This grant constituted what was called "the Governor's Orchard Farm." In conformity with the policy on which grants were made, Endicott at once proceeded to occupy and improve it, by clearing off the woods, erecting buildings, making roads, and building bridges. His dwelling-house embraced in its view the whole surrounding country, with the arms of the sea. From the more elevated points of his farm, the open sea was in sight. A road was opened by him, from the head of tide water on Duck, now Crane, River, through the Orchard Farm, and round the head of Cow House River, to the town of Salem, in one direction, and to Lynn and Boston in another. A few years afterwards, the town granted him two hundred acres more, contiguous to the western line of the Orchard Farm. After this, and as a part of the transaction, the present Ipswich road was made, and the old road through the Orchard Farm discontinued. This illustrates the policy of the land grants. They were made to persons who had the ability to lay out roads. The present bridge over Crane River was probably built by Endicott and the parties to whom what is now called the Plains, one of the principal villages of Danvers, had been granted. The tract granted by the town was popularly called the "Governor's Plain." By giving, in this way, large tracts of land to men of means, the country was opened and made accessible to settlers who had no pecuniary ability to incur large outlays in the way of general improvements, but had the requisite energy and industry to commence the work of subduing the forest and making farms for themselves. To them, smaller grants were made.
The character of the population, thus aided at the beginning in settling the country, cannot be appreciated without giving some idea of what it was to open the wilderness for occupancy and cultivation. This is a subject which those who have always lived in other than frontier towns do not perhaps understand.
How much of the land had been previously cleared by the aboriginal tribes, it may be somewhat difficult to determine. They were but slightly attached to the soil, had temporary and movable habitations, and no bulky implements or articles of furniture. They were nomadic in their habits. On the coast and its inlets, their light canoes gave easy means of transportation, for their families and all that they possessed, from point to point, and, further inland, over intervening territory, from river to river. They probably seldom attempted, in this part of the country, to clear the rugged and stony uplands. In some instances, they removed the trees from the soft alluvial meadows, although it is probable that in only a very few localities they would have attempted such a persistent and laborious undertaking. There were large salt marshes, and here and there meadows, free from timber. There were spots where fires had swept over the land and the trees disappeared. On such spots they probably planted their corn; the land being made at once fertile and easily cultivable, by the effects of the fires. Near large inland sheets of water, having no outlets passable by their canoes, and well stocked with fish, they sometimes had permanent plantations, as at Will's Hill. With such slight exceptions, when the white settler came upon his grant, he found it covered by the primeval wilderness, thickly set with old trees, whose roots, as well as branches, were interlocked firmly with each other, the surface obstructed with tangled and prickly underbrush; the soil broken, and mixed with rocks and stones,—the entire face of the country hilly, rugged, and intersected by swamps and winding streams.
Among all the achievements of human labor and perseverance recorded in history, there is none more herculean than the opening of a New-England forest to cultivation. The fables of antiquity are all suggestive of instruction, and infold wisdom. The earliest inhabitants of every wooded country, who subdued its wilderness, were truly a race of giants.
Let any one try the experiment of felling and eradicating a single tree, and he will begin to approach an estimate of what the first English settler had before him, as he entered upon his work. It was not only a work of the utmost difficulty, calling for the greatest possible exercise of physical toil, strength, patience, and perseverance, but it was a work of years and generations. The axe, swung by muscular arms, could, one by one, fell the trees. There was no machinery to aid in extracting the tough roots, equal, often, in size and spread, to the branches. The practice was to level by the axe a portion of the forest, managing so as to have the trees fall inward, early in the season. After the summer had passed, and the fallen timber become dried, fire would be set to the whole tract covered by it. After it had smouldered out, there would be left charred trunks and stumps. The trunks would then be drawn together, piled in heaps, and burned again. Between the blackened stumps, barley or some other grain, and probably corn, would be planted, and the lapse of years waited for, before the roots would be sufficiently decayed to enable oxen with chains to extract them. Then the rocks and stones would have to be removed, before the plough could, to any considerable extent, be applied. As late as 1637, the people of Salem voted twenty acres, to be added within two years to his previous grant, to Richard Hutchinson, upon the condition that he would, in the mean time, "set up ploughing." The meadow to the eastward of the meeting-house, seen in the head-piece of this Part, probably was the ground where ploughing was thus first "set up." The plough had undoubtedly been used before in town-lots, and by some of the old planters who had secured favorable open locations along the coves and shores; but it required all this length of time to bring the interior country into a condition for its use.
