Historic Shrines of America / Being the Story of One Hundred and Twenty Historic Buildings and the Pioneers Who Made Them Notable

by John T. Faris

FERNSIDE FARM, HAVERHILL, MASSACHUSETTS

THE BIRTHPLACE AND BOYHOOD HOME OF
JOHN G. WHITTIER

The first house built by Thomas Whittier, the three-hundred-pound ancestor of the poet Whittier, and first representative of the family in America, was a little log cabin. There he took his wife, Ruth Flint, and there ten children were born. Five of them were boys, and each of them was more than six feet tall.

No wonder the log house grew too small for the family. So, probably in 1688, he built a house whose massive hewn beams were fifteen inches square, whose kitchen was thirty feet long, with a fireplace eight feet wide. The rooms clustered about a central chimney.

In this house the poet was born December 17, 1807, and here he spent the formative years of his life. When he was twenty-seven years old he wrote for The Little Pilgrim of Philadelphia a paper on "The Fish I Didn't Catch." In this he described the home of his boyhood:

"Our old homestead nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low, green meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled and laughed down its rocky falls by our garden-side, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in its time, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we could hear across the intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river took it up and bore it down to the great sea."

Whittier's poems are full of references to the life on the farm; many of his best verses had their inspiration in memories of the past. For instance, the description of the building of the fire in "Snow-Bound," a poem which describes the life at the farm when he was twelve years old, is a faithful picture of what took place in the old kitchen every night of the long New England winter, when

"We piled, with care, our nightly stack

Of wood against the chimney back—

The oaken log, green, huge and thick,

And on its top the thick back-stick;

The knotty fore-stick laid apart,

And filled between with curious art.

The ragged brush; then, hovering near,

We watched the first red blaze appear,

Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam

On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,

Until the old, rude-fashioned room

Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom."

Young Whittier was a faithful worker on the farm. One day, when he was nineteen years old, William Lloyd Garrison, the young editor of a Newburyport newspaper, to which Whittier had contributed a poem, found him assisting in repairing a stone wall. The visitor urged the father of the young poet to send him to school. As a result of this visit Whittier entered the Academy in Haverhill, with the understanding that he was to earn his way.

At intervals during the succeeding ten years the poet returned to the old farm, but when he was thirty years old the place was sold, the family went to Amesbury, and he left soon afterward for Philadelphia, where he was to edit an anti-slavery paper.

All through life Whittier dreamed of buying back the homestead. When he received a check for $1,000 as the first proceeds from "Snow-Bound," he set the sum aside as the beginning of a redemption fund.

But the citizens of Haverhill, led by Alfred A. Ordway, asked the privilege of buying the property themselves, and making it a memorial to the poet. Whittier died before the purchase was completed, but soon afterward Fernside Farm, as the poet called it, was taken over by Mr. Ordway. It is now in the hands of an association that has restored it and keeps it open to visitors whose hearts have been stirred by the work of the Quaker poet.

Photo by W. R. Merryman, Haverhill
DUSTON GARRISON HOUSE, HAVERHILL, MASS.

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THE DUSTON GARRISON HOUSE, HAVERHILL,
MASSACHUSETTS

FROM WHICH HANNAH DUSTON WAS CARRIED AWAY
BY THE INDIANS

The attention of visitors to Haverhill, Massachusetts, is attracted to a great granite boulder set in a place of honor in the old town. When they ask about it they are told the story of Hannah Duston, heroine.

Thomas and Hannah Duston were married in 1677, and at once built a humble house of imported brick on the spot where the boulder now stands. Frequently one of the bricks is uncovered on the site; those who examine it marvel at the thought of the building material brought across the sea.

Later Thomas Duston uncovered deposits of clay near his home which led him to make experiments in brick making. He was so successful that his product was in demand; villagers said that the Haverhill bricks were fully as good as those brought from England.

