Westward Ho!

This post marks my first in a number of weeks, and I apologize for the length of time between posts. What I intended as a brief hiatus ended up being longer than expected with part of the time being spent in Arizona, an appealing distraction.

The West has always held an allure for Middleborough folk for different reasons. Following the Revolutionary War, numerous Middleborough residents headed "west" to Vermont because of economic hardship at home and the promise of greater financial security. The early and mid-1800s saw Middleborough residents emigrate further afield to places such as Minnesota and Missouri, then considered the western frontier. Among them were members of the Barrows family.

The discovery of gold in 1848 in California unleashed an unprecedented flood of westward emigration, and Middleborough residents for years to come would be attracted not only by the prospect of riches, but by the continuing allure of productive land which was inexpensive (if not free) and an invigorating and healthy climate. Dura T. Weston of Thomastown emigrated temporarily to California during the period of the Gold Rush, though he later returned, none the richer to Middleborough. In 1856, S. W. Marston gave up his private boarding school on East Grove Street (later better known as the Eaton Family School) in order to pursue his future "out west". Accompanying him were Middleborough furniture dealer Solomon Snow (who was succeeded by George Soule) and clothing retailer George Wilbur, also of Middleborough. Another prominent Middleborough resident who moved west during the mid-19th century was George Leonard. Born at Middleborough in 1816, Leonard was a prominent shoe and boot manufacturer at Middleborough until 1868 when he relocated to Rochester, Minnesota, for the health of his wife and son. At Rochester, Leonard continued in the shoe business and also engaged as a gentleman farmer, owning two farms, 30 cows and over 80 other head of livestock. He was recognized as "an upright, honorable and much beloved citizen" and was described as one of Rochester's "oldest and most respected citizens" upon his death in 1893.

The Klondike gold rush of the late 1890s similarly caught the attention of Middleborough residents. A number of Middleborough residents proposed making the journey to western Canada, including Charles P. Drake of North Middleborough in 1897, and it was reported that Middleborough men's clothiers Sparrow Brothers had outfitted at least one Middleborough resident with heavy weight apparel suitable for the Yukon.

Nonetheless, some of these western dreams proved illusory, including that of Charles W. Wadhams (1850-85). Wadhams married Phebe Ann Gerrish of North Rochester, Massachusetts, in 1879, and though troubled by heart problems, he failed to reveal the condition to his wife, no doubt for fear of alarming her unnecessarily. The condition, however, was severe enough to prompt Wadhams to emigrate to Redlands, California, where he proposed making a home for himself and his wife who he left behind in Massachusetts. At the time, Redlands was gaining notice for its healthful dry climate which would soon make it a citrus-growing center in southern California, and it is likely this factor which encouraged Wadhams' emigration. However, he was not to realize his dream. He died at the age of 35 a short time after coming to Redlands. "It seems that Mr. Wadhams had been informed some time since that he had heart trouble and might die at any time and might possibly live two years. He was frequently troubled with irregular circulation and palpitation, but had carefully kept all these troubles from the knowledge of his wife and mother at home. He was laboring to make a home for his wife, and his forgetfulness of self, as it appears in a detailed account of his life, shows the true and noble spirit with which he was possessed." Wadhams' remains were brought back to Middleborough and interred in Hope's Rest Cemetery at Rock.

Illustration:

"American Progress", oil on canvas, John Gast, 1872

Gast's 1872 painting has since become an iconic image of American Manifest Destiny, depicting various aspects of the nation's westward expansion.

Memorial Day

Illustrations:

Memorial Day Parade, photographs, mid-20th century

Veterans parade down Center Street near Everett Square in the late 1940s on the occasion of Memorial Day. Parades such as this provided the community an opportunity to publicly recognize its veterans on the holiday once known as Decoration Day when local residents decorated the graves of family members and loved ones. Memorial Day observances with a parade and ceremonies at the Central Cemetery remain a Middleborough tradition.

