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1906'

A MILESTONE PLANTED

Address of
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
at Lincoln, Massachusetts
April 23, 1904
on the
One Hundred and Fiftieth
Anniversary of the
Incorporation of
the Town

A MILESTONE PLANTED

Address of
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
at Lincoln, Massachusetts
April 23, 1904
on the
One Hundred and Fiftieth
Anniversary of the
Incorporation of
the Town

A MILESTONE PLANTED'
And this day shall be unto you for a memorial ; and ye shall keep
it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shaU keep it
a feast by an ordinance fbr ever. — Exodus xii, 14.
Why are we here gathered ? Why, old and young,
have we left plow and counter and desk, — the fur
row, the school and the office, — proclaiming high-
holiday in Lincoln, and thus — men, women and
children — met under a common roof-tree ? The
answer to this question, put at the threshold of the
day's observances, will give its character to my ad
dress, and upon it impose limitations. It is Lincoln's
birthday ! — the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary
of its existence as a town. We have met to com
memorate the event. We are here to plant a mile
stone, — a memorial for other times and subsequent
generations. It will mark the ending of one cycle
in our existence as a community, and the beginning
of another.
A dozen years ago I was called upon, where I then
lived, to bear the burden of the day, so far as the
preparation of the conventional address was con-
' This address, considerably abbreviated, occupied in delivery one
hour and fifteen minutes. It was subsequently revised. The portions
omitted in delivery are here included ; and very considerable additions
have also been made to it

A MILESTONE PLANTED
cerned, on alike occasion. It was at Quincy, not my
own birthplace, but where I and mine originated,
where — bone of its bone, flesh of its flesh — we for
two hundred and fifty years had lived, and, dying,
gone back to the soil. Responding, though with
extreme reluctance, to the call thus made upon me,
I took occasion to comment on the character of such
commemorations, — their sameness of tone, their
self- laudation and lack of individuality, only exceeded
in weariness by their constant succession. The his
torical deliverances customary in such cases, I not
untruly asserted, were made up largely of ancestor
worship, combined with the ill-considered laudation
of a state of things, social, material and educational,
which, if brought back and imposed upon us now,
would be pronounced unendurable. Of those decep
tive, as well as imaginary, portrayals, I declared I had
both heard and read more than enough. Like most
conventional observances, they at one time had served
a purpose, and a useful purpose ; for in them, un
consciously quite as much as with intent, was recorded
much of historical worth, which otherwise would
probably have perished, — not only local traditions,
personal memories, the story of the quickly forgotten
past, its friendships, its feuds, its great aspirations
and its small accomplishment, but phases of thought
and expression. Records of the time gone by, those
discourses and addresses were also mirrors of what
was then in vogue. This, however, was in another
age ofthe world, — the days which knew not news
papers or periodicals, the town history or the histori-
4

A MILESTONE PLANTED
cal society. But, though that period is gone, the
commemoration address abides ; and so the old straw
is everlastingly threshed over, though few indeed are
the grains of wheat resultant therefrom. Each age
has, or ought to have, some mode of expression
peculiar to itself. The occasional historical discourse
and the formal memorial address were of an age that
is past. Let them go with it.
He, I admit, would be over bold who, standing,
in this year 1904, on the threshold of a century,
should undertake to forecast the form of expression
to which the century will, in its full maturity, addict
itself; but I do not think it will be platform oratory.
That was characteristic of the nineteenth century, as
pulpit deliverance was characteristic ofthe eighteenth;
and, speaking frankly as well as honestly, though not
without study of both, I do not know which of the
two modes of expression, taken as wholes, was the
drearier and the emptier. The theological literature
of the eighteenth century is vast, and, in largest part,
devoid both of interest and value ; but, on the other
hand, retrospect reveals a shallowness and affectation
of thought, combined with a tinsel of rhetoric, about
the platform oratory of the nineteenth century, which
goes far in a comparative way to a rehabilitation of
what went before.
Thus I felt then, so I feel now ; and so, twelve
years ago, I argued to a friend of mine, — one ofthe
antique Quincy stock. He, however, took a differ
ent view of the subject. Picking me up at once, and
assenting to much of my criticism, he refused to
5

A MILESTONE PLANTED
accept my conclusions, arguing that it was wholly
inexpedient^ on these occasions to dispense with the
time-honored address. It was he who then made
use of that milestone simile. In Quincy, and along
the old Coast-road, as it was once called, running
from Salem through Boston to Plymouth, we had a
number of those landmarks, bearing upon their faces
eighteenth century distances, dates and initials ; and,
with them, my friend and I were familiar. Those
old colonial way-metes, rough-hewn at the begin
ning and now furrowed and gnawed by the tooth of
time, — as they stood there aslant at the roadside,
with inscriptions no longer wholly legible through
moss growth and weather stain, — had marked for
generations of travellers the distances traversed. And
so the printed pages to which I so slightingly alluded
told for all future time of some point a community
had reached in a journey knowing no end. Here
those composing that community had paused for a
space, and, resting in their march, cast a glance back
ward over the road by which they had come, and
forward over that yet to be traversed. " At such a
time," my old friend, now become my mentor, went
on, " we are, or ought to be, a world unto ourselves.
Why take thought, on this our birthday, of other
people, or their kindred observances, or burden our
selves because of posterity ? What matters it who
are looking on, or what to-morrow's ' Times ' or
' Herald ' may have to say of that now taking place ?
Those after us here dwelling will, to remote gen
erations even, give heed to the utterances of to-day ;
6

A MILESTONE PLANTED
its record will, by them, not be forgotten. Let that
suffice ! This is our anniversary. Thus far have we
got in our journey ; and, throwing off our burdens
for the moment, we here raise a memorial such as
it is, which to those — be they many or few — who
care to observe, will tell them that here we rested as
we passed a centennial."
On consideration I had to admit that my friend
had the best ofthe argument. His was the saner, the
more sensible view. So I helped plant that Quincy
milestone ; ' and, recalling the lesson then received,
I am here to plant the Lincoln milestone to-day.
But the circumstances are not the same. Then I
spoke as one to the manner born, ' — I was, as I al
ways had been, part of the halted column. Of the
town family, its names, its localities, its traditions,
were familiar to me. It is ndt so here; it never can
be so. I may be a useful citizen in Lincoln; and
hereafter, as for ten years past, it may be my home.
I hope it will be. But here I never can be other
than a new-comer, — at most and best, a child of
adoption. As such, I am conscious I speak to-day ;
and what I say needs must lack that insight, that
sympathy, that absorption of the individual in the
community possible only amid those surroundings
where " Heaven," as Wordsworth tells us, "lies about
us in our infancy." So I beseech your patience while,
' The Centennial Milestone: an Address in Commemoration of the
One Hundredth Anniversary ofthe Incorporation of Quincy, Massachu
setts, delivered July 4, 1892. Concerning the friend "of the antique
Quincy stock," see p. 44 ofthe address above referred to
7

A MILESTONE PLANTED
not wholly of Lincoln, I speak about Lincoln, to
Lincoln.
I shall indulge in no generalities or abstractions,
much less attempt flights of eloquence. I propose
to talk of Lincoln, and of Lincoln only ; and that in
simple fashion. But the audience I address is not
here ; so far from being here, it is remote, as yet
unborn. The message framed to-day is to the Lin
coln of the next century. At the earliest it is to the
Lincoln of 1954, — those who will then gather on
this hillside to celebrate the bi-centennial ofthe town.
It is not often in these days of the printing-press
and tumult of tongues that any one can nourish even
a hope, no matter how delusive, that what he says or
puts on paper will be remembered to-morrow. In
stant oblivion, as a rule, awaits. But the proceedings
of to-day are exceptional ; they will surely be recalled.
The interest in what we say or do is not widespread,
— indeed, it is confined to a very narrow circle ; —
and yet what we this day do and say will abide.
Within that circle, the passage of time will make it
more curious, more interesting, ever more perma
nent. It also will be the time-eaten, weather-stained
inscription on a moss-covered milestone.
The better to realize this, let us put ourselves in
the place of those who are gone, — those we to-day
commemorate. To dwellers in it the present is al
together commonplace, and its daily environment,
as distinguished from its exceptional events, is
deemed uninteresting. It was so in 1754; it is so
in 1904; it will be so in 2054. What, in 1754,
8

A MILESTONE PLANTED
their vision dwelt on every day and all the time was
so familiar that it never occurred to those then
living here that a generation to which it would all
be remote and strange and curiously quaint would
presently people the soil. So they made no record.
Yet what they did not dream of, long since came to
pass ; and, to-day, there is for us no Lincoln start
ing-post ! Vainly we seek even a vestige of the
landmark. While we can send a message forward, we cannot
send one back. But suppose for a moment we could,
— suppose that our voice could reach Chambers
Russell, John Hoar, Benjamin Brown and Stephen
Weston, gathered at the house of Edward Flint,
close to this spot, on the 26th of May, 1746, there
and then holding the first precinct meeting, — what
would our message be ? If we can frame that mes
sage, we can probably form some idea of the similar
message our descendants in 2054 would be likely to
send back to us here. Unquestionably, we would
say to Chambers Russell, and the rest, including the
Rev. William Lawrence, — "Tell us of yourselves
and of the Lincoln in which you lived. We do not
care to listen to sermons on dead and forgotten
theological issues, to disquisitions on the rights of
man, or to your conception of the everlasting veri
ties ; — we want to know about you, and the local
ity in which you lived and had your being, — your
homes and your meeting-house, your school, with
its text-books, your church and its pastor, the roads,
the means of conveyance, the clothes you wore, the
9

A MILESTONE PLANTED
social life you led, and the bones of contention
amongst you ! You once lived, and lived here ! Of
you and yours not a vestige remains save a few old
houses, and the stones in the village burying-ground
behind our new town hall ; not a garment, scarcely
a utensil or book, hardly a printed record. What
you thought the commonplace of every-day life the
passage of years has made quaint. Tell us, then, of
yourselves and of the old-time, the original Lincoln,
— long since dead and buried and forgotten."
As it is with us, so, rest assured, will it be with
our posterity. That fact dictates the character of
the inscription to be cut on the milestone we now
plant. And first of that forgotten past, — that remote
heretofore with which there is no connection, whether
telephonic or spiritual. To our posterity it will be
even more shadowy than it is to us ; and to try to
revive it, — to inject such degree of life as is possible
into those long-buried bones, a ray of animation into
eyes for more than a century glazed and sightless,
is part of the task to which I to-day must address
myself. In the case of every Massachusetts town the past
divides itself into two portions, the prehistoric and
the historic, — the last a mere fringe hanging on the
garment, yet in great degree conditioned on the first.
Our records of Lincoln, — our traditions even, are
but of yesterday. They go back only to 1744, or
possibly a century or so more at most, — covering
the lives of five, or, perhaps, eight, generations of
10

A MILESTONE PLANTED
children of the soil. Beyond and behind stretches
the vast unknown, a very Sahara of time, to the his
torian forever a sealed book, and only in degree and
through patient study explorable by the geologist. It
reaches back to that remote ice age only in traces vis
ible, but which gave to all the region hereabout the
character it bears to-day, dictating in advance for
each locality the products of its soil, the vocations of
its people, and the lines of its thoroughfares ; — so,
commerce was decreed for Boston, mills for Lowell
and Lawrence, agriculture for Sudbury, Concord and
Belmont, a railroad for the valley of the Charles, and
forests of oak and pine for Lincoln. In our homes,
our vocations and our journeyings, — in the field and
on the road, in locating a way or a mill, or choosing
a site for a house, we do but follow those lines, —
whether of least resistance, or of grace and beauty,
— which were laid down for us here in New Eng
land long before the idea of the pyramids got a lodg
ment in the brains of the Pharaohs, or the legend
of Eden assumed shape in the imagination of the
pilgrims of Horeb.
In his sketch of the history of Lincoln, Mr.
Wheeler makes this statement : " The hill on which
the [Lincoln] meeting-house stands is four hundred
and seventy feet above high-water mark at Boston,
and though there are other hills of greater magni
tude, it is believed to be the highest land in [Middle
sex] county whereon men have built themselves
habitations. . . . Brooks which are tributaries to
the Concord, Charles and Shawshine rise and flow
II

A MILESTONE PLANTED
out, but not a tubful of water comes into the town
from any source except the rains and dews of heaven."
Here, in fewest possible words, is the whole secret
told of the early settlement and slow development of
Lincoln. They resulted from natural conditions;
and, talking of the history of Lincoln, is it not star
tling as well as curious to reflect that, of the seventy
or eighty centuries which have elapsed since the nat
ural features of the township became exactly what
we see them to-day, a little less than two cover the
history which interests us and which we so minutely
investigate, — the other sixty-eight or seventy-eight
centuries, a few less or many more, are an absolute
blank ! Yet, through them all, Lincoln hill and
Sandy Pond, the Walden woods and Fairhaven-bay,
were as to-day they are. We men only are here as
of yesterday !
When Lincoln was incorporated, — in those days
of Chambers Russell and William Lawrence, John
Hoar and Edward FHnt, — the word geology had
no well-defined meaning. The scientific study of the
earth, and of the physical changes it has undergone,
had not begun. Indeed, the first chapter of the book
of Genesis disposed of that matter, and disposed of
it summarily. It was all delightfully simple. The
earth was six thousand years old ; it was created in
six days, and in the form in which we now know it.
To question this was impious. The deluge was ac
cepted as an undeniable historic fact ; but the actual
occurrence of an ice age was a thing as yet undreamed
of even by the most advanced and sceptical of scien-
12

A MILESTONE PLANTED
tists. Since 1754, and almost entirely within the last
half of the period, the geologist has revealed a few
facts which, while interesting in themselves, are still
more interesting in the possibility of future discov
eries they suggest. But upon the basis of what is
already known, the remoter past may, for Lincoln
as for other like dots on the globe's surface, be to
a degree restored. During that remoter period pre
ceding the last ice age, a period to be measured by
aeons and cycles and not by centuries or millenaries
even, all the region hereabout, not Middlesex merely
but Massachusetts and New England as well, were
in the formative stage ; — then the rocks were mixed
and hardened below the surface ; and the surface it
self was slowly shaped by rain and the flow of rivers,
until its general form was not greatly unlike that of
to-day. Instead of being some sixteen miles from the
ocean, Lincoln is supposed to have then been some
sixty miles from it ; while its altitude above the level
of the sea was more than twice what it now is. The
continental coast line seems to have then run well
outside of what we call Cape Ann and Cape Cod.
The site of present Boston was forty miles inland,
and a very considerable river with its affluents, the
predecessor ofthe Merrimac, drained all the country
hereabouts. Flowing down from the New Hamp
shire hills and across the present Middlesex water
shed, it found an outlet, it is surmised, not where the
Merrimac empties itself, but through the channels
of what are now the Mystic or the Charles. Then
came the long arctic cycle, with its sea of glacial ice.
13

A MILESTONE PLANTED
The dreary waste reached back to the very pole, —
one unbroken area of frozen matter, — soil, gravel
and ice, — its surface dotted by boulders, like an
army moving forward, in New England, towards the
southeast in silent, pitiless march. This vast and
indescribable desolation was, it is supposed, a mile
or more in solid depth, overtopping the summits of
our hills by thousands of feet. When all this region,
the crest of Mt. Washington even; was submerged
by the sea of ice, Lincoln lay simply devoid of life —
crushed and mute — under a superincumbent burden
of to us inconceivable thickness and weight. Grad
ually, after a lapse of years concerning which we can
form not even an estimate, — it is here all matter
of guess-work, — climatic changes again came about,
and the ice sheet began to melt away. At the time of
its greatest development, its frontier had been some
forty miles east of Nantucket and south of Cape
Cod, — approximately, perhaps, — for certainty and
exactness of measurement are, in this matter, as yet
remote, — some 120 to 150 miles from Lincoln; —
and, as the grinding and excavating barrier, fold on
fold and bit by bit, receded, the continent beneath it
emerged, assuming as it did so a different contour and
novel shapes.
This may have been ten thousand years ago, more
or less, — probably less rather than more, possibly
six thousand only. And yet, in comparison with
even six thousand years, how small a poor century
and a half of municipal life appears, — the narrow
fringe on an ample garment ! When, however, this
14

A MILESTONE PLANTED
region, in process of time to be known as Lincoln
by the descendants of a race not yet emerged from
barbarism, again saw the sunlight, — like Hamlet's
father, revisited the glimpses of the moon, — when
this slowly came about, the crust of the solid earth
had been depressed some forty feet, — whether by
the sheer weight imposed upon it, or by the cosmic
conditions which led to the cyclic change ; the water
sheds were not as they had been, and the streams
found new channels and outlets. Meanwhile the
interior had become the seaboard ; and the old sea
board marked the edge of what are known as deep-
sea soundings. In the further interior the whole
aspect of the continent had undergone change, the
former surface had been ground down or scraped
away, the hills had been denuded, the valleys filled
up. Everything movable in the region thereafter to
be known as Lincoln had been displaced. When not
gouged away, the soil had been bodily lifted up and
carried over into what are now Norfolk and Plymouth
counties, and there deposited ; or, perhaps, borne
still further on and, literally, cast into the sea. Thus,
when Lincoln — the township we know — emerged
from under the liquescent mass, it appeared not only
in a new form, but with a soil in large degree alien,
— a detritus from northern Massachusetts, and the
mountains of New Hampshire. As the ice dissolved,
moreover, fierce sub-glacial streams flowed to and
fro, or made lakes against the barrier, seeking,
through a strangely changed watershed, the easiest
outlets. These streams also brought down with them
15

A MILESTONE PLANTED
vast deposits of soil, — gravel, clay and sand, —
spreading them over the denuded country or the
face of yet unmelted ice, thus long held congealed.
On an immensely large scale of space and time, it
was the process we now see in little each recurring
spring. The fields and roadsides are then boggy
with water, brooklets in miniature run everywhere,
the uplands are in movement towards the valleys,
and every hollow in the fields becomes for a time a
shallow lake. In certain spots, — recesses in the soil,
— bodies of ice accumulate, and, becoming covered
with soil, are shielded from atmospheric influence.
Presently, the ice formation melts until finally a
cavity is left, at the bottom of which lie the matters
which had held the ice congealed. On a gigantic
scale, multiplied in every case by many thousand
fold, this familiar process then went on.
Take an instance fresh in memory. The winter
just ended was with us one of well-nigh unprece
dented severity. They say we had a snowfall of some
seventy inches ; while, on more than thirty days, the
mercury registered from thirty to sixty degrees of
frost. The ice formation and snow deposit, when the
season passed its climax, may have averaged two
feet. They certainly did not average more. During
that glacial period, as the result of which the Lincoln
region assumed its present contour, the ice formation
was, instead of two feet thick, perhaps five thousand ;
and, after lasting not three months but for centuries,
it at length broke up through a period and from
cosmic causes which the scientist has as yet failed to
i6

A MILESTONE PLANTED
specify or explain. One thing only may safely be
assumed. Every natural process we last month
watched in little then proceeded on a scale at least
two thousand times as large. Our gurgling roadside
gutter stream was a rushing sub-glacial torrent ; the
cavities left by the ice bodies which lingered last be
came the beds of lakes ; the soil and gravel and sand
we saw washed down and left in the lowlands became
those ridges of gravel and hard-pan, those deposits
of light, sandy soil, those upland bogs and marshes,
cold and treeless, with which Lincoln to-day abounds.
Starting at this very hill on which Lincoln village
stands, going out through yonder door and walk
ing down by Sandy Pond, the geologist will to-day
point out the line of gravel deposit left by the gla
cier where its ice-concealed streams tore down to the
Sudbury, which then found and formed the channel
wherein now it flows. First, there is Sandy Pond, a
mere hollow among the hills, partly rimmed by gla
cial rubbish ; then there are the Concord woods, all
ridged with glacial kames and knolls, between and
among which lie yet other ponds ; next, sixty feet
below Sandy Pond, though not a mile away, is Wal
den, a deep ice-block cavity, among the gravels ;
finally, a succession of ridges, swamps, bogs, swales
and hollows, — still freshly bearing the imprints of
the glacier, — until we emerge on Fairhaven-bay,
the shallow and confined residuum of what was once
a lake of depth and compass. As the crow flies,
Fairhaven-bay is but a short two hundred yards
from Walden, and, measured centre to centre, two
17

A MILESTONE PLANTED
miles from Sandy Pond ; but, under the mysterious
workings of glacial force, there is a drop of sixty
feet between Sandy Pond and Walden, and of an
hundred between it and the Sudbury. And all the
intermediate space is so fresh from the formative
power, so clearly marked by it, that though we fail
in our daily walks to note it, a thousand years are
there but as yesterday and as a watch in the night.'
So it was and is ; and, because of it, the Lincoln
of to-day is a Massachusetts hill region. In Mr.
Wheeler's forceful, if homely, words, " not a tubful
of water " flows into the town, — every drop that
filters through its soil or falls from the clouds upon
it always has sought, and now seeks, an outlet from
it. Hence its history. Originally, the backwoods,
the outlying districts, " the Farms," as such dis
tricts were then called, of several adjacent towns, out
of them it was carved and made up. Concord and
Lexington and Weston each co!itributed,even though
grudgingly, a share. In fact, the tradition is that by
those dwelling in the mother communities Lincoln
was long known not by that name, but was somewhat
derisively designated " Niptown," being made up, it
was alleged, of remnants bitten off, as it were, from
each. But of the three territorial entities thus despoiled,
one alone. Concord, can in the Massachusetts no
menclature be classed as a mother town. Settled,
because of its well-watered site and broad bottom
lands, in 1635, Concord was in the same year incor-
1 See Appendix A, pp. 105-118.
18

A MILESTONE PLANTED
porated, thirteenth in seniority among Massachu
setts towns. Cambridge and Watertown bordered it
on the east ; to the west was the unpeopled wilder
ness. What afterwards became Lexington was then
known as Cambridge Farms, — the outlying back
region of what a year later (1636) became the col
lege town. But almost sixty years were to pass be
fore an independent existence, as Lexington, was to
be given that remote region, first (1691) as a pre
cinct, then (1713) as a municipality. Watertown was
in every sense of the term a Massachusetts mother
town. Not until 17 13 was Weston cut off from it.
Thus, after 17 13, Concord, Lexington and Weston
— one mother and two daughter towns — adjoined
each other, and where they met was the hill portion
of each ; — an outlying, then inaccessible and, conse
quently, undesirable region, somewhat elevated, not
well drained, heavily wooded and with an inferior
soil, — where not cold and boggy, light and friable.
In a word, it was a glacial detritus, and not an allu
vial deposit. So, naturally enough, Lincoln, the hill
tract of the three towns, was peopled last, nor thickly
peopled at that. But at length the fulness of time
came to it also.
It is one of the commonplaces of our Massa
chusetts history that those who first established
themselves here as families, — fathers, mothers and
children, — and not as mere adventurers, came to
Plymouth in 1620, or to Salem in 1628, or to
Boston in 1630, to found a "plantation religious,"
— church and town were one in the beginning, and
19

A MILESTONE PLANTED
thenceforth advanced hand in hand. The church
represented and comprised not only the religious
aspirations and spiritual existence, but the social life
also ; the town, the material, the educational and
political. The meering-house, as its name implied,
was common ground ; for in those days all was
sanctified in a way, and nothing was peculiarly sanc
tified. So, theology and religion permeating life,
church and town met under one roof-tree. There
was no consecrated church edifice, and no distinctive
town-hall, — only the Meeting-house. Naturally, as
the inhabitants occupying the back lands, — the
Farms, — the common hill country of Concord and
Lexington and Weston, — increased in number, they
became more and more conscious of their isolation.
It must have been great, — as we without much
exaggeration would consider it, unbearable. So far
as I have been able to discover, for there are no
maps of that period, and the records are very scanty,
after the incorporation of Weston (1713) and before
that of Lincoln (1754) there were but two East and
West roads running through all this region, with one
North and South road. In the case of Concord, the
earliest way opened, seems to have been from Water-
town, through what is now Lexington, by the old
Virginia road, so called, through Lincoln's northern
limits, to the junction of the Sudbury and Assabet
rivers, beyond.' Speaking generally, in those times
' See Albert E. Wood's paper "The Plantation of Muskete-
quid" (p. 20), in the publications of the Concord Antiquarian So-
eiety. 20