Strong building material was needed, for hostile Indians were all about. In order to afford protection against them, Mr. Duston determined to build a new house, which should serve as a garrison in time of danger. By the village authorities he was appointed keeper of the garrison, as this commission shows:

"To Thomas Duston, upon the settlement of garrisons. You being appointed master of the garrison at your house, you are hereby in his Maj's name, required to see that a good watch is kept at your garrison both by night and by day by those persons hereafter named who are to be under your command and inspection in building or repairing your garrison, and if any person refuse or neglect their duty, you are accordingly required to make return of the same, under your hand to the Committee of militia in Haverhill."

The new house was well under way when this command was given. As it is still standing, it is possible to tell of its construction. A Haverhill writer says that "white oak, which is to-day well preserved, was used in its massive framework, and the floor and roof timbers are put together with great wooden pins. In early days the windows swung outward, and the glass was very thick, and set into the frames with lead."

On March 15, 1697, the watching Indians decided that their opportunity had come to attack the village. They knew that if they waited for the completion of the new garrison, there would be little chance of success. So they struck at once.

The story of what followed was told by Cotton Mather, in his "Magnalia Christi Americana," published in London in 1702:

"On March 15, 1697, the Salvages made a Descent upon the Skirts of Haverhil, Murdering and Captiving about Thirty-nine Persons, and Burning about half a Dozen Houses. In the Broil, one Hannah Dustan having lain-in about a Week, attended with her Nurse, Mary Neffe a Widow, a Body of terrible Indians drew near unto the House where she lay, with Design to carry on their Bloody Devastations. Her Husband hastened from his Employment abroad unto the relief of his Distressed Family; and first bidding Seven of his Eight Children (which were from Two to Seventeen Years of Age) to get away as fast as they could into some Garrison in the Town, he went in to inform his Wife of the horrible Distress come upon them. E'er he could get up, the fierce Indians were got so near, that utterly despairing to do her any Service, he ran out after his Children.... He overtook his children about Forty Rod from his Door, ... a party of Indians came up with him; and now though they Fired at him, and he Fired at them, yet he Manfully kept at the Reer of his Little Army of Unarmed Children, while they Marched off with the Pace of a Child of Five Years Old; until, by the Singular Providence of God, he arrived safe with them all unto a Place of Safety about a Mile or two from his House....

"The Nurse, trying to escape with the New-born Infant, fell into the Hands of the Formidable Salvages; and those furious Tawnies coming into the House, bid poor Dustan to rise immediately....

"Dustan (with her Nurse) ... travelled that Night about a Dozen Miles, and then kept up with their New Masters in a long Travel of an Hundred and Fifty Miles....

"The poor Women had nothing but Fervent Prayers to make their Lives Comfortable or Tolerable, and by being daily sent out upon Business, they had Opportunities together and asunder to do like another Hannah, in pouring out their Souls before the Lord."

The Indians were "now Travelling with these Two Captive Women, (and an English Youth taken from Worcester a Year and half before,) unto a Rendezvous of Salvages which they call a Town somewhere beyond Penacook; and they still told, these poor Women, that when they came to this Town they must be Stript, and Scourg'd, and Run the Gantlet through the whole Army of Indians. They said this was the Fashion when the Captives first came to a Town;...

"But on April 30, while they were yet, it may be, about an Hundred and Fifty Miles from the Indian Town, a little before break of Day, when the whole Crew was in a Dead Sleep ... one of these Women took up a Resolution to imitate the Action of Jael upon Sisera; and being where she had not her own Life secured by any Law unto her, she thought she was not forbidden by any Law to take away the Life of the Murderers.... She heartened the Nurse and the Youth to assist her in this Enterprize; and all furnishing themselves with Hatchets for the purpose, they struck such home Blows upon the Heads of their Sleeping Oppressors, that e'er they could any of them struggle into any effectual resistance, at the Feet of those poor Prisoners, they bow'd, they fell, they lay down; at their Feet they bowed, they fell; where they bowed, there they fell down Dead."

One old squaw and a boy of eleven escaped to the forest. The scalps were not taken at first, but soon Hannah Duston returned to the camp and gathered the trophies, in order that she might claim the bounty offered by the colony for the scalps of hostile Indians. Then all the Indians' canoes were scuttled, their arms were taken, and the party of three embarked.