Nemasket Hill: A Garden Cemetery

During the early and mid-19th century, a radical reassessment of the place of the cemetery in American society and the way in which cemeteries were viewed occurred. No longer was the burying ground considered to be a barren place of desolation; rather it became regarded as a peaceful place surrounded by and evocative of Nature. Death was no longer considered a dreaded end, but a spiritual beginning. William Cullen Bryant spoke to this new understanding in his masterly Thanatopsis:

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

While changes in the Victorian conception of death would rapidly alter the types and designs of monuments erected in cemeteries at this time, the rural cemetery movement (arising from the watershed development of Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1831) was also drastically transforming the physical shape and appearance of cemeteries during this era, providing broad paths and winding, curvilinear roads on larger parcels, and creating park-like environments of which Nemasket Hill Cemetery is the best noted local example.

Wrought iron fences erected around individual family plots created a sense of luxury, while fences installed about the perimeter of the cemetery as a whole defined a unified visual space as well as deterred straying livestock from entering and damaging the stones and plantings. Plantings, were in fact, the most notable addition to cemeteries at this time, helping transform them into rural parks. When plantings weren't possible, or to reflect deeper symbolic meanings, plants were frequently represented upon the stones themselves.

With the coming of the Victorian era, Nemasket Hill Cemetery was made over at this time, being transformed from an unornamented graveyard into a rural garden cemetery. The plots laid out at this time and during the subsequent half-century still reflect these developments, retaining many of the early plantings. The array of heirloom varieties and vintage landscaping is most notable in spring when the cemetery comes alive with color.

Lily of the Valley


Bridal Wreath with Obelisk


Wisteria


Rustic Chair


Hydrangea


Denham Monument Rose


Myrtle


Japanese Azalea


Bridal Wreath


Rhododendron


White Monument Lily


Rhododendrons

Illustrations:
All photographs taken at Nemasket Hill Cemetery by Mike Maddigan, October 21, 2009, and May 13 and 16, 2010.

Source:
Michael J. Maddigan. Elysian Fields: An Illustrated History of Rock Cemetery. Middleborough, MA: Rock Cemetery Association, 2007

The Last of the Nemaskets, 1786

One of the last of the Nemasket tribe was Alice Anthony who died in Middleborough on December 2, 1786 at the age of 80. Little is known of her other than the fact that she presumably resided in a wetu located in the vicinity of the area now bounded by High, Oak and Southwick Streets. On January 24, 1742, she along with seven others was admitted as a member of the First Church of Middleborough. The following item which refers to her as "Else Antony" (the same name as was used in the record of her church admission) was published in the Nemasket Gazette in 1857.

[Just to the west of Oak Street is] an old well now in good repair. It marks the spot where lived one of the last of the Nemasket Indians, by the name of Else Antony, who died about the year 1790. The tract of land lying between [South] Main street and the Depot [on Station Street], formerly belonged to Mr. Silas Wood, grandfather of Mr. Abial Wood. He dug this well by the side of Else's wigwam, and gave her the privilege of cutting broom and basket stuff on this land, as a compensation for her watering his herds, the water being poured into a long trough which he handhewn out for the purpose. Else was a member of the church on the Green, and appears to have been conscientious. In those days Dick Thompson, a slave of Clerk Jacob, went to pay his addresses to Else, but she refused him admission with the declaration, that her first lover was dead and that must be the end of it. A second was not to be entertained.

Source:
Namasket Gazette, "Local Antiquities", July 24, 1857.

Illustration:
"Indian Corn Hanging on a Post", photograph taken October 15, 2008, by Live♥Laugh♥Love. Reprinted under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Cotton Manufacturing at the Lower Factory Established, 1811

The honor of first establishing textile manufacturing in Middleborough must rightly lie with a family that receives very little mention in either of the two published town histories: the Shephard family of Wrentham, Massachusetts, who in 1811 established a cotton manufactory on the Nemasket River at the Lower Factory, later the site of the Star Mill.

Prior to the arrival of the Shepards, the Lower Factory was a relatively bustling industrial area. A dam just upstream from East Main Street had long harnessed the natural drop in the river and powered a grist mill, a carding mill and a fulling mill (which processed woollen cloth). On December 14, 1810, the owner of the grist mill, Jacob Bennett of Middleborough, sold to Captain Benjamin Shephard, Junior; Benjamin Shephard III; and Oliver Shephard, all of Wrentham, the land and water rights at Bennett's Mills "for the purpose of working a Cotton Mill or any other Factory or works." Excepted from the conveyance, however, were the right of the carding mill owners, the "Cloathing Mill" or fulling mill, and Bennett's own grist mill. At the time, the Shephards also purchased other nearby lands.

