Groton, Massachusetts

“ George Sewall Boutwell, LL. D., Boston and Groton, the first commissioner of internal revenue, secretary of the treasury under President Grant, and for many years one of the leading international lawyers, is the son of Sewall and Rebecca (Marshall) Boutwell, and was born in Brookline, Mass., in what is now the old part of the Country Club house, January 28, 1818. He comes from old and respected Massachusetts stock, being a lineal descendant of James Boutwell, who was admitted a freeman in Lynn in 1638, and of John Marshall, who came to Boston in the shop Hopewell in 1634. ”

“ In 1694-95, the frontier line of Massachusetts was established by law as including the towns of Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, and Deerfield. Five years later this list was increased by Brookfield, Mendon, and Woodstock, with a kind of inner line, running through Salisbury, Andover, Billerica, Hatfield, Hadley, Westfield, and Northampton. ”

“ She is still living, in her eighty-ninth year, in the possession of her mental faculties, able to describe the scenes of hardship and peril in which she shared in the nation's infancy, and still glowing with the ardent feelings. of love to America and hatred to America's foes, which have given a coloring to her life.
The fol1owing extract from Butler's "History of Groton," may show that the women of Massachusetts were not behind their sisters of other States in patriotic daring.
"The patriotism of the women in those times 'which tried men's souls,' must not be passed over in silence. ”

“ It appears to me, that the arrangement which has been made for carrying the mail to Groton is sufficient for the accommodation of the inhabitants, as it gives them the opportunity of receiving their letters regularly, and with despatch, once a week. The route from Boston, by Leominster, to Groton is only twenty miles farther than by the direct route, and the delay of half a day, which is occasioned thereby, is not of much consequence to the inhabitants of Groton. ”

“ Some worthy citizens of Providence essayed to play the part of mediators, and after some parley the Gortonites offered to submit to arbitration. The proposal was conveyed to Boston, and the clergy were again consulted. They declared it beneath the dignity of Massachusetts to negotiate "with a few fugitives living without law or government," and they would no more compound with Gorton's "blasphemous revilings" than they would bargain with the Evil One. The community must be "purged" of such wickedness, either by repentance or by punishment. ”

“ Each one was compelled to wear a chain fast bolted around his legs. If they spoke to any person, other than an officer of the Church or of the State, they were to be put to death. They were kept at labor that winter and then banished in the spring. Gorton escaped to England and secured an order from the Earl of Warwick and the Commissioners of the Colonies requiring Massachusetts not to molest the settlers at Shawomet. Thereafter Gorton and his friends occupied their lands in peace. ”

“ Gorton and his friends purchased land and commenced a settlement at Popaquinepaug, or Pawtuxet, within the jurisdiction of Providence; but certain 36of his enemies who owned adjoining property determined to prevent his peaceful occupancy. William Arnold and a few others, to insure his expulsion, gave in their allegiance to Massachusetts, and called on the government of that Colony to remove the intruders. ”

“ Winthrop had secured possession of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay by purchasing the half originally owned by Roger Williams, [43] and now with a marvellous inconsistency, held the whole by a title derived solely from Miantonomi, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. If he could maintain his denial of the rights of Gorton to the Shawomet lands claimed by even a stronger title, he 51would succeed in his efforts to divide the Narragansett settlements and establish the claims of Massachusetts. ”

“ The four settlements about Narragansett Bay, whose extreme individualism and disinclination to submit to any superior government have already been noted, would probably have been exceedingly slow to form a combination, had it not been for the danger to their existence, threatened by their neighbors. Massachusetts had already set up claims to a portion of the territory, and assumed jurisdiction over some of the natives at the time of the Gorton affair in 1643; and contemplated more aggressive action by attempting to secure a charter from the Commissioners of Plantations, in the same year. ”

“ Gorton and his companions were summoned to Boston to make answer to Pomham’s claim. [31] Denying the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, in a spicy correspondence, Gorton refused to obey the summons. Increase Nowell, Secretary of the Colony, and the Boston Elders, discovered no less than twenty-six instances of blasphemy, “or thereabouts,” in the terms of Gorton’s epistle. The Gortonists were warned that if they continued contumacious they would be regarded as “fitted for the slaughter,” [32] 40and would be peremptorily dealt with by force of arms. ”

“ In the case of such men as Gorton, however,—and the type is by no means an uncommon one,—their temperament usually has much more to do with getting them into trouble than their opinions. Gorton's temperament was such as to keep him always in an atmosphere of strife. Other heresiarchs suffered persecution in Massachusetts, but Gorton was in hot water everywhere. His arrival in any community was the signal for an immediate disturbance of the peace. His troubles began in Plymouth, where the wife of the pastor preferred his teachings to those of her husband. ”

“ Boston, in 1830 had but the poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport, centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.
Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents, and did not tyrannize them. ”

“ Gorton hires a house of in Plymouth, 26 Colleague of Roger Williams, 26 Soccononocco. Signs deed to Shawomet lands, 37, and note. Repudiates his signature, 38 Makes submission to Massachusetts, 38, and note. His revolt one cause of the submission of the Narragansetts to Great Britain, 52 Soul Liberty. Defence of by Roger Williams and Samuell Gorton, 19 Rhode Island the first Government founded on, 79 Its final triumph in the Nation, 81 Sources of information, 17-20 Squatter Sovereignty, denied by Samuell Gorton, 75 139Staples, Hon. William R. On Samuell Gorton, 18, and note, 33, note. ”