A MILESTONE PLANTED
the bridle path followed the Indian trail ; the farm-
way the bridle path ; the road, then, was developed
out of what had been the farm-way ; and, in due
time, the thoroughfare, or highway, followed. The
railroad, when at last it came, was, as a general thing,
apt to keep close to the original trail.
From Boston the settlement of Massachusetts ra
diated ; and, in that settlement, Boston continued to
be the centre of gravitation. But, at the time of the
incorporation of Lincoln, and for two and forty years
after that event, Boston was, and remained, strictly
a peninsula. We to-day, as our fathers before us, are
so accustomed to reach the city's centre by a direct
route, road or rail, through Arlington, or Waltham,
and Cambridge, that it is not easy to realize that this
has not always been the line of intercourse, — that
it is, in fact, a modern invention. Such, however, is
the case ; nor is it possible to get a clear idea of the
origin and development of Lincoln's system of roads
without first ridding the mind of that to which it is
accustomed as part of its daily life. Lincoln's roads
originated, and were developed, with an eye to Bos
ton : but, until 1786, the only unbroken thorough
fare into Boston was through Roxbury, over the
Neck, as it was called. The single other regular
means of communication was the Charlestown ferry,
provided in 1631 ; and, later, become a link in the
great Coast-road of 1639, from Salem to Plymouth.
Thus for one whole century and two thirds of an
other, following the settlement of Massachusetts, —
three fifths ofthe whole time since elapsed, — every
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vehicle that went out of Boston, or into Boston, ex
cept over the ice in winter, passed through Roxbury
and along what is now Washington Street. Foot-
passengers, and, at a later day, those on horseback
probably, were ferried over from Charlestown ; but
everything on wheels or runners, even from the
Essex towns, found its roundabout way Boston-ward
over the Neck. Until 1783, people passing between
Boston and Cambridge even, unless they sailed or
rowed over, went through Brookline. Thus Judge
Sewell records how, on July 4, 171 1, he "went to
the Commencement by water in a sloop ; " though,
in 1720, he drove out through Roxbury, but had a
pleasant passage home by water, and " landed at the
bottom of the Common." When, fifty-five years
later, the British troops marched through Lincoln to
Concord, they were carried over from Boston by
boats to what is now East Cambridge, and, on their
return, they made their way to Charlestown. I have
referred to Judge Sewftll, and his Commencements
at Cambridge. The Judge was a good deal of a trav
eller about Massachusetts, but he records one visit
only to Concord. That was on Wednesday, May 14,
1712 ; and he went as a delegate from the church of
Boston to the ordination of the Rev. John Whiting.
He made the journey in a hired calash ; and, start
ing from his house in Boston at five o'clock in the
morning, he got to Concord at ten. Coming back,
he left Concord at half after three, and " Return'd
into my own House a very little before Nine. Laus
Deo." 22

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Boston being thus the great objective, it naturally
followed that, as new roads or ways were opened in
Lincoln, they almost uniformly tended towards either
Charlestown or Roxbury, on the way to Boston, and
not at all to Cambridge. The earliest map we have
upon which the roads ofthe period anterior to 1800
are indicated, is an English military map of 1775.
The original and subsequent lines of communication
can thereon be traced. The north road in Lincoln
then went by way of Prospect Hill to Charlestown ;
the south road ran through Weston to Watertown ;
there crossing the Charles, it passed through Brook-
line to Roxbury. A more direct road through Cam
bridge, and over Cambridgeport bridge, was opened
in 1793; while what was at the time referred to as
that "gigantic undertaking the Mill Dam," the ex
tension of Beacon Street to Brookline, was not com
pleted until 1820. So far as Lincoln was concerned,
the Mill Dam, following West Boston bridge, at last
did away with Charlestown and Roxbury as thorough
fares to Boston.'
In this comparatively remote region, lying between
the two natural routes to Boston, — elevated, tree-
grown and secluded, — a sparse population dwelt,
and, somehow, extracted from a niggard soil the
wherewithal on which to live. Needless to say there
were in those days no stage-coaches ; no daily news
papers ; no post-offices or mails ; no places where
men congregated ; for Lincoln, — I am speaking of
the period before 1750, — there was not even a corner
I See Appendix B, pp. 1 19-124.
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grocery or a cross-road variety store. It was a work-
a-day life in the woods all the year round for those
whose lot was there cast, — with Boston, their near
est market-town, some twenty miles away. How
they continued to exist, much more accumulate sub
stance, I have found it difficult to make out. Wood
they had for fuel ; corn they grew, and from it made
meal ; the pork and beef barrels were in the store
house ; their cloth was home-spun ; of groceries and
West India goods they used but little, our necessi
ties being luxuries with them ; and, for household
utensils, they depended on the passing peddler, or
the occasional journey by cart or sleigh to Boston.
In case of illness there was no near-by physician ;
for childbirth no nurse ; the simplest drugs and
medicines were hardly procurable. There were few
books, and absolutely no libraries ; no printing-press,
much less a news stand. A surveyor by calling, who
in 1 82 1 published what he designated a topographi
cal sketch of the country immediately about Boston,
has left this description of Lincoln ; and, be it re
membered, it was written in the stage-coach period,
nearly seventy years after the incorporation of the
town, and when many additional public ways and
turnpikes had been laid out: "The old road [Tra-
pelo] leading to the town of Lincoln, for the last six
miles, is crooked, narrow, and hilly, little travelled on
and much neglected. The roads within the limits of
the town are generally uneven and in bad repair. The
soil is coarse and rocky, a great portion whereof is
covered with wood, and not more than one third ofthe
24

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town under culture." ' Certainly not an alluring
description ; yet at the time when it was written two
generations of inhabitants had already passed away
since the incorporation of Lincoln, and the War of
Independence was as remote from the people then
alive as the War of Secession is from us.
The situation I have sought thus rapidly to picture
had existed from the beginning. Custom made it
endurable ; but, as population increased, people be
came restive. A craving was felt. A full century
before the incorporation of Lincoln was discussed, the
Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay had
proclaimed it as their first "duty to provide that
all places and people, within their gates, should be
supplied with an able and faithful minister of God's
holy word ; " and now, in August, 1 744, divers of
those residing in this, the easterly part of Concord,
the northerly part of Weston and the westerly part
of Lexington, represented to that same Great and
General Court that they labored " under great diffi
culties and inconveniences by reason of their distance
from their respective places of public worship in said
towns, their families being many of them numerous,
in the winter season more especially ; " and, accord
ingly, they petitioned to be set off as a separate pre
cinct, to the end that " the public worship of God
might, by them, be more comfortably, constantly and
universally attended upon." The prayer was certainly
reasonable ; for, as the signers of it went on to assert,
many of them lived " four, and some five miles dis-
' J. G. Hales, Survey of Boston and Vicinity (1821), p. 68.
25

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tant from " their places of public worship ; whereas,
if the petition was granted, there would be " but few
inhabitants two miles and a quarter from the center"
of the proposed precinct.
Circumstanced as we to-day are, we do not even
remotely realize what all this meant ; but, to those
instructed, the words used are in their simplicity
redundant of pathos. They reveal a community cut
off from everything which to us makes life worth
living. Essentially a simple, a moral and a religious
race, the seclusion in which they perforce passed
their lives bordered close on that solitude which
leads to mental atrophy. They had, of course, their
pleasures and pastimes, such as they were ; for it
was neither a gloomy nor a joyless race. There were
the house-raisings, the pig-stickings and the corn-
huskings ; Thanksgiving came, as well as Fast-day :
but, like his English forbears, the New Englander
took his pleasure rather sadly. Into it also he car
ried an abiding sense of the obligations under which
he drew breath, and the hereafter which awaited him.
Thus the church to which he belonged, and the Sab
bath concourse at the meeting-house were about all
either social or aesthetic that existence had to offer.
According to our ideas, it was not much ; but, to
them, it was everything.
Thus it was with Lincoln, as it was with all the
little New England civic communities, — the history
of the church is the early history of the town. Not
only were the two blended, but the former absorbed
the latter. On the earliest plan of the township
26

A MILESTONE PLANTED
which has come down to us, that made by Samuel
Hoar just forty years after its incorporation, the
" meeting-house " is the one building designated ;
and when Hales, twenty-five years later made his
surveys, he described the " principal settlements "
as grouped around the meeting-house. Naturally
enough, therefore, the church being its all, the first
acts of the " distinct and separate Precinct," eight
years before the town came into being, related to
the meeting-house, and the securing the services of
" some meet person " therein " publicly to preach
the word of God."
Of that earliest meeting-house, referred to in
April, 1747, as "already built," no description has
come down to us. It seems to have stood, and
served its purpose, for over a century, indeed until
1857, or easily within the memory ofthose now liv
ing ; but no sketch or picture of it taken on the spot
and at the time is extant. In its latest form also it
differed in all essential respects from the more prim
itive building of 1747, which appears to have been
a sufficiently large, but somewhat barn-like structure,
foursquare, two stories in height, and surmounted
by a sloping ridge-pole roof. In the very early days,
in fact immediately after the incorporation of 1754,
provision was made for a belfry, and, subsequently,
for a steeple ; and for entrances and porches at the
front, and on the two sides. The names, twenty-
two in number, of those who contributed, whether
in money, material or labor, to the construction of
the primitive building, have come down to us, — a
27

A MILESTONE PLANTED
species of original town roster. Headed by Benjamin
Brown, in it is found the familiar Lincoln nomen
clature from the first page of its records to that just
written, — Munroe, Pierce, Brooks, Wheeler and
Brown; though Farrar, Hartwell, Baker and Smith
do not there appear. Curiously enough, and indica
tive of the prudential spirit of the period, in the con
veyance to the precinct of the edifice, together with
the land on which it stood, the " glass in said House"
was specifically and carefully excepted. The win
dows and sashes apparently did not go with the site
and structure ; and the precinct forthwith voted to
assess itself in the sum of _;^25o, "in bills of credit
of the new tenor," to defray the necessary charges
in further finishing "the edifice." Eleven months
later, the meeting-house meanwhile having appar
ently been improved and completed, Mr. Wilham
Lawrence was chosen as "gospel minister," receiving
twenty-two out of twenty-nine votes. His settle
ment was characteristic of the period. He was to
have outright ^^800, "old tenor," to garnish his
establishment, and afterwards an annual salary of
jCaoo " according to old tenor bills." But those were
the dreary days of provincial paper money. The
currency was in process of readjustment on a hard-
money basis, and the bills in use circulated at a rate
of about eleven paper to one silver. A livelihood
of _;{'400 "according to old tenor bills" represented,
therefore, a somewhat precarious and uncertain sup
port; and Mr. Lawrence not unnaturally stipu
lated that his salary should be regulated by the
28

A MILESTONE PLANTED
prices " of some of the necessaries of life." The ar
ticles then enumerated tell us clearly what the eigh
teenth century population of the town produced, and
upon what those composing it lived: — Indian corn
was the staple, rated at fifteen shillings, old tenor, per
bushel ; rye, one pound, old tenor, per bushel ; pork,
one shilling and eight pence per pound ; beef, one
shilling per pound. The minister was also to have
delivered to him " at his house, thirty cords of wood,
annually, for his fire." What do these figures mean,
— j£Soo, and ^4°° " according to old tenor bills ; "
Indian corn at fifteen shillings per bushel ; rye at
one pound per bushel, — wood thirty cords ?
This is history ! Those figures carry us back di
rectly into the homes of a people. With them under
our eyes, we can sit down beneath the roof-trees ; we
stand at the hearthstones. Interpreting those first pre
cinct votes in the language, and measuring them by the
standards of our time, — for they are expressed in a
familiar tongue but in forgotten terms, — doing this,
we get down to the daily lives ofour colonial period,
— a period which in Lincoln lasted as long as its first
meeting-house stood. But of this, more presently.
First, however, to return for a moment to Lincoln
town, successor to Concord second precinct. We ob
serve its birth on the twenty-third day of April, and
refer to the opening lines of the first page of the ear
liest volume of our records as authority for so doing.
On the other hand, the act of incorporation passed
both legislative bodies April 19. This fact, only
recently come to light, has led to further research
29

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among the archives of the Commonwealth, as a re
sult whereof it appears that Lincoln was very directly
connected with a not uninteresting incident in Massa
chusetts provincial history in a way which has here
tofore escaped the notice of its historians. Space and
time do not admit of full treatment here. Suffice
it to say that between 1740 and 1760 the incor
poration of towns, carrying with it the right of re
presentation, was, for reasons of state, discouraged.
During that period only four new towns were or
ganized ; in all other cases, some twenty-two in
number, districts were created with all the powers
and rights of towns, save name and representation.
But the 1754 session, of the General Court was in
this respect exceptional, inasmuch as three new towns
were then incorporated. Of the three Lincoln was
one, Greenwich and Petersham being the other two.
Governor Shirley had himself inaugurated what may
be called the district policy ; and, at his instance, in
structions covering the case had in 1743 been sent
out by the Lords of Trade. Subsequently, while
Governor Shirley himself was in England, the mat
ter was wrangled over between the Legislature and
Lieutenant-Governor Phipps, who, in the absence
of the governor, represented the Crown. Chambers
Russell then took a hand in the matter. An ener
getic man, he had for some time been involved in a
controversy with the people of Concord. He wanted
a public way laid out through his estate; the present
road from Concord to Weston, by Walden Pond.
Concord opposed the laying out " tooth and nail."
30

A MILESTONE PLANTED
So he threw his influence in with the inhabitants of
the remoter parts of the three adjoining towns, seek
ing incorporation. The Russells were a power in the
Province. Chambers's father, Daniel Russell, was
of the Council ; his brother, James, was a member of
the House of Representatives ; he himself was a
justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, as the
highest legal tribunal of the Province was then de
nominated. In August, 1753, Governor Shirley had
returned to Massachusetts after an absence of three
years ; and, meeting the General Court in December,
was not successful in his dealings with it. Hutch
inson says in his history that when he asked some
allowance to be made him for the time he was away,
the legislative body returned " an angry message,
and not only refused to enlarge the grant, but gave
this reason for it, that if his services and their pay
ment since his appointment to the government could
be fully stated, the balance would be in their favor."
Having measures of his own — a fort on the Ken
nebec, and instructed delegates to the Albany Con
vention then about to be held — much at heart, his ,
excellency was in no position to oppose the wishes
of the Assembly on matters of lesser consequence.
The Great and General Court met on March 28,
1754, and the petition of Chambers Russell and
others for the incorporation of Lincoln was that day
presented. Somewhat in disregard of rule and pre
cedent, the measure was immediately pushed through
all the legislative stages ; and, the opposition of the
three towns curtailed of territory to the contrary not-
31

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withstanding, the act, in face of sundry adverse peti
tions, passed both houses within three weeks of its
presentation. This was on April 19. It then went
to the governor. His instructions adverse to it were
explicit ; he himself had inspired them. There was,
however, no help ; so he chose the lesser of two
evils. He seems to have held the measure some
days under advisement ; but apparently signed it on
the 23d, and it then became a law. The original
parchment has disappeared. It cannot be found on
the files of the office of the secretary of the Com
monwealth ; but the first town-clerk of Lincoln, in
opening his book of records, spread on it the certi
fied copy of the act sent him by the deputy secretary,
the act, as thus copied, bearing date " April the 23d,
Anno Dom. 1754." No time was lost in organiza
tion. James Minot, of Concord, was a member ofthe
Council. The legislative session closed on the 23d,
and Mr. Minot seems to have carried the act home
with him, the ink of the governor's signature hardly
dry upon it. The next day he issued his precept for
a town-meeting. Two days later it was held ; and
the town organization of Lincoln thus dates from the
26th day of April, 1754.
On the 26th of May, 1746, one month only lack
ing of eight full years before, the first meeting of
Concord's second precinct had been held at the house
of Edward Flint. The evolution was now complete ;
the precinct had become a town : and, as was proper
and in accordance with the custom of that time, the
first town-meeting was held in the meeting-house.
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Judging by patronymics, the officers then selected
might have been selected yesterday, — Ephraim
Flint, Ephraim Hartwell, Samuel Farrar, John Hoar,
John Garfield, Joshua Brooks, Benjamin Monroe,
John Adams, Josiah Parks, Edmund Wheeler, John
Billings. From that day to this, the continuity has
been unbroken.
I have just said that, in the case of Lincoln, the
history of the church is the early history of the town,
— the former absorbed the latter. The story of the
Lincoln church has been told, and well and suffi
ciently told. It has been told also in a scholarly way
by men in every essential respect far better qualified
for the task than am I. I do not propose to repeat
what Mr. Richardson and Mr. Bradley and Mr.
Porter have so recently set forth, and so graphically
narrated. They have exhausted that field. I do,
however, propose to picture, in so far as I can, the
earlier life of the town as seen through its connection
with the church ; for, only in that way, can it be re
produced and made visible. I begin, therefore, with
the precinct's earlier ministerial settlements.
William Lawrence, the first minister of the Lin
coln church, belonged to the widely-known family
whose name is as deeply stamped on the map of
Kansas as on that of Massachusetts. Born at Groton,
in 1723, he was graduated at Harvard in the class of
1743. On the 7th of December, 1748, he was or
dained as the first settled minister of Lincoln and, a
little more than a year later, on the 7th of February,
1750, he was, in his own quaint language, "married
33

A MILESTONE PLANTED
To a young Lady whose Name was Love Addams,
Daughter of John & Love Addams." '
Mr, Lawrence ministered here hard upon a third
of a century, or more than five years over the church
of the second Concord precinct, and, for the twenty-
six years following those five, over this Lincoln con
gregation. He died in the odor of sanctity, and, it
is said, of loyalty, in the midst of our revolutionary
troubles, on the nth of April, 1780. He left his
widow. Love, with nine children, three sons and six
daughters, the youngest of eight years. Mrs. Love
Lawrence lived to an extreme age, and far into
the following century, dying, January 3, 1820, here
on Lincoln hill, to which she had come as a bride
nearly seventy years before. In the early days of
the town. Chambers Russell, we are told, was " the
most distinguished resident of Lincoln," as unques
tionably he was the most well-to-do ; for no one
was wealthy in our sense of the term. His mansion
still stands just south of the railroad, and in the
fields about it are noble pasture oaks which even
in his day must have been large.^ Next to Cham
bers Russell in consideration unquestionably came
the minister, he also a Harvard graduate, reported
to be " a good thinker, a vigorous writer, and an
instructive preacher." He was certainly an industri
ous writer, for it is recorded of him that he wrote
on an average seventy sermons a year, and that he
derived from the Gospel of St. Matthew texts for
« See Appendix C, pp. 124-127.
* See Appendix D, pp. 127-138.
34

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no less than 212 discourses, while the Gospels of
Luke and John, and the First Epistle of Peter sup
plied him with 295 more. There is in this statement
something pathetic and depressing ; for it suggests
an industry conscientious and sustained, and yet so
exceedingly profitless. Here was a man, educated,
and, presumably, refined in his way, — a student and
a thinker, — but remote from the world and bu
ried in colonial seclusion, cut off from any contact
with living thought or access to current literature,
spider-like, perpetually evolving sermons, not from
stones but from his inner consciousness. Seventy
sermons a year produced under such conditions ! In
the thought there is something distinctly appalling.
Almost had it been better to have ground in Gaza's
prison-house ! — but, as the Sabbath discourses were
all they had, supplying the needs filled for us by
theatres, lectures, concerts, newspapers and books,
eighteenth century parishioners were, doubtless,
exacting. So the unfortunate minister drudged along,
eking out weekly his sermon and a half, till at
last the end came. To the investigator of later
times, however, living in a wholly different stage of
development, there is also something exasperating,
not to say irritating, in such fecundity of the com
monplace. Why could it not have occurred to Mr.
Lawrence to find tongues in trees, and books in the
running brooks, so telling us something of Lincoln ?
I have not examined these discourses myself; life
— at least my life — is not long enough to delve in
eighteenth century pulpit utterances : but one who
35

A MILESTONE PLANTED
did dip to a moderate extent into the Lawrence man
uscripts assures us that, though expressed in a some
what conventional style, — how, under the circum
stances of composition, could it have been otherwise ?
— they show " a careful exegesis, a calm, logical
method," and " an earnest purpose ; " but, and here
comes in the irritating proviso, in them is found " no
allusion to passing events." They are Dead Sea ap
ples, — "all ashes to the taste." A single occasional
discourse, descriptive to us of the preacher's sur
roundings, his interests, his people and their pur
suits, would in value have far outweighed to us
whole barrels of abstract discourses, though in them
" the Beatitudes receive far more specific attention
than the Decalogue."
Let us now turn to the minister's home. Gold
smith, in his " Deserted Village," tells us of the
Auburn curate : —
" A man he w-as to aU the country dear
And passing rich with forty pounds a year."
Measured in " hard money," or, as we phrase it,
in specie, the settlement and annual stipend of the
Rev. William Lawrence does not seem to have risen
to even this modest competence. Those were days
of a depreciated paper currency, — bills of the
" old tenor," bills of the " new tenor," were out
standing, with, at the close, continental money.
Some ten years after the settlement of Mr. Law
rence, the Massachusetts monetary system was
reformed, and put on a stable basis, through the
36

A MILESTONE PLANTED
financial skill and strong business sense of the
much, and unjustly, maligned Governor Thomas
Hutchinson ; and the bills of the " old tenor " were
then called in, and redeemed, at about fourteen per
cent, of their nominal value, — or, more exactly, at
7.5 to I. The ;^8oo voted Mr. Lawrence at his
settlement in 1747 represented, therefore, approxi
mately ;^ii5 in silver at $2.^3 a pound, or an
aggregate sum in our money of ^365 ; while the
annual stipend of ;£^400 was reduced to about jCsSy
Massachusetts, or, approximately, ^185 a year. If
these figures represent the real state of Mr. Law
rence's financial resources, they are certainly sugges
tive. Computed in staples, — the market quotations
of corn and rye, beef and pork furnishing the stand
ards of value, — what, compared with the present,
was the relative purchasing power of this annual
stipend of ^185 "hard money"? Indian corn, for
instance, seems to have been valued at about 30
cents a bushel, and rye at 45 cents ; while pork was
rated at about four cents a pound, and beef at three
cents. As corn is now quoted at an average price
of about 42 cents a bushel, and rye at ^2 cents,
while pork is 12 cents per pound, and beef 10
cents, the purchasing power of money, measured in
food staples, compared with its present purchasing
power, would seem to have been from half as much
again to four and even five times as much.'
I When, after the death of Mr. Lawrence, the Rev. Charles Steams
was, in 1781, invited to succeed him, the salary oifered was ;^8o,
Massachusetts, a year, in "hard money," or $266, and this was, pre-
37

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Clearly, then, the Rev. William Lawrence must
have been what is now known as a forehanded man;
though his helpmate, or, as he termed her, his " yoke
fellow," may well have been a large factor in his pru
dential affairs. Indeed, she is portrayed to us as not
only of " stately mien and benign countenance," but
also " a wife of uncommon wisdom and prudence."
The worldly outcome of the pair was certainly sug
gestive.' Something, it is true, came to Mr. Law-
sumably, an increase on the salary previously paid to Mr. Lawrence.
The custom of paying the minister his salary on a standard of staple
prices continued until the close of the eighteenth century. Thus the
report of a committee appointed in 1797 to reach an understanding
with Mr. Stearns contains the following: —
"That frora and after the 7th dayof November inst: during the
time that he [Mr. Steams] shall remain our Gospel Minister, his An
nual Salary continue to be Eighty pounds, at all times when the Current
price of Indian Com is at three shillings per BusheU, Rye at four shil
lings and Beef at twenty Shillings per hundred, and Pork at thirty-three
Shillings and four pence per hundred w' t, all of Right good Quality —
that the sum or amount of said Salary shall be increased or diminished
as the Current price of those Articles shaU rise or fall, from time to
time, one fourth part of the Salary to be computed on each of those
Articles. And that the Selectmen of the Town shall make the said
Computation, with the said Charles Steams, in the beginning of No
vember annually. This being the contract of the Specie part of his the
said Charles Steams' Salary, the Allowance of Wood [15 cords] re
maining as heretofore allowed by the Town — And that the payment
of the said Salary to the said Charles Steams be made semi-annually by
the Treasurer." (Town Records, November 6, 1797.) Measured
by purchasing power, the value of the money unit was then four to five
times what it now is; measured by cost of living, a salary of ^23 3 may
have been, approximately, the equivalent of a salary of J1200 a year
now; but life was much simpler generally.
' The thrift and business instinct of the Rev. Mr. La-wrence and his
spouse seem to have excited notice during his Ufe ; for, in his anniver-
38

