of the Battle of Bunker Hill, who, dying at the age of 96, was buried in Lexington on March 30, 1854. When the outbreak of the South seemed imminent and Massachusetts sought to be prepared, in obedience to orders from Governor Andrew, Captain Messer called a meeting of the company on Wednesday, Jan- uary 23, 1861. The roll was called. Each mem- ber was asked if he was ready to serve his coun- try in war if the Governor should summon them [49] Haverhill 1640-1915 to service, and every mother's son of them unhesitatingly answered, "Yes." On Monday, April 15, President Lincoln called for 75,000 militia to serve for three months. The call found Massachusetts prepared with her full quota. On Tuesday the sturdy men from Marblehead arrived early in Boston, the first of the troops that almost every train brought. On Wednesday the Sixth Regiment, the first to be sent from Massachusetts, drawn up before the State House, received its colors from the Governor and with God-speeds went proudly on its way, little dreaming of the momentous events awaiting it. On Thursday Massachusetts was fired with pride by news of the enthusiasm that cheered and applauded this regiment as it marched down Broadway. On Friday it was thrilled by the message that this regiment had been attacked in the streets of Baltimore, and shocked by the knowledge that Massachusetts men, the first victims of the war, lay dead in that city. On Saturday in mid-afternoon the ringing of the bells, the signal agreed upon, announced that the summons had come for the Haverhill company. The members immediately gathered [50] An Historical Address at the armory. Close by there gathered, also, to act as escort, the veterans of the Haverhill Light Infantry, some of whom had belonged to that company, when, in the war of 1812, it had marched from the church green,~the Common,— to Charlestown. The firemen assembled, also, to lend their picturesque presence to the proces- sion, and the throng of men, women and chil- dren filled the ways. There were farewell exer- cises and the presenting of gifts on the Common, and then the whole concourse moved through the streets to the railway station. The band played America, there were cheers and tears, prayers and farewells, and the train moved off. The tragedy of war had touched the town. The record of Haverhill in the four years of the Civil War is too long to be told as a part of this address; the deeds of heroism and bravery too many to be recounted herein; the list of heroes too full to be recorded here. "They were as noble, brave and true, As ever followed noisy drum; Their silent ranks pass in review With noiseless tread and voices dumb." [51] Haverhill 1640-1915 Lives were offered in service to the country; but grief, with all her tears, gave place to patriotic pride. When Clarence Woodman, killed in his youth at Antietam, was buried from the First Parish Church, there were quoted, in the spirit of the hour, these patriotic and pathetic lines from Cato: "Thanks to the gods My boy had done his duty. Welcome, my son! There, set him down, my friends, Full in my sight, that I may view at leisure The bloody corpse, and count those glorious wounds. How beautiful is death when earned by virtue! Who would not be that youth! What pity 'tis That we can die but once to save our country! Why sits this sadness on your brows, my friends? I should have blushed if Cato's house had stood Secure and flourished in a civil war." The year 1865 opened with a feeling of confidence that the end of the long war was near. Hope smiled upon the soldier in the field and upon those who waited at home. News of the capture [52] An Historical Address of Richmond came on April 3. The bells were rung in jubilant peals, forty guns were fired on the Common, fireworks were sent blazing into the heavens, and huge bonfires glowed in the dusk of evening. When the news of Lee's sur- render came on Monday, April 10, there was a public procession and a meeting of rejoicing in the Town Hall, and not even the down-pouring of the rain could quench the fires of exultation. On Saturday, the 15th, when the trees were beautiful with the fresh verdure of spring, the myriad birds flitting and singing, the sky clear and glorious, like the cloud that creates black- ness, like the shock that engenders horror, came the news of the assassination of Lincoln, and the emblems of rejoicing were changed for those of mourning ; the bells, still vibrant with victory, pealed of death; and everywhere were the hushed voices of sorrow. The great Ship of State had come into port from its perilous voyage, safe and with the victory won, but with its Captain dead upon its deck. On June 1, the day appointed for national fasting and prayer, the citizens suspended their customary occupations and filled the Town Hall to listen to a eulogy on Lincoln by the Honorable Charles J. Noyes, [53] Haverhill 1640-1916 while fifty-six minute guns, one for each year of the martyred President's life, boomed from the Common. The record of the brave boys who fought should be supplemented by the story of the