Newbury, Massachusetts

“ CHAPTER III. NEWBURY. Newbury was one of the twenty-odd townships, five miles square, that then made up the county of Geauga, and a part of the Western Reserve, the Yankee-doodledom of Ohio, settled exclusively by emigrants from New England. It was so much of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, etc., translated into the broader and freer West. It has been said that the Yankee, like a certain vegetable, heads best when transplanted. ”

“ Michael's remains to-day an interesting memorial of Anglican worship in the colonies. It was the third church in Massachusetts, and the fourth in all New England, those of Boston, Newbury, and Newport alone having preceded it.
The names of famous people are perpetuated in the place of their birth in many ways. ”

“ As was said above, William, Anthony, and Robert Morse, brothers of Samuel, Jr., emigrated to America, and became the ancestors of nearly all of their name in this country. William and Anthony settled at Newbury, Massachusetts. The latter became a respected citizen, and among his descendants were such men as Rev. ”

“ Hearing that the difficulties would probably be adjusted, he embarked for Massachusetts, the vessel was taken off Newburyport. He was in Newbury Jail, February, 1776, when at the solicitation of his sister, the mother of Harrison Gray Otis, an order was passed to allow his removal to the Otis homestead in Barnstable on condition of his giving a bond with security in £1,000 not to pass without the limits of that town, or deal or correspond with the enemy. Mr. Gray was in London, January, 1781. ”

“ Moody, William Henry, was born in Newbury, Mass., educated at Phillips Academy, Andover, and graduated from Harvard in 1876. He took up the law, and became district-attorney of the east district of Massachusetts in 1890, serving till 1895. ”

“ J. L., of Lawrence, Massachusetts. His flattering notice has been received. We trust the future course will give no less cause for satisfaction.
J. W. and J. S. J. The letter of these devoted friends was received, and the North Star forwarded to Albany, as requested. Their absence from the Rochester Bazaar and annual meeting was much regretted. They will act as Agents.
B. W. R., N. Newbury, Ohio. His list of cash subscribers are gratefully acknowledged. ”

“ Newburyport, in Essex county, Massachusetts, at the mouth of the Merrimack, is remarkable for the beauty of its situation, and the regularity of its streets. It stands upon a gentle declivity sloping down to the river, the streets are generally straight and at right angles, and the town lies along the bank of the river for about a mile. The principal streets pass through the whole width of the town, from the summit of the declivity to the river. The buildings are generally handsome, and the streets clean. Few towns in the United States surpass Newburyport in beauty. ”

“ There is the large, square house, three stories in height, which came into vogue early in the nineteenth century. Then there is the double-decked house with its roof ornamentations, and the plain house of the purest colonial type, an illustration of the latter being the Dalton house at Newburyport, Massachusetts.
This house stands on the principal street in Newburyport, a seaport city, where in the days of [Pg 190] commercial prosperity ships lined the wharves, as they came and went in their traffic with foreign lands. ”

“ The cloth industry is long extinct in Newbury, but large wool fairs are held annually; there is considerable agricultural trade, and there are breweries and flour mills. A racecourse was opened in the vicinity of the town in 1905, and six meetings are held annually. The borough is under a mayor, 6 aldermen and 18 councillors. Area, 1828 acres.
Newbury (Neubiri, Neubiry) possibly owes its origin to the village of Speen on the other side of the Kennet, which probably marks the site of the Roman station Spinae. The name Newbury (new town or borough) is first mentioned by Odericus Vitalis ”

“ Under the name of Newtown a settlement was made on its territory, then much more extended than at present, by some of the first company of English colonists on Massachusetts Bay in 1630. It was then proposed to make it the capital of the colony; but the neighbouring peninsula of Boston was found more convenient for commerce and defence against the Indians. ”

“ It is likely, therefore, that the papers which concerned the 205 passengers of those vessels might be taken to Salem, perhaps during Governor Endicott’s administration, and placed in the hands of some official person at that place, so as to be more accessible to the home of the people in question, instead of being retained at Boston, the journey to which from Newbury was in those days a long and tedious one, to be made on foot through the wilderness.
To many persons the abstract of the Charter of Charles I., which is a very liberal one, can hardly fail to be interesting. ”

“ The inhabitants are about one hundred; they live solely by fishing, and in connection with those of the shore in their immediate neighborhood, who follow the same mode of life, are the most rude and uncivilized beings in New England, except the Indians. They supply the markets of Newburyport with fish, and have long been known there by the name of Algerines. Efforts have recently been made to improve their social condition.
In the northern part of Massachusetts, at the mouth of the Merrimack, lies Plum Island, nine miles long and one wide. ”

“ At Newport there was a great exodus of passengers and baggage about 3 o'clock, and some two hours later the steamer, passing up Narraganset Bay, arrived at Fall River, where we landed, and took our places in a train of the Old Colony Railroad for Boston. Fall River, which one might take to be a cascading stream, turned out to be an enormous manufacturing town of some 50,000 people, all factories, chimneys, and storehouses, and what we saw of Massachusetts as we ran through it gave us a higher idea of its commercial activity and manufacturing industry than of its natural advantages. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Newark, capital of Essex county, New Jersey, is handsomely built, and finely situated on the west side of Passaic river. It is one of the most beautiful towns in the country. It has extensive manufactures of shoes, leather, coaches, and cabinet work. Morris canal passes through this town. Population, seventeen thousand two hundred and ninety-two.
New Bedford, port of entry in Bristol county, Massachusetts, stands on an arm of Buzzard’s bay, about fifty-two miles south of Boston. ”