A MILESTONE PLANTED
rence in the way of inheritance ; but it was not much,
and consisted chiefly of farming land in Groton. Yet,
" passing rich " on that salary of ;^6o, Massachusetts,
a year, he and his spouse Love lived, and obviously
prospered ; for they brought up, educated and mar
ried a family of nine children, six of whom were
daughters. And when, a minister of one church for
over thirty years, William Lawrence wrote himself
to a death-bed, he breathed his last in his house
here on Lincoln hill, the possessor of what is de
scribed as "a good farm of thirty-nine acres con
nected with the homestead, extending down to
[Sandy] pond, besides eighteen acres known then as
the 'Oliver land' — since called the Lawrence pas
ture — seven acres of 'mead land,' and some ten
acres of ' flint land.' Considerable property was also
left in Groton and Townsend." The dwelling-house
is thus described : "It was a low-studded two-story
building ... a modest abode, with whitewashed
walls and sanded floors and plain furniture. There
was but one carpet in the house, and that was in
the ' west chamber,' " the chamber looking towards

sary discourse (p. 2z) Mr. Bradley, the successor of Mr. Lawrence in
the sixth remove, reports a legend to the following effect : " Toward
the end of his ministry one of [Mr. Lawrence's] flock, remarking upon
his evident prosperity, asked him in a jesting way how it -was that he
got on so well. To which Mr. Lawrence replied, ' By minding ray
own business, and letting yours alone. ' ' ' The incident is apocryphal ;
but it is given as illustrating Mr. Lawrence's " sense of humor." It
may, however, perhaps be questioned whether the "member of his
flock," to whom the reply was addressed, saw at once the humorous
aspect of the retort.
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
Concord. " The parlor contained a mahogany table,
a walnut desk, a little round tea-table, six leathern-
seated chairs, a few books of divinity, and the family
Bible. . . . The ' common room ' had an eight-day
clock, a looking-glass, and a light-stand. • . . The
kitchen had the usual capacious fireplace, with its
blazing light reflected from double rows of shining
pewter." From the parlor we pass into the minis
ter's study, — the work room in which the busy
pen wrote out those seventy sermons in the average
year. In it were some two hundred volumes, largely
quartos and folios, — sermons, theology and commen
taries ; those forgotten gravestones of a buried past
of which Hallam, the English historian, wrote —
" They belong no more to man, but to the worm,
the moth, and the spider. Their dark and ribbed
backs, their yellow leaves, their thousand folio pages,
do not more repel us than the unprofitableness of
their substance." Of general literature there was lit
tle. Poetry was represented by the wholly forgotten
Blackmore, and the lighter prose by eight volumes
of the "Spectator." Of history there was little, —
the recently published " Massachusetts" of Thomas
Hutchinson, and the ubiquitous Rollin, that also then
a new work. But among the first Lincoln minister's
collections one searches in vain for the names of
Shakespeare or Dryden or Bunyan or Pope or
De Foe, or even for that of the Puritan laureate,
John Milton.
And now, having made the acquaintance of the
minister and his wife in their dwelling, let us walk
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down the hill to the meeting-house, at the cross
roads. However it may have been in the beginning
and in precinct days, one of the first acts of Lincoln
town was to provide for the " building a steeple for
the hanging a bell for the town's use." " The old
Meeting-house," we are told, " was nearly square,
and was entered by three porches, the front porch
being on the southerly side. The [square] tower in
which the bell was hung, and on which the spire
stood, was at the westerly end, as the gables ran, and
another porch at the easterly end, a part of which
was occupied by the stocks, made of heavy oaken
planks." ' Inside, the body of the edifice was filled
with long benches, — the women sitting on one side,
the men on the other. On the outside of these, and
against the walls, were pews, built by permission
and at the cost of the owners thereof, — Chambers
Russell being the first privileged " to choose a place
for his pew in the meeting-house where he pleases, and
build it when he pleases." He selected the space
on the right of the front entrance, nearest the door.
From time to time permission was asked, and for
mally given, to construct windows at the cost and
for the benefit of privileged pew owners, through
which the proprietor, we are told, wearying with the
discourse, would sometimes stand and view the outer
' Drake, in his Old Landmarks of Boston (p. 92), says : " In front
of the old meeting-house stood the whipping-post, and probably the
stocks. . . . Both were used as a means of enforcing attendance, or
punishing ofl'ences against the church, and their location at its very
portal served, no doubt, as a gentle reminder to the congregation."
41

A MILESTONE PLANTED
world, his back to pulpit, sounding-board and min
ister. In the early days, when printed books were
scarce, it was the custom, after the minister gave out
the hymn, for him — or for the precentor, as he was
designated in the Church of England hierarchy, here
called chorister — to read the psalm line by line to
the congregation, which then sang it. In Lincoln
this practice was discontinued in 1789 ; but, eighteen
years earlier, in 1771, forty-two persons "who had
attained a good understanding in the rules of sing
ing " were, by vote of the town, seated together as
a choir on the lower floor. While the experiment
apparently gave general satisfaction, td Mr. Law
rence's successor. Dr. Charles Stearns, it was a source
of special pleasure ; for, among his other endow
ments, that faithful divine seems to have been blessed
with an ear, as well as a soul, for music. On this
topic he even warmed into eloquence ; and, though
it must be admitted extracts from sermons do not
as a rule tend to enliven, there are passages in one
discourse of his which throw such gleams of light on
several points of interest that quotation at length is
justified. The sermon in question was preached here
in Lincoln, and on this site, upon the 19th of April,
1792, — as near as may be a century and twelve
years since, — at " An Exhibition of Sacred Music."
Not a soul then living in Lincoln now survives.
Addressing the " brethren and sisters of the choir,"
Mr. Stearns exclaimed, " With pleasure have we
beheld your zeal, and the animated diligence of your
teacher. We have often had our ears refreshed by
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your agreeable performances. , . , When sounds
bold and strong have set forth the majesty, the
power and eternity of God, when lofty notes cele
brated his glories ' which transcend the sky,' when
menacing tones have shown the dangers of the
wicked ' on slippery rocks ready to fall into ruin,'
when tender and plaintive accents called our atten
tion to ' Jesus nailed to the tree,' when voices softer
than the gentlest breeze expressed the care of Jesus
over, his flock, ' hearing their prayers, and wiping
their tears away,' such touches, so true to nature,
could not fail. Mute attention, expressive features,
and melting eyes declared the sensations of the
assembly. To you we owe the revival of sacred
music in this place, which had well-nigh slept in
silence. So long had our harps hung upon the
willows, that we began to fear that they would be
wholly useless. But the songs of Zion are revived,
and sweeter than before."
But in this same discourse of Mr. Stearns there
are other passages of much significance. The worthy
minister not only actually quotes familiar lines from
the " Merchant of Venice," — and apparently from
memory, as he fails to quote correctly, — but he cites
James Thomson's now forgotten poem of "Sum
mer" as evidence of the high estimation in which the
bard of Avon was then held by all Britons : —
" Is not wUd Shakespeare thine and Nature's boast ? "
It was Charles Lamb who in one of the " Essays of
Elia " confessed to being wholly devoid of an ear for
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music, — to save his life, he could not have turned
the most familiar of airs, — a not uncommon defi
ciency ; and now Mr. Stearns, by nature tolerant,
threw the veil of an all-enveloping charity even over
Charles Lamb, and those in this respect his like.
Finally, he flashes a gleam of suggestive light upon
the manners and bearing of some who would seem
even at that period to have attended the sanctuary in
a spirit the reverse of devout edification. The passage
is as delightful as it is quaint : " From the ease with
which minds, susceptible of the pleasures of musick,
receive moral and religious impressions, some have
been led to consider insensibility to musick as the
sign of a bad heart. Shakespeare, whom the people
of Britain almost adore, and consider as an oracle in
the knowledge of human nature,' saith, —
• He that hath no musick in himself.
And is not mov'd vyith concord of sw^eet sounds.
Is fit for treasons.' ^
" Yet let us while we enjoy the pleasures of musick,
be charitable to those who are deprived of them.
Reason tells us that dullness to the charms of musick
is no more evidence of a bad heart than to be deaf,
blind, or dumb. In some cases it is a natural defect.
In others, a habit of sedateness has quenched the fire
' Vide Thomson's Seasons, "Summer," ver. 1563.
* The correct reading is,
" The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd by concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils."
Merchant ofl^enice. Act V, Sc. I.
44

A MILESTONE PLANTED
of imagination. It is related of a German mathema
tician, that attending the King of Prussia's opera,
where musick was in its highest perfection, he busied
himself in measuring the height and breadth of the
room, and in calculating the distance to which the
human voice might be distinctly heard. Then, when
he had done this, finding nothing else entertaining
for him, he left the audience abruptly. Such an in
stance, to the lovers of the Muse, will seem almost
miraculous. "Yet this person behaved himself much better
than many others, who, not less insensible, are yet
less innocent. They disturb the most sublime per
formances, in honor of Christ and of God, by mov
ing from place to place in the assembly, by jesting,
laughing and tumult. If indeed it be, that such
have no relish for sacred musick, they ought, in
point of civility, not to disturb the holy pleasures
of others."
To return to the choir — the forty-two persons
"who had attained a good understanding in the rules
of singing ; " — these were at first assigned seats in the
rear of the main floor, although galleries had already
been built around three sides of the interior; but
not until a later day were the ceilings under the floors
of these galleries plastered. Occupied during the
hours of Sabbath service, mostly by boys, or by the
town poor, and its Africans, the galleries were looked
upon as undesirable, — to sit in them was an indica
tion of inferiority. So, not until after the town had
been forty years incorporated, and the church had at
45

A MILESTONE PLANTED
last given a hesitating consent to the innovation of
a bass viol to assist the singers, could the choir be
reconciled to a place in the gallery, facing the pulpit.
Shatttick, in his history of Concord, asserts that, in
Lincoln, the reading of the Scriptures was first in
troduced as a part of the Sunday exercises by Mr.
Lawrence, in 1763; and, in 1768, a short prayer
before the reading. Later, and in the Stearns pas
torate, the services were much the same as those
with which we are familiar — the short and long
prayers, the singing of the psalms, and a discourse*
by the pastor, the assigned limit of which last was,
however, not thirty minutes, as now, but a full
hour. Such were the meeting-house and the services;
the audience, — all the inhabitants of the town ! The
Sabbath was the day of leisure, — the holiday of
the week, though a very silent and solemn one, —
the single break in that life-long monotony. It is a
thing of history now, remembered only by those in
the decline of life ; the Civil War is the dividing
line: but no one who passed a childhood during the
first half of the last century can fail to recall that
Sunday stillness, — a quiet so intense, so unbroken,
that even animal life seemed to observe it ; so com
plete that it was actually audible. The bicycle, the
carriage and the automobile have made of it a tradi
tion ; but it prevailed here in Lincoln for a whole
century after incorporation, and, during that period,
the meeting-house was for those then here dwelling
all that the town-hall, the theatre, the lecture-room,
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
the library, the Sunday paper and the periodical are
to us of the world as it now is. Of the six hundred
and ninety persons who composed the population
of the town at its incorporation, probably five hun
dred usually gathered for worship. The old and the
young, the rich and the poor, the bond and the free,
the wise and the simple, the halt and the lame, the
blind and the palsied, — all were at meeting. They
came on foot and on horseback. There were no car
riages in those days ; but, summer and winter, farm
wagons and rude country-side vehicles trooped in,
laden with those of both sexes and all ages, the dog
trotting demurely alongside, and, on rare occasions,
to the huge delight of the boys in the gallery, indul
ging in unseemly fights, to the great disturbance of
worshippers. To keep dogs out of the meeting-house
during divine service was in this country, as in Eng
land, not infrequently made the function of a special
officer. But, even on the Sabbath, " goin' to meetin' "
served other ends than worship. It was the time and
place of social gathering. The old meeting-house
was then the centre of a lively scene, people gather
ing in groups around the three porches, the sheds
on both sides of the road would be full of vehicles
while others were hitched to neighboring posts, and
often the flanks of the hill were dotted with wagons.
On rainy Sundays Dr. Stearns, they used to assev
erate, could be depended upon to preach his best.'
Going to meeting, those dwelling more remotely
' Mr. Porter's Discourse, Proceedings on the One Hundred and
Fiftieth Anni'versary, p. 76.
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shut up their houses, took with them their food,
and made a day of it. These were those Sabbath
"noonings" to which Mr. Bradley, in his anniver
sary discourse, properly and truly refers,' as not the
least important feature of the Lord's day. It was
" the only occasion during the week when the scat
tered neighbors had an opportunity of exchanging "
greetings and news ; and there is no sort of ques
tion that " this friendly hour had as much influence
as any enactment of the State in securing the gen
eral attendance of all inhabitants at the meeting
house from Sunday to Sunday." In the case of
Lincoln, moreover, it was this which decided the
placing of the meeting-house, and, subsequently, the
site of the village. Lincoln hill was not convenient ;
it was not on the line of least resistance for travel ; it
was not in the beginning accessible : but it was cen
tral; it was almost equidistant from the two great
thoroughfares which crossed the precinct near its
northern and southern limits. Even now, a century
and a half after the town's incorporation, there is
not a single dwelling on either the Walden road or
the Sandy Pond road for a space of a mile and a half
between the westernmost dwellings of Lincoln and
the easternmost of Concord. It was then much the
same in the direction of Weston and Lexington.
Thus the one great wish of that community was to
fix on some common central spot where once a week
they could congregate. This they found on the south
ern slope of Lincoln hill ; and there they placed
» Proceedings on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anni'versary, p. 27.
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
the meeting-house. It was in the beginning a mere
site. There was not, so far as I have been able to
ascertain, a single established public way affording
access to it. It could be reached only on sufferance
and through farm lanes, and by private ways. This,
of course, was soon remedied, and, ultimately, the
village grew up at the cross-roads ; but, unlike al
most any other Massachusetts town in that respect,
Lincoln village has no cause whatever for its being
except the one forgotten fact that, a hundred and
fifty years ago, it was a central point for the Sabbath
gathering of a scattered population, few of whom
lived more than " two miles and a quarter " there
from. Here, then, they met in every season ofthe year,
— spring and autumn, summer and winter. In the
winter it could not have been otherwise than trying.
The ways were bad and heavy ; the meeting-house
unwarmed ; out-of-door movement was under em
bargo. Later, when air-tight stoves came into use,
great pieces of peat were stowed away in them to
keep a slow, safe fire in the deserted house till the
return of the family, as the short winter day drew
towards nightfall. How the congregation bore the
deadly chilliness of the barn-like edifice it is not easy
to understand. The introduction of stoves was agi
tated here in Lincoln during the earlier years of
the last century, but Dr. Stearns, then pastor, set
his face against the innovation. It might extend life
and reduce the cases of lung fever, as pneumonia was
called, but the fathers had not found any heating
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apparatus necessary, and the world got along very
well then ; so he hoped no appliances for heating
would be introduced as long as he lived.' During
the winter, therefore, those who could not find a
friendly shelter in the scattered dwellings about the
hill, did not attend meeting, — they remained per
force at home ; but it was otherwise during half the
year at least. Then, in spring, summer, or autumn,
weather permitting, all the youth of Lincoln wan
dered in parties along the roads and through the
meadows, down by Sandy Pond and the brooklets,
and there the young men met the maidens, and
through generations the most momentous question
of life was then wont to be put, and the answer to it
given. By the older and more sedate, the news of
the day was canvassed, and the issues of politics de
bated; on the porch and about the meeting-house
— there, during the first year of the life of the town,
the bloody defeat of Braddock was discussed ; and,
' Mr. Porter's Discourse, p. 75. Dr. Steams died July 26, 1826.
The warrant for the next annual town-meeting bore date February 19,
1827. In it was the following : —
"Article 7. To know the pleasure of the Town respecting the Stove
lately put up in the Publick Meetinghouse — Whether the Town will
Defray the Expense of the same, or any part thereof, or give leave to
have it remain where it is, or adopt any measures respecting said stove,
and provid wood for the same, also provid Storage for the wood in the
Meetinghouse as the Town see fit and say how it shall be taken care of
and by whom. . . .
" Voted to have the Stove remain in the Publick Meetinghouse in
Lincoln where it now is, and voted the Congregational or religious
society in said Town pay the Expence of said Stove. Also voted the
selectmen provide wood, and a place for the storage of the wood to be
used or burnt when necessary to have fire in said Stove."
50

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a little later, the events and vicissitudes of the Seven
Years' War. Then, in 1757, the massacre of Fort
George, and, in 1758, the repulse of Abercrombie
at Ticonderoga spread a panic through Massachu
setts, a thrill of which doubtless found expression at
Lincoln ; Wolfe's death on the Plains of Abraham
followed, with the fall of Quebec and the English
conquest of Canada; and, at last, before the town
was yet in its "teens," came the close of the "old
French War." Subsequently, in 1765, the Stamp Act
was uppermost in mind, with that long succession
of issues culminating for Lincoln with the 19th of
April, 1775. Then, for the only time in its history
as a town, the smoke of an enemy's camp-fire curled
up within Lincoln limits.
In every way, that revolutionary period seems to
have been one of sore tribulation for the town ; and,
as was always apt to be the case, the trouble cen
tred on the meeting-house porch, and there found
expression. It was a civil trouble ; and, as was tra
ditionally proper, the Church was divided against
itself. The Rev. Mr. Lawrence was even suspected of
insufficient patriotism. To such a ripeness did this
suspicion grow, that, greatly to his indignation, his
private letters were tampered with by the so-called
Committee of Safety. A crisis seems to have been
reached during the autumn of 1774, — the months
following the Boston tea-party, and the closing of
the port of Boston. One Sabbath morning during
that season, the Lincoln air, tense with excitement,
was, it is said, full of rumors. The people gathered
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about the meeting-house at an unwonted hour, and
there was talk of not allowing the minister to enter
his pulpit. More neighborly and wiser counsels pre
vailed ; but the closing years of the Lawrence pas
torate were troubled. Indeed, the unhappy minister
seems to have been worried into his grave ; for, while
he died in April, 1780, only a year previous he had
been arraigned at three successive church meetings
because of " a jealousy " that he had " not been
friendly to his country in respect to the contest be
tween Great Britain and America." After much
wrangling it had been decided " by a great majority "
to " drop the affair in dispute," the " circumstances
and particular instances " alleged appearing on ex
amination " trifling and insufficient." ' That Mr,
Lawrence was a Tory has been denied, and certainly
was not proven : but it is clear that he was far from
being an ardent patriot; and, at a time when his
parishioners were thoroughly aroused by great events
transpiring, he " halted for a time between two opin
ions, and allowed his trumpet to give an uncertain
sound," But, as I have said, the story of Lincoln church
' The One Hundred and Fiftieth Anni'versary Proceedings, p. 23.
The Rev. Micah Lawrence, a cousin of William Lawrence, a graduate
of Harvard in the class of 1759, who taught school in Lincoln for a
time shortly after graduation, was a pronounced loyalist. R. M. Law
rence's Historical Sketches, p. 84. Chambers Russell was dead, but his
nephew, Dr. Charles Russell, who had inherited his uncle's place in
Lincoln, practising here as a physician, was a pronounced Tory, and
in 1775 went to Martinique. He left Lincoln on the 19th of April,
1775, — an extremely suggestive coincidence.
52

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has been written ; and for me now to repeat it would
be but to tell once more an already twice-told tale.
Yet Lincoln was first organized as a church precinct,
and its political incorporation did not greatly alter
the original purpose. For a whole century the his
tory of its church was the history of Lincoln ; and,
as contrasted with other and neighboring towns, —
its sisters of the Massachusetts family, — I cannot
here find, after its first pastorate, anything distinctive.
The initial period — the Lawrence regime, if it may
be so termed — was individual, and more or less per
turbed : but it carried the town practically through
the revolutionary troubles, for the second pastor was
not installed (November 7, 178 1) until a month after
that momentous 19th of October which witnessed
the surrender at Yorktown. Thenceforth, and for
nearly ninety years, the life of Lincoln presented no
features peculiar to itself. Its story is one of mono
tonous existence, — the slow development of a Mas
sachusetts community, exclusively agricultural. It
can be studied in the records of its town-meetings, its
schools, and its churches ; and, perhaps, most clearly
of all, in the annual tax levy.
In his poem entitled " The Deacon's Masterpiece,
or The Wonderful ' One-Hoss Shay,' " — and that
famous conveyance, let me in passing observe, was
built, we are told, in the year (1755) following the
incorporation of your town, — it and Lincoln thus
came into organized being within nineteen months of
each other, — in his well-known poem, I was saying.
Dr. Holmes remarks, truly enough, —
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"Little of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer ; "
and so it is always interesting, and usually suggestive,
to revert to an exact century since. This being 1904,
what was Lincoln's record in 1 804 ? Let us hunt it
up in the town-books. Lincoln then had a popu
lation of 740 souls ; it now has 1 100. Its entire
annual appropriations in 1 804, exclusive of the min
ister's salary and the rent of his house, amounted to
I1410, or $1.90 to each inhabitant; they last year
aggregated ^21,673, or $19.70 to each inhabitant,
almost exactly a tenfold increase. The school sys
tem of the town then involved an annual outlay of
$500 ; last year it cost $6500. For maintenance of
its roads the town voted in 1 804 the sum of $400 ;
this year it calls for I4000, last year it cost $6000.
Our poor and insane last year cost us $1000; in
1804 the sum of I500 was required. But of this
item in town expenditure I shall have more to say
presently. Meanwhile, looking over the lists of
officials of the two years a century apart, it is curious
to observe how the same names appear. In 1804
they had seven town-meetings ; we last year got
along with three. A century ago Samuel Hoar was,
when present, the moderator ; in his absence. Dea
con Samuel Farrar. None of the name of Hoar
now live in Lincoln ; but it is inseparably associated
with the mother town, and the Samuel Hoar ofthe
present generation was selected to address you to
day; only when he, after long deliberation and with
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strongly expressed regret, felt constrained to decline,
did I assume the duty. It was well; for he has since
fallen by the wayside. Ten days only have passed
since we witnessed his obsequies.'
Recurring to the record of 1 804, a Wheeler was
then town-clerk. A Brooks was a selectman ; while
among the other officials appear the names of Flint,
Bemis, Baker, Hartwell, and Tarbell. Samuel Hoar
that year represented the town in the General Court,
having received twenty-seven votes as against thir
teen thrown for Samuel Farrar, and two for Captain
J. Hartwell. But 1804 was also the year of a
national election, and Thomas Jefferson was chosen
for a second term. Prior to 1804 the Massachu
setts presidential electors had, as a rule, been named
by the General Court, as was the early practice in
most of the States ; but, in 1 804, they were chosen
directly by the people. Throughout the troubled
period of the Napoleonic wars, Lincoln seems to
have been a strong Republican, or Anti-Federalist,
town ; so, this year, its vote was sixty-six for the
Jefferson ticket, to eighteen for the electors pledged
to vote for Charles C. Pinckney, the candidate of the
Federalists, I Both Senator George Frisbie Hoar and Samuel Hoar were invited
to deliver the address on this occasion. Each felt obliged to decline : —
Senator Hoar, who had passed much of his earlier life in Lincoln, and
entertained a feeling of warm aff'ection for the town, because of that
failing health which proved premonitory of his death on the 30th of the
following September ; Samuel Hoar, then in his sixtieth year, was taken
suddenly ill, with a cerebral difficulty, early in April preceding this
anniversary, and, dying at Concord on Monday, the i ith of that month,
was there buried on the 1 3th. 55