strong- hearted and helpful women who labored un- ceasingly for the comfort of the soldiers. The Soldiers' Relief Society, organized on April 21, 1861, devoted its untiring labors to furnishing articles for the comfort of the soldiers, and there was no want which it did not attempt to fill. The list of supplies that it forwarded is long and varied, and every gift was the dearer and brought the greater comfort because it was inspired "By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy, By love, supremest in adversity." Haverhill contributed to the fighting forces thirteen hundred men, including seventy-three commissioned officers, and her population (I860) was but 9,995; and the town raised and expended on account of the war, exclusive of State Aid, $118,135.49, while for aid to the families of vol- unteers she gave $114,542.24, although her valuation (1865) was but $3,798,550. [54] An Historical Address When the war was ended the Soldiers' Relief Society gracefully suggested that the erection of a soldiers' monument would be a fitting close to their labors: "The Soldiers' Relief Society, as is eminently fitting, turn with tender hearts and tearful eyes to the last kindly act allowed for the completion of their mission—the raising of a memorial to the heroic dead." From this in- ception came the raising of the monument that records incut in its die the names of one-hun- dred-and-eighty-six honored dead of the war, and bears above their names the inscription: "IN GRATEFUL TRIBUTE TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO, ON LAND AND ON THE SEA, DIED THAT THE REPUBLIC MIGHT LIVE, THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY THE CITIZENS OF HAVERHILL A. D. 1869." The year 1870, which marked the change from the town form of government under which Ha- verhill had lived for two-hundred-and-thirty- five years— it was incorporated as a town in 1645, being previously a plantation— to the city form, [55] Haverhill 1640-1915 sharply marks, also, the line between the old Haverhill and the new. The shade trees on Merrimack street were cut down (1871); busi- ness blocks displaced the old-time residences there; lower Washington Street changed from a village road with cottage houses to a street of brick manufacturies; the hay scales and the old town pump with its iron "calabash," for drinking, in front of City Hall, were swept away (1872); the tall liberty pole in Washing- ton Square— the highest in the state—erected by the Torrent Engine Company, was cut down; the First Baptist Church, on "Baptist Hill," that once marked the western boundary of the village,— where the Academy of Music is now,— was demolished; the historic "Christian Chap- el,"— the old South Church,— on the corner of Washington and Essex Streets, was torn down; the memorable Attwood house on Crescent Place, consecrated by the sweet and saintly lives of those who had dwelt there and made it a centre of Christian activities, by the founding there of the first Sabbath School in 1817, and by the forming there of the Haverhill Benevolent Association in 1818, was destroyed (1872), and the first town school house, close by, was re- [56] An Historical Address moved the next year; the Washington Street schoolhouse and lot, a short distance east of Railroad Square, was sold for $20,350; the age- browned Haverhill Bridge, antique and musty, but quaintly interesting, built in 1794 at a cost of $40,000, rebuilt in 1808~the Bridge Street stone bears this date,— and made a covered bridge in 1825, was sold for $310, and removed in ten days,- and its timbers were found to be as sound as when first they were hewn, and the new bridge that replaced it was opened first for carriages on January 1, 1874; the beautiful new High School building, now the Central Ninth School, was dedicated on August 31, 1874; on October 5 of the same year the schooner "Lucy May," —the last structure of the Haverhill ship yards, —was launched, with flags and pennons flying, from just below the present County Bridge; and on November 4 the Public Library was dedi- cated. So "where the slow years came and went, And left not affluence but content, Now flashes in our dazzled eyes The electric fight of enterprise." The era of romantic history and poetic tradition [57] Haverhill 1640-1915 has been succeeded by a more utilitarian one, characterized by rapid growth, increase of wealth, the coming of many stranger peoples from many diverse lands to settle here, and new modes of life made possible,— yes, obligatory,~by new conditions and new inventions. The city has been swept by disastrous fire in 1882, and risen in greater strength from its ashes. It has felt again the thrill of war—the Spanish War—in 1898, and shown anew its patriotic spirit. It has received as a part of its corporate body, in 1897, the beautiful and academic town of Bradford, long bound to it by ties of common interest and association, and, preserving for her the inher- itance of her name and her traditions, it has en- riched her by the extension of its care and beneficence to meet her needs. It has com- memorated