Day after day they paddled down the Merrimac, the three taking turns in the unaccustomed labour. At night they paused to rest. Cautiously a fire was kindled, and food was cooked. Always they feared discovery by the bands of Indians. Two slept, while a third stood guard. But no Indians appeared.

At last the home village was in sight. The wondering villagers came out to see who the visitors could be. Their astonishment and delight can be imagined.

The General Assembly of Massachusetts voted Mrs. Duston twenty-five pounds' reward, while a similar amount was divided between Mrs. Neff and the boy Samuel Lennardson. Later the governor of Maryland sent Mrs. Duston a silver tankard.

The Duston descendants, who hold a reunion every year, prize these souvenirs. But most of all they prize a letter (the original of which is in the possession of the Haverhill Historical Society) written by Mrs. Duston in 1723, in which she gave a wonderful testimony to God's goodness to her and hers. This is the message she gave to children and grandchildren:

"I Desire to be thankful that I was born in a Land of Light & Baptized when I was young and had a good education by my Father, tho' I took but little notice of it in the time of it—I am Thankful for my Captivity, 'twas the Comfortablest time that ever I had. In my Affliction God made his Word Comfortable to me. I remember ye 43 ps. ult. [probably meaning last part] and those words came to my mind—ps. 118:17—I have had a great Desire to Come to the Ordinance of the Lord's Supper a Great while, but fearing I should give offense and fearing my own Unworthiness has kept me back. Reading a Book concerning X's Sufferings Did much awaken me. In the 55th of Isa. beg [beginning] We are invited to come: Hearing Mr. Moody preach out of ye 3rd of Mal. 3 last verses it put me upon Consideration. Ye 11th of Matt., ending, has been encouraging to me—I have been resolving to offer my Self from time to time ever since the Settlement of the present Ministry. I was awakened by the first Sacraml Sermon [Luke 14:17]. But Delays and fears prevailed upon me: But I desire to Delay no longer, being Sensible it is my Duty—I desire the Church to receive me tho' it be the Eleventh hour; and pray for me that I may honer God and receive the Salvation of My Soul.
"Hannah Duston, wife of Thomas. Ætat 67."

Mrs. Duston lived in the old house at Haverhill for many years after her remarkable escape.

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THE OLD MANSE AND THE WAYSIDE, CONCORD,
MASSACHUSETTS

TWO HOUSES MADE FAMOUS BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

Nathaniel Hawthorne was thirty-eight years old before he was able to begin the ideal life of Adam with his Eve, to which he had looked forward for many years.

"I want a little piece of land that I can call my own, big enough to stand upon, big enough to be buried in," he said to a friend when he was thirty-four years old. Lack of money delayed the realization, but it is a curious fact that the marriage to Sophia Peabody took place just after he had made up his mind that the thousand dollars he had invested in the Emerson Brook Farm experiment was gone forever.

The marriage took place July 9, 1842, and housekeeping was at once begun in the Old Manse at Concord, which was built in 1765 by Emerson's grandfather. But he was merely a renter; his dream of ownership was to be delayed ten years longer. The great rooms of the curious gambrel-roofed house were rather bare, and there was a scarcity of everything except love, yet the author and his bride found nothing but joy in the retired garden and the dormer-windowed house.

Hawthorne's own charming description of the house and grounds is so attractive that the reader wishes to visit them:

"Between two tall gateposts of rough-hewn stone (the gate itself having fallen from its hinges at some unknown epoch), we beheld the grey front of the old parsonage terminating the vista of an avenue of black ash trees. It was now a twelvemonth since the funeral procession of the venerable clergyman, the last inhabitant, had turned from that gateway toward the village burying ground....

"Nor, in truth, had the old manse ever been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly owners from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in the chambers had grown up to assume the priestly character. It was awful to recollect how many sermons must have been written there. The latest inhabitant there—he by whose translation to paradise the dwelling was left vacant—had penned nearly three thousand discourses.... How often, no doubt, had he paced along the avenue, attuning his meditations to sighs and gentle murmurs, and deep and solemn peals of the wind among the leafy tops of the trees!... I took shame to myself for having been so long a writer of idle stories, and ventured to hope that wisdom would descend upon me with the falling leaves of the autumn, and that I should light upon an intellectual treasure in the Old Manse well worth those hoards of long-hidden gold which people seek for in moss-grown houses."

Two years after their marriage, Mrs. Hawthorne wrote to her mother:

"I have no time, as you may imagine. I am baby's tire-woman, hand-maiden, and tender, as well as nursing mother. My husband relieves me with her constantly, and gets her to sleep beautifully.... The other day, when my husband saw me contemplating an appalling vacuum in his dressing-gown, he said he was a man of the largest rents in the country, and it was strange he had not more ready money.... But, somehow or other, I do not care much, because we are so happy."

Hawthorne did much of his work in the rear room where Emerson wrote. In the introduction to "Mosses from an Old Manse" he said of this apartment:

"When I first saw the room, the walls were blackened with the smoke of unnumbered years, and made still blacker by the grim prints of Puritan ministers, that hung around.... The rain pattered upon the roof and the sky gloomed through the dirty garret windows while I burrowed among the venerable books in search of any living thought."

From his writing Hawthorne turned easily to wandering in the garden or rowing on the river or helping his wife about the house. "We had a most enchanting time during Mary the cook's holiday sojourn in Boston," Mrs. Hawthorne wrote at one time. "We remained in our bower undisturbed by mortal creature. Mr. Hawthorne took the new phases of housekeeper, and, with that marvellous power of adaptation to circumstances that he possesses, made everything go easily and well. He rose betimes in the mornings and kindled fires in the kitchen and breakfast room, and by the time I came down the tea-kettle boiled and potatoes were baked and rice cooked, and my lord sat with a book superintending."

Poverty put an untimely end to life at the Old Manse. The years from 1846 to 1852 were spent in Boston and Salem. In 1852 Hawthorne was able to buy a dilapidated old house at Concord, which he called The Wayside. Here he remained until his appointment in 1853 as American Consul at Liverpool, and to it he returned after long wandering.

The Wayside had been the home of Bronson Alcott. Here Mr. and Mrs. Hawthorne made their second real home. They rejoiced as, a little at a time, they were able to improve the property, and they showed always that they knew the secret of finding happiness in the midst of privations.

Hawthorne described his new abode for his friend, George William Curtis:

"As for my old house, you will understand it better after spending a day or two in it. Before Mr. Alcott took it in hand, it was a mean-looking affair, with two peaked gables; no suggestion about it and no venerableness, although from the style of its architecture it seems to have survived beyond its first century. He added a porch in front, and a central peak, and a piazza at each end, and painted it a rusty olive hue, and invested the whole with a modest picturesqueness; all which improvements, together with the situation at the foot of a wooded hill, make it a place that one notices and remembers for a few minutes after passing it....

"The house stands within ten or fifteen feet of the old Boston road (along which the British marched and retreated), divided from it by a fence, and some trees and shrubbery of Mr. Alcott's setting out. Wherefore I have called it 'The Wayside,' which I think a better name and more morally suggestive than that which, as Mr. Alcott has since told me, he bestowed on it, 'The Hillside.' In front of the house, on the opposite side of the road, I have eight acres of land,—the only valuable portion of the place in a farmer's eye, and which are capable of being made very fertile. On the hither side, my territory extends some little distance over the brow of the hill, and is absolutely good for nothing, in a productive point of view, though very good for many other purposes.

"I know nothing of the history of the house, except Thoreau's telling me that it was inhabited a generation or two ago by a man who believed he should never die. I believe, however, he is dead; at least, I hope so; else he may probably appear and dispute my title to his residence."

In furnishing the house Mrs. Hawthorne took keen pleasure in putting the best of everything in her husband's study. She called it "the best room, the temple of the Muses and the Delphic shrine."

In these surroundings, supported by a wife who worshipped him, Hawthorne wrote until the call came to go to England. It was 1860 before he returned to The Wayside. There he hoped to end his life, but death overtook him at Plymouth, New Hampshire, while he was making a tour of New England with Franklin Pierce. Mrs. Hawthorne survived him seven years.

Photo by Ph. B. Wallace
ROYALL HOUSE, MEDFORD, MASS.

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