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A hundred years ago no steps had yet been taken
to separate church from state. As it had been from
the beginning, so was it still — congregation and
town were one ; and, in 1 804, stimulated probably
by the minister, there was in Lincoln, not a religious
or political movement, but, much less open to ques
tion, a singing revival. At the same time the inte
rior arrangements ofthe meeting-house were in ques
tion. So the two matters, taken up together, were
dealt with comprehensively, — in a large way, as we
would express it. In the first place, an appropria
tion was voted for the " incouragement of Church
Music;" and, next, a special gallery was planned,
" to convene the singers." The town was, however,
thrifty ; the period of municipal extravagance was
still in the remote future, and it was planned that
the alterations in the interior of the meeting-house
were not only to pay for themselves, but should bring
a handsome surplus into the treasury. The votes
then passed in town-meeting, the reports made and
the action taken, are curiously illustrative of the
little republic, and the business-like way in which
its affairs were managed. To-day, they constitute a
study in polity.'
« December 12, 1803 (vol. ii, p. 494) : "Voted, to do something
to incourage Church music in this place." Then, "Voted, that the
sum of Fifty Dollars be assessed and paid by the inhabitants of this
Town for the incouragement of Church Music." Then, "Voted to
choose a Committee to take from the Treasury and lay out the fifty
dollars to the best advantage to incourage singing — and made choice
of Sam' 1 Hoar, Esq., Thos. Wheeler, Capt. Abner Mather, Elij. Fisk
and Eleazer Brooks, Jr." 56

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As a result of the simply planned meeting-house
alterations, sixteen additional pews were provided,
" twelve Pews in the Gallery in said House which
are numbered and four Pews on the lower floor ; "
and all these it was ordered " shall be sold at pub
lick Vendue to the highest bidder." They were so
sold, the town-meeting adjourning that the auction
might take place.
The financial outcome of the "Vendue " seems
to have exceeded the most sanguine expectations.
May 7, 1804: "Voted, to accommodate the Singing Society with
convenient seats in the Front Gallery."
"To act on a Refer' d Article, which is to hear the report of their
Committee Chosen by the Town, for the purpose of viewing the
Meeting House in order that the Singers may be accommodated with
convenient seats."
The Committee report as follows : " We the Subscribers being
Chosen a Committee at the last Town Meeting in order to see which
is the best way to finish the front gallery in order to convene the singers,
and to take under consideration the first article — beg leave to report
as follows : — It is our opinion that it is best to Build a Porch in the
front ofthe Meeting House 12 feet Square and 14 feet Posts, and to
swell the front Gallery, and build two convenient seats for the Singers
— and to Build a row of Pews round the Gallerys, and to alter the
porch Doors in the Gallerys so as to have them in the center of the
porches and to have an Alley to divide the Side Gallerys — also to
build four Pews below. We have calculated the probable expense will
be 450 Dollars and it is probable the Pews will fetch 900 Dollars the
Ballance in favor of the Town is 450 Dollars, all which is humbly
submitted. " Voted, To accept the Report of their Committee.
"Voted, To choose a Committee of Seven to carry into efi'ect the
subject matter of the above Report.
" Made Choice of Sam'l Hoar, Esq., Dea'n Sam'l Farrar, Major
Sam'l Hastings, Mr. Isaac Munro, Doct'r G. Tarbell, Mr. Abner
Wheeler & Lt. Elijah Fiske."
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It was, it must be admitted, a good deal like sell
ing boxes in a modern city opera-house ; but the
demand for special Sabbath church privileges was,
in the Lincoln of 1 804, unquestionably brisk. The
committee having the matter in charge had " calcu
lated" the expense of the improvements at I450,
and the receipts from the sale of new pews at I900;
resulting in a " Ballance in favor of the Town " of
I450. The transaction in fact, when the " Vendue "
finished, was found to have netted the town a profit
of no less than $762.35. At the "Vendue," Mr.
Amos Bemis — a family name since associated in an
other and larger way with Lincoln's public edifices —
seems to have become the owner of one of the pews
in the gallery; for, the sale having taken place on the
loth of September, the warrant for the next town-
meeting, called for the 5th of November, contained
the following article : — " 4th. To see if the Town
will give Liberty to Mr. Amos Bemis to put in a
Window in his Pew in the Gallery in the North
west corner of the Meeting house, agreeable to his
request." And presently the following vote was
passed, and recorded : — " 4th Article. Granted
Mr. Amos Bemis Liberty to put a Window in his
Pew in the Gallery as Requested."
Such were the questions which engaged the atten
tion of the town an hundred years ago ; such the
scale of its expenditure. Nor, for a quarter of a
century, did any change take place. At last, in 1829
the separation of state from church was effected, and
thereafter the prudential affairs of the parish did not
58

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affect those of the town.' Accordingly, from 1 830
to the present time, we have an unbroken record of
' The Rev. Elijah Demond succeeded Dr. Steams. He was the
last pastor called under the old system, and prior to the total separa
tion of church from town. The change in relations of pastor and peo
ple which had already taken place is apparent in the vote in the Lincoln
records. The town now did not seek to settle a pastor ; it hired a.
preacher. The article in the warrant, and the vote, were as follows: —
September 5, 1827 — "2d. To see if the Town will Concur with
the Church in giving Rev. Mr. Elijah Demond an invitation to Settle
over them as their Gospel Minister, and if so, to vote what they will
give him for Sallary, annually, and what incouragement other ways
they will give. . . .
"Voted, to give Rev. Elijah Demond an invitation to settle over the
Church and people of this Town as their Gospel Minister.
" Also voted to pay him for Sallery, annually five hundred and fifty
dollars, so long as he performs his Ministerial labours in this Town,
with the provision, that the connection may be dissolved, by either
party giving the other, six months notice."
On the nth ofthe following month (October) another town-meeting
was held, the warrant for which contained the following article —
«'2nd. To see if the Town will make any alterations in the conditions
of the call which they voted to give Rev. Mr. Demond at their last
meeting or act anything respecting the same, and in case he shall accept
the call, to make proper arrangment for his installation. . . .
" Voted, to dispence with that part of the condition in the Invitation
voted to Rev. Mr. Elijah Demond at the last Town meeting which
provides for the dissolution of connection by either party giving the
other six months notice
"Then voted to reconsider the last vote
" then voted. That the conditions of the call given to the Rev'd
Mr. Demond by this Town at their last meeting be so far altered, that
a morgority of two-thirds of the legal voters shall be necessary, on the
part of the Town, to cause a disolution of the connection, and should
such a majority ever be obtained ; or should their Minister, on his
part, give notice of his desire of dismission, in either case, a Councill
of Ministers and delegates from other Churches shall be called to
advise thereon. . . .
"Then Rev'd Mr. Demond excepted the call voted him the last
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the amounts annually raised by taxation. It is curi
ous and suggestive. During the five years between
1834 and 1839 inclusive, the average annual levy
was ^1,878.58. The first century of town life closed,
unnoticed and uncommemorated, in 1854. During
the five ensuing years (i 856-1 860) the average
annual levy was I4100. The increase of public ex
penditure during nearly the lifetime of a generation,
on account of roads, schools and all the incidents of
corporate existence, had been but I2200 per annum.
Then came the Civil War with its continuous calls
for men. It was an altogether exceptional period.
Yet the money burden that terrible conflict imposed
on Lincoln was not considerable, — it amounted in
the aggregate to only $ 1 5,000, the average levy for the
five years 1861 to 1865, inclusive, being $7,113.80,
or $3000 more than during the previous similar
period. Then, for the next ten years or so, town
affairs resumed the even tenor of their ancient way,
and not until 1870 is a change observable. Then,
first in the history of the town whether in time of
peace or In time of war, the annual tax levy passed
the ten thousand dollar mark, not again to fall be
low it. The older and simpler existence had come
to a natural close, though one gradually approached,
and Lincoln entered on a new and more highly
developed life.
Let us for a moment recur to the first period, that
anterior to 1870, and its annual tax levies. Very
meeting., with the above mentioned alterations as they are proposed,
and voted in his presents, at this meeting."
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simple as compared with those of more recent years,
they reveal a niggard expenditure and a most rigid
scrutiny. The amounts are small ; the accounting
exact. Every item was jealously observed. The three
great heads of outgo were the roads, the schools,
and the support of the poor ; and it is very notice
able how large a proportion, as compared with the
present, the cost of maintaining the pooi: bore to
the total outgo. It now constitutes one twenty-fifth
part of it, or only 4 per cent.; in 1833, seventy
years ago, it constituted 23 per cent. ; and, in i860,
8 per cent. How explain this? Lincoln was a
sparsely peopled town ; but its people were homo
geneous, thrifty, and fairly well-to-do. As such com
munities went, it was moral and temperate, — nei
ther so moral nor so temperate as now, but in both
respects probably above the average of the time. In
its population was no appreciable foreign element ; '
substantially, it was pure American stock. Whence
then this pauperism ? The answer is not far to seek ;
nor is the page which reveals it pleasant reading.
It is a page now happily closed.
In those times, as now, the demented were classed
with the poor. I have already alluded to the fact
that in its earliest period Lincoln was without any
physician who would now rank as educated. Later,
the estimable, as well as educated, Dr. Charles Rus-
^ Even as late as 1875, — twenty years after the opening of the
Fitchburg railroad, — no less than 77 per cent, of those inhabiting
Lincoln were of American birth. The town-bom constituted 34 per
cent, of the whole. 61

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sell served the little community in that capacity ;
he, however, was driven away as a Tory in April,
1775, and, five years later, died in exile. But, apart
from physicians, surgeons or trained nurses, I have
been unable to find any evidence of a drug-store in
the eighteenth century Lincoln, much less of a hos
pital. The town was without an almshouse also ; for,
though provision for an almshouse was at one time
made through the bequest of a public-spirited towns
man, a mere two-room tenement was forthcoming ;
and this, after trial of the experiment, was discon
tinued. Needless then to say that Lincoln neither
had an asylum for the insane within its limits, nor
access to one elsewhere. There is a curious theory
sometimes advanced that insanity is in New England
steadily increasing ; and, in support of this disturb
ing contention, the statistics of former times are
compared with those ofthe present. In point of fact
there are no statistics ofthose former times. Now the
insane are carefully gathered together, enumerated,
and scientifically cared for ; then, they were ignored
or neglected, and often brutally abused. They were
allowed, if harmless, to wander in the streets, — the
village idiots ; or they were herded in the almshouse,
if there chanced to be an almshouse. Some years
ago I found in the records of Braintree a vote appro
priating money to one Samuel Spear to " build a
little house seven foot long and five foot wide, and
set it by his house to secure his sister, good wife
Witty, being distracted, and provide for her." The
wretched lunatic was housed like a dog, in a ken-
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nel by her brother's door. And again, by another
town-record entry of a later day, Josiah Owen was
voted " Twenty pounds money provided he gives
bond under his hand to cleare the Towne forever of
Ebenezer Owen's distracted daughter." What, under
these circumstances, became of the unfortunate girl,
presumably Josiah's orphan niece, it is perhaps as
well not to inquire. But, as respects the care of its
poor and insane, Lincoln then pursued the usual
course. With its records I am less familiar than
with the records of other Massachusetts towns not
dissimilar, and so cannot quote chapter and verse ;
but in the records of Weymouth I once came across
the following action of the town-meeting of March
II, 1771 : "Voted to sell the Poor that are main
tained by the Town for this present year at a Vendue
to the lowest bidder." This tells the whole story,
— a lamentation, and an ancient tale of wrong ! '
' In the North American Kcvieiu for January, 1 849 (vol. Ivi, pp.
171-191), is an article entitled "Insanity in Massachusetts," written
by the celebrated Dr. S. G. Howe. In it he describes in detail some
cases of treatment of the insane which he had himself " witnessed,
during the last three months, in places within thirty miles of Boston."
He found the demented of both sexes "in the almshouses, shut up
in cold and cheerless rooms, sometimes chained to the walls, often
confined in narrow cages, without a chair or bed, and with nothing
but the straw on which they lie down like the brutes. " He cites with
painful particularity cases exactly parallel to those of " good wife
Witty Spear" and "Ebenezer Owen's distracted daughter. " Nor was
this eighteenth century treatment ; it was the practice of sixty years
ago. The cases were, moreover, in no way exceptional. Dr. Howe
asserted that if " allowed to make extracts from the journal of a friend,
who has traversed every part of Massachusetts on an errand of mercy
... we could fill a volume." Yet Massachusetts was then aheady
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Lincoln, in the earlier period, — that ideal age of
gold so commonly referred to as the "good old
times," — having no almshouse or asylum, farmed
out its poor and insane. They were annually put
up at auction, and their care intrusted to whoever
agreed to assume it, — undertook to feed, lodge,
clothe and warm the wretched outcasts, — at the
lowest rate. Last year, with an appropriation on
that account less than twice as large as its average
appropriation on the same account se-venty years
ago, Lincoln cared for four insane dependent upon
it ; the previous year for six. Beyond these it had
no paupers to support ; — only tramps to enter
tain ! Nor are our records now disfigured, as then
they were, by long lists of entries notifying those
without visible means of support at once to return
to the place whence they came. Judging by the
record, eighteenth century charity certainly began at
home ; as also it was indisputably cold. So, through
all those years Lincoln's appropriation of I400, or
thereabouts, a year, covered not only its charge for
pauperism, but the cost for it of almshouse, hospi-
fer in advance among communities, American or foreign, in care of
the insane. Elsewhere in the same paper (p. 183) Dr. Howe says:
" Under the name of economy, the insane and idiots of our own coun
try have been and are now (1843) kept in a state of physical degrada
tion which is painful to them and demoralizing to others. In many
towns their keeping for one year is hired out at public auction, in
town-meeting, to the man who will agree to keep souls and bodies
together for the smallest number of dollars and cents." Selectmen
had even made it matter of boast that they had "kept town paupers
alive three hundred and sixty-five days upon eight cents and five mills
per day."
64

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tal, and asylum. Viewed in that light, it cannot be
called extravagance ; but the character of the care
bestowed admits of question.
Turning from the poor and the insane to the
schools, the record is not much better. Upon " the
little red school-house " period, sometimes so greatly
lamented, it is not necessary to dilate. In the case
of Lincoln, it is pre-natal, — a part of the histories
of Concord and Lexington and Weston. Referring
to the conditions then prevailing, and the educa
tional methods in vogue, the historian of Lincoln
— and he was sufficiently near to speak thereof with
knowledge — exclaims : " What pen shall describe
the schools, the teaching, the poverty of the appli
ances of learning ? Lead pencils, steel pens, and
ruled paper were unknown. The exercises consisted
of reading, spelling, the study of arithmetic, and
learning to write. These exercises, and the disci
pline of the school — which was usually in accord
ance with the maxim of Solomon — occupied the
sessions." But this, in justice be it distinctly understood, was
in the earlier and provincial period, — a period pre
historic, — beyond the memory of the oldest living
inhabitant. With the installation into the pastorate
of the Rev. Charles Stearns, Lincoln seems to have
entered on a new educational life. This was in 178 1,
before the close of the War of Independence ; and
the impetus then given was not thereafter suffered
to die wholly away. Shattuck, who wrote as early as
1835, or nine years only after Mr. Stearns's death,
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bears his testimony that Lincoln had always given
liberal support to her common schools, and adds
that she had been "rewarded in the distinguished
character of her educated sons ; " and the number
of those among them who were graduates of Har
vard is, in the case of a town which never up to the
close of the nineteenth century numbered a popu
lation of twelve hundred, certainly most creditable.'
Among the names of the teachers of Lincoln's
grammar school are to be found those of Timothy
Farrar, the centenarian jurist of New Hampshire,
born here in 1747; of Fisher Ames, the orator-
statesman, born in Dedham in 1758 ; and of Jacob
Bigelow, the eminent physician who subsequently
revolutionized the practice of medicine, born in Sud
bury in 1787. These are great names to inscribe
over the portal of one rural school, — names to feel
pride in. But, according to Mr. Porter,^ another
bearer of a great name bore emphatic testimony to
the literary atmosphere which prevailed In Lincoln,
when, in the early forties, Theodore Parker publicly
Informed the residents of Lexington that the " little
town on the hill yonder [Lincoln] has long main-
I Mr. Wheeler gives (Hurd's Middlesex, vol. ii, pp. 627—631) a
list of Lincoln college graduates from the incorporation of the town to
1886. They number thirty-one in all, of whom twenty took degrees
at Harvard, four at Amherst, three at Brown, three at Dartmouth,
and one at Williams. The name of Farrar occurs most frequently in
the list, ten having graduated between 1755 and 1839. The Hartwells
follow with four. Samuel Hoar graduated at Harvard in 1 8 02 ; Professor
John Farrar in 1803. Both were prepared for college at Dr. Stearns's
Liberal School.
2 One Hundred and Fiftieth Anni'versary of First Church, p. 94.
66

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tained so high a standard that Lexington has de
pended upon her for many of Its teachers." Lincoln
never rose to that grade in population which imposed
on her as a town the obligation of a Latin School,
but, in 1793, Mr. Stearns and others instituted here
a " liberal school," as it was denominated. We are
told that the old laird of Auchinleck contemptuously
said of the famous Dr. Johnson that " he keppit a
schule and cau'd it an Academy ; " the reverse was
the case with Mr. Stearns and his associates, for
they installed an academy, and modestly called it a
school. But what, in this respect, Mr. Stearns did
has already been gratefully recorded, and I shall not
repeat what others, far better informed, have in this
respect said.' But there is reason to claim that,
throughout the first half of the last century, — and
Mr. Stearns, be it remembered, did not die until
1826, — the schools of Lincoln were exceptionally
good. In the veracious record of his famous voy
ages. Captain Lemuel Gulliver tells us that the King
of^ Brobdingnag " gave it for his opinion, that who
ever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of
grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only
one grew before, would deserve better of mankind,
and do more essential service to his country, than
the whole race of politicians put together." The
sphere of duty and of Influence of Charles Stearns
"See Mr. Bradley's "Historical Discourse" (pp. 33, 34), and
Sermon by Rev. E. G. Porter (pp. 69, 70, 94), in Proceedings on
Observance of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anni'versary; also Mr.
Wheeler's "Lincoln " in Hurd's History of Middlesex County, vol. ii,
pp. 632, 633.
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was not large, but within that sphere what Dr.
Johnson wrote of another might be recorded of
him : —
"His virtues walk'd their narrow round.
Nor raade a pause, nor left a void :
And sure the eternal Master found
His single talent w-ell employ 'd."
The second pastor of the Lincoln church did
more than make " two blades of grass to grow upon
a spot of ground where only one grew before ; "
he found the schools of the community to which he
ministered poor, and he left them comparatively
good. What greater service could he have rendered
his people ?
But before dismissing the schools of that earlier
period, I cannot refrain from quoting the following
excellent precepts, laid down as long ago as 1 8 17 for
the guidance of Lincoln teachers and pupils. There
is about them a qualntness and simplicity in these
days refreshing: — "In respect to the Internal order
of Schools, the Committee recommend that the Mas
ters insist on Good Order and enforce it by such pru
dent measures as shall be likely to produce that effect.
That they strongly recommend to the scholars' atten
tion cleanliness of person and decency of dress, and
that the scholars make it known to their parents
and Guardians that it is expected of them. It is
highly approved by the Committee that the Masters
do whatever Is in their power to preserve and pro
mote good morals and decent and polite behaviour
among the Students, That each school be reduced
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to as few classes as may be convenient, and that in
each class the Students take their rank according to
Merit, particularly in spelling."
But, when all is said, the record of Lincoln In all
these respects, though quaint and graphic and instruc
tive In its way, is but the record of well-nigh innu
merable other towns somewhat similarly placed. The
schools were simple and ungraded; the school-houses
mean, bare and remote; the teaching in them was,
perhaps, unscientific; but the annual tuition of each
scholar cost five dollars, whereas now It costs twenty-
five. The roads were poor and unfit for heavy team
ing; but the traffic over them was light, and the cost
of their maintenance nominal. All this, however, Is
not history; no more history than the daily diary of
him who keeps a shop, of cultivates a farm. From
neither the last nor the first can anything new or of
value be educed. But what else is there to record ?
In his very sympathetic, as well as scholarly address,
— for it was not, as there denominated, a " Ser
mon," — delivered here now six years since, my
friend,— now, alas, dead, — the Rev. Edward G.
Porter, observed that " Lincoln's part in the French
war, in the Revolution, and In our subsequent wars,
remains yet to be fully written." I do not think so.
The story has been told, — carefully told, and by
those who have studied the subject in each detail, —
eloquently told from every point of view. A tablet
by the wayside on the old Lexington-Concord road
commemorates the fact that It was in Lincoln- Paul
Revere's ride on the night of April i8, 1775, was
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brought to a close; and a more modest affidavit
tells us that, next day, Abijah Pierce, of Lincoln,
" colonel of the minute-men," went up to Concord
bridge "armed with nothing but a cane." But it
is when one goes beyond the general and formal
record of the day and comes in contact with its par
ticular incidents, that April, 1775, lives again, and
we realize not only what real men and women had
their being here, but we feel again as they felt. For
instance. In April, 1850, Concord celebrated the
seventy-fifth anniversary of its famous fight. Two
survivors of the day were then present, Jonathan
Harrington, of Lexington, of the age of ninety-two,
and Amos Baker, of Lincoln, then ninety-four. Four
years later, in March, 1 854, 1 remember being present
at the funeral of Jonathan Harrington, the last sur
vivor of Lexington fight ; for Amos Baker had died
here In Lincoln three months after the 1850 anniver
sary at Concord. He lies just opposite us now, in the
family tomb, on the edge of the old burying-ground.
But, three days after that celebration of 1 850 they re
corded his recollection of what had occurred seventy-
five years before ; ' and it is instinct with life. He
told how his "brother Nathaniel was then paying
his addresses to the girl whom he afterwards mar
ried;" and, on the evening before the fight, was at the
house on the Lexington road where she was staying.
They must have been late callers in those days, for he
there received the alarm from Dr. Prescott, who, the
• "Oration by Robert Rantoul, Jr., and Account of the Union
Celebration at Concord, Nineteenth April, 1850," pp. i33_i35,
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inscription on the tablet tells us, did not escape the
British outpost, and ride that way, until after two
o'clock in the morning. Coming home, and alarm
ing his family, the father and five sons, with one son-
in-law, — six Bakers and one Hosnier, — that morn
ing "joined the Lincoln company at the Brook, by
Flint's, now Sandy, Pond, near the house of Zachary
Smith." Amos there " loaded his gun with two balls,
— ounce balls, — and powder accordingly," He saw
the British troops move up towards Concord com
mon, and " the sun shone very bright on their bay
onets and guns ; " they had just marched through
Lincoln, According to his own recollection, he was
the only man from Lincoln who had a bayonet. His
father got it " in the time of the French war," But
the men with bayonets were put in the front when
they made ready to march down to the bridge, be
cause it was not certain whether the British would
fire, or whether they would charge bayonets without
firing. "Then they saw the smoke ofthe town house,
and Major Buttrick said — ' Will you stand here, and
see them burn the town down ? ' And the order was
given to march, and we all marched down without
any further argument. The British had got up two
of the planks of the bridge. There were two soldiers
killed at the bridge, I saw them when I went over
the bridge lying, side by side, dead. Colonel Abijah
Pierce got the gun of one of them, and armed him
self with It. Joshua Brooks, of Lincoln, was at the
bridge, and was struck with a ball that cut through
his hat, and drew blood on his forehead, and It looked
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as if it was cut with a knife. When we had fired at
the bridge, and Jellied the British, Noah Parkhurst,
of Lincoln, who was my right-hand man, said — 'Now,
the war has begun, and no one knows when it will
end.' " So Amos Baker, who followed the pursuit
back to Lexington meeting-house, closes with this
reflection on his feelings during that long, fatiguing
experience : — "I verily believe that I felt better that
day, take it all the day through, than if I had staid
at home." This is history ; and, racy of the soil, it is
characteristic ofthe people and ofthe time. Fighting
before their own lintels and over their own hearth
stones, Jacob Baker, a veteran of the French wars
and then a man of fifty-four, accompanied by his
five sons and the husband of his daughter, join the
mustering minute-men of Lincoln up by the outlet
of 9&.ndy Pond ; and, armed with the old flint-lock
King's-arms and fowling-pieces, they hurry to Con
cord common. In time to see the glistening arms of
the invading troops as they march in solid ranks
up the road from Lexington. The very names of
the father and his sons, biblical all, are characteristic
of time and place, — Jacob, the father, and again a
Jacob ; then Samuel, James, Nathaniel and Amos,
with a brother-in-law Daniel ; and they assembled at
the house of Zachary, later occupied by Jonas ; the
Colonel was Abijah ; and, during the engagement,
Amos's right-hand man was Noah, while Joshua was
struck by a bullet.
Again, eighty-seven years later, and during the
Civil War, one would look far to find a more typical
72

