Part 11 (1/2)
If he repented afterward of his bargain, ashe was satisfied with ”ye sue duly paid over, the town being incorporated under the name of Andover in 1646, as may still be seen in the Massachusetts Colony Records, which read: ”At a general Court at Boston 6th of 3d aed that, for the sum of L6 and a coat which he had already received, he had sold to Mr John Woodbridge, in behalf of the inhabitants of Cochichewick, now called Andover, all the right, interest and privilege in the land six miles southward from the too miles eastward to Rowley bounds, be the same more or less; northward to Merrier, and his company, may have liberty to take alewives in Cochichewick river for their own eating; but if they either spoil or steal any corn or other fruit to any considerable value of the inhabitants, the liberty of taking fish shall forever cease, and the said Roger is still to enjoy four acres of ground where now he plants”
Punctuation and other minor matters are defied here, as in many other records of the time, but it is plain that Cutshaain, and that the Rev John Woodbridge, on his side was equally satisfied
The first settlee of sater” The delight in the cold, clear New England water coe of exploration in the early records In the first hours of landing, as Bradford afterrote, they ”found springs of fresh water of which ere heartily glad, and sat us down and drunk our first New England water, with as ht as ever we drunk drink in all our lives”
”The waters arefrom the entrails of rocky mountains,” wrote John Sinson was no less s,” he wrote, ”and a sup of New England's air is better than a whole draught of old England's ale” The ”New English Canaan” recorded: ”And for the water it excelleth Canaan byamiss Therefore if the Abrahams and Lots of our time come thither, there needs be no contention for wells In the delicacy of waters, and the conveniency of them, Canaan came not near this country” Boston owed its first settles,” and Wood land's Prospect” ”The country is as atered as any land under the sun; every fa of sater betwixt theht there can be no better water in the world” New Englanders still hold to this belief, and the soldier recalls yet the vision of the old well, or the bubbling spring in themarches, or in the hospital wards of war tiathered naturally about the brook, and building began vigorously, the houses being less hastily constructed than in the first pressure of the early days, and theprecedence of all
Even, however, with the reverence inwrought in the very name of minister we e equal to the demand born in her, by intercourse with such ers, or that he could ever have become full equivalent for what she had lost With her intense family affection, she had, however, adopted him at once, and we have very positive proof of his deep interest in her, which showed itself at a later date This change from simple ”husbandman” to minister had pleased her pride, and like all ation and known often sharp privation It is said that he was the second one ordained in New England, and like most others his salary for years was paid half in wheat and half in coin, and his life divided itself between the study and the farm, which formed the chief support of all the colonists His old record mentions how he endeared hiiving teland, and this desire was probably increased by his connection with the Dudley family Anne Bradstreet's sympathies, in spite of all her theories and her determined acceptance of the Puritan creed, were still monarchical, and Mercy would naturally share theentlewoman of fortune” who showed itself in her children Friends urged the young preacher to return, which he did in 1647, leaving wife and children behind hi lasted but a year There is a letter of Dudley's, written in 1648, addressed to him as ”preacher of the word of God at Andover in Wiltshi+re,” and advising him of what means should be followed to send his wife and children, but our chief interest in him lies in the fact, that he carried with hireat delay, were published at London in 1650 He left her a quiet, practically unknooman, and returned in 1662, to find her as widely praised as she is now forgotton; the ”Tenth Muse, Lately sprung up in America”
What part of the, but probably only a few of the later ones, not included in the first edition The loneliness and craving of her Ipswich life, had forced her to composition as a relief, and the major part of her poems ritten before she was thirty years old, and while she was still hampered by theat Andover and the satisfying coradually died out, and only occasional verses for special occasions, seem to have been written The quiet, busy life, her own ill-health, and her absorption in her children, all silenced her, and thus, the work that her ripened thought and experience ht have ious life became more and more the only one of any value to her, and she ence in favorite pursuits, as a ainst the Adversary whose temptations she recorded Our interest at present is in these first Andover years, and the course of life into which the little co its own interpretation of the silence that ensued The first sharp bereavement had come, a year or so before thelate in December of 1643, at Roxbury, to which they had hter Anne, shohat her simple virtues had meant for husband and children
AN EPITAPH
ON MY DEAR AND EVER-HONORED MOTHER,
MRS DOROTHY DUDLEY,
WHO DECEASED DECEMB 27 1643, AND OF HER AGE 61
Here lyes A worthy Matron of unspotted life, A loving Mother and obedient wife, A friendly Neighbor pitiful to poor, Whom oft she fed and clothed with her store, To Servants wisely aweful but yet kind, And as they did so they reward did find; A true Instructer of her Family, The which she ordered with dexterity