The Shephards who would prove the driving force behind the early textile-related industrialization of Middleborough, had been instrumental in the development of the textile industry in Southeastern Massachusetts. About 1793, Benjamin Shephard had built a cotton manufactory in an area of South Wrentham (now Plainville) later known as Shephardville. This factory, partially financed through a $300 loan from the Massachusetts General Court which sought to promote the cloth manufacturing industry, was "probably the third [cotton manufactory] to be operated by water power in this country," the historic Slater Mill in Pawtucket having been built only earlier that same year.

A series of embragoes beginning in 1807 and maintained throughout the War of 1812 provided protection from British competition for the nascent American textile industry, and prompted the establishment of cotton mills throughout Rhode Island and Southern Massachusetts during this period.

While it is not readily clear what attracted the Shephards to Middleborough, there was a local connection in that Captain Shephard's daughter, Susanna, was married to Dr. Thomas Nelson of Middleborough, and the couple resided in that section of Middleborough that is now Lakeville until 1801. The Shephards may, therefore, have become acquainted with the industrial potential of the Nemasket River at that time.

Contrary to Weston's History of the Town of Middleboro, the Shepard's cotton manufactory at the Lower Factory was constructed in 1811 prior to the company's 1815 incorporation, built on the site of the old fulling mill, as indicated by deeds from that period. It therefore probably predates Washburn and Peirce's New Market cotton manufactory which was erected on the river at the Upper Factory at what is now Wareham Street sometime about 1812 or 1813.

Though there are no existing views of the Shephard's 1811 mill, the mill building would have been a two to three-story wood-frame building with large windows to illuminate the interior of the carding and spinning rooms and a waterwheel to power the machinery - a typical design for New England cotton mills during that era.

The Shephard family moved to formally establish the Middleboro Manufacturing Company on January 1, 1812, as a firm to manufacture cotton yarn and cloth, with Benjamin Shephard, Jr., Horatio G. Wood; Amos Cobb; and Alanson Witherell, all of Middleborough; Oliver Shephard of Wrentham; Thomas Nelson of Bristol, Rhode Island; and George Bicknell of Philadelphia. The Company assumed the liabilities incurred previously by the Shepards "in Erecting, and establishing a Cotton Maunfactory & other buildings," and took possession of these and the "Machinery, land, water privileges, ways and easements, and also the present manufactured & unmanufactured stock on hand," The Company was divided into thirty-six shares of $500 each, distributed to Benjamin Shephard (ten shares), Oliver Shephard (ten shares), Thomas Nelson (six shares), George Bicknell (six shares), Horatio G. Wood (two shares), Amos Cobb (one share) and Alanson Witherell (one share).

The Middleboro Manufacturing Company continued to purchase nearby land and houses for its needs, some of the land being used as a bleaching green or "whitening yard." The Company was eventually incorporated in 1815 by Benjamin Shephard, Jr.; Thomas Weston; Horatio G. Wood; Nancy Nelson; Sarah W. Shephard; and Alanson Witherall.

The Company's mill was run in accordance with the so-called Rhode Island system of operation whereby local families would be employed as mill operatives, as opposed to unmarried young women. Cotton yarn would be produced at the mill and the weaving, most likely, would have initially be done on hand looms in the workers own homes, and returned to the factory.

Sadly, little is yet known of the history of the Middleboro Manufacturing Company. It seems to have operated for a period before the Shephards eventually relinquished control of the mill to the business partnership of Peter H. Peirce and Horatio G. Wood, which added the manufacture of shovels to the business before yielding, in turn, to the larger Star Mill. The Shephards continued to operate their South Wrentham mill "until the business reverses of 1837, when they were forced into bankruptcy," a sad fate for such an enterprising family.