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or creditable Individual case and record than that of
George Weston, of Lincoln stock, and one of Lin
coln's quota. A Harvard graduate, his story has been
well, and perhaps sufficiently, told ; for he was of a
goodly company.' Two years only a graduate, just
entering on professional life, physically unequal to
the hardships necessarily incident to all active mili
tary service, under every family inducement to re
main at home, he enlisted from an overruling sense
of obligation. But in him, as in so many others,
pluck supplying the lack of physical stamina, he
proved faithful to the end.
And yet there was another side to the record both
in the War of Independence and in the Civil War,
That other side, too, was developed in the case of
Weston, and emphasized In one of his utterances, by
chance handed down to us. His entrance into the
service had been peculiarly creditable to him. For a
young man to enlist, or rush into the training camp,
during the summer and autumn of 1861, called for
no courage, bespoke no sense of sacrifice or duty ;
on the contrary, the restraint lay In not yielding to
the universal military craze. As In the case of George
Weston, many who then held back showed In so
doing a suitable regard for home and domestic obli
gations. It was not so a year later. The glamour was
now gone ; and, after the terrible fighting before
Richmond and Washington In June, July and Au
gust, 1862, war showed itself for what It was, —
something very grim. The tinsel was gone ; recruits
" Har'vard Memorial Biographies, vol. ii, pp. 199—206.
73

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were sorely needed ; enlistments had stopped.' Then
It was, five days before Antietam, in September,
1862, just as the first draft was about to be ordered,
that Weston stepped to the front. He volunteered.
He did so, as he said at the time, because others,
his friends and classmates, had gone to their deaths
"just because I, and such as I, were not In our
places to help them." Not from impulse did he
act, but goaded to the sacrifice by that terrible New
England conscience.
Such was an individual case ; nor di|i it stand
alone. But there was another side to that great
experience ; a seamy side, and one now generally
I The " craze" had passed away even before the close ofthe sum
mer of 1 8 61. "The black disaster of Bull Run still overshadowed
the North. The five regiments in camp [in Massachusetts] lacked
some 1700 men, and yet the daily returns from the recruiting officers
for four of the regiments showed a total enlistment from the 14th
to the 1 6th of August of only four men. " (H. G. Pearson, Life of
J. A. Andreiv, vol. i, p. 244.) A year later, and at the time young
Weston volunteered, the situation was much worse. Even in early
June, 1862, the militia organizations would not respond to an emer
gency call. Governor Andrew then wrote : " // luas not so a year since.
No one was reluctant. No one stipulated for short terms. Twenty
regiments eagerly pressed for leave to go for any term however indefi
nite. Now, a battery Co. whose enlistment began a week yesterday
has not 85 men. And they are only enlisting for Six Months. The
war looks to be of indefinite length." (Ib., vol. ii, p. 23.) As the
struggle progressed the difliculties in procuring voluntary enlistments '
steadily increased, and the character of those enlisting deteriorated.
Finally the filling of contingents became a recognized business, and
passed into the hands of a set of brokers and crimps, of whom as a
class it is said, "The sum total of honesty among them was probably
as small as in any set of men to be found outside prison." (Ib.,
p. 144.)
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passed over in silence, — quietly ignored, in fact.
Yet it was the side from which the lesson of greater
value to posterity is to be drawn. The mistakes
— stupid, unscientific, cruel, costly — of 1778 and
1862 should not be repeated; and that they may
not be repeated, they must be coldly set forth and
emphasized strongly. The plain, historic fact is that,
individual instances like that of George Weston
apart, after the first outburst of excitement which
carried the whole Baker family to Concord had sub
sided, the record of Lincoln, as of Lincoln's sister
towns, whether in the War of Independence ' or in
the Civil War, is in my judgment not one to dwell
upon with feelings of complacency. As a whole,
and when studied in the hard, matter-of-fact entries
of your town-books, it is far from being a record
I The record of Lincoln in the War of Independence was worked
up with great labor and assiduity by Mr. Wheeler, and a list of the
town's revolutionary soldiers is to be found in Hurd's Middlesex (vol.
ii, pp. 620-624). The list is, however, admittedly imperfect and
incomplete. The only deduction to be drawn from it is that the war
was carried on in a. most ineffiective and extravagant way as respects
both men and money. Enlistments were voluntary ; terms of service
varied ; extravagant bounties were paid. But it is also apparent that, in
proportion to population and wealth, the War of Independence weighed
far more heavily than the Civil War on the resources of the commu
nity. It lasted twice as long ; there was no large floating and foreign
population to draw on for recruits ; the means of transportation were
limited ; the material at command was small. Mr. Wheeler says that
in 1781 the town, with a population of 750, paid ^73 10 s. "hard
money," or ^(255, to each of twelve men enlisting for three years in
the Continental serviee. This represented for that single year one
man in twelve ofthe entire arms-bearing population ofthe town; and
$255 in specie then would have been the equivalent of at least $1$°°
in currency during the Civil War. 75

A MILESTONE PLANTED
either of eager patriotism or of unthinking self-
sacrifice. But here bear with me for a moment while I
Indulge in a brief disquisition ; as, perchance, what
I have just said may grate harshly on the ears of
some, offending their most cherished preconceptions.
Briefly, between 1861 and 1865 I served myself
through years of actual warfare, and, since, I have
searched somewhat deeply into our records of that
period. My study has emphasized my recollection ;
so, on this subject, I feel. I have come to think
that neither in our War of Independence nor in our
Civil War did Massachusetts, or our Massachusetts
towns, evince a military instinct, or rise to an equality
with the occasion. In other words, I hold that no
community has any right to go to war unless it Is
prepared to make war in a way at once scientific,
business-like, and effective. To pursue any differ
ent course is to the last degree wasteful, dangerous,
bloody, foolish. Yet this is what Massachusetts, and
the Massachusetts towns, did in both their great re
cent war ordeals. The course pursued was as little
creditable to their intelligence, as to their sense of
thrift in money, or of the sanctltude of blood. In
each case there was at first a great outburst of zeal
and patriotism, — a rush to arms. Then followed
coolness and huckstering. With the memory ofthe
first outburst, — Lexington, in the one case, Sumter,
in the other, — occasions like this are resonant ; that
only is dwelt upon. What ensued is ignored ; but
your record-books tell the story. The only strenu-
76

A MILESTONE PLANTED
ous effort was the effort to escape military service ;
food for powder was purchased in open market, and
at a price advancing by leaps and bounds. The fact
is that neither In 1778 nor in 1862 did the young
men rush to the colors ; nor would the community
order and submit to a draft. Patriotism was sold and
bought. Flesh-and-blood was so much a pound, —
twelve dollars, being, ifl remember right, the top quo
tation. We carried, it Is true, both struggles through
to triumphant conclusions ; but was this method of
doing it creditable, or economical, or humane ? Was
it a thing to be proud of or to dilate on? I hold it
was not. If others here think it was, I commend to
their consideration the pages of the Lincoln town-
books. It would, in 1780 and in 1863, have been
immensely creditable to Lincoln did It therein appear
that, in view of the war, the men were divided and
enrolled by ages, — the married and the unmarried,
brothers and sole supports of mothers, — and the
draft had then been rigidly and swiftly enforced. Ifa
community elects war, its young men should be made
to go to war. So doing should not be a matter of
choice or of bargaining. Had this severe, scientific
and logical course been adopted, and ruthlessly pur
sued either in 1 77 6 or in 1 8 6 1 , 1 risk nothing in assert
ing that both the War of Independence and the Civil
War would have cost in time, in treasure. In anguish
and in blood, but a tithe of what they did cost. As
it was, you sent forward the bounty-bought refuse of
the city slums and county jails to associate with your
George Westons if they survived, or to take their
77

A MILESTONE PLANTED
places when they fell ; while, by the system of re
plenishment in vogue, you compelled those at the
front to undergo eight campaigns instead of four, and
to fight two indecisive battles where one vigorously
followed up should have sufficed. Were it germane
to the history of Lincoln, I could myself tell you of
bitter experiences with those latter-day substitutes for
soldiers. One fact, however, should ever be borne in mind,
— a fact already referred to, and which I now would
emphasize. Once only during the last two centuries
has an armed enemy crossed Lincoln's borders. The
struggles in which, since her Incorporation, she has
been called upon to contribute, whether in money or
in blood, have been remote ; nor, as such things go,
were her sacrifices in them really considerable. Dur
ing the whole four years of our great civil conflict,
fbr instance, Lincoln's entire quota amounted to not
more than one in ten of her population, and of that
actual population, — from among her own denizens,
— it is open to question whether even one In twenty
was sent by her to the front. Of her assessed valua
tion, the conflict of which so much is said cost her
less than two dollars in a hundred. She did not see
her hearths devastated, nor was death's bitter cup
pressed home to her own lips ; she never felt the
cruel stress and wicked waste of instant, grim-visaged
war. Had that lot indeed been hers, it does not for
a moment admit of doubt, the spirit of April, 1775,
would have again flamed forth ; and, while as then,
every arms-bearing man would have been found in
78

A MILESTONE PLANTED
the ranks, her substance would have been poured
out like water spilt upon the plain.
On this topic enough has in my judgment been
said. In other respects, the roster — and it is a cred
itable one — of the town's conspicuous sons has been
compiled by one conscientious investigator,' and
eloquent mention made of certain of the more emi
nent among them by another, now recognized as
past master of this description of tribute.^ Later, the
general principles involved In our two great crises
of national development were adequately outhned
and emphasized by an orator very competent for the
task, when, on the 26th of May, 1892, you dedicated
your town-hall.' Nothing on these topics has been
left for this occasion.
It is otherwise as respects your system of water
supply. That undertaking, and its slow develop
ment, were not only events in Lincoln's story, but
their treatment by one competent for the task, who,
having been present at the town-meetings, was per
sonally familiar with the men concerned and had
watched the course of events, — their treatment by
such a person might, I say, be made a study as full of
life and humor and character as Mrs. Gaskell's "Cran-
ford." The development was initiated In 1872, and
for thirty years thereafter it not only supplied a por
tion ofthe community with water, but the whole of
' 'The Lincoln Church Manual, by Rev. H. J. Richardson, 1872.
2 Senator George F. Hoar, Proceedings at the Dedication ofthe Lin
coln Library, August 5, 1864.
3 William Everett, LL.D., of Quincy.
79

A MILESTONE PLANTED
it with an ever-present bone of unfailing contention.
Indeed, echoes ofthat contention have not yet wholly
died away, — their rumble is at times distinctly
heard. Nor is that surprising ; for I doubt if state
or nation afford another instance of a like burden
assumed by a purely rural community numbering but
eight hundred souls, and those scattered over some
seventeen square miles of territory, with no thickly
peopled centres. The act was one of genuine states
manship ; as such it implied in those who promoted
it not only courage and foresight, but an absolute
confidence In destiny. That in reality it was a move
of self-protection, if not of self-preservation, is now
apparent. But, in 1872, this was far from apparent;
and Lincoln's birthright was then threatened. An
offshoot of Concord In part, Lincoln was in immi
nent danger of having Concord preempt Sandy Pond;
and, with it, a priority in right over Lincoln's great
reservoir of one of God's most precious gifts to man.
Of the two whose prescience, shrewdness and
assiduity then saved for Lincoln its patrimony, —
prevented the sacrifice thereof without even the pro
verbial mess-of-pottage return therefor, — both were
within ten years still active in the town's affairs.
To see them, and cooperate with them, was my privi
lege. One, the traditional town-clerk, has now gone
before ; ' the other yet remains, wholly withdrawn
from active participation in those proceedings over
' James Lorin Chapin, died March i, 1902. Bom, 1823. Settled
in Lincoln in 1 845. Chairman of the Board of Selectmen and Town
Treasurer, 1868 to 1876. Town Clerk, 1878 to 1902.
80

A MILESTONE PLANTED
which through so many years he exercised an influ
ence no less beneficial than potent. They were men
of a type of which this age produces few, — a type,
let me add, peculiar to New England and Its town
governments. Shrewd, humorous, crabbed perhaps
at times and In a way, they were public-spirited, as
careful of the Interests of the town as of their own,
— the county politicians and the village statesmen.
Individual In type, the outcome of New England
conditions, of an antique mould, the last of the race,
lingering among us from the stage-coach period, are
now fast disappearing. They will soon be extinct,
and the world so much the poorer ; for, to men df
that peculiar stamp, the railroad was as fatal as 'was
civilization to those denizens of the forest, their long
time predecessors. As for us who have succeeded
them, — " ground in yonder social mill.
We rub each other's angles down.
And merge in [one same] form and gloss.
The picturesque of raan and raan."
I have referred to the dedication of your Town-
Hall in 1892, and Dr. Everett's inspiring address on
that occasion. But there Is another utterance in the
report of what occurred that day which to my mind
strikes a note of deeper significance. One to the man
ner born, — oppressed, it would appear, by a certain
sense of solemnity very proper to the day, — being
called upon, thus then expressed himself: "This town
bas, in a manner, reached a turning of the ways.
Changes have taken place within it during the past
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
few years greater than for a long period In Its previous
history. A new Library, the removal of the old
Church and Town-Hall, and the erection of new and
more elegant buildings in the place of each, have much
altered the appearance of the middle of the town
as I have always known it. Many a venerable form
familiar to this spot has gone down, and out of sight.
As I view these buildings, as I look over this audi
ence, consisting as it does largely of Lincoln people,
I see not the Lincoln of my boyhood ; instead, the
old buildings gone, almost all of the old faces gone,
and their loved and honored names one by one let
tered on slabs of stone down in the valley and on the
hillside. Instead of the old buildings and the old
faces, modern structures and an unfamiliar street."
Coming from the source it did, there was in this
something suggestive, not to say pathetic. Born in
Lincoln of the old Lincoln stock, he who uttered
those words had passed here his boyhood, had gone
to the school, had watched the town-meeting and
hearkened to the village debates, had sat under the
ministrations of the Richardson pastorate. Having
made his home elsewhere, he had come back to Lin
coln to take part in the ceremonies of the occasion.
A distant echo of Rip Van Winkle pervaded what
he said, — a suggestion of bewilderment, an under
tone of reminiscence and sadness. It was, moreover,
as he said. The change he referred to had indeed
taken place ; it was deep-reaching and wide : more
over, in outward expression at least, it was sudden
and recent ; — the modern church edifice, — no
82

A MILESTONE PLANTED
longer a meeting-house, — the town-hall, and the
new library building, all grouped together on the
familiar cross-roads, emphasized the existence of
another and different community. Old Lincoln had
passed forever away !
The fact was there. Yet I have sought in vain for
any mention of that change, or reference to Its cause,
in the historical sketches of the town, — whether
that contributed by Mr. Wheeler, or in the occasional
utterances of Senator Hoar, or of Dr. Everett, or
in the Manual prepared by Mr. Richardson, or In
the discourses of Mr. Bradley and Mr. Porter. The
change, and the cause of it, however, when once
considered, both are and were obvious enough, —
apparent indeed to all men ; so apparent, so very
obvious and commonplace, and so gradual, that, per
haps, they were not thought worthy of notice.
The Fitchburg railroad, as it was called, — the
outcome of the energy of Colonel Alvah Crocker,
that typical New Englander, active in body and
in mind, untiring in movement, and voluble In
speech, " A Steam-Englne In Breeches," as he was
sometimes not over respectfully denominated, — the
Fitchburg railroad was formally opened for traffic to
Waltham, December 20, 1843. Fourteen months
later, March 5, 1 845, — the day after the inaugura
tion at Washington of President James K. Polk, —
the first locomotive, with Alvah Crocker on it, ran
into Fitchburg. On the 17th of the previous June
— Bunker Hill day — the road as far as Concord
had been put in operation ; and Lincoln, conse-
83

A MILESTONE PLANTED
quently, since that day, had been in railroad com
munication with Boston. The 17th of June, 1844,
marks the single; great epoch In the modern history
of the town. The great change then began, — a
change slow in movement, and for years not out
wardly perceptible ; but, so far as Lincoln was con
cerned, far reaching and all involving; a change re
plete with interest for the philosopher, the historian
and the economist. This, indeed, and the building
of the original meeting-house, are the only two really
parting-of-the-way events in the Lincoln record.
Much, first and last, has been written and said
of King Philip's War, of Queen Anne's War, and of
the old French War ; of the fall of Quebec, of the .
War of Independence, and ofthe incidents ofthe 1 9th
of April along the old Lexington and Concord
road. The War of Secession, and Lincoln's contri
butions to it In men and In money, have also not
been forgotten. And yet. If only reflected on, it will
be seen that not one of those really great historical
landmarks even perceptibly affected the conditions
of this place, or the mode of life of its people.
These were exactly the same after those epochal
events, one and all, as before. Take, for Instance,
the War of Independence, or, for that matter, the
War of Secession, — the ride of Paul Revere, or the
firing on Sumter ; — great events, dramatic, and of
far-reaching political moment, — but how did they
affect Lincoln? After them, as before, the people
here year by year, season in and season out, pursued
the even tenor of their ways, — a path monotonous
84

A MILESTONE PLANTED
from cradle to grave, I have herein sought to pic
ture it as it dragged along through school and field,
forest and kitchen, — the plow, the axe, the wash-
tub and the oven ; — the Sabbath ever the only
break in hfe, the meeting-house Its single centre.
Those people were born, married, brought forth,
and died ; and one generation resembled another.
Their entire biographies may be read on their
gravestones. How did Quebec, or Bunker Hill, or
Gettysburg, affect them ? The generation which
followed the War of Independence differed in no
respect from that which took part In Queen Anne's
War, or that which bore the brunt of Philip's Indian
fighting. With them there was, It Is true, a gradual
increase in worldly possessions ; a bettering of ma
terial conditions : but it was so very gradual as to
be from year to year imperceptible ; between gen
erations, scarcely noticeable. The schools may have
improved, though, before the Stearns pastorate, it
would be difficult to point out exactly In what re
spect. There was an Increase in the number of
thoroughfares, as in the volume of traffic upon them :
but in essentials those thoroughfares were the same,
and, prior to 1870, it may safely be said that, judged
by the standard this generation has attained unto,
the people of Lincoln did not know what a good
road was. The highway tax was a levy paid in kind.
Yearly, on town-meeting day, prices were fixed for
labor, or the use of teams ; ' and, at the rates thus
' " Voted and granted the sum of sixty pounds to be laid out as
usual in the repairs of highways and bridges in current year ; and
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established, those liable discharged their dues. Tra
ditions yet survive of the way in which the Rev.
Charles Stearns, D. D., — that. In person, Falstaffian
divine, — with hoe and shovel, and by the sweat of
his brow, worked out his tax in company with those
composing his flock. He too, it is profanely said,
then larded the lean earth as he walked along.
The roads corresponded with the methods in use
for their maintenance. Deep in mud in the spring,
deep in dust in the summer, the so-called public
ways were deep in snow in winter. In the autumn
only were they passable. All this the War of In
dependence did not better, — did not in any way
change. Schools and roads and church observances,
— the food, the dress, the domestic life, or the
means of livelihood of that people, — continued to
be as immemorially they had been. And so the
faint echoes of distant battles died gently away with
out introducing into Lincoln a book or a paper,
much less an industry or a new means of livelihood,
or a breath of stronger and more varied life, or any
increase of intercourse with the outer world. Not
until 1825 did the town even boast a post-office ; '
and the early history of that office throws a queer
gleam of light on Lincoln at, so to speak, the half-
three shillings per day to be allowed to each man that doth a suflicient
day's work, and the same sum for a sufl[icient team till the loth of
September — and but is 6d per day from the said loth of September
to the end ofthe year." Records, March 2, 1795.
' The South Lincoln post-oflice was not established until 1872,
seven years after the close of the Civil War. That struggle does not
seem to have influenced Lincoln in any way.
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
way house between its starting-point and the point
now reached. The railroad was only twenty years in
the future, yet the place had not got going. The
office was established, and one David S. Jones made
postmaster, January 24, 1825. Its total receipts for
the first five months of Its existence were ^14.35.
Postmaster Jones then seems to have become wearied
and discouraged, or delinquent, for no returns appear
during the year ensuing. At last, in July, 1827, the
office showed signs of renewed life. Luke Gates
assumed charge of it ; and, during the ensuing full
fiscal year, its receipts amounted to no less a sum
than $47.62, an average of I3.97 a month. Even
after the railroad was opened, the single daily mail
was for years carried over the road to and from the
station by a man on foot, — nor was he thereby
over-burdened ! Such was Lincoln seventy-five years
after its incorporation, and when the Declaration of
Independence had been celebrated for a half century.
That instrument, and the stirring events which
marked its proclamation, had not produced any dis
cernible effect on the Massachusetts hill community.
But at last the railroad ; that changed all ! And
now Lincoln's history once more becomes interest
ing, — an economical study. Indeed, of small, per
haps, but profound, significance ; for it illustrates to
a remarkable degree the truth of the teachings of
Adam Smith, — his faith In the benefits sure to fol
low the removal of every restriction on trade. Events,
however, even in these latter days, — those succeed
ing the Declaration, — move slowly. Smith's book
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
first saw the light in i'776, — sixty-eight years before
the railroad from Boston to Fitchburg was opened
through Lincoln. If, when that road was opened,
the veil could have been lifted, and the economical
significance of the event revealed, it would have
called for a very robust faith in the fundamental
truth of the Scotch professor's new-fangled theories
to have foreseen for Lincoln anything but a future
of ruin and desolation, — abandoned farms and
rotting roof-trees. What did the railroad signify?
— not perhaps at once, but In the slow progress and
final result of an inevitable development, — a devel
opment those who looked on at the opening were to
live to witness and to study ; for the man now of three
score and ten was already then in his eleventh year.
That opening meant for Lincoln the complete cast
ing down of her trade barriers. Those dwelling In
Lincoln were thereafter to be subjected, as respects
every source of livelihood, to an unrestrained com
petition from each quarter of the compass — the
boundless and fertile West, the frost-covered North,
the genial South, and even from the barren sea.
And there was not one single article which Lin
coln then produced which could not be produced
elsewhere under more favorable conditions. Those
articles — staples of life — were henceforth to be
transported by rail and " dumped," to use the word
now in vogue, not only on the markets open to Lin
coln, but on Lincoln itself. Take, for instance,
Lincoln's traditional products, — those enumerated
in the Lawrence settlement of 1748, — cord-wood,
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Indian corn, rye, pork and beef. How could Lin
coln, hauling its wood over country roads, hope to
compete in Boston market with wood brought by
the train-load from New Hampshire and Maine ?
How much less could it compete with coal from
Pennsylvania ? Every child here knows that to-day
coal has driven wood as fuel out of every house in
Lincoln. A wood fire is a luxury. And Indian corn,
and rye ? How could Lincoln, on Its rugged hill
sides and with Its thin upland soil, compete with the
rich virgin plains of Illinois, where cereals of fabu
lous size and productiveness grew of themselves, —
where fertilizers were wasted ? And so with cattle
and swine. In the States west of the Lakes, they
were raised in herds and droves, living on the plenty
of the land ; here they must be nurtured, singly and
toilfully, sheltered and fed, and ceaselessly cared for.
Nor was it any better with the choicer fruits of
the earth, — the apple, the peach, the cherry and the
strawberry. If the valley of the Mohawk, the up
lands of Ohio, and the plains of Indiana and Illi
nois made wheat Instead of meal the staff of life, so
New Jersey and Delaware rushed into the produc
tion of peaches and berries under conditions which
made Lincoln's competition seemingly hopeless,
flooding every accessible market. At the same time
apples, potatoes and carrots, produced in the great
belt reaching from Maine to Michigan, poured In by
the train-load. It was, too, a case of absolute free-
trade. There was no tariff barrier anywhere. The
cost of transportation alone had to be taken into
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
account; — the farm wagon from Lincoln ran over
the highway against the freight train from the Hud
son over the railroad. Lincoln had no protection !
Fortunately, the situation was not realized, and the
change came gradually. As it developed, the unex
pected occurred, — : it usually does occur ! In other
words, the abandoned farms, the vacant homesteads,
the falling roof-trees, did not materialize. On the
contrary, and in due time, there resulted, as I have
said, a most interesting illustration of the truth of
Smith's teachings. An alert, enterprising and ener
getic community proved equal to the emergency ;
and Lincoln, quietly. Insensibly almost, adjusting it
self to the gradual change of conditions, instead of
lapsing Into everlasting ruin, grew yearly more pros
perous, more populous, more intelhgent and more
moral. Were statistics attainable, and did time and
space permit, it would be curious to follow this change
through its intricate channels. Unlike many other
towns, Lincoln could not diversify its occupations.
Nature debarred it from so doing. It was a farming
town, and, moreover, a hill town ; as such it had
no source of power, nor any natural advantage. It
could not, like Lowell, become a mill-centre ; nor a
boot and shoe factory, like Brockton ; it could not
go Into the manufacture of whips, like West field, nor
even of base-balls, like Natick, From the conditions
of Its origin, it was, and had to remain, exclusively
agricultural. As such, apparently, it was doomed.
How did it escape its doom ? — for, unquestionably,
the doom was escaped. It escaped simply by force of
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
intelligence, and because it had to. In the first place,
under the so-called " dumping " process, its markets
developed an unexpected sustaining power. They
even seemed to like it, and thrive under it. Contrary
to all prognostications of evil and ruin, a plentiful
supply of all the goods of the earth, at prices ruin
ously low for the home producers thereof, had a most
stimulating effect, and centres of industry — each a
new market in itself — began to develop with ever
increasing rapidity. With wealth and population
arose new and undreamed-of demands ; the luxury
of yesterday became the necessity of to-day. Take
a few homely examples, articles known as garden-
truck, — asparagus, lettuce and cucumbers ; before
the railroad, these were raised In Lincoln only for
home use, and the two latter had, as the first has still,
their season. In that season they were cheap and
plentiful ; out of that season, money could not buy
them. How is It now ? Lincoln has simply gone
into their manufacture, regardless of season ; they are
made artificially, under glass. Plentiful throughout
the year, the demand for them is incessant ; and they
cost hardly more In December than in June. The
asparagus and strawberry beds have displaced the field
of Indian corn, just as wheaten bread has driven out
the loaf of meal and rye. And so to-day, by a nat
ural process, Lincoln, without protection, with no ex
ternal aid or tariff barrier, has quietly adjusted itself
to changed conditions ; and, even as an agricultural
town in a community of absolutely unrestricted free-
trade in all agricultural products, is more prosperous
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
than ever before. Even wood, — cord-wood, —
the traditional product of the axe and wood lot,
— the competition of Maine and New Hampshire
beyond the State, and of Berkshire and Franklin
within, has not destroyed Its value ; nor has coal dis
placed it as fuel. Though the range and the stove
have supplanted the open fireplace, the product ofthe
forest still reigns supreme as the fuel of wealth ; and,
at the beginning of the twentieth century, more cord-
wood goes annually out of Lincoln to seek a market
in Waltham, Watertown and Boston than went out at
the end of the eighteenth century. Truly, it would
have made glad the heart of Adam Smith could
he have studied this illustration ofthe truth of the
strange doctrine he taught ! As Hamlet long ago
observed in quite another connection, — " This was
sometime a paradox, but now the time gives it proof."
Thus Lincoln passed, and successfully as slowly
passed, through its ordeal of change, — its great re
volution. Beginning with June 17, 1844, the out
come of the ordeal and result of the change were
fitly commemorated in the utterance — instinctive
and somewhat bewildered — I have just quoted from
the lips of one of its sons on the 26th of May, 1892.
More than forty -eight years had elapsed since the
locomotive had forced its way by the banks of Wal
den, — over one third of Lincoln's whole municipal
life! The story of the past is told. It remains to frame
the message to the future. To be complete, the in
scription on the milestone must speak of us, and of
92

