WHAT WAS THE HEIGH-HO CLUB? The above picture and a letter vaguely that the club was encouraged were sent to us by a woman from or started by the Unitarian minister Orleans, Massachusetts. There are (Hobbs?) but it was never ten signatures on the back of the religiously affiliated. It seems to picture: have been purely social, sponsoring plays, outings, dances, etc. James H. Critchett We have unfortunately failed to Everett H. Critchett find any reference at the Watertown Harry F. Gould Public Library to this club, Waldo Stone Green however, several of these names were Francis Hathaway Kendall found to be associated with the Benjamin Fay McGlauflin Theodore Parker Fraternity cf the Alfred Foster Jewett First Parish Unitarian Church. Royal David Evans If you or a friend or relative LaForest Harris Howe have any pertinent information on William Henry Benjamin Jr the Heigh-Ho Club or any of its members, please send it to us. This The letter states that sometime is an interesting sidelight on life after 1905, a group of college-age in Watertown in the early 1900's and young men from Watertown formed "The we would like to explore it further. Heigh-Ho Club". She remembers WATERTOWN - HOW IT GREW! On November 16, 1994 a joint and establishing trade and commerce, meeting between the Friends of the for Watertown stood at the crossing Library and the Historical Society place on the Charles River for the of Watertown was conducted in the stagecoach route on the road west. Pratt room of the Free Public Freight was unloaded here for Library. The meeting was dedicated transport overland. Mills, shops and to the late Charles T. Burke, who taverns clustered below the falls. had a •significant impact on both of Trees felled upstream were floated these organizations during his life. downstream to Boston. The program consisted of an illustrated lecture on the events that led to the establishment of the Free Public Library in Watertown and was given by Sigrid Reddy Watson. We have included the text of Sigrid's speech and some of the photographs, courtesy of the Free Public Library in Watertown, for the benefit of those who were not able to attend. For those who were, this printing will give you an opportunity to linger over the information that was presented to u s . In this talk I shall attempt to trace the evolution of the "Arbella" intellectual and social climate in Watertown, and in the nation, that The Revolutionary War period led to the establishment of free saw the Provincial Congress assemble public libraries in general and to in the Fowle House. Paul Revere the Watertown Public Library in printed Provincial currency here. particular. I plan to refer in this George Washington visited here on talk to examples of people and his way to take command of the places relevant to these events, troops in Cambridge, staying most of which took place during the overnight at the Coolidge tavern. 19th century. Trade and commerce continued their growth around the Grist Mill, which stood near the river crossing for Watertown, as we know, was the three hundred years. In New England, first inland settlement in after the Revolution, the First Massachusetts. The settlers of the Parish represented the Established Massachusetts Bay Colony on the ship Congregational Church; the Town "Arbella" had arrived to found maintained the meeting house and the Salem, but it was not long before a clock in the church tower. dissident element left to establish Although the governing class a community in Watertown, up the was identified with the Charles River from Boston, which was Congregational Church, many citizens established in the same year in what were not active in church affairs, is now Dorchester. The years before having come to the new world foJ^ the Revolution were spent dealing other reasons than the search for with the Indians, defining the religious freedom. Some, for Town's boundaries, quarreling about example, were indentured servants the location of the Meeting House working to earn their freedom from 2 their masters; others were fortune hunters. Although the first religious "Great Awakening" had aken place in the Colonies beginning early in the 18th century, it was not until early in the 19th century, with independence from British rule, that there occurred a new religious revival, a declaration of independence from conformity. Throughout the country, people had arrived with different religious convictions. The release from pressure to conform, together with the disestablishment of the Congregational Church and the withdrawal of support from the local Lydia Maria Child government (in Watertown in 1837) led to greater desire for religious slavery and edited the "National freedom in New England. The Baptists Anti-Slavery Standard" for William and other Protestant denominations Lloyd Garrison, publisher of the felt that they should not have to "Liberator." Henry Ward Beecher, the pay the Church tax, and went on to brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe, build their own churches in author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Watertown. preached at the Phillips Church. T h e influence of During the 1840's 150,000 people Transcendentalism in the new joined anti-slavery societies. James Unitarian movement divided the Russell Lowell, a Harvard professor ^Congregational Church and led to the and poet, who married Maria White of orthodox Congregationalists, who Watertown, was active in the still believed in the Trinity, movement. Senator Charles Sumner, leaving the First Parish to found whose statue by Anne Whitney stands t h e Phillips Church. in Harvard Square, spoke so Transcendentalism, reflected in the offensively in the Senate Chamber writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, was against slavery in 1856 and so important in generating a movement insulted his colleagues from the for the abolition of slavery South that he was severely beaten on throughout the North. It affirmed a the Senate floor by Senator Preston belief in the divinity of human Brooks of South Carolina. In 1857, nature and appeared as intense the Dred Scott case further individualism in some, and in others polarized opinion between the South a passionate sympathy for the poor and the North, demolishing the and oppressed. Convers Francis, the agreement embodied in the Missouri minister of Watertown's Unitarian Compromise. Dred Scott, a slave, and Church, was outspoken against his wife had been taken into free slavery. Here also, Theodore Parker territory by their master and started a school. He was ordained in petitioned for their freedom in the 1841 and became a famous court at St. Louis. After decisions abolitionist orator. While and appeals, the case reached the opposition to slavery was not by any Supreme Court, where Chief Justice means universal in the North, among Taney handed down the decision the intellectual leaders in the denying the petition, asserting Boston area it became a major cause, among other things that negroes had bydia Maria Francis Child, the no right to freedom under the sister of Convers Francis, lived Constitution. One of the dissenters with him and his wife In the house to this decision was Benjamin on Riverside Street, established a Robbins Curtis, who, with his school, wrote polemics denouncing brother, had been brought up by his 3 widowed mother in Watertown, had nature, and in 1851 "The Atlantic' gone to Harvard and later had been Monthly" published one of her poems, appointed to the Supreme Court by which had been sent in without her President Fillmore. He was so knowledge by Maria's husband James.^ outraged by what he considered a bad Celia's birthplace on the Isle o f ^ decision that he resigned from the Shoals eventually became a Unitarian Court and resumed private practice, conference center. later defending President Andrew Johnson in his impeachment hearing. The movement for the abolition of slavery was supported not only by great writers and preachers like Emerson’ Parker, Lowell and Sumner but also by such women as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria Child and Lucy Stone Blackwell. Lucy Stone was descended from Gregory Stone, who with his brother, Simon, had settled in Watertown in 1635. She was a champion of women's rights as well as those of negro slaves, and converted Susan B. Anthony to the cause in 1850 at the first National Women's Rights convention in Worcester. Lucy married Henry Blackwell, an abolitionist and brother of Elizabeth Blackwell, an early woman physician. Lucy became a Unitarian, and for many years edited the " Woman's Journal." In addition to supporting abolition, women's suffrage and the temperance movement, Watertown women were active in the literary life of The cultural life of Watertown Massachusetts. James Russell Lowell was enriched by other women artists, married Maria White, whom he had met among them Ellen Robbins, another through his classmate, William cousin of the Thaxters and Curtises. White. Maria Lowell had a cousin, She showed her love of nature by Levi Thaxter, whose home stood on doing watercolor paintings of Main Street. His wife, Celia, wrote flowers, several of which are in the poetry reflecting her love of library. She also painted a charming picture of Celia Thaxter in her island garden. Although education for women in the mid-19th century differed from men's and few attended college (Lucy Stone, who graduated from Oberlin, was an exception) , schools for the education of females were founded by Lydia Maria Child and others, and we must not forget that Henry Fowle Durant and his wife, Pauline, founded Wellesley College. With the focus on intellectual, political and cultural activities, Watertown produced others, women artists who attaine<fo> international renown. Anne Whitney, Maria White Lowell a cousin of Lucy Stone's, developed 4 ■ her considerable talent for The mid-nineteenth century was sculpture by studying in New York a period of industrial growth and and Philadelphia and spending four development which not only changed years in Rome.