The publick s ever did frequent, And in her Closet constant hours she spent; Religious in all her words and wayes Preparing still for death till end of dayes; Of all her Children, Children lived to see, Then dying, left a blessed e in these old Puritans
They ”married early, and if opportunity presented, married often”
Even Governor Winthrop, whose third e lasted for thirty years, and whose love was as deep and fervent at the end as in the beginning, rapher delicately puts it, ”he could not live alone, and needed the support and coe could alone afford hiaret a full year, but Governor Dudley had fewer scruples and tarried only until the following April,then Catherine,of Sae, Joseph Dudley, beco successively before his death, Governor of Massachusetts, Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Wight, and first Chief Justice of New York, while thirteen children handed on the nahter of Governor Winthrop, and thus healed all the breaches that hteen children, and all through the old records are pictures of these exuberant Puritan families
Benjamin Franklin was one of seventeen Sir Williaunsmith at Pemaquid, and one of the first and most notable instances of our rather tireso sons, while Roger Clapp of Dorchester, handed down names that are in the Experience, Waitstill, Preserved, Hopestill, Wait, Thanks, Desire, Unite and Supply The last naland need, and Tyler, whose witty yet sympathetic estimate of the early Puritans is yet to be surpassed, writes: ”It hardly needs to be mentioned after this, that the conditions of life there were not at all those for which Malthus subsequently invented his theory of inhospitality to infants
Population was sparce; as plentiful; food was plentiful; and the arrival in the household of a new child was not the arrival of a new appetite a a brood of children already half-fed--it was rather the arrival of a new helper where help was scarcer than food; it was, in fact, a fresh installment from heaven of what they called, on Biblical authority, the very 'heritage of the Lord' The typical household of New England was one of patriarchal populousness Of all the sayings of the Hebrew Psalmist--except, perhaps, the damnatory ones--it is likely that they rejoiced most in those which expressed the Davidic appreciation of hty man, so are children of the youth Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them; they shall not be ashaate' The New Englanders had for ate, whom they wished to be able to speak with, in the unabashed manner intimated by the devout warrior of Israel”
Hardly a town in New England holds stronger reland at-winded discussions of fate, fore-knowledge and all things past and to cooes on, as steadily as if the Puritan debaters had rated, not passed over, to a land which even the ned and submissive soul would never have wished to think of as a ”Silent Land” All that Cae has failed to preserve of the ancient spirit lives here in fullest force, and it stands to-day as one of the few representatives reinal Puritan faith and purpose Its foundation saw instant and vigorous protest, at a sly the spirit of the tiested, while the future one was building, and Hubbard writes: ”They had given notice thereof to thechurches, as theof the assembly was to be at that ti but newly erected, were not capable to entertain theether on that occasion But when they were asseether in church fellowshi+p, at that time, refused to make confession of their faith and repentance, because, as was said, they declared it openly before in other churches upon their aders of the churches not being satisfied, the assembly broke up, before they had accolish obstinacy were both at work, the one having no mind to make a private and purely personal experience too co the least encroachht and proposed to hold By October, the ers had decided to compromise, some form of temporary church was decided upon, and the permanent one went up swiftly as hands could work It had a bell, though nobody knows froalleries, one above another, the whole standing till 1711, when a new and larger one beca, what , 45 feet wide, and 24 feet between joints”; and undoubtedly a source of great pride to builders and congregation No trace of it at present reular lot, sparsely covered with ancient , broken and neglected, and overrun with tall grass and weeds” But in May, as the writer stood within the cruround was thick with violets and ”innocents,” the grass sprung green and soft and thick, and the blue sky bent over it, as full of hope and promise as it seemed to the eyes that two hundred years before, had looked through tears, upon its beauty From herMistress Bradstreet could count every slab, for the home she came to is directly opposite, and when detained there by the many illnesses she suffered in later days, she could, with opened s, hear the psaluenerous ho the elms, there was the usual period of discomfort and even hardshi+p Simon Bradstreet was the only member of the little settlement who possessed any considerable property, but it is evident that he shared the sa In 1658 there is record of a house which he had owned, being sold to another proprieter, Richard Sutton, and this was probably the log- house built before their coer one had slowly been made ready