A MILESTONE PLANTED
the spot on which the column has to-day halted, as
well as of the past and of the road thus far traversed.
How about the Lincoln that now is ? And, whatever
the future may have in store, I am fain to say that,
in my own belief, Lincoln in all Its century and a
half of history has not seen better days. The post-
office, the railroad, the library, the daily newspaper,
and the improved school have all done their work ;
and the result bears witness for Itself. Nowhere —
yes ! absolutely nowhere — do I see signs of deteri
oration. As compared with a century ago, — much
more as compared with the anniversary we celebrate,
— Lincoln Is more populous, more intelligent,
wealthier, more temperate and more moral. While
of those classed as rich there may within its limits be
a larger number, within those limits there are fewer
really poor. With us, the needy are housed ; the
sick are cared for ; the Insane receive treatment. The
man in Lincoln of all Its people least well-to-do
when injured to-day has bestowed on his case, with
out cost to him, a science and skill which, a century
ago, wealth could not command. Again, the tlppling-
room has been closed. In his historical discourse
of six years ago, Mr. Bradley threw a queer gleam of
light on what may well enough be referred to as the
drinking usages In vogue a century and a quarter
since. When the Rev. William Lawrence died, his
congregation made proper provision for his obsequies.
That provision included the following items : one
barrel of cider, five quarts malt and some hops, one
gallon wine, one gallon rum, seven pounds of sugar,
93

A MILESTONE PLANTED
and one half pound of tea. Nineteen months later,
the Rev. Charles Stearns was installed as successor to
Mr. Lawrence. Like provision was then also made
for this more propitious event. In that provision
were included nine gallons of wine ; five of rum ; tea,
coffee and chocolate one pound each. One pound of
tea to fourteen gallons of rum and wine is Irresistibly
suggestive of the proportions between Falstaff's sack
and bread. In 1778, during the death agony of the
continental currency, a joint meeting was held of
committees representing the several towns of Con
cord, Billerlca, Lexington, Weston, Stow, Bedford,
Acton and Lincoln, and they attempted the impos
sible feat of establishing prices at which all com
modities in general use should be sold. Among
the prices thus established were the following to
govern inn-holders : Mug of West India phllp, 15
shillings ; ditto, New England, 12 shillings ; Toddy,
in proportion. Bowl of Punch, not set. And all
this is so set down in Lincoln's Book of Records !
But when the consumption of rum in those days Is
under discussion, it Is not a question of temperance.
The most profitable trade of all country stores was
in spirits, and all — ministers, doctors, farmers and
squires — made use of It in about the same degree.
They habitually ate salted meat ; and habitually
quenched the resulting thirst with rum.' In the
' See the curious facts and statistics given on this subject by Albert
E. Wood in his paper published by the Concord Antiquarian Society,
entitled "How our Great Grandfathers Lived." Those mentioned
therein, Mr. Wood, Mr. Barrett, Mr. Wheeler, etc., were as much
Lincoln as Concord men.
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A MILESTONE PLANTED
stage-coach days there was a house of call at every
great road crossing ; and the remains of three old
taverns, each of which once ran its open bar, are still
to be seen on the Lancaster road, on the old turn
pike, and in the centre of the town. By way of
contrast, the Lincoln of to-day, in town-meeting
assembled now seven weeks ago, without a single
dissenting voice, directed its clerk to cast one ballot
for the order prohibiting during the year all sales of
spirits within Lincoln limits !
Other times ; other men ; other customs ! Are
we, indeed, as some maintain, degenerate ? As did
those of the earlier period when, on the 7th of
November, 1781, the Rev. Charles Stearns was
installed as minister of the town, and pastor of the
church which gathered In the meeting-house which
preceded this edifice, we to-day are observing an
occasion of interest. A century and twenty-two years
have since elapsed. Presently, after the formal cere
monies of the day, we also, as did they, will sit down
at the tables, and partake of the flesh-pots. Now
imagine, were such an Imagination possible, coun
tenanced by my esteemed friend, Mr. Moorfield
Storey, as presiding officer of the day, a proportion
ate recurrence to the menu, or bill of fare, of No
vember 7, 178 1. We would have to dispose of at
least a couple of barrels of cider, approximately a
hogshead of wine, a barrel more or less of rum,
and, possibly, as much as one pound of tea. More
accustomed than we to heady beverages, they had no
organ in those days ; only a bass viol. But, as we
95

A MILESTONE PLANTED
dwell in imagination on the possibility I have sug
gested, we can picture Mr. Storey, at the close of
the coming entertainment, leading off with an organ
accompaniment in that, to us, familiar air which re
lates to what will occur in the " old town to-night,"
and to the carmine in which it will appear clad when
to-morrow's sun rises. But, as I have already said,
— other times! — other customs! Either we, as
respects potations, are degenerate, or there were
giants in those days.
To return to our theme.
In other respects, also, the character of the town
has changed, — not revolutionized, it has changed
significantly. No longer purely agricultural, it has
become more and more a residence and, so to speak,
bedroom community : — that is, while fifty years
ago no one ' lived here and yet pursued his daily
vocation — earned his living — elsewhere, many do
so now; and the number is steadily increasing. The
town-meeting, that great feature of Massachusetts
life, is no longer a gathering of yeomen, — children
of the soil and exacting their livelihood from It. But
it is still the genuine town-meeting, — the assembly
of a little commonwealth, in which all are equal, all
freemen, all Americans.
And here let me for a moment speak of myself,
and my own experience and impressions ; not im-
" I am informed that, forty years ago, a single Lincoln resident, and
one only, Edward Stearns, earned his living in Boston, making daily
trips each way between home and place of occupation. Some fifty do
so now.
96

A MILESTONE PLANTED
possibly they may have an interest — the interest of
novelty and freshness — even to those here dwell
ing three generations hence. Very distinctly do I
remember my own first town-meeting in Lincoln,
its surprise and delight. It was ten years ago, —
the 5th of March, 1 894, I had then been less than
four months a resident ; and, a year before, had never
but once set foot in Lincoln, In 1879, I think it
was, I came here one day officially, as member of
the Board of Railroad Commissioners, to investi
gate the circumstances of a death at the grade-cross
ing next east of the station. With that single ex
ception, I had never been in Lincoln, except on a
train in movement. At last, on an almost fairy-like
day in May, — a day most fortunate for me, — I
was on the spur of the moment induced to come
out, and look at a place bordering on Fairhaven-bay,
then for sale, I came. It was the 20th of May,
and Thoreau's "Pleasant Meadows," Fairhaven-bay,
and the stretching valley of the Sudbury with the
Maynard hills beyond, lay basking in the fresh
spring sunlight, and their germinal perfection, I saw
what I wanted made ready to my hand ; and, moved
by a reckless impulse, I made myself its master
on the spot, I have since come to regard my so
doing as an inspiration ; as such, thanking God for
it! Just six months after I here made my home.
Presently town-meeting day came round. At town-
meetings, I was no novice. I had, in fact, attended
them for 250 years; at first in Braintree, — though
there in the persons of my ancestors, — but, more
97

A MILESTONE PLANTED
recently, in Quincy myself. In them also I had
habitually taken an active part, A day of change
came, — a change I greatly deplored ; it was, how
ever, inevitable, and, as such, in it I silently ac
quiesced, Quincy outgrew town government, A
large alien population by degrees came in, and secret
organizations made themselves felt, perverting the
old town-meeting to factional ends, I saw the system
break down ; and its break-down grieved me. Then
Quincy became a city, — a suburban municipality.
And at once almost I woke to a consciousness of
the fact that the home of my youth and my earlier
manhood was gone, — gone, never to return ! Its
whole individuality seemed departed. It was the
same place outwardly in all essential respects ; but
I was a stranger in it. Its traditions no longer held ;
spiritually it was defunct. It might be a " live " city
to others ; to me it was a dead town, I walked its
streets a ghost, — superfluous, lagged. Where all
had once been neighbors and familiar, I now knew
few ; and fewer still seemed to know me. So, cut
ting the knot, though with a sharp pang, I betook
myself elsewhere. And now town-meeting day had
come in the place of my new abode.
As I need not say, since the period of De Tocque-
ville, — that Is, for sixty years, — the New England
town-meeting has, as a political Institution, been
world renowned ; and, familiar as I myself was with
it and its methods, I remember well my silent sur
prise when one day the late John Fiske, an authority
on New England history. Informed me, in an inci-
98

A MILESTONE PLANTED
dental sort of way, that he had never been present at
one. I could hardly have been more surprised had
some eminent practising surgeon told me that he
had never witnessed a dissection. Now it so hap
pened that in March, 1894, an English friend of
mine was here, and he had expressed a wish to see a
genuine New England town-meeting ; so I told him
that, would he come to Lincoln, I thought I could
gratify him. I had never been to one there, but I
imagined I knew what it would be like. He gladly
accepted my invitation, and together we went, —
both strangers. Very vividly do I recall his curiosity,
amusement and delight. For myself, I felt at home
at once. I was back among my native surroundings.
A new-comer, I naturally took no part; but the
plain, orderly, common-sense procedure, the rough,
manly equality, the give-and-take of town-meeting,
were all there, and there in perfection. It was not the
crowded hall and swaying, shouting mass to which
I had of late years grown accustomed at Quincy ; it
was the genuine village gathering of the earlier, and,
in that respect, the infinitely better time. I recog
nized instinctively every familiar character, though
not one face or name did I know ; — there was the
moderator, sufficiently skilled In parliamentary law
and the conduct of business ; and, by him, the tra
ditional town-clerk. On the front bench was the
chairman of the selectmen ; and the shrewd, humor
ous squire at his side. The leader of the opposition
was not far to seek ; nor the village demagogue ;
nor the town-meeting orator ; nor the town-meeting
99

A MILESTONE PLANTED
bore. The prober into the details and mysteries of
the town-book was also in evidence. I knew them
all ; I felt myself one of them. Not so my English
friend. To him It was novel, and yet not altogether
strange. It was the Commons House of Parliament
in little ; and, watching It with the deepest interest, he
later in discussion referred to Mr. Samuel Hartwell,
then chairman of the selectmen, as the "Chancellor
of the Exchequer," and to the list of appropriations
as the " Budget ; " while Mr. Wheeler became the
" Speaker," and the town-clerk remained his wonder
and admiration. It was, I am fain to say, a typical
town-meeting; one I was glad to have witnessed by
a foreigner of Intelligence. It showed our New
England institutions In their home, and at work.
It has been so since. As it stands to-day, I bear
witness that Lincoln town government represents
that form of government in a shape approaching per
fection. Made up almost exclusively of Americans,
traditionally accustomed to the forms, not so large as
to be unwieldy and yet large enough to have an ele
ment of uncertainty as to outcome in It, the voting roll
of the entire town can be called in ten minutes, and
the annual warrant is disposed of at a single session.
What more remains to be said ? What further
message can be sent down for delivery to a future
generation, as It plants yet another milestone ? I
think of little. The record of these days, unlike
those we are here to commemorate, is full, and he
who runs may read. It will tell of a town no longer
remote ; and one to which the fact that it is set upon
100

A MILESTONE PLANTED
a hill is a commendation, not a drawback. The nat
ural beauties of Lincoln are plain to see, whether you
float along the Sudbury, or, from the summit of the
hill, view the broad stretch of rolling and wooded
country off to Wachusett and the hills of New
Hampshire, or walk or drive through Its forest-lined
roads. The population is not dense, and Nature still
holds its own. As a community it is neither large
nor wealthy. The statistics tell us that we number
but one inhabitant to some seven and two thirds '
acres, and our worldly possessions are estimated at
I2000 to each inhabitant. The map tells the story
of our roads ; the succession of town-books Is the
record of our finances, our schools and our library.
As a community we are not torn by dissensions ;
though, in this respect, it was not always so. Indeed,
I am told that, from a time which memory and tra
dition fail to recall, the Lincoln of former days was
rent in twain, — divided as a house about to fall.
But it did not fall ; on the contrary it seemed to
thrive through contention. Old residents, — men
whose recollections run far back of this railroad
epoch, assure me that the North and South feud
was an inheritance from other generations, and a con
dition of affairs which long ago ceased to exist. To
a certain extent it was Homeric, for It flavored of
the muster-fields and the New England Olympic
games. It was a rivalry of runners and wrestlers — of
those throwing the hammer, and those shooting at the
' Inhabitants, 1127; acres, 8500. See Wheeler, in Drake's Mid
dlesex, vol. i, p. 34. lOI

A MILESTONE PLANTED
butts. There were giants then ; and the giants of the
South, it is asserted, contended, not unsuccessfully,
with those ofthe North. Hence jealousies and heart
burnings ; and these became chronic, and hereditary.
Gradually, the issues changed ; but the feud re
mained. What it was all about, no one seemed to
know; and, curiously enough, no one now refers to it
except In a humorous way. But, as between North
and South, this town was, prior to 1890, the nation
in miniature. The railroad was Lincoln's Mason-
and-DIxon's line. So bitter, I am assured, was the
feeling, that It was sufficient for one section to desire
anything to have the other unalterably opposed to
it ; and when, moreover, in town-meeting the North
and Centre carried an issue over the South, the
meeting-house bell was rung in noisy triumph. It
was a very parlous period ; but, like most such
periods, it wore itself gradually away. I have, more
over, been told that one distinctly alleviating influ
ence — again Homeric — was the appearance at
school from the South of the daughter, passing fair,
of one of the oldest and most distinctive families
in that section. This maiden, — quite a Lincoln
Briseis, — found favor in the eyes ofthe young men
of the Centre and North, and they by degrees came to
think that conditions could not be altogether bad or
hopeless among a people of whom this was the con
summate flower. And so, gentler sentiments assum
ing sway, they at last began to ask the why and the
wherefore of it all. When my time began it was
over ; but I am assured that, while it lasted, — and
102

A MILESTONE PLANTED
it lasted long, — it was a great and classic feud. The
opportunity was not lacking ; the theme was there ;
the village Homer only failed us.
But now there Is peace and good-will in town-
meetings, where we still adhere to the institutions of
our fathers. While liberal in expenditure, the town
is not extravagant ; nor, in these days of so-called
" graft," does any breath of calumny attach to those
by whom our public affairs are administered. That
with us more than with others the limit of improve
ment has been reached, we do not believe ; mean
while, as it addresses itself with confidence to the
future, a reasonable contentment dwells within Lin
coln's borders.
And so ends the anniversary. The milestone Is
planted ; the record Is inscribed upon it. We have
looked back over the road we have travelled ; we
have surveyed the land in which we dwell ; the holi
day approaches Its close. With to-morrow's sun we
will gather together, old and young, and, once more
shouldering our burdens, resume the line of march.
The road of the future will doubtless, as did that of
the past, lead over hill as well as through dale ; but,
when the next resting-place is reached, let us set out
in the hope that our descendants may say it has been
not less well with them than it was with us and with
our fathers. It Is a goodly land ; and may they in
their day feel blest in Its possession, no less than do
we in ours.

103

APPENDIX A
(Page 1 8)
Fifty years ago, at the close of the first century of Lin-
coin's incorporated life, no study whatever had been made
of the geology of Middlesex County. Since then, and espe
cially of recent years, it has been gone over repeatedly with
care, and the marlcs of the student's hammer are everywhere
to be found. Many data have been collected, and certain
conclusions reached. These have interest in themselves ;
but, not improbably, their chief value hereafter will be found
as a basis of comparison ; for hitherto the geologists have
found recurring occasion to revise the conclusions thereto
fore confidently reached. The ice age, for instance, was
first fixed at an antiquity measured in years by the hundreds
of thousands ; since gradually contracted to the more rea
sonable period given in the text. So also as respects varia
tions of the polar axis. That the theories, beliefs and con
clusions now held will undergo similar, though continually
diminishing, modification, scarcely admits of doubt. The
rocks and deposits of Lincoln afford an interesting field of
study. The following memorandum of results concerning
it, and them, up to this time reached, has been prepared by
Mr. J. W. Goldthwait of the Harvard University Geolo
gical Department. In its field it, also, is of the milestone
character. The geology of an area like Lincoln involves the study
of two rather different kinds of things, — (a) the bed rock, or
solid foundation, of the region, and (^) the surface features ;
105

A MILESTONE PLANTED
namely, the shapes given to the hills and valleys by erosion
of rain and rivers and by the old North American ice sheet,
and the deposits of rock waste, chiefly of glacial origin,
which have been spread over the bed rock surface so as
generally to conceal it. In other words, geology includes not
only the study of rocks but the study of everything which
is usually called the " ground." Its object is to understand
the origin of these things, — how they were produced, and
what they really mean. In this paper, tiien, a certain order
will be followed ; the features of geological interest will be
considered roughly in order of their age, the bed rock his
tory first, then the history of the development of the topo
graphy, and last of all the effects of the great ice sheet.
Bed Rock Geology
The rock mass, of which we see occasional outcropping
ledges about the town, is composed of
(a) Ancient seashore sediments, barely recognizable as
such, because they have been so completely transformed
or " metamorphosed " by compression, squeezing, and the
action of subterranean heat.
(b) Other metamorphic rocks, including some which
probably broke their way up into these old sediments in a
molten state some time before the great metamorphism took
place, for they share it ; and some which may represent the
old original sea floor on which the sediments were laid down.
(f) Rocks, once molten or " igneous," which found their
way into the others as subterranean lavas, but after the
rocks of the first two groups had been metamorphosed.
It may be well to take these up in order, to see some
thing of their history.
The first two groups have already been spoken of as
" metamorphic " rocks. Under this head come all rocks
io6

APPENDIX
which have undergone great transformation in their physi
cal and mineralogical make-up, by reason of that intense
heat and pressure which seems to be continually exerted
on the earth's crust while the earth cools and shrinks. It is
believed to be chiefly this constant shrinkage that gives rise
to great wrinklings of the earth's crust, determining the
location of mountain ranges. Wherever wrinkling of this
sort has gone on, the rocks show the effects of it to a greater
or less extent. One result is the upturning and folding of
the rocks ; but when the process is long continued the rocks
suffer also great changes of structure, — their component
crystals or grains are rearranged, flattened out and fused,
and new minerals may be born. A rock thus transformed,
or metamorphosed, often has a distinct banding or " folia
tion " in a direction perpendicular to that of compression.
Gneisses and schists are two great classes of foliated rocks,
— the former being massive and firm, and the latter split
ting easily along the foliation. Whether a certain gneiss,
or a certain schist, was originally a sedimentary deposit or a
molten rock mass is often very hard to tell. Other meta
morphic rocks, however, such as quartzite and marble, which
need not have foliation, are clearly derived from stratified
or sedimentary deposits. In Lincoln several sorts of meta
morphic rocks appear at the surface; but only one or two
need be mentioned.
Quartzite occurs in several parts of the township, but
the main belt is in the southeastern part, along the back of
Mount Tabor. The area in which quartzite ledges occur is
from a quarter to a half mile wide, and can be traced in
a southwest direction as far as Reeves' Hill in Wayland.
Quartzite is a hard firm rock, always light colored — bluish
or pinkish — and sugary in texture. It was probably once
a sandstone, or rock formed from thick beds of sand hard
ened by pressure of overlaying deposits ; but by metamor-
107