Illustration:
Replica of a Crompton Spinning Mule (detail), Slater Mill, Pawtucket Rhode Island, photograph by Mike Maddigan, July 24, 2005
Crompton's spinning mule revolutionized textile production and helped lay the foundation of the industrial revolution by permitting the large-scale production of high-quality yarn. Although centered in the Blackstone Valley of Rhode Island and south central Massachusetts and developed following 1793, America's early textile industry soon spread to nearby areas, including Middleborough which had two cotton manufactories in operation by 1813.

Industrious Middleborough, 1860

In the summer of 1860, the Hyannis Messenger visited Middleborough and remarked upon the industriousness of its residents:

The signs of industry were everywhere visible. Even the [Peirce] academy students ... were employed during their leisure hours in making shoes. We entered a great many private dwellings and found women and children busy - boys as well as girls - either binding shoes, or braiding straw for bonnets, or occupied in some other equally useful way.

Both shoe-making and straw braiding for the local straw hat industry were cottage industries pursued by Middleborough residents through the mid-19th century. Many farmers traditionally had been accustomed to producing shoes during the relatively slack winter months, and as the modern shoe industry developed in the mid-1800s, their skills were utilized to help produce rudimentary shoes and boots which were completed in local manufactories. Meanwhile, straw hat manufacturers established a similar system of rural outwork for local residents, primarily women, whereby straw would be provided for them to braid in their homes. The so-called "braid cart" would collect the completed plaits which were used to produce hats and bonnets in the local manufactory. Shortly after the Messenger's comment, the local production of both shoes and straw hats was centralized in large manufactories including Leonard & Barrows and the Bay State Straw Works.

Illustration:

Plaited Straw Bonnet, photograph by Michael Maddigan, April 30, 2007

Bonnets manufactured of braided straw such as this were typical of those produced in Middleborough in the early and mid-19th century. Rural outworkers produced straw plaits in their homes which were later used by manufacturers to produce such intricate head wear and which promoted Middleborough's reputation for industriousness.

Source:

Middleborough Gazette and Old Colony Advertiser, August 4, 1860.

Mr. Patstone's Chickens Disturb the Neighborhood, 1941

Not all matters that historically have come before the Middleborough Board of Selectmen have proven weighty. In October, 1941, the Middleborough Selectmen, acting as the Board of Health, were called upon to address a nuisance complaint regarding roosters being kept on School Street, an issue which the correspondent from the Brockton Enterprise clearly found entertaining. The poor neighbors were slightly less amused.

Although none of the echoes reached the selectmen's meeting last night, the fact that roosters' crowed was a matter for consideration at the board's session. William Patstone, 28½ School Street, appeared before the board and opened the matter, and had proceeded well along in his discussion before the board informed him that the matter was not officially before them.

He told about a complaint which had been lodged against his roosters, evidently a flock rated by the neighbors with having great vocal powers. Mr. Patstone declared "there are others," meaning other roosters, with good heavy voices. He said the board of health had warned him that complaints and a petition with several signatures had been filed against his roosters. The selectmen, under the charter, are the board of health, but they had not heard about the roosters, so that matter evidently had gotten as far as their agent.

"Have you disposed of them?" queried a selectman. "No," Patstone replied, "but I moved them, and soon they will be no more, as with the holidays coming, I plan to eat them." He declared that others in the neighborhood had roosters living nearer to the folks who signed the complaint than do his crowers and that they had kept them longer than he had.

Selectman W. J. MacDougall, a past member of the grange, and a man who could qualify in judging the fine points of these barnyard alarm clocks, suggested that it might be a good thing to delegate Town Manager E. C. Peterson to make an early morning trip and listen to the roosters to determine the extent of the nuisance. But on second thought it was decided to let the selectmen do the investigating. No action was taken against the activities of the roosters, pending the investigation. Then again their death sentence by the axe may come first.

What is perhaps most surprising is the number of School Street residents still presumably keeping chickens at the time.

Illustration:
Rooster, photograph by travis warren123, November 29, 2009, reprinted under a Creative Commons license.

Source:
Brockton Enterprise, "A Bit of Axe-Swinging May Solve Problem of Middleboro Selectmen", October 21, 1941.