HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF BELLINGHAM MASSACHUSETTS 1719 - 1919 BY GEORGE F.PARTRIDGE PUBLISHED BY THE TOWN 1919 Copyright 1919 By Town of Bellingham PREFACE THE two hundredth anniversary of our town this year brings the occasion for writing its history, for both those who are interested now and those who may care for it in the future. My purpose has been to collect and preserve the essentials of the story, not to describe the life of this rather unusual border town as it deserves. In the strug­ gles of Baptists and Quakers for religious liberty from its beginning, and in the anxious times of the Revolution and the settlement of the constitution, the town was a leader in its day. Genealogy and much else that is interesting has been left out, and documents have been quoted exactly but with omissions. The chief sources used have been the _town records and the vital statistics, church records, the Massachusetts Archives and General Court Records, the Registries of Deeds and Wills at Boston and Dedham, and the Metcalf and other family papers. There are in print two sermons of Rev. Abial Fisher on our first century~ and a chapter on Bellingham by R. G. Fairbanks in Hurd's "History of Norfolk County," 1884. This book has been made possible by the vote of $500 for its publication by the town, and by Mr. A. E. Bullard, who has met the expense of printing beyond that sum. The author's thanks are due also to the town's committee on publication, and to many others who have helped him in the pleasant task. That committee is Maurice J. Connolly, Percy C. Burr, and Orville C. Rhodes, now deceased. CONTENTS CBAPTEB PAGE I Governor Bellingham . 1 II King Philip's War .. 14 III Secretary Rawson and his Farm . 22 IV Baptist and Quaker . 29 V Early Settlers . 44 VI The Town Church . 78 VII Town Affairs, 1719-1747 . 89 VIII The Baptist Church, 1786-1819 . 100 IX Town Affairs, 1747-1819 . 118 X The Mills . 141 XI The Churches, 1819-1919 . • • . 160 XII Town Affairs, 1819-1919 . 172 XIII Public Persons . 187 XIV The Town in 1919 . 201 Index . • • • • • • • • • • • 219 A map, eleven autographs, and twenty-six pictures. History of Bellingham CHAPTER I GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM THE town of Bellingham has a name that has not been much used, for either persons· or places. In England Sir Edward Bellingham was a headstrong and quarrel­ some Puritan soldier, who died in 1549. In Northum­ berland, not far from the Scottish Border, is a quaint little town of that name, with a remarkable church, built about seven hundred years ago, when the noble family of Bellinghams lived there. It produces many sheep, and coal, iron and -lime from its mines. In America, when the English navigator Vancouver first explored the coast of the State of Washington in 1792 and found what is now called Bellingham Bay, he nam~d . it for Sir Henry Bellingham, the British naval officer who had_ dismissed him on this voyage. The flour­ ishing city of the same name on its shores is a county seat, with a normal college, four railroads; and manufactures that give it the fourth place in its State. Its chief products are shingles and salmon, and it has great quarries. Its population is thirty-three thousand. Besides these two places, there appear to be only two small post offices of our name besides our own, one in Ontario and one in Minnesota. Our town was named for the third Governor of the Colony of l\tiassachusetts Bay, the old Puritan lawyer, Richard Bellinghamo l HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM His name will never be forgotten, because it is pre­ served in a famous book, Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," but only a few of those who read it there ever know the life story that makes him memorable for his own sake. He was born in England of a good family in 1591, and educated for a lawyer. Few men gave up that profession to become a Puritan as he did, and he was naturally a leader among them all his long life. He was the Recorder of the important English town of Boston, helped to draw up the charter of the new Massachusetts Bay Colony, was one of the twenty-six original members of the company, and subscribed fifty pounds for it. He arrived in Boston in 1634 with his wife .Elizabeth· and his son Samuel. He was given a sort of greeting in that quaint and childish book, ''Johnson's Wonder Working Providence in New England," published in 1654: "At this time came over the much honored Mr. Richard Bellingham, whose estate and person did much for the civil government of this wandering people, hee being learned in the Lawes of England, and experimentally fitted for the worke, of whom I am bold to say as f olloweth: "Richardus 110w, arise must thou, Christ seed hath thee to plead, His people's cause, with equall lawes, in wilderness them lead; Though slow of speech, thy counsell reach, shall each occasion well, Sure thy stern look, it cannot brook, thos~ wickedly rebell."· Probably these four lines ~re amply enough to show how bold the poet was. Newcomers in Boston then were not citizens until they joined the church and were accepted as freemen by vote. His name is on the first list of twenty-six free­ men, and he and his wife joined the church in 1634. GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM 8 The very next year he received two high honors, when a military commission for public defence with extraordinary powers, including the penalty of death, was appointed, consisting of the magistrates and Mr. Bellingham; besides this he was Deputy Governor for the year. He was repeatedly placed on a committee to draw up a code of fundamental laws based on the Bible, but the task was always put off because the magistrates avoided it in order not to transgress their charter; a natural growth of the common law was safer for them. He had a larger share in the law-making for the colony than any other man, unless Winthrop. In 1686 a public subscription for a school in Boston was started, and Bellingham's name came third on the list with a gift of ten pounds. '' Like Winthrop, Dudley and Bradstreet, he was a man of property above the rest." In 1640 he was Deputy Governor again, and men began to think of him for the higher office, which was then held by Joseph Dudley of Roxbury. This was Dudley's first term, and he was the first Governor who was not a voter in Boston, chosen probably not on account of any dissatisfaction with his predecessor, Winthrop, but because "the freemen feared a governor for life." No good reason appears why Dudley was not continued in office for another year, but the remarkable election of 1641 put Bellingham in his place. We have no account of the campaign, but Winthrop's History says: "There had been much laboring to have Hellingham chosen." Every freeman of the colony could vote for Governor either in person or by ·proxy, and Bellingham was chosen by six votes, out of fourteen hun­ dred. When this re3u}t was announced, some men who had not voted when they entered the room, as the custom 4 HISTORY OF BELLINGHAM was, asked to be allowed to do it then, but they were too late. Besides the mortification of seeing this close result, the new Governor was at once insulted by the General Court, for they immediately repea~ed the Gov­ ernor's annual grant of one hundred pounds, and he was left with no salary for this year tiH October, 1648, when the Court voted him fifty pounds. Not only was the pleasure, of his triumph spoiled by these two public disappointments, but his grand house, on Tremont Street opposite to King's Chapel burying ground, had lost its mistress by death, and he was left alone with his son Samuel. The house is imagined in" The Scarlet Letter": "It was a large wooden house, decorated with strange figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and . durable, for the admiration of after times. With many variations, Governor Bellingham had planned his n~w habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here then was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house. At one extremity this spacious room was lighted by the windows of two towers, which formed a small· recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall­ windows which we read of in old books, and which w~s provided with a keep and cushioned seat. Here on. the cushion lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles .of England, or other such substantial literature. The fur­ niture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, and a table in the same taste, being heirlooms from the Governor's paternal home. On the table stood a large pewter tankard. GOVERNOR BELLINGHAM 5 On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Bellingham lineage, and at about the centre of the oaken panels that lined the hall hung a suit of mail, not like the pictures an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date.