A MILESTONE PLANTED
phism the original sand grains have been fused, and partly
turned into minute quartz crystals. The quartzite is at
least six hundred feet thick.
Half a mile southwest of Sandy Pond is a ledge of mar
ble, a rock which is of local interest more from its rarity
than anything else. It is a nearly white rock, crystallized
with a fine grain. Marble of this sort is re-crystallized
limestone, originally a calcareous shell or slime deposit col
lected on the sea floor, and later consolidated by the weight
of beds laid down on top of it. Both heat and the action of
percolating waters bring about the crystallization of the
mass first into limestone and, later, into thoroughly crys
tallized marble. On account of its organic origin marble
might be expected to contain fossils ; but often the meta
morphism has entirely obliterated them, as seems to be the
case with the Lincoln rock. At several places in this local
ity the rock has been quarried, and where it is thus freshly
exposed one can see plainly the way the original beds have
been folded. The thickness of the formation is about two
hundred feet.
What may once have been a subterranean lava, forced
into the sediments, is a broad belt of hornblende-schist
almost a mile wide, running in a northeast-southwest direc
tion through Sandy Pond. This is a rock of dark gray color
and variable texture, containing a good deal of the black
mineral called hornblende, as well as mica and the two
common light-colored minerals, quartz and feldspar. The
mass of rock itself, and the foliated structure of it, run from
northeast to southwest, showing that the squeezing took
place in a direction northwest-southeast. This trend of foli
ation of the rocks, indeed, occurs clear across Massachu
setts, indicating that the wrinkling of the rocks accompanied
the formation of the Appalachian mountain system, or at
least of a part of it. 1 08

APPENDIX
A belt of granite stretches in a northeast-southwest di
rection along the northwest border of the township, from
the head of Meade Brook to the vicinity of Walden Pond.
Since granite is composed of different minerals crystallized
out in much the same manner that any substance like
molten sugar crystallizes on cooling, it is believed that the
rock mass was once hot and plastic, like lava, but that it
cooled slowly to a solid state, — so slowly that distinct
crystals were developed. Lavas from volcanoes cool too fast
for such a complete crystallization as this, because they are
on the surface. Granites and other coarse-grained igneous
rocks are thought to have been formed deep down below
the earth's surface, and to be visible now because long-
continued erosion has brought the surface far down through
the original rock mass. The presence of mica in abundance
in the Lincoln granite makes it a true granite, according
to accepted terminology, whereas the so-called " granites "
of Quincy and Rockport, which have no mica, are not
true granites, but hornblende - granites. One noticeable
feature in the Lincoln rock is the occurrence of irregular
veins or tongues of coarse-grained quartz and feldspar rock
called " pegmatite," which shoot through the granite in
every direction. It is possible that this Lincoln granite is
the oldest rock in the township, and represents the rock
floor on which the marine sediments (since metamorphosed
into quartzite, marble, and schist) were spread. This,
however, is hardly more than a conjecture.
Another northeast-southwest belt of rock, running through
the township from Beaver Pond to the old turnpike west
of Mount Tabor, is of hornblende-gneiss. The rock varies
greatly in appearance, but is usually grayish or pinkish
where weathered, with more or less foliation. In intimate
association with it is a black rock called diabase, which oc
curs in bands sometimes sharply marked off from the gneiss,
109

A MILESTONE PLANTED
and sometimes blended with it along the contact. This
mixture of gneiss and diabase seems to be a very firm re
sistant rock, for it makes the ridge of high ground northeast
of Beaver Pond. Softer rocks on either side have been worn
down to form the valleys.
Of several other sorts of rock that are known to occur
in Lincoln, only two need be mentioned. Both of these
occur in straight strips, or " dikes," where fissures in the
main rock mass were opened and filled with lava, which
cooled there into firm rock. Diabase, or " trap " dikes, oc
cur sparingly in the eastern part of the town. They are
black where freshly broken, but weather with a brownish
surface. "Aplite" dikes occur in a hill three quarters of
a mile southwest of Sandy Pond, south of North Street.
These are light colored, and made up of quartz and feld
spar. The aplite and diabase of these dikes are the two
youngest rocks of the region, because they fill fissures in
the others, — that is, because they " cut " the gneisses,
schists, etc.
Concerning the age of the rocks, very little can be said.
Obscure markings in the marble bear a resemblance to fos
sil pteropods like some found at Nahant. If these are truly
fossils, the rocks belong to the " Lower Cambrian " pe
riod ; but it is very doubtful. At any rate, the gneisses,
schists, quartzite and marble are very old, for they have
undergone great metamorphism ; and, after that, they have
been invaded at different times by igneous rocks of different
sorts, including last of all the dike-rocks, diabase and aplite.
The bed rock history, then, is a complex series of events,
including the accumulation of thick beds of sediments under
water, the compression and upheaval of them by mountain-
building forces by which the rocks have been completely
metamorphosed, and the intrusion of subterranean lavas
into the mass both before and after the mountain-building
no

APPENDIX
process was most active. All this probably involves many
millions of years. Surface Form
The form of the hills and valleys hereabouts has been
determined by two great geological agencies of erosion, —
water and ice, acting with some regard to the rock struc
ture into which they have deeply carved. Although the
shape and trend of the hills of Lincoln may seem at first
sight to show little regularity, a careful inspection will
bring out the fact of a rather persistent northeast-southwest
trend of hills and valleys. So far as this pattern holds good,
it doubtless shows the control of rock structure ; for the
northeast-southwest rock belts already spoken of are not all
equally resistant to the destructive action of rain and rivers,
and consequently the harder belts are left standing up as
hills or ridges.
Another feature about the topography, but one which
would hardly be appreciated except when it is seen from
the top of one of the higher hills of the town, is the rela
tive accordance in height of the hills. Here, in the eastern
part of the State, it is not very striking ; for, though the hills
rise to the same general height, they are far apart and have
rather rounded summits. Farther west, however, in the
Berkshires, where the hilltops cover a greater part of the
total area, their accordance is very marked, and a view of
the landscape shows a rather flat skyline. A much more
perfect case of such a flattish upland country occurs in
Brittany, a widely accepted explanation for it being that the
region, probably originally mountainous, was worn down
lower and lower, by natural process of erosion by atmos
phere, rain and rivers, until it became nearly flat, — a
" peneplain," — and stood close to sea level ; that it was then
tilted up to form a low plateau, and the rivers, with steep-
III

A MILESTONE PLANTED
ened slopes and renewed energy, cut down their valleys be
neath the plateau level. In the case of New England the
complexly folded structure of the rocks and their extreme
metamorphism indicate that at one time the whole region
was mountainous. The present low-rolling topography is
not at all appropriate to such a complex rock structure.
Apparently the mountains were worn down to a gently roll
ing country, and then the peneplain was tilted up, and again
somewhat cut into by streams. Since the upland skyline
rises steadily towards the northwest, the uplift of the pene
plain must have been greatest in that part, so as to give the
greatest slant towards the southeast. So the rather flat sky
line that one sees from the top of the Lincoln hills may re
present an old peneplain, while the valleys of to-day record
the work of the streams since the peneplain was uplifted.
Wachusett and other hills that rise far above the general
upland level are considered to be residual masses, never
worn down to the peneplain, because they are composed of
harder rock and were situated near the headwaters of the
streams that reduced the surface of the country. These
abnormally high hills have been named " monadnocks,"
after the New Hampshire example. The reduction of the
surface to the peneplain is placed by geologists in " Cre
taceous " time ; for all the rock waste produced by the
wearing down of the mountains to the lowland must have
been swept seaward, and deposited as sediment along the
coast ; and cretaceous strata occur on Long Island, Mar
tha's Vineyard and elsewhere, which seem to be part of
this waste.
One more topographic feature should be mentioned,
before considering the work of the ice sheet on Lincoln
topography. It is the long steep rock escarpment that runs
along the eastern boundary of the township, from Mount
Tabor southward as far as Kendall Green. The unusual
112

APPENDIX
straightness of this escarpment and its steepness suggest
that it is a somewhat worn " fault-scarp," or cliff produced
by the upheaval of the whole rock mass on one side of a
deep fracture, — the fracture in this case running some
where along the base of the cliff, and the uplifted block
being on the western side of it. The suggestion of faulting
is strengthened by the fact that near the supposed fracture or
" fault line " (east of Mount Tabor, on the eastern side of
the Cambridge reservoir) the diorite rock of that region is
cut by two fractures along which there has been some slip
ping and displacement, polishing of the rock surfaces along
the planes of fracture, giving what are called " slickensides."
These two fault planes run northeast-southwest, or roughly
parallel to the escarpment, and so they may be minor frac
tures of a parallel set. Glacial History
At the beginning of the glacial period — probably a
score or even scores of thousands of years ago — New
England had already gone through the geological history
just outlined. The rock foundation had been built piece by
piece, it had been wrinkled up into mountains, worn down
to a lowland, then raised to a slanting position, and exten
sively cut into again by streams. Over this low upland of
hills and valleys came the North American ice sheet, scrap
ing away all the soil, planing the surface down into firm
rock, tearing and plucking blocks from exposed ledges, and
thus changing the shape of the surface to a considerable
degree. When later the ice sheet melted back, the rubbish
that it had collected was spread out in deposits of different
sorts over the rock surface, and New England took on the
appearance that it has to-day.
The nature of the ice sheet can be appreciated by reading
one of the several good accounts of it, like G. F. Wright's
113

A MILESTONE PLANTED
" The Great Ice Age." The North American glacier was
unlike modern Alpine glaciers in that it was not confined
to the valleys but covered the whole region, so that not
even Mount Washington stuck up through the ice fields.
Ours was a " continental glacier," like the Greenland ice
cap. Its centre of accumulation, or rather its centres, for
it had three, were near Hudson's Bay ; and starting at these
points it spread out radially in all directions, as an advan
cing sheet, until it covered the northern part of the United
States, including all of New England as far south as Long
Island, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. The cause of
the glacial period has been discussed for many years, and is
still in dispute ; but one apparently good explanation is that
the Gulf Stream was turned from its course by a wrinkling
up of the sea bottom, and the climate of North America
was thereby modified to one of great snow precipitation.
Deflection of currents is known to have occurred in other
cases, as for instance the Japan current, which was shut
out of Behring Sea when the Aleutian Island ridge was up
heaved ; and, in a case like that, the climate would probably
be seriously affected.
The work that the ice sheet did, however, is much better
understood. In Lincoln it left its marks in several ways.
In the first place, the form of the hills shows glacial
action. The northwest sides have gentle slopes, and the
few outcrops there are low and rounded ; the southeast
slopes, on the other hand, are abrupt and ragged, with more
abundant outcrops. The ice moved over the country from
north-northwest to south-southeast, and, as it ascended the
hills, it smoothed the " struck" side but tore or " plucked "
away blocks from the leeward side. Where a rock surface
has been recently stripped of soil it may be fresh enough to
show not only the smoothness peculiar to glaciated surfaces
but also the scratches or " striae " made by boulders or
114

APPENDIX
pebbles drawn across the surface by the ice. In both large
and small ways, then, the erosive action of the ice sheet is
illustrated. Glacial boulders, or " erratics," are also evidence of the
ice age. They are merely blocks of rock that were torn up
by the ice and carried along, suffering a good deal of round
ing and smoothing as they went ; and, finally, as the ice
melted away, tumbling or settling to the ground. Often
they are very large, as for instance one within sight of
Walden road, on the old Baker farm. Most of the boulders
in Lincoln are made of rock similar to the bed rock near by,
so they probably have travelled only a short distance. Peg
matite, diorite, and granite are the most abundant.
Boulders are of course only the larger fragments of rub
bish left by the ice sheet. If we leave out the alluvium,
which is glacial rubbish worked over in recent times by
streams, all the soil cover belongs to glacial deposits of one
sort or another. Some of it is " ground moraine," or " till,"
deposited directly by the plastic ice wherever the ice cur
rents were too weak to carry off the supply of waste ; and
other parts of it are gravel deposits derived from the ice
sheet, but laid down through the agency of streams while
the ice sheet melted away.
Till occurs abundantly throughout the higher ground, in
patches or sheets ; it is piled up rather thickly on the
northern sides of many of the hills, for instance, the one
northeast and the one southwest of Sandy Pond. Without
the glacial deposits, these two hills would probably trend
more definitely in a northeast-southwest direction, following
the rock structure ; but the ice moving across them in a
nearly perpendicular direction has given them a north-south
trend. The hill halfway between the village and the station
is a " drumlin," or high mound of till, lenticular in shape.
Hagar Hill in South Lincoln is another. There seem to be
"5

A MILESTONE PLANTED
no other true drumlins in the town, although they occur
throughout the State, and are very common in and around
Boston Harbor. These drumlins bear the same relation to
the ice sheet that sand bars bear to a river, or sand dunes
bear to winds ; they are accumulations of waste brought
about by the local inability of the ice currents to carry the
load given them.
Glacial gravels occur in Lincoln almost wholly on the
lower ground, in the valleys. Their two usual forms of
occurrence are " eskers " and " sand plains."
Eskers are winding ridges of gravel built by streams that
ran on the ground in tunnels under the ice, or in canons
between ice walls. Under certain conditions of velocity and
supply of gravel such a stream would upraise its bed, lay
ing down gravel along its course ; and when the ice melted
away, and the supporting walls of the tunnel vanished, the
gravels on either side of the old stream bed would slide
down, giving it the form of a steep-sided ridge. Eskers
occur along the valley of Stony Brook above and below
Beaver Pond. There are others in the northern part of the
town, running from Sandy Pond road southwest across
Goose Pond to Lake Walden, and thence southwards.
Another esker runs near the railroad south of Lincoln
station. They are curiously shaped ridges, and often passed
as Indian mounds in the early days before the glacial period
was thought of. " Serpent ridges " they are sometimes called,
on account of their winding courses.
Sand plains are delta-like deposits built by streams, which
issued from the ice into a body of standing water at the ice
front. Their flat top is the most striking element of form.
Instead of being fan-shaped, like ordinary deltas, they are
usually semi-elliptical in outline. Instead of reaching back
to higher ground, in the way that ordinary deltas extend
back to the shore of the lake in which they were built, sand
ii6

APPENDIX
deltas are usually bounded by an abrupt slope — an " ice-
contact slope " — because the delta was built forward from
against the ice, and the ice subsequently melted back and
caused the edge of the delta to slump down. From this
back-slope the flat top of a plain slopes gently forward to
the front border, which is often lobate in form, like an
ordinary delta. One sand delta occurs near Massachusetts
Avenue just south of Wellhead Pond. It has a good steep
ice-contact slope on the northern side, marking the posi
tion of the front of the retreating ice at the time it was
built. The best plains, however, lie in the southwestern part of
the township, west of the station. Two very fine plains in
this area — partly in Wayland — are important members
of an extensive series of deltas built in an extinct glacial
lake that occupied the greater part of the basin of the Sud
bury River while the ice sheet was retreating north, with its
east-west front damming the northward flowing drainage.
The gravel deposits near Lake Walden, and the plain cut
by the railroad near Baker Bridge come into the same group
of lake deposits. The most interesting feature of these del
tas is the fact that though all of them between Wayland
village and Lake Walden were probably formed in a single
lake — glacial Lake Sudbury — at a time w^hen its level was
constant and controlled by the level of an outlet that passed
down Cherry Brook, the deltas do not occur at the same
altitude ; they measure separately all the way from 1 60 feet
above sea level at Wayland to 195 feet at Walden. When
it is seen, moreover, that the increase in height of deltas going
north is exactly proportionate to their distance apart, it looks
very much as if the whole region had been tilted up on the
north since the ice sheet left it, so as to make the extinct
water-plane slant southward at the rate of about six feet a
mile. Such a movement of the region is not at all improbable,
117

A MILESTONE PLANTED
as it is known to have occurred elsewhere in the glaciated
area, as near as western New York, and has been suspected
in New England because of certain " raised beaches " along
the coast, at Cape Ann and Mount Desert. In Scandinavia,
too, the land has risen since an ice sheet melted off from it.
Probably the removal of the weight of a thick ice sheet is
itself sufficient to account for earth movements of this sort.
One of the outlets of glacial Lake Sudbury in the later
stages of its short life seems to have been across the divide
near Wellhead, and south down Hobbs' Brook. Evidence of
this is found in a small area of smooth bare rock, rounded as
if waterworn by a torrential stream, which occurs by the side
of the reservoir near Weston Street and just south of Con
cord Avenue. It looks very much as if a strong river had
once swept over the ledges at this point, rounding their edges
in a way that Hobbs' Brook with its present volume could
never have done. Down Hobbs' Brook below the reservoir,
also, there is a stretch of extremely bouldery ground which
suggests that the old river swept over the till deposit at
this point, carried with it all the clay, pebbles, and cobble
stones, and left only the pavement of boulders.
In the ten thousand years or so since the ice age, remark
ably little change seems to have been brought about in the
form of the glacial deposits. The complete foresting of the
country, followed by the de-foresting and settlement of it
within historic times, has certainly produced a very different
looking region from that which the ice sheet left; but during
all this the rains and streams seem hardly to have touched the
deltas, or to have gullied the till on the hillsides. Very little
soil has accumulated on the sand plains, too ; and probably
because of the ease with which decaying vegetable growth
can be carried down in solution through porous sands.

ii8

APPENDIX
APPENDIX B
(Page 23)
As stated in the text, the first contemporaneous map, or
plan, of Lincoln was that prepared by a committee appointed
by a vote of the town in accordance with a Resolve of the
General Court passed in 1794. Ofthis committee Samuel
Hoar was chairman, and the plan prepared by him was re
produced in the published " Proceedings in Observance ofthe
One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Organization
of the First Church" (p. 100). A mere outline sketch,
it is familiar, and its reproduction is unnecessary. Upon it
the bounds, the public ways in existence in 1794, and the
principal watercourses, are indicated. The earliest known
general map of the region about Boston, in any degree con
temporaneous or at all authentic in detail, is that entitled
" The Seat of War in New England by an American Vol
unteer," published in London between February, 1775, and
April, 1777. This map also is referred to in the text (p. 32)
and was reproduced, in somewhat reduced facsimile, in 1902,
by Dr. S. A. Green in his " Ten Facsimile Reproductions
Relating to New England" (p. 43). On this map Lincoln
does not appear ; though Concord, Weston, Lexington and
Bedford are all indicated, and the roads through Lincoln are
laid down. There is no authentic contemporaneous map of
Concord prior to the incorporation of Lincoln. Such a map
was, however, prepared by William Wheeler, in 1884, from
data contained in the records, and published in Charles H.
Walcott's " Concord in the Colonial Period." On it are
indicated, also, the boundary lines of Lincoln when incor
porated, as affecting the territories of Concord, Lexington
and Weston, showing the actual and proportional area taken
119

A MILESTONE PLANTED
from each town ; also the roads laid out prior to incorpora
tion. This map, necessarily in some degree conjectural, is
of great interest in connection with Lincoln, and is here
reproduced. To trace the origin of each road, and the changes subse
quently made in it, is difficult in the case of any Massachu
setts town at all old. Lincoln is no exception to the rule.
It can generally be done ; but doing it involves infinite pa
tience, and almost endless labor. A careful study of both
county and town records must be made, including orders
of Court, the conveyances of real estate, and the wills on
file in the probate offices. Not only are the entries in the
town-books both obscure and deceptive, but the metes and
bounds given were generally of a very perishable nature, —
a white oak tree, a pile of stones or even fence rails, the
corner of a barn, or the holding of some person whose name
has died out.
As stated in the text (p. 32), Boston being both the point
from which development worked its way out, and the prin
cipal objective of trade and travel, all the original roads and
ways naturally formed themselves on the most convenient
lines, usually those of least resistance, in connection with
the main thoroughfares from and to Boston. Prior to the
incorporation of Lincoln the only wagon way to Boston
was by the old Worcester road, which was reached from
Concord by way of Sudbury or Watertown. The Bay Road,
as it was called, through the north part of Lincoln and
Lexington, went to Charlestown. The line of the Bay Road
was substantially that of the historic Lexington-Concord
route, modified, straightened, and, in places, relocated to
meet growing requirements. The origin and development
of the southern road were more complicated. Formerly
known as the Sudbury Way, this road, for one going from
Boston to Concord, left the Worcester artery at what is
120

APPENDIX
now Wayland Centre, but, originally, Sudbury meeting
house ; for, incorporated as Sudbury in 1637, ^'^^ becom
ing East Sudbury in 1780, that locality was set off and
christened Wayland as recently as 1835. The way then
ran almost due north, through the woods, to Concord. On
it still stands the seventeenth century Farrar house.
A highway from Watertown to Concord was laid out,
we are told,' in 1638. This road, running in a west by
north direction, — the present Waltham North Avenue, —
joined the Sudbury Way, immediately north of the Farrar
homestead, and, turning north and then again west, crossed
the brook. Thence, Walcott says, " the most ancient road,"
long since wholly discontinued, turned sharply after passing
the old eighteenth century Baker homestead, crossed the
deep ravine between Walden and Fairhaven-bay, south of
the Fitchburg railroad filling, and thence found its way to
Concord, emerging from the woods at the settlement now
known as Hubbardsville. The present direct line of road
from Concord to Waltham, skirting the north bank of
Walden and paralleling the Fitchburg railroad from Baker's
Bridge through the Codman place, was not laid out until a
much later period. Indeed, the separation of Lincoln from
Concord, and its incorporation as an independent town,
was to no small extent due, as related in the text, to a
controversy between Chambers Russell and the inhabitants
of the mother town over the laying out through his place of
this more direct route to Waltham and Boston. Since 1754
it has constituted the southern artery of the town ; the sec
tion of road from Baker's Bridge to the brook having been
laid out when the road at that point was relocated in 1843,
at the time the Fitchburg railroad was under construction.
The old Waltham road was continued across the Sud
bury Way to Lee's Bridge and Nine-acre Corner in 1760,
' Walcott's Concord in Colonial Days, p. 8o.
121

A MILESTONE PLANTED
after the incorporation of the town, and subsequent to
the laying out of the more direct Waltham road, north
of Walden. Later, in the turnpike and stage-coach period,
between 1790 and 1845, the southern, or lower artery, was
known in Lincoln as the Lancaster stage-road, while the
corresponding east and west route through the north of the
township — avoiding the intermediate high ground on which
the village of Lincoln stands — became known as the Keene
stage-road. These two were the original travelled ways of
Lincoln, — its spinal columns ; and, so far as the plans and
maps show, they were the only county roads, so-called, in
the Lincoln territory until long after the incorporation of the
town. As in Concord, there were numerous drift-ways,
farm-ways, and private ways for the accommodation of
owners of land ; and these from time to time were by town-
meeting action made public ways. Afterwards, as already
said, they were frequently discontinued and vacated. In
the Samuel Hoar plan of 1794 only the county roads are
indicated ; but a large number of these subordinate and
intersecting town ways had already been voted. The road
from Lincoln Centre to Walden Pond, and so to Concord,
seems to have been laid out at an early day ; that from
Flint's, or Sandy, Pond to Concord, direct, though indicated
on Walcott's " colonial period " map, was not formally
laid out until about 1810. It probably existed prior to that
time as a travelled woodway. What is now the great inter
secting artery of the town, the road from Lincoln village
to the railroad station, and thence to the intersection of the
old Watertown road, was, until after 1850, a mere country
cross-road, comparatively little used. It was straightened
out and rebuilt in 1894. Prior to that time it connected
with the Tower Road to Weston over what had been the
dam of a water power, on the brook from Sandy to Beaver
Pond. In the early days South Lincoln was familiarly
122

APPENDIX
known as Watertowne Corner, and was largely held under
two grants, the Bulkeley, now Codman, of 750 acres, and
the Stow, now Farrar, of 666 acres. Flint's farm, 750
acres, lay east of Sandy Pond, on Lincoln hill.
Many of the most ancient ways have lapsed, and long
since reverted to private ownership. They can now only
with difficulty be traced. This, for instance, has been
the case with the original Watertown connection with the
Concord-Lexington road, on the north side of Lincoln hill ;
also with the Concord- Waltham road, south of Lake Wal
den. The names of localities, as well as roads and ways,
have also lapsed, or passed out of use ; while others have
been substituted for them. Some remain, but have to a
large extent lost their significance. For instance, in the
cases already cited, the Bay Road and the Sudbury Way.
The Tower Road and the Trapelo Road are examples of
ways still called after families once living on them, long
since gone. But, in brief, the three controlling influences
in the case of Lincoln road development were (i) access to
the meeting-house ; (2) access to Boston, as described in
the text ; and (3) access to the railroad station. The meet
ing-house influence made itself felt between 1747 and 1760 ;
the changes incident to the more direct route opened to
Boston by the building of the Cambridge bridges were grad
ually worked out between 1790 and 1820 ; and, finally, the
changes which followed the opening of the railroad, begun
in 1843, were not completed until 1894.
It is greatly to be regretted that from the beginning a
different usage has not prevailed. Metes, bounds and in
dications should have been more monumental in character ;
and every edifice erected, public or private, should have its
date of origin upon it. It is merely a matter of usage, in
volving little trouble and small additional expense. The old
provincial milestones, referred to in the text, with initials,
123

A MILESTONE PLANTED
dates and distances cut upon them, have now great anti
quarian interest ; they are carefully preserved. It would be
the same with edifices, had the custom of marking them
prevailed. In a town which had a true appreciation of its
history and traditions, every finger-board would serve as a
record. No stone post would be planted as a mete or bound
which did not bear an indication of its purpose, together
with the date of its planting.

