Watertown, Massachusetts

“ Apart from other factors, the church-covenant idea, brought by the Pilgrims, accepted by Endicott, and indorsed by the three churches formed by the Winthrop colonists, in 1630, at Dorchester, Charlestown, and Watertown, was the seed of a democratic conception of the state, which grew so persistently as to defy all efforts of its own planters to destroy it. The attitude of the two most influential Massachusetts leaders, lay and ecclesiastical, is not a matter of inference. ”

“ Whereas, upon some reasons and grounds, there are to remove from this our Commonwealth and body of the Massachusetts in America divers of our loving friends and neighbors, freemen and members of Newtown, Dorchester, Watertown, and other places, who are resolved to transport themselves and their estates unto the river of Connecticut, there to reside and inhabit ”

“ The township is at the head of navigation on the Charles, and occupies the fertile undulating plains along the river running back to a range of hills, the highest of which are Whitney Hill (200 ft.) and Meeting House Hill (250 ft.) . ”

“ In 1630 the “Colony of Massachusetts Bay” was augmented by the arrival of a large number of settlers, many of them being people of education and refinement. The towns of Boston, Watertown, Roxbury, and Dorchester were founded. In August the first Court of Assistants met since the arrival of the colonists, and voted to build houses and to raise salaries for ministers. This year was made a bold step toward the establishment of civil liberty in the removing of the governing council from England to Massachusetts. In 1633 the settlement of Connecticut was begun. ”

“ As soon as he could settle his affairs, Washington started for Boston. In New York he heard the news of Bunker Hill, and was cheered by it. He arrived on July 2 in [Pg 301] Watertown, where the Massachusetts congress was sitting, and received a congratulatory address. He then pressed on to Cambridge, which he reached on the same day. On the 3d, a year and a day before the Declaration of Independence, and according to tradition under the great elm still standing near Cambridge Common, he took command of the army. ”

“ Watertown was founded about 1836 by settlers who gave it the name of their former home, Watertown, New York. Afterwards there was a great influx of Germans, particularly after the Revolution of 1848, among them being Carl Schurz, who began the practice of law here. Germans by birth or descent still constitute a majority of the population. Watertown was incorporated as a village in 1849, and was chartered as a city in 1853. ”

“ Watertown is situated in a fertile agricultural and dairying region, of which it is a distributing centre, and it ships large quantities of farm produce and dairy products (especially cheese) . The Black river furnishes water-power which is utilized by manufacturing establishments of diversified character. In 1905 he city's factory product was valued at $8,371,618. Watertown was settled during the late years of the 18th century. ”

“ The chief towns on its banks are the Newtons, Waltham, Watertown, Cambridge, Brookline, and Boston. Below Watertown the stream is tidal, and between Cambridge on one side and Boston on the other it widens into an estuary, part of which has been filled in, and is known as Back Bay. ”

“ From the beginning the Watertown & Rome played a most important part in the life of the steadily growing territory that it served. Northern New York was finally beginning to come into its own. More than a hundred thousand folk already were residing in Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Lewis counties. No longer was it regarded as a vast wilderness somewhere north of the Erie Canal. Horace Greeley had visited it in the fifties, had lectured in what was afterwards Washington Hall, Watertown, and had been tremendously impressed by Mr. Bradford’s portable steam engine. ”

“ The newspapers we take, are enough to confound any man; but these creatures are worse than the London news-writers. Sometimes we are told that Baltimore is burnt; and then that New York is taken; and we have been positively assured that old New England has declared for the British; and that the governor of Massachusetts and his council had dined on board a British man of war in Boston harbor; and that President Madison had been hanged in effigy in Boston, Newburyport and Portsmouth. ”

“ Dorchester was the residence of Captain Israel Stoughton, and Watertown the residence of Richard Brown and John Oldham, all three of whom had been under the ban of the orthodox Puritan church. At Watertown also had sprung up the first decided opposition to the aristocratic claim of the court of assistants to lay taxes on the people. As for Newtown (now Cambridge) , its inhabitants could not forget that, though selected in the first instance as the capital of the colony, it had afterwards been discarded for the town of Boston. ”

“ At that same Gouverneur meeting a memorial was prepared for the Trustees of the Village of Watertown. It asked, as an important link of the pathway for the new railroad, the use of Factory Street for its entire length. Factory Street, as we have already seen, was one of the most aristocratic, as well as one of the prettiest streets of the town. So great was Watertown’s appreciation of the advantages that were to accrue to it by the [Pg 68] completion of the line steel highway to the north that the permission was finally granted by the Trustees, not, however, without a considerable opposition. ”

“ The population of Watertown was also preponderantly German—not indeed so much impregnated with the Forty-eight spirit as were the Milwaukeeans, although in Watertown, too, I found a former university student whom in September, 1848, I had met as a fellow-member of the Students' Congress at Eisenach, Mr. Emil Rothe, and several other men who had taken part in the revolutionary movements of the time. ”

“ Wachusett is, in fact, the observatory of the State. There lay Massachusetts, spread out before us in its length and breadth, like a map. There was the level horizon, which told of the sea on the east and south, the well-known hills of New Hampshire on the north, and the misty summits of the Hoosac and Green Mountains, first made visible to us the evening before, blue and unsubstantial, like some bank of clouds which the morning wind would dissipate, on the northwest and west. ”

“ The first meeting of the Directors was held, as we have just seen, on January 9, 1852. Most of the men, who were that day elected as Directors, had gone on that day to Gouverneur—many others too. Watertown, Gouverneur, Canton and Potsdam were present in their citizens, men of [Pg 66] worth and distinction in their home communities. Their families are yet represented in Northern New York, and succeeding generations owe to them a debt of gratitude for their unselfish work in that early day. ”