“ The office is still kept in the Town Hall, and there is no reason to think that it will be removed from the spacious and commodious quarters it now occupies, for a long time to come. Few towns in the Commonwealth can present such an array of distinguished men among their postmasters as those of Groton, including, as it does, the names of Judge Dana, Judge Richardson, Mr. Butler, and Governor Boutwell. ”

“ Three months later the family left Groton forever, having taken a house at Jamaica Plain, then and perhaps now the most rural and attractive suburb of Boston. Here their dwelling was near a little stream, called Willow Brook, and there were rocks behind it covered with cardinal flowers. Margaret Fuller had with her two pupils from Providence; she was within easy reach of friends, and could at the same time renew that love of nature which Groton had first taught her, and which city-life had only suspended. ”

“ And, what is more remarkable, he found it necessary to apply, in restraint of others, several of the measures against which he had protested when brought to bear upon himself. He came to discover that there was mischief in "such an infinite liberty of conscience" as was claimed by his own followers. The erratic Gorton was to him precisely what the legislators of Massachusetts had feared that he himself would prove to be to them. He publicly declared himself in favor of "a due and moderate restraint and punishing" of some of the oddities of the Quakers. ”

“ Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled, and by the authority of the same, That a tract of Land at the south western extremity of the town of Groton, bounded by a line beginning at a large white oak stump, on the southeast side of Nashua River, being the northwest corner of the town of Harvard; thence running southeasterly on Harvard line, as the town bounds direct, till it comes to the stump of a pine tree lately fallen down, an antient bound mark in said town line ”

“ Gorton’s residence on, 13, 37, 112 Settlement of Aquidneck on, 29 Efforts of Massachusetts authorities to control, 50, 55 Narragansett Indians. Allies of Gorton, 10 Gorton purchases Shawomet of, 37 Gorton obtains their submission to Great Britain, 51-53 Massachusetts declares war against, 53 Gorton publishes their submission in London, 55 New England Confederation, 39, 53 Nowell, Increase, on Gorton’s alleged blasphemies, 39, and note, 83, note. ”

“ The next year, 1642, thirteen citizens of Providence petitioned Boston for assistance and protection against him; and not long after, four of the petitioners submitted their persons and lands to the authority of Massachusetts.10 Although to accept this submission was to step beyond their bounds under the Massachusetts charter, the authorities at Boston, in October, 1642, gave a formal notice of their intention to maintain the claim of the submissionists.11 To this notice Gorton replied, November 20, 1642, in a letter full of abstruse theology and rancorous invective. ”

“ What is the cure for these shrivelled dividends? Clearly, is it not, to bring in cheap labor? Let every man who has nothing and wants much, take shares in
"The Cheap Labor Society."
Seeing what has been done for Massachusetts, it is easy to see what can be done. And what has been done? In fifty years she has built up Lowell, and Lawrence, and Worcester, and Holyoke, and many more great towns. She has increased Boston to a population of 341,919 souls—or bodies—in the year of grace 1875. ”

“ Hutchinson, that the civil peace of Massachusetts had been endangered. The outcome showed, however, that the cruel and immoral power of the clergy and magistrates was coming to be opposed by a growing body of healthy and liberal opinion. The bloody sentence demanded by them had been refused by the people’s leaders, and public opinion had finally secured the reversal, within a year, of the milder one that had been executed. The confusion of Gorton’s own religious views, and his incoherence in expressing them, could in themselves have won him little popular support. ”

“ The gentleman from Alabama (Judge Hopkins) , has hinted to us that the Southern States may find it necessary to protect themselves against this action of Massachusetts, by legislation that shall touch her material interests. Threats of that kind, sir, have no terrors for Massachusetts. Her people will laugh to scorn all such idle threats, by whomsoever made. Massachusetts, with one million of intelligent people, with free schools, free churches, free labor, is competent to take care of her own material interests. ”

“ This density gives her 221.78 persons to a square mile, a far greater ratio than any state except Rhode Island. This neighborly proximity has its social tendencies, which may account in part for the hospitable amenities which are a rightful part of Massachusetts' well known loyalty to a higher regard for the purest type of home, a comparative statement of the density of population of a few states.
As inseparable as night is from day, so also are the ills of life from life itself. Massachusetts is no exception to the inexorable law which defines the conditions [pg 445] of human society ”

“ In 1839, she removed from Groton, with her mother and family, to Jamaica Plain, a few miles from Boston; and thence, shortly, to Cambridge and New York. Boston, however, was her point d'appui, and in it she formed acquaintances of every class, the most utilitarian and the most idealistic. ”

“ This territory is now entirely within the State of New Hampshire, lying mostly in Mason, but partly in Brookline, Wilton, Milford, and Greenville. It touches in no place the tract, hitherto erroneously [pg 344] supposed to comprise the Gore. It was destined, however, to remain only a few years in the possession of the proprietors; but during this short period it was used by them for pasturing cattle. Mr. John B. Hill, in his History of the Town of Mason, New Hampshire, says:—
Under this grant, the inhabitants of Groton took possession of, and occupied the territory. ”

“ The Honorable Robert C. Winthrop, a descendant in the seventh generation from our honored First Governor, seizing upon a brief vacation-interval in the course of his high public service, made a visit to England in the summer of 1847. He was naturally drawn towards his ancestral home at Groton, in Suffolk. The borough itself, with its own due share of historic interest, from men of mark and their deeds, is composed of one of those clusters of villages which are sure in an English landscape to have some charm in their picturesque combinations. ”

“ Owing to the death of Mason, and the failure of Gorges's plans for Maine, the settlements north of Massachusetts were without a settled government, and the inhabitants do not seem to have had the ability to create a stable one for themselves, which was so marked a characteristic of those in Massachusetts and Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven. ”