“ 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. ”

“ State Societies in the New England States, which has been already accomplished in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, the operations of the New England Society during the past year have been very much confined to Massachusetts, and hereafter it will be only a State Society. ”

“ His observations at Boston confirm his observations at Philadelphia and New York. “I meet,” he writes, “with the same opinions as in the provinces already visited, only expressed with greater violence and acrimony. The four provinces composing New England — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire — appear to be more firmly united among themselves, on account of the community of interests, than the remaining colonies. Massachusetts in particular, the most wealthy and populous, gives the impulse and the signal of independence to the rest. ”

“ The Newbury road runs about half a mile north of the river past Stock Cross and Benham Park to Speen, generally supposed to be identical with Spinae, the Roman station at the junction of the roads from Bath and Cirencester to Silchester. Not far from the rebuilt church is an ancient well over which has been erected in recent years a Gothic arch. One mile farther, eight from Hungerford, and we are in Newbury, perhaps the "new burb" in comparison with the older settlement of Speen. A castle built in 1140 was in existence but a few years. ”

“ Let us dedicate it to the sacrifice that is required in these present days. Let us dedicate it to the hope of the future. Let us dedicate it to New England ideals—those ideals that have made Massachusetts one of the strong States of the Nation; strong enough so that in Revolutionary days we contributed far in excess of our portion of men and money to that great struggle; strong enough so that the whole Nation has looked to Massachusetts in days of stress for comfort and support. ”

“ Presently the Dutch made war upon England, and the king felt it to be unwise to irritate the people of Massachusetts beyond endurance. The turbulent state of English politics which followed still further absorbed his attention, and New England had another respite of several years. [ [Sidenote: Founding of Newark]
In New Haven a party had grown up which was dissatisfied with its extreme theocratic policy and approved of the union with Connecticut. Davenport and his followers, the founders of the colony, were beyond measure disgusted. ”

“ It is built of bricks of a good deep rich red—not the painfully bright red so much in use now—and no person has had the bad taste to spoil the harmony by introducing stone and stucco. Moreover, Newbury has, in Shaw House, an Elizabethan mansion of the rarest beauty. Let him that is weary of the ugliness and discords in our town buildings go and stand by the ancient cedar at the gate and look across the wide green lawn at this restful house, subdued by time to a tender rosy-red colour on its walls and a deep dark red on its roof, clouded with grey of lichen. ”

“ The foundation of Boston was succeeded by that of many other now famous towns of Massachusetts, and, ten years after the arrival of Conant at Salem, 21,000 emigrants are said to have settled in New England, one and all being Puritans, most of whom had been driven from their homes in their native land by the intolerance of the Government. Among those Puritans, however, were many who were unable to conform to the rigid practices or subscribe to the stern tenets of the Massachusetts churches, and to this fact was due the foundation of the first settlement in the neighboring state of Rhode Island. ”

“ Edward Newbury indeed belonged to a type not common in our upper class, yet always represented there, and in its main characteristics to be traced back at least to the days of Laud and the Neoplatonists. It is a spiritual, a mystical type, developed under English aristocratic conditions and shaped by them. Newbury had been brought up in a home steeped in high Anglican tradition. His grandfather, old Lord Broadstone, had been one of the first and keenest supporters of the Oxford movement, a friend of Pusey, Keble, and Newman, and later on of Liddon, Church, and Wilberforce. ”

“ Throughout New England as a whole, the daily routine of life was pursued without regard to the particular form of government established in Boston. In Massachusetts the election of deputies stopped, but in other respects the town meetings carried on their usual business. In other colonies no changes whatever took place. Men tilled the soil, went to church, gathered in town meetings, and ordered their ordinary affairs as they had done for half a century. ”

“ And indeed she began to grow as great a gossip as any in Newbury, and would sometimes come home very late at night, insomuch that once her husband John went up to bed and locked her out, and took the key up into his chamber. And when the good wife found she was locked out, she knocked very hard, till at last her husband looked put of the window, and told her to look out her lodging that night at the place she had been sitting all day. Such gossips as you, says he, the cage is he fittest lodging for. ”

“ All those interested in New England could not fail to recognize, with varying emotions, that the situation had altered. The possibility that England might at last be able to exercise authority over her dependencies could bode nothing but evil to the rulers of Massachusetts, in view of their record, theological beliefs, and political aspirations. To the proprietors of Maine and New Hampshire, on the other hand, it meant the possibility of recovering their properties, which, in turn, portended unsettlement and trouble for the inhabitants of those provinces. ”

“ The traveller approaching by the Connecticut Valley holds this exquisite landscape in view from the Vermont side of the river. The tourist who approaches by the valley of the Merrimac enjoys it from the New Hampshire shore.
The large village of Newbury, usually known as the “Street,” is built along a plateau, rising well above the intervale, and joined to the foothills of the Green Mountains. The Passumpsic Railway coasts the intervale, just touching the northern skirt of the village. The village of Haverhill is similarly situated with respect to the skirt of the White Mountains ”