My very early memories alternate between my grandfather's farm in Leominster, Massachusetts, and the Pemberton House in Boston. My father and mother, both born in Leominster, were schoolmates, and in due time they married. Father was at first a clerk in the country store, but at an early age became the tavern-keeper. I was born on January 26, 1841. Soon thereafter father took charge of the Pemberton House on Howard Street, which developed into Whig headquarters. Being the oldest grandson, I was welcome at the old homestead, and I was so well off under the united care of my aunts that I spent a fair part of my life in the country.
My father was a descendant of Robert Murdock (of Roxbury), who left Scotland in 1688, and whose descendants settled in Newton. My father's branch removed to Winchendon, home of tubs and pails. My grandfather (Abel) moved to Leominster and later settled in Worcester, where he died when I was a small boy. My father's mother was a Moore, also of Scotch ancestry. She died young, and on my father's side there was no family home to visit.
My mother's father was Deacon Charles Hills, descended from Joseph Hills, who came from England in 1634.
Nearly every New England town was devoted to some special industry, and Leominster was given to the manufacture of horn combs. The industry was established by a Hills ancestor, and when I was born four Hills brothers were co-operative comb-makers, carrying on the business in connection with small farming. The proprietors were the employees. If others were required, they could be readily secured at the going wages of one dollar a day.
My grandfather was the oldest of the brothers. When he married Betsy Buss his father set aside for him twenty acres of the home farm, and here he built the house in which he lived for forty years, raising a family of ten children.
I remember quite clearly my great-grandfather Silas Hills. He was old and querulous, and could certainly scold; but now that I know that he was born in 1760, and had nineteen brothers and sisters, I think of him with compassion and wonder. It connects me with the distant past to think I remember a man who was sixteen years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. He died at ninety-five, which induces apprehension.
My grandfather's house faced the country road that ran north over the rolling hills among the stone-walled farms, and was about a mile from the common that marked the center of the town. It was white, of course, with green blinds. The garden in front was fragrant from Castilian roses, Sweet Williams, and pinks. There were lilacs and a barberry-bush. A spacious hall bisected the house. The south front room was sacred to funerals and weddings; we seldom entered it. Back of that was grandma's room. Stairs in the hall led to two sleeping-rooms above. The north front room was "the parlor," but seldom used. There on the center-table reposed Baxter's "Saints' Rest" and Young's "Night Thoughts." The fireplace flue so seldom held a fire that the swallows utilized the chimney for their nests. Back of this was the dining-room, in which we lived. It had a large brick oven and a serviceable fireplace. The kitchen was an ell, from which stretched woodshed, carriage-house, pigpen, smoking-house, etc. Currant and quince bushes, rhubarb, mulberry, maple, and butternut trees were scattered about. An apple orchard helped to increase the frugal income.
We raised corn and pumpkins, and hay for the horse and cows. The corn was gathered into the barn across the road, and a husking-bee gave occasion for mild merrymaking. As necessity arose the dried ears were shelled and the kernels taken to the mill, where an honest portion was taken for grist. The corn-meal bin was the source of supply for all demands for breakfast cereal. Hasty-pudding never palled. Small incomes sufficed. Our own bacon, pork, spare-rib, and souse, our own butter, eggs, and vegetables, with occasional poultry, made us little dependent on others. One of the great-uncles was a sportsman, and snared rabbits and pickerel, thus extending our bill of fare. Bread and pies came from the weekly baking, to say nothing of beans and codfish. Berries from the pasture and nuts from the woods were plentiful. For lights we were dependent on tallow candles or whale-oil, and soap was mostly home-made.
Life was simple but happy. The small boy had small duties. He must pick up chips, feed the hens, hunt eggs, sprout potatoes, and weed the garden. But he had fun the year round, varying with the seasons, but culminating with the winter, when severity was unheeded in the joy of coasting, skating, and sleighing in the daytime, and apples, chestnuts, and pop-corn in the long evenings.
I never tired of watching my grandfather and his brothers as they worked in their shops. The combs were not the simple instruments we now use to separate and arrange the hair, but ornamental structures that women wore at the back of the head to control their supposedly surplus locks. They were associated with Spanish beauties, and at their best estate were made of shell, but our combs were of horn and of great variety. In the better quality, shell was closely imitated, but some were frankly horn and ornamented by the application of aquafortis in patterns artistic or grotesque according to the taste and ability of the operator. The horns were sawed, split, boiled in oil, pressed flat, and then died out ready to be fashioned into the shape required for the special product. This was done in a separate little shop by Uncle Silas and Uncle Alvah. Uncle Emerson then rubbed and polished them in the literally one-horsepower factory, and grandfather bent and packed them for the market. The power was supplied by a patient horse, "Log Cabin" by name, denoting the date of his acquisition in the Harrison campaign. All day the faithful nag trod a horizontal wheel in the cellar, which gave way to his efforts and generated the power that was transmitted by belt to the simple machinery above.