The town had been laid out on the principle followed in all the early settlements, and described in one of the early volumes of the Massachusetts Historical Society Collections Four, or at the utht acres, constituted a hoht the aree for all practical needs It is often a land methods to find estates which , divided in the most unaccountable fashi+on, a meadow from three to five miles from the house, and wood-lots and pasture at equally eccentric distances But this arose from the necessities of the situation Homes must be as nearly side by side as possible, that Indians and wild beasts erous and that business be eeneral plan:
”Suppose ye towne square 6 miles every waye The houses orderly placed about yehouse, the which ill suppose to be ye center of ye wholl circureatest difficulty is for the employment of ye parts most remote, which (if better direction doe not arise)6 -house in ye center, will be unto every side 32500 paces round about & next unto ye said center, in what condition soever it lyeth, may well be distributed & employed unto ye house within ye compass of ye same orderly placed to enjoye co without, ye neerest circuht fittest to be imployed in farmes into which may be placed skillful bred husbandmen, many or fewe as they may be attayned unto to become farmers, unto such portions as each of the to the portion of stocke each of them may be intrusted with”
House-lots would thus be first assigned, and then in proportion to each of theround,land, double the aht-acre house-lot, and such lands being held an essential part of the property A portion of each townshi+p was reserved as ”common or undivided land,” not in the sense in which ”coe of to- day, but sie With Andover, as with ranted or sold from time to time up to the year 1800, when a final sale was made, and the money appropriated for the use of free schools
As the settlement became more secure, many built houses on the farm lands, and removed from the town, but this was at first peremptorily forbidden, and for many years after could not be done without express peristrate, naturally remained in the town, and the new house, the admiration of all and the envy of a few discontented spirits, atched as it grew, by its mistress, who must have rejoiced that at last so house in which she waited, probably had notwhich her alish life had made doubly distasteful She had a terror of fire and with reason, for while still at Cae her father's family had had in 1632 the narrowest of escapes, recorded by Winthrop in his Journal: ”About this time Mr Dudley, his house, at Neas preserved frounpowder, by aall night upon a principal bea near, and not discovered till they arose in the an to flame out”
The thatch of the early house, which were of logs rilled in with clay, was always liable to take fire, the chis and often not clayed at the top Dudley had warned against this carelessness in the first year of their co: ”In our nen, intended this summer to be builded, we have ordered, that no man there shall build his chimney ood, nor cover his house with thatch, which was readily assented unto; for that divers houses since our arrival (the fire always beginning in the wooden chiwams, which have taken fire in the roofs covered with thatch or boughs” With every precaution, there was still constant dread of fire, and Anne must have rejoiced in the enor up through the centre and showing in the garret like a fortification This e, took the place of the one burned to the ground in July, 1666, but duplicated as exactly as possible, at a very short time thereafter Doubts have been expressed as to whether she ever lived in it, but they have sround for existence It is certain that Dudley Bradstreet occupied it, and it has been known fro as the ”Governor's house” Its size fitted it for the large hospitality to which she had been brought up and which was one of the necessities of their position, and its location is a conspicuous and important one
Whatever terounds, and lish homes they had left, was never yielded to To be near the street, and within hailing distance of one another, was a necessity born of their circumstances Dread of Indians, and need of ether, and the town ordinances forbade scattering So the great house, as it , stood but a few feet frohty elo, ”sixteen and a half feet in circu of mention in the 'Autocrat's' list of famous trees” The house faces the south, and has a peculiar effect, fro to one, and that a very low one, at the back The distance between caves and ground is here so slight, that one may fancy a venturous boy in soe pole to ground, and even te a small and ambitious sister to the same feat Massive old timbers form the frame of the house, and the enormous chimney heavily buttressed on the four sides is exactly in the center, the fireplaces being rooh studded, the floor having been sunk so the forress a series of bows Some of the walls are wainscotted and soo, having probably chosen to re, as despised then as it is now desired At the east is a deep hollow through which flows a little brook, skirted by alders, ”green in summer, white in winter,” where the Bradstreet children waded, and fished for shi+ners with a crooked pin, and made dams, and conducted themselves in all points like the children of to-day Beyond the brook rises the hill, on the slope of which the rew as they grow to-day
A dense and unbroken circle of woods limpses of river and hill that to- day make the drives about Andover full of surprise and charreat mills at Lawrence were undreamed of and the Merrimack flowed silently to the sea, untroubled by any of reen and smooth Scattered farms are seen, and houses outside the town proper are few, and the quiet country gives ser life so near it In 1810, Dr Tiht, whose travels in America were read with the same interest that we besto upon the ”Merv Oasis,” or the ”Land of the White Elephant,” wrote of North Andover, which then held inal features: