Border Lands
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Borderlands Report A 2019 note from the author: The report that follows was prepared in 2004 on the cusp of good digital reproductions – the images here leave much to be desired and you might want to check out Pierre Humblet’s recommendation for better pictures: A lot of the postcards and pictures about Royalston were originally stereographs by J. French, in Keene NH. We believe most were taken at the request of H.C. Bartlett. One displays a building that was moved in late 1874, and another one a building that was built in 1872, so they would date from 1872-1874. For example go to: https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/collections/robert-n-dennis-collection-of-stereoscopic- views#/?tab=navigation and type "departed power" or "looking up the glen" (including the quotes) in the search box. At the time this report was written, maps were photocopied only – those referred to in this report are housed either in the Massachusetts Archives, the Royalston Historical Society, or assorted other repositories in the county. There is a wealth of information in many of the maps, and you are encouraged to seek them out. A note about notes: footnotes are located at the bottom of relevant pages and provide relevant commentary; source citations (Arabic numbers) are relegated to endnote status at the end of the report. As you wade through the minutiae included in this study prepared for a management plan, I hope you will discover bits & pieces of life, work and land back then that help Royalston’s – and your – history come alive. ekt 2019 ii BORDER LANDS Land Use History and Cultural Resources at Royalston Falls Reservation Jacobs Hill Reservation Doanes Falls Reservation Royalston, Massachusetts A report prepared by Electa Kane Tritsch for The Trustees of Reservations 2004 Copyright 2004. All rights reserved iii CONTENTS SECTION ONE: OVERVIEW OF HISTORIC LAND USE AND DEVELOPMENT I. Introduction: Purpose and Scope .............................................................................1 II. Methodology and Sources........................................................................................2 III. Prehistory .................................................................................................................4 IV. The Youngest Town (1750-1800) ............................................................................8 V. New Kid on the Block (1800-1850).......................................................................12 VI. The Agricultural Continuum (1800-1910) .............................................................14 VII. The Power of Wood ...............................................................................................19 VIII. Royalston Outpaced: Industry After 1850 .............................................................23 IX. Royalston Redefined: 20th Century Change..........................................................24 SECTION TWO: ROYALSTON FALLS RESERVATION I. Royalston Falls Summary of Ownership and Occupation .....................................30 II. Local Land Use History – Introduction ................................................................32 III. Families at the Falls ...............................................................................................32 IV. Falls Road Farms ...................................................................................................36 V. The 24th Reservation .............................................................................................40 SECTION THREE: JACOBS HILL RESERVATION I. Jacobs Hill Summary of Ownership and Occupation ............................................45 II. Local Land Use History – Introduction ................................................................48 III. What’s in a Name? ................................................................................................48 IV. Owners and Abutters .............................................................................................52 V. The 60th Reservation .............................................................................................53 SECTION FOUR: DOANES FALLS RESERVATION I. Doanes Falls Summary of Ownership and Occupation .........................................57 II. Local Land Use History - Introduction .................................................................65 III. The First Privilege .................................................................................................66 IV. Amos Doane and His ‘Unique Concern’ ..............................................................71 V. The Doanes Falls Neighborhood ..........................................................................74 VI. Water and Edward Bragg ......................................................................................77 VII. The 32nd Reservation ............................................................................................81 iv SECTION FIVE: DOCUMENTATION I. Appendices A. Photographs ................................................................................................... B. Disposition of Isaac Royall Lands ................................................................. C. Prouty’s Mill ................................................................................................. E. Deed Transcriptions and Excerpts 1877 Whipple to Wheeler (Royalston Falls) ................................................. 1863 Perkins to Perkins (Jacobs Hill – Thompson parcel) ............................ 1873 Ripley to Clement (Jacobs Hill – Hill parcel) ....................................... 1797 – 1913 Nichols Mills (Doanes Falls) ................................................... 1827 – 1859 Amos Doane Property (Doanes Falls) ..................................... II. Bibliography III. Endnotes 1 SECTION ONE OVERVIEW OF HISTORIC LAND USE AND DEVELOPMENT ROYALSTON, MASSACHUSETTS The western flank of the central uplands is one of Massachusetts’ best-kept and most spectacular secrets. James Skehan, Roadside Geology of Massachusetts, 2001 Not only do the hill-tops present scenes of beauty, but the streams in the valleys below contain gorges and waterfalls, with the grandest and wildest of natural scenery. George W. Horr, “Royalston,” History of Worcester County, 1879 I. Introduction: Purpose and Scope The town of Royalston, 42.4 square miles in area, is the third largest town in Worcester County and one of its least known. Located in the far northwest corner of the county on the New Hampshire line, Royalston is centered on a 1,000 foot high plateau to which roads climb from Athol, Templeton and Winchendon to the south and east; Warwick and Orange to the west. North of the center the land continues to rise toward New Hampshire, with Prospect Hill, about 1500 feet high, the highest elevation in town. Roads, ridges and rivers tend to run north-south, their routes determined, as in much of central New England, by a series of glacial advances and retreats. The true western flank of the central uplands, however, as Skehan describes it, lies west of Royalston Common, where the ridge line that includes Jacobs Hill and Prospect Hill plunges as much as 500 feet down in as little as 500 feet across, to the Tully River valley. On the west side of the river, similarly spectacular though less consistent inclines rise to Davis Hill and Wyman Hill. The Tully valley and its flanking uplands are thought to be visible remains of the greatest earth- 2 moving event in local history: the creation of Pangaea, when the Laurentian and Gondwanan terranes collided 400 million years ago.1 More recently, glaciers worked at carving through the gneiss that underlies much of Royalston (located on what geologists call the “Tully Dome”) with uneven success, creating the falls that are the centerpieces of Royalston’s three Trustees of Reservations properties. Doanes Falls, Jacobs Hill and Royalston Falls Reservations owe much of their character to geological events that shaped the landscape millennia before humans began using the land. The severity of these events was also the main reason that George Horr, writing in 1879, could still marvel at the wildest of natural scenery in a region where most waterfalls had been thoroughly developed for industrial use years earlier. An understanding of the permanent impact of nature on culture at The Trustees’ Royalston reservations is best achieved within the context of the town’s land use history. Royalston’s history is shorter, and more sparsely populated than that of most Massachusetts towns. It is a border community – between states, between counties, even between prehistoric continents. Historically, border lands attract, and hold, smaller populations than other areas. They are border lands for any number of reasons, from difficulty of access to paucity of natural resources to challenging climate – usually a combination of all three. II. Methodology and Sources What follows is an outline of Royalston’s historic and archeological past. It focuses on the town’s natural resources and the ways they were used by its inhabitants to make a living, support families, define lifestyles. It looks at shifts in land use over time, leading eventually to the conditions and mind set that resulted in permanent conservation of perhaps twenty different parcels under the management of The Trustees of Reservations. The Trustees’ parcels constitute less than two per cent of this large town – only 439 acres altogether – but they include what are arguably its three most spectacular landscape