with remarkable exercises and cere- monies, in 1890, the two-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its settlement, when it was hon- ored by receiving from the hands of its distin- guished guest, the Honorable Daniel Gurteen, Chairman of the Local Board of Haverhill, Eng- land, the felicitous greetings of the old English town to the New England city. It received, also, on that occasion from its poet son, John Green- [58] An Historical Address leaf Whittier, the tribute of his poem, "Hav- erhill." We clasp with reverent, loving hands the story of the achievements of the past, but reverently, and with love, also, we dream and pray that the records of the city in the years to come may be no less golden and precious; and that the suc- cessive generations to whom its honor, its pros- perity and its progress shall be entrusted, may hold these legacies as a treasure not to be dimmed or despoiled, but to be made brighter and to be enriched, as the tale of the years shall stretch on. "Hold fast your Puritan heritage, Eut let the free thought of the age Its light and hope and sweetness add To the stern faith the fathers had." I have drawn my pictures from the closed book of the past; and therein are pictures of the forest land that knew no smoke from the white man's dwelling, of the river that knew no skiff save the Indian's light canoe; pictures of the timid and cautious adventuring that brought the first little band of colonists from Ipswich [59] Haverhill 1640-1915 and Newbury to found the plantation at Pen- tucket, the slow beginnings, and the stern and high spirit that sought to build with law and order; pictures of the days of trial and the days of dread, the Indian raids, the deeds of heroism and bravery; pictures of the growth of the spirit of independence and broadening liberty, of the resistance to oppression, of the Revolutionary up- rising; pictures of the town, a century older, shar- ing in that patriotic zeal that offered life and pos- sessions that national union might be maintained and universal liberty established; pictures of the beginnings and growth of industries that have given us national and world-wide import- ance; of changes in the forms of government that have kept us in the van of advancing econ- omic conditions :— a panorama of the growth of a New England settlement that became a village, grew into a town, expanded into a city,~and marked each era of its expansion by the swelling and ripening of broader interests and deeper and fuller sympathies. No more grateful task could be mine than to tell,~how imperfectly I well know,— this story of the past. May he who in after years shall tell the story of the city of Haverhill, find nothing to record that [60] An Historical Address shall fall below the best traditions of her past, and may all of her children so love her that they shall find constant in their hearts the prayer of her poet son--, "I pray God bless the good old town:" Surely no privilege could be greater than is mine today,~the privilege of extending for the City of Haverhill on the two-hundred-and-sev- enty-fifth anniversary of her settlement to her guests her cordial welcome, and to all her sons and daughters, at home and abroad, her loving greetings and the expression of her warm and kindly interest. Proud of her history and her traditions; proud of the men and women who here have lived and worked; preached and taught and sown the seed of larger thought and of prosperity within her confines,— "And never in the hamlet's bound Was lack of sturdy manhood found; And never failed the kindred good Of brave and helpful womanhood;—" proud of her growth, her honored standing [61] Haverhill 1640-1915 among the cities of the Commonwealth, the intelligence and high character of her people; proud of the prosperity within her marts of trade, the peace within her streets, the harmony within her factories; she turns to the future a face shining with hope and the confidence of fortunes even greater and brighter than those of her past years. Giving greeting to her sons and daughters, she asks of all her children the quickening of their love and the renewal of their loyalty and their help by word and deed to make her a City Beautiful,— a city of exalted character, of just dealings, of wisdom and knowledge and material prosperity,— a city where the equality in rights and the brotherhood of all shall be the founda- tions of abiding peace and good will. [62] Adrift on Time's returnless tide, As waves that follow waves, we glide. God grant we leave upon the shore Some waif of good it lacked before. Some seed, or flower, or plant of worth, Some added beauty to the earth; Some larger hope, some thought to make The sad world happier for its sake. As tenants of uncertain stay, So may we live our little day That only grateful hearts shall fill The homes we leave in Haverhill. The singer of a farewell rhyme, Upon whose outmost verge of time The shades of night are falling down, I pray, God bless the good old town Haverhill : Whittier. 163] THE RECORD PRINTING SERVICE HAVERHILL -UMbHbbb 014 014 676 6