“ Thousands died whose names have never been known; perishing when no eye could witness their fortitude, nor praise their devotion to their country."
A very interesting account is given in Dwight's Travels of the capture and escape of General Wadsworth. He had been for many years a member of Congress—and was sent by the legislature of Massachusetts to command in the District of Maine. In February, 1781, he dismissed his troops, and made preparations for his return to Boston. ”

“ If we divide the known countries of the globe into thirty equal parts, five will be found to be Christians, six Mahometans, and NINETEEN Pagans. It is difficult to believe that the first man, the governor and commander in chief of the great and respectable commonwealth of Massachusetts, can seriously expect that the missionary societies of England and of Boston can effect this immense task or that it ever was the design of Providence that all the families of the earth should think alike on subjects of religion. ”

“ The men who walked its pleasant maple-shaded streets were real men, indeed: the Flower brothers—George W., Anson R. and Roswell P.—George B. Phelps, Norris Winslow, the Knowlton brothers—John C. and George W.—Talcott H. Camp, George A. Bagley, these were the men who were the town’s captains of industry of that day. An earlier generation had passed away; Norris Woodruff, O. V. Brainard, Orville Hungerford; these men had played their large parts in the upbuilding of Watertown and were gone or else living in advanced years. A new generation of equal energy and ability had come to replace them. ”

“ Oh, you have no idea what a city Waterville has become. The great waterpower has been effectually harnessed, the streets are paved; electric car lines, planing mills, and scores of other manufacturing concerns are in full operation. Our population is now 246numbered by thousands, instead of hundreds, while busy activity and prosperity are apparent on every hand.”
“You quite astonish me, old fellow,” replied Vance, “indeed you do; but I needed no greater proof of Waterville’s prosperity than your report of the sale of lots belonging to my New York friends. ”

“ It made steam engines and sewing machines. All in all it created a very considerable traffic for its railroad—in reality for its railroads, for in 1872 a rival line had come to contest the monopoly of the Rome, Watertown & Ogdensburgh; of which more in good time.
As went Watertown, so went the rest of the North Country. It was a brisk, prosperous land, where industry and culture shared their forces. There was a plenitude of manufacturing even outside of Watertown, whilst the mines at Keene and Rossie had reopened and were shipping a modest five or six cars a day of really splendid red ore. ”

“ Worcester, nestling among the hills along the Blackstone River, the second city in Massachusetts, the heart of the Commonwealth, has a population of about 85,000.
Shut in by its wall of hills, it seemed, as I first came into it, something like a little miniature world in itself. It possesses some share of all the good we know. Nature, that "comely mother," has laid her caressing hand upon it. Art has made many a beautiful structure to adorn its streets. Commerce smiles upon it. While its wonderful manufactures seem to form a great living, throbbing heart for the city. ”

“ The most ancient town in Massachusetts appears quite like an affair of yesterday, compared with Rochester. Its attributes of youth are the activity and eager life with which it is redundant. The whole street, sidewalks and centre, was crowded with pedestrians, horsemen, stage-coaches, gigs, light wagons, and heavy ox-teams, all hurrying, trotting, rattling, and rumbling, in a throng that passed continually, but never passed away. ”

“ It should be remembered that they were all citizens of the United States, sailing in merchant ships; and yet the merchants, at least those of Boston, and the other New-England sea-ports, have, very generally, mocked the complaints of impressed seamen, and derided their representations, and have even denied the story of their impressment. Even the Governor of Massachusetts (Strong) has affected in his public speeches to the Legislature to represent this crying outrage, as the mere groundless clamor of a party opposed to his election? ”

“ Strong as a sensible and correct man, and a true patriot, his conduct as governor of Massachusetts, especially as to the time of organizing a convention, of which the English promised themselves countenance and aid, must have appeared more than strange to us in captivity. ”

“ It appears from this return that he made the attempted service by delivering a copy of the summons to William H. Rohr, the last mayor of the city; a copy to Henry Bieber, city clerk; a copy to Charles H. Gardner, city attorney; and a copy to Thomas Baxter, the last presiding officer of the board of street commissioners of the city of Watertown; the office of mayor being vacant, and there being no president of the common council, nor presiding officer thereof, in office. ”

“ It is significant of the altered conditions of modern life that a larger proportion of the population of Washington—the serious settlement of which dates back but a little over forty years, which spreads over more than eight times the area of Massachusetts, and which is not yet a manufacturing State—resides in cities of over 8,000 inhabitants, than was the case in Massachusetts as late as 1840, nearly two centuries and a quarter after the Plymouth landing, and when it had long been the principal manufacturing State in the Union. ”

“ As the result of these extended journeys and herculean labors, Brother Frink, during the year, formed classes at Fort Atkinson, Jefferson, Piperville, Oconomowoc, Summit, Baxter's Prairie, Waukesha, Poplar Creek, Brookfield, Wauwatosa, Granville, Menomonee, Lisbon and North Prairie, but was unable to gather sufficient materials to form one at Watertown. ”

“ And indubitably first in importance no less than in natural order is the great fact of his heredity. William Dwight Whitney was born, in 1827, at Northampton, Massachusetts, and in his veins flowed the best blood of a typical New England community, of the Dwights and the Hawleys,—heroes of the heroic age of Hampshire. His stock was remarkable for sturdy vigor, both of body and of intellect, and was in fact that genuine aristocracy which, if it be true to its traditions, will remain—as for generations it has been—one of the prime guarantees of the permanence of democracy in America. ”