APPENDIX C
(Page 34)
Adams, Brooks, Smith
Mr. Lawrence spells his young wife's maiden name
with a double " d." That marriage, more than a century
and a half ago, caused me for obvious reasons to feel a
family interest in the Rev. William Lawrence. Love Adams
was, it seems, a daughter of one John Adams, a name —
spelled always with a single " d " — which frequently ap
pears in the Concord and Lincoln records. The marriage
of William Lawrence to Love Adams, the daughter of the
Concord John Adams, took place on the 7th of January,
1750. Nearly fifteen years later, on the 25th of October,
1764, another John Adams, living in Braintree, was mar
ried at Weymouth to Abigail Smith, the daughter of William
Smith, pastor of the church in that town. I chance to be
one of the offspring of that union ; and the John Adams then
married was a descendant in the fourth generation of a cer
tain Henry Adams who came, it is said, from Devonshire,
England, in 1633, with his eight sons, scattering a numer
ous progeny over the entire land. In his Church Manual
of 1872 (p. 57) the Rev. Henry Jackson Richardson, the
124

APPENDIX
fifth successor of William Lawrence (1860-92), states that
the Concord John Adams was a great-grandson of that same
Henry Adams, and, accordingly, a cousin, though far re
moved, of the John of Braintree. A similar statement as to
the descent of John, of Concord, from the Braintree Henry,
is made by Robert M. Lawrence, M. D., in his volume
(p. 73), published in 1888, entitled "Historical Sketches
of Some Members of the Lawrence Family." Both Mr.
Richardson and Dr. Lawrence seem to have accepted, and,
without independent investigation, followed Shattuck, in his
" History of Concord, and Thayer, in his " Memorial of the
Thayer and Adams Families," with whom the statement ap
parently originated. To the same effect in the Genealogy of
the Minot family ' it is stated that " Captain Daniel Adams
lived in the south part of Lincoln, then within the limits of
Concord, on the road from Waltham to Stow. He was the son
of Joseph, and grandson of John Adams, one of the eight
sons of Henry of Quincy." His brother John lived near the
centre of Lincoln, married Love Minot, and their daughter
Lucy married Rev. William Lawrence, of Lincoln. These
are very direct statements ; but James Savage, after the manner
of genealogists, quite discredits them. He characteristically
remarks ^ that John, of Cambridge, was son of Henry, the
first, " as amiable credulity would assume, is highly improba
ble, since he came [to Massachusetts] twenty years, or a little
less, after that great progenitor, and so long outlived him."
This John, of Cambridge, was the progenitor of Mistress
Love [Adams] Lawrence. But the doubt thus thrown on
the Henry Adams descent is less conclusive than Savage
supposed. Henry Adams, of Braintree, certainly had a son,
John, born in England about 1624. That son survived his
father, who died in 1644. Tradition has it, a son returned
' New England Genealogical and Antiquarian Register, 1847, p. 176.
^ Genealogical Dictionary, vol. i, p. II.
125

A MILESTONE PLANTED
to England with his mother and sister, named Ursula. The
mother there died ; not impossibly the son may have come
back to New England, settling in Cambridge, where he died
in 1706, "at an advanced age," about eighty-five, thus
outliving Henry Adams no less than sixty years. In age
John of Cambridge thus corresponds with John, the son of
Henry. The identity cannot be established positively ; but
the weight of evidence is in its favor. The Rev. Andrew
N. Adams is non-committal on this point. In his elaborate
" Adams History " (p. 958) he says : " Considering the con
flict, or contrariety of opinion, and the doubt which naturally
attaches to absence of direct evidence, the writer has decided
to give what he has been able to gather of the record and
history of ' John of Cambridge,' . . . leaving it to every
reader to form his own belief as to the identity of John of
Cambridge with the son of Henry of Braintree." Adams is
one of the more common Anglo-Saxon names. There were
certainly two, and not improbably several, bearing the name
in Cambridge, Watertown, and Concord in colonial times ;
and, while connection may in some cases have existed, and
the probabilities may even favor such a connection, it cannot
be positively asserted. There was a George of Watertown,
a John of Cambridge, and a Robert of Newbury, as well as
a Henry of Braintree. They, as well as others of the name,
all came to New England between 1630 and 1655.
In the matter of connection with the Lincoln stock, I
was more fortunate on the distaff side. My mother, Abigail
Brown Brooks, was the eleventh, and youngest, child of
Peter Chardon Brooks, of Medford. Mr. Brooks (1767-
1849) was a descendant in the fourth generation of Caleb
Brooks, the son of Thomas Brooks, who came over in, or
before, 1631, and settled first in Watertown and then in
Concord. Joshua, another son of Thomas Brooks, estab
lished himself in Concord, and from him, in the fourth
126

APPENDIX
generation, was descended the General Eleazer Brooks, of
revolutionary fame (i 727-1806). On the mother's side,
consequently, I am the cousin, seven times removed, of the
descendants of General Eleazer Brooks, now living in Lin
coln. Furthermore, Mr. Wheeler in his sketch of Lincoln in
Hurd's " History of Middlesex County" (vol. ii, p. 624) says
that " Captain William Smith, son of the Rev. William
Smith of Weymouth, commanded a company in Colonel
Nixon's regiment at Cambridge in 1775, and in Colonel
Brooks's regiment in 1776." I have always understood also
that William Smith commanded the company of Lincoln
Minute-men. The Rev. William Smith of Weymouth was
of Charlestown descent ; but in some way he became the
possessor of a farm in Lincoln. He had a son, William,
and several daughters, among them Abigail, who became
Mrs. John Adams. Presumably, the son settled on his
father's Lincoln farm; and, if so, he was, in 1775, a man
of twenty-nine. Of him little is recorded. The name is so
common that I do not feel assured the Captain William
Smith of Lincoln was the brother of Abigail Adams. Such,
however, is unquestionably the Lincoln tradition.
APPENDIX D
(Page 34)
Codman Place
This estate, and the colonial mansion upon it, would
afford in itself, and in connection with the Russell family,
ample material for a monograph, both characteristic and
interesting. It is the story of a family of the provincial
days, the owners of a considerable landed property in a Mas-
127

A MILESTONE PLANTED
sachusetts country town, and the occupants for generations
of a typical colonial house. In that house were collected
much furniture, and many objects of art. Distinctly belong
ing to the gentry of the provincial period, this family bore
its full share in the vicissitudes of the revolutionary period,
going into exile and suffering forfeiture of property. Its
records, and the letters exchanged between its members,
would afford an interesting contribution to eighteenth cen
tury history. Such a sketch, however, including as it should,
to be at all complete, numerous maps, plans, illustrations
and copies of family pictures, could not properly be made
part of a town commemoration. It should be prepared in
dependently; and the present Ogden Codman has accu
mulated all the material necessary to a work of great
interest individually, as well as in connection with the town
of Lincoln.
Chambers Russell was the son of Daniel Russell, and
was born July 4, 17 13. He was graduated at Harvard in
the class of 1731. Subsequently he studied law with John
Reed, a prominent member of the provincial bar of that
period, and shortly after being admitted to the bar he be
came engaged in public business. April 2, 1738, he married
Mary, daughter of Francis Wheelwright, merchant, she
being also a granddaughter of Gov. Dudley. His wife died
in 1762, in the forty-fifth year of her age. They had no
children. The death of his wife was a severe blow to him ;
and, being out of health, he was advised to cross the At
lantic. He sailed for London in October, 1766; and died
in England, November 24 of the same year, having barely
survived the passage.' The following quaint notice of him
' According to Lincoln records, which the authorities (Shattuck, p. 317) have all
followed, Chambers Russell died at Guildford, Surrey, England, November 24,
1 767. This is obviously an error, inasmuch as mention of his death ' ' on the 24th
day of November last, in the 54th year of his age ' ' is found in the Massachusetts
Gazette of January 15, 1767, and in the Boston Post Boy and Advertiser of four
128

APPENDIX
subsequently appeared in the Massachusetts " Gazette " of
January 15, 1767 : —
" By Capt. Dixey from London we have received the
melancholy news of the death of the late Hon. Chambers
Russell, Esq., who, after a short illness of three days, de
parted this life in Guildford in Surrey, on the 24th day of
November last in the 54th year of his age.
" A gentleman who's truly upright and amiable character,
in public and private life, had justly endeared him to all who
had any knowledge of him, but more especially to those who
were favored with his particular friendship and intimacy. In
the year 1 746 he received, unexpected and unsolicited. His
Majesty's commission, appointing him Judge of the Court
of Vice Admiralty for the Provinces of the Massachusetts
Bay and New Hampshire, and the Colony of Rhode Island,
which he held until a few years ago, when, Rhode Island
being made a separate District, he was commissioned for the
two provinces only, in which station he continued until his
decease. He was for several years one of the Justices of the
Inferior Court of Common Pleas, for the County of Mid
dlesex, and in the year 1752 he was removed from that
Bench, and appointed one of the Justices of the Superior
Court of Judicature of this Province, which important office
he sustained till his death. In the space of about 26 years
he was almost uninterruptedly chosen by the towns of
Charlestown, Concord or Lincoln to represent them at the
General Court, and in the years 1756 and 1760, he was
elected one of the members of His Majesty's Honorable
Council, after which he voluntarily resigned his seat at the
Board, and was again chosen Representative of the town of
days later, January 19. As he was born July 4, 1713, he was fifty-three on July 4,
1766, and in the following November he was " in the 54th year of his age. " Had
he died, as recorded in the Lincoln town-books,! November 24, 1767, he would
have died in his fifty-fifth year.
129

A MILESTONE PLANTED
Lincoln. In these several stations he discharged the trust
reposed in him with great ability and the most unsullied in
tegrity, — ever maintaining a sacred regard for the laws and
constitution of his country and the rights and liberties of his
fellow subjects, avoiding with scrupulous conscientiousness
whatever might have a possible tendency to warp or bias his
judgment, and always giving the surest evidence of his un
alterable intention and endeavor to make the Rule of Right
the governing principle of all his actions.
" In private life his character shone with distinguished
luster. He exhibited an example of the most tender con
jugal affection, during a course of many years, in which he
was happy in a most agreeable, sensible and virtuous con
sort. " He was an uncommonly kind and indulgent Master, ever
considering and treating his slaves as entitled to the rights
of humanity, and making them in all respects as happy as
was consistent with their state. As a proof of his just and
humane sentiments in this respect, it may not be amiss to
mention that in his last will he has made special provision
that none of his slaves shall be sold, but in case any of
them through age or other bodily infirmity become useless,
they shall be comfortably supported out of his estate during
their natural lives.
" All the inhabitants of the county and towns in which
he resided are witnesses of his numerous acts of generosity
and beneficence, both of a public and private nature, and
it may be said of him in an eminent sense that ' he deliv
ered the poor that cried and the fatherless and him that had
none to help him.' The blessings of him that was ready
to perish came upon him — he was eyes to the blind, feet
to the lame, and a father to the poor.
" His hospitality was such that friends and strangers who
visited him, were received and entertained with a cheerful
130

APPENDIX
open liberality which denoted a real sense of obligation on
his part. In his friendships he was warm and sincere, and
such were the favorable allowances which his candor made
for the frailties of humanity that even an injury never pre
vented his bounty and kind offices to the author of it.
" To conclude the outline of this truly worthy character,
it may with justice be said that in the death of Judge
Russell his country has lost a disinterested patriot, his in
timates an amiable companion, and mankind a sure and
hearty friend. The man who by his steady course
Has happiness insured,
When earth's foundations shake, shall stand
By Providence secured."
In a foot-note to Quincy's " Reports," pp. 232, 233, is
the following reference to his associate. Judge Russell, made
by Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson in course of his charge
to the Grand Jury at the March Term of the Superior
Court of Judicature VII George III (1767): —
" Before I say Anything to the Grand Jury, it is highly
proper that I should take Notice of the Death of One of
the Judges of this Court. I have no Talent for it, and am
an Enemy to traducing and vilifying the Characters of Men,
when alive, and of flattering them when dead. Yet Justice
to Judge Russell obliges me to say Something of his Death.
Every one who knew him in private Life, must acknowledge
him a most amiable Man. I scarce ever knew his Equal.
He might be truly characterized as a Lover of Mankind,
and no higher Character can, I think, be given of any One.
Nothing more need be said to recommend him, especially at
this Time,
" The several Posts of Honour which he bore, he sus
tained with Dignity. As a Legislator, I had an Oppor
tunity to observe his Conduct, both as a Member of the

A MILESTONE PLANTED
Council and House of Representatives. And I know that
he ever engaged on that Side which had Truth arid Justice
for its Support. As a Judge of the Admiralty, his Conduct
was most unexceptionable. And I believe none of his De
crees, but met with universal Approbation, except at Times,
when Party-spirit and Animosities ran high, and made it
a Thing impossible, for any Judge, in any Department, to
give Satisfaction. His Conduct in this Court — I appeal to
the Gentlemen of the Bar — was such as pronounced him
the Judge, and a Man of strict Integrity. Although we all
have some Byass, — 't is impossible for human Nature to
be without, — yet if he had any Byass, it was ever in Favour
of Virtue.
" Justice has been done this worthy Character, already,
in publick, in an unexceptionable and elegant Manner.'
The best Use that we can make, is to follow his Path and
imitate his Virtues ; especially, as we all must shortly follow
him to give our Account to the Judge of us all."
Brief biographical sketches of Chambers Russell, or re
ferences to him, are to be found in Shattuck's " Concord " (p.
317), in Richardson's " Church Manual " (p. 92), in Hurd's
" History of Middlesex County " (vol. ii, p. 636), and in
the " Proceedings of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Church
Anniversary " (p. 63). A print from the portrait by Copley
is also included in the " Proceedings." Allusions and re
ferences to him are contained in John Adams's " Works,"
vol. ii, p. 333, and iv, pp. 5, 72, 73. Also in Quincy's
" Reports," p. 427.
The Chambers Russell estate, now the property of his
collateral descendant, is believed to be a part of the original
Bulkeley grants, made at the time of the settlement of
Concord. Of these grants there seem to have been two, one
of three hundred acres " towards Cambridge," and one to
' Referring to the foregoing notice in the Massachusetts Gazette. ,
132

APPENDIX
Grace Bulkeley of seven hundred and fifty acres. The seven
hundred and fifty acre grant is thought to have included
what is now known as the Codman place. It lay between
Sandy Pond, Lake Walden and Fairhaven-bay, and was in
tersected in the beginning by the Concord-Sudbury road ;
at a later day (1754) by the Lincoln-Waltham road ; and,
finally (1844) by the right-of-way of the Fitchburg railroad.
It originally included most of the holdings now (1904)
belonging to Henry S. Warner, H. L. Higginson, George
Baker and C. F. Adams, as well as the Codman place.
The original Bulkeley grant, made prior to 1665, after
passing through various hands, was purchased, in whole
or part, by Charles Chambers, of Charlestown. He built
on it the large, colonial mansion house, still standing, for
Chambers Russell, the eldest son of his only child Re
becca, to whom he, by his will, left the property. This
Charles Chambers was a man of prominence in the Pro
vince, coming to Massachusetts from Lincolnshire, Eng
land, about 1688, and dying in Charlestown, his place of
residence, in 1743. Coming over when a young man of
twenty-seven, he was for many years a member of the
Council of the Province, and a judge of the Court of Com
mon Pleas. He was twice married; and by his second
wife, Rebecca Patefield, had one child, Rebecca, born
March 31, 1691, who subsequently married Daniel Russell.
He also lived in Charlestown. Born in 1685, Daniel Rus
sell, like Charles Chambers, was many years a member of
the Council, and for over fifty years treasurer of Middlesex
County. By his wife, Rebecca Chambers, Daniel Russell
had nine children, the second of which, Chambers, was
born July 4, 1713. His mother, Mrs. Daniel Russell, died
in 1729, fourteen years before the death of her father, the
owner of the Lincoln property. Chambers Russell himself,
passing his youth at Charlestown, entered Harvard at four-
133

A MILESTONE PLANTED
teen, and was graduated in the class of 173 1. At that time
it was the practice to print the names of those composing
the class, not, as now, in alphabetical order, but the place of
each was assigned arbitrarily, and in accordance with the
social estimate in which his family was held. For instance,
John Adams was graduated in 1755, twenty-four years
after Chambers Russell. Alphabetically his name would
have been first on the list of his class ; the fourteenth place
in twenty-four was assigned to him. Alphabetically,
Chambers Russell would appear twenty-fourth in his class
of thirty-four ; he does appear first. The esteem in which
both the Russell and the Chambers families were held is
shown in this assignment.
Soon after graduation Chambers Russell settled in that
part of Lincoln then belonging to Concord, on his grand
father's farm. He married seven years later, in his twenty-
fifth year ; and, probably, the original L shaped house
had then already been built. After Lincoln was set-off
and incorporated Chambers Russell was eight times sent
to represent it in the General Court. He was appointed
a judge of the Court of Common Pleas in 1747, and
also of Vice Admiralty; in 1752 he was commissioned
as judge of the Superior Court of Judicature, then the tri
bunal of final appeal. In August, 1762, his wife died, in
Lincoln, never having borne children. Upon the death of
Mrs. Russell, described at some length in the town-book
of records as " the virtuous consort " etc.. Judge Russell,
then already it would seem in failing health, reluctantly
decided to visit England. Dying there, he was buried in
Bunhill Fields, London, where a monument in his memory
subsequently stood. Having no children, he bequeathed his
place in Lincoln to his nephew Charles Russell, the son of
his younger brother, James (171 5-1 758). Charles Russell,
born in Charlestown in 1738, was graduated in 1757, his
134

APPENDIX
name appearing sixth in a class numberingtwenty-six. Study
ing medicine, first in this country and subsequently in Eng
land, he received (i 765) a doctor's degree from the University
of Aberdeen. Returning to Massachusetts he settled as a
physician in Lincoln, his uncle having left to him the farm.
He then (1768) married Elizabeth Vassall, of Cambridge,
by whom he had five children, all born in Lincoln. An
eminent man in his profession, and in every way a useful
citizen, Dr. Charles Russell was, in politics, a Tory and
loyalist, and subsequently an exile. Lincoln, as the Rev.
William Lawrence had occasion at that time to know, was
patriotic in sentiment ; and, probably, Dr. Russell had been
made to realize that his neighbors viewed him with suspicion.
In any event, he is said to have left Lincoln in the midst of
the excitement of April 19, 1775. He then, temporarily,
exchanged dwellings with Henderson Inches, a merchant
resident in Boston, who was as anxious to move out of that
town, then besieged, as Dr. Russell was anxious to move
into it. Shortly after, he sailed for the island of Antigua,'tn
the West Indies, where Mrs. Vassall, his mother-in-law,
had inherited plantations. All the Vassalls were loyalists.
Placed in charge of the hospital established at Antigua for
the prisoners of war from the States, he demeaned himself
in that position most creditably, and his countrymen under
his charge were open in their expressions of gratitude. He
died at Antigua in May, 1780, while the war was yet going
on, and at about the time of the capture of Charleston by
Lord Cornwallis, a few months previous to the Benedict
Arnold treason ; his widow and children, later, returned to
Massachusetts. Meanwhile, when in March, 1776, the
British evacuated Boston, Mr. Inches returned to his house
there from Lincoln. Apparently the Russell house remained
unoccupied, until James Russell, the father of Dr. Charles,
moved into it from his place of refuge at Dunstable ; for,
13s

A MILESTONE PLANTED
at the time of the battle of Bunker Hill, Charlestown had
been burned, and James Russell's house destroyed. The
house and farm at Lincoln were the property of his son, a
loyalist refugee, proscribed under the Banishment Act of
1778. The son's estate was confiscated; and, December
10, 1777, agency of it had been granted to Elnathan Jones,
of Concord.
A new complication involving the title to the Lincoln
property now arose. When Chambers Russell was making
his arrangements for going to England, in 1766, he mort
gaged his house and farm to John Hancock to secure a
loan of ;^3000, or ;^ 10,000. James Russell was execu
tor of Chambers Russell, and he now came forward, with
evidence that this mortgage, never having been discharged,
was an existing lien on the estate. His son. Chambers
Russell, second of the name, and a brother of Dr. Charles,
thereupon purchased the equity of redemption, and in 1784
discharged the mortgage. He thus became by purchase the
owner of the confiscated farm, which had belonged to his
brother. The younger Chambers Russell was born in Charlestown
in 1755. A merchant by calling, he accumulated a hand
some fortune, and died in Charleston, S. C, in 1790. He
left the Lincoln estate to his nephew, Charles Russell Cod
man, the son of his youngest sister, Margaret (1757— 1789),
who had married John Codman, Jr., of Boston.
It was now that the Russell place passed into the Cod
man family. John Codman, Jr. (1755— 1803),- finding that
the estate of his brother-in-law, the younger Chambers Rus
sell, would be insufficient to meet the legacies in his will
without selling the place at Lincoln, decided to pay the
legacies himself, and take the place. He did so, occupying
the mansion house, which he remodelled and enlarged, as a
country residence. Dying, he bequeathed the property to
136

APPENDIX
his second son, Charles Russell Codman, carrying out his
brother-in-law's wishes in that respect.
Charles Russell Codman, born in Boston, December 19,
1784, was not yet of age when he inherited the Lincoln
property, — the fifth in descent from Charles Chambers.
He came of age in 1805, and shortly after divided the farm,
selling the northern portion of it, on which stood the old
farmhouse, in which Dr. Stearns for years lived, to Amos
Bemis, in 1807. The southern, and larger, portion, on
which stood the mansion, the slaves' quarters, and the
principal farm structures, including the farmhouse, he con
veyed May 23', 1807,10 Charles De Wolf, a member of
the well-known Rhode Island family of that name. The
Chambers Russell estate now changed ownership frequently.
Charles De Wolf, having bought it in May, 1807, in
1812 conveyed it to Andrew Homer, of Boston. Andrew
Homer in his turn conveyed it in 1816 to James Percival.
He died at Lincoln in 1826; and in 1835 his executors
sold the " Codman farm " to C. F. Minns, a merchant of
Boston. Mr. Minns died at Lincoln in 1841 ; and, under
date of November 14, 1862, his widow and children con
veyed the property, described as " a certain farm in Lincoln,
called the Codman place," to Ogden Codman, the son of
the Charles Russell Codman, who, fifty-five years before,
had sold the place to Charles De Wolf. Ogden Codman
was owner of it forty-two years, dying in Lincoln October
25, 1904. He was the tenth in ownership of the mansion
since it was built, circa 1710, the successive occupants
having been as follows : —
Charles Chambers, to 1743
Chambers Russell, 1743 to 1767
Charies Russell, 1767 to 1775
Chambers Russell, 1781 to 1790
137

A MILESTONE PLANTED
John Codnjan, 1790 to 1803
Charles Russell Codman, 1803 to 1807
Charles De Wolf, 1807 to 18 12
Andrew Homer, 1812 to 1816
James Percival, 1816 to 1835
Constant F. Minns, 1835 to 1862
Ogden Codman, 1862 to 1904
Ogden Codman, the recent owner of the place, was a
descendant of Charles Chambers, of Daniel Russell, and
of John Codman ; but not of Judge Chambers Russell, nor
of Dr. Charles Russell. Chambers Russell, so closely asso
ciated in every way with the origin and development of
Lincoln, left no progeny. Ogden Codman was also the
eleventh owner of the place in succession, whether by
descent, bequest or purchase, from Charles Chambers, the
whole period covering, approximately, two centuries.

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