The opening of a wilderness combined circumstances of interest which are not, perhaps, equalled in any other occupation. It is impossible to imagine a more exhilarating or invigorating employment. It developed the muscular powers more equally and effectively than any other. The handling of the axe brought into exercise every part of the manly frame. It afforded room for experience and skill, as well as strength; it was an athletic art of the highest kind, and awakened energy, enterprise, and ambition; it was accompanied with sufficient danger to invest it with interest, and demand the most careful judgment and observation. He who best knew how to fell a tree was justly looked upon as the most valuable and the leading man. To bring a tall giant of the woods to the ground was a noble and perilous achievement. As it slowly trembled and tottered to its fall, it was all-important to give it the right direction, so that, as it came down with a thundering crash, it might not be diverted from its expected course by the surrounding trees and their multifarious branches, or its trunk slide off or rebound in an unforeseen manner, scattering fragments and throwing limbs upon the choppers below. Accidents often, deaths sometimes, occurred. A skilful woodman, by a glance at the surrounding trees and their branches, could tell where the tree on which he was about to operate should fall, and bring it unerringly to the ground in the right direction. There was, moreover, danger from lurking savages; and, if the chopper was alone in the deep woods, from the prowling solitary bear, or hungry wolves, which, going in packs, were sometimes formidable. There were elements also, in the work, that awakened the finer sentiments. The lonely and solemn woods are God's first temples. They are full of mystic influences; they nourish the poetic nature; they feed the imagination. The air is elastic, and every sound reverberates in broken, strange, and inexplicable intonations. The woods are impregnated with a health-giving and delightful fragrance nowhere else experienced. All the arts of modern luxury fail to produce an aroma like that which pervades a primitive forest of pines and spruces. Indeed, all trees, in an original wilderness, where they exist in every stage of growth and decay, contribute to this peculiar charm of the woods. It was not only a manly, but a most lively, occupation. When many were working near each other, the echoes of their voices of cheer, of the sharp and ringing tones of their axes, and of the heavy concussions of the falling timber, produced a music that filled the old forests with life, and made labor joyous and refreshing.
The length of time required to prepare a country covered by a wilderness, on a New-England soil, for cultivation, may be estimated by the facts I have stated. A long lapse of years must intervene, after the woods have been felled and their dried trunks and branches burned, before the stumps can be extracted, the land levelled, the stones removed, the plough introduced, or the smooth green fields, which give such beauty to agricultural scenes, be presented. An immense amount of the most exhausting labor must be expended in the process. The world looks with wonder on the dykes of Holland, the wall of China, the pyramids of Egypt. I do not hesitate to say that the results produced by the small, scattered population of the American colonies, during their first century, in tearing up a wilderness by its roots, transforming the rocks, with which the surface was covered, into walls, opening roads, building bridges, and making a rough and broken country smooth and level, converting a sterile waste into fertile fields blossoming with verdure and grains and fruitage, is a more wonderful monument of human industry and perseverance than them all. It was a work, not of mere hired laborers, still less of servile minions, but of freemen owning, or winning by their voluntary and cheerful toil, the acres on which they labored, and thus entitling themselves to be the sovereigns of the country they were creating. A few thousands of such men, with such incentives, wrought wonders greater than millions of slaves or serfs ever have accomplished, or ever will.
It was not, therefore, from mere favoritism, or a blind subserviency to men of wealth or station, that such liberal grants of land were made to Winthrop, Dudley, Endicott, and others, but for various wise and good reasons, having the welfare and happiness of the whole people, especially the poorer classes, in view. In illustration of the one now under consideration, a few facts may be presented. They will show the amount of labor required to bring the "Orchard Farm" into cultivation, and which must have been procured at a large outlay in money by the proprietor. In the court-files are many curious papers, in the shape of depositions given by witnesses in suits of various kinds, arising from time to time, showing that large numbers of hired men were kept constantly at work. Nov. 10, 1678, Edmund Grover, seventy-eight years old, testified, "that, above forty-five years since, I, this deponent, wrought much upon Governor Endicott's farm, called Orchard, and did, about that time, help to cut and cleave about seven thousand palisadoes, as I remember, and was the first that made improvement thereof, by breaking up of ground and planting of Indian-corn." The land was granted to Endicott in July, 1632; and the work in which Grover, with others, was engaged, commenced undoubtedly forthwith. Palisadoes were young trees, of about six inches in diameter at the butt, cut into poles of about ten feet in length, sharpened at the larger end, and driven into the ground; those that were split or cloven were used as rails. In this way, lots were fenced in. In some cases, the upright posts were placed close together, as palisades in fortifications, to prevent the escape of domestic animals, and as a safeguard against depredations upon the young cattle, sheep, and poultry, by bears, wolves, foxes, the loup-cervier, or wild-cat, with which the woods were infested. Grover seems to have wrought on the Orchard Farm for a short time. We find, that, a few years after the point to which his testimony goes back, he had a farm of his own. Some wrought there for a longer time, and were permanent retainers on the farm. In 1635, the widow Scarlett apprenticed her son Benjamin, then eleven years of age, to Governor Endicott. The following document, recorded in Essex Registry of Deeds, tells his story:—
"To all christian people to whom these presents shall come, I, Benjamin Scarlett of Salem, in New England, sendeth Greeting—Know ye, that I, the said Benjamin Scarlett, having lived as a servant with Mr. John Endicott, Esq., sometimes Governor in New England, and served him near upon thirty years, for, and in consideration whereof, the said Governor Endicott gave unto me, the said Benjamin Scarlett, a certain tract of land, in the year 1650, being about 10 acres, more or less, the which land hath ever since been possessed by me, the said Benjamin Scarlett, and it lyeth at the head of Cow House River, bounded on the north with the land of Mr. Endicott called Orchard Farm, on the South with the high way leading to the salt water, on the West with the road way leading to Salem, on the East with the salt water, which tract of land was given to me, as aforesaid, during my life, and in case I should leave no issue of my body, to give it to such of his posterity as I should see cause to bestow it upon; Know ye, therefore, that I, the said Benjamin Scarlett, for divers considerations me thereunto moving, have given, granted, and by these presents do give and grant, assign, sett over, and bestow the aforesaid tract of land, with all the improvements I have made thereon, both by building, fencing, or otherwise, unto Samuel Endicott, second son to Zerubabel Endicott deceased, and unto Hannah his wife, to have and to hold the said ten acres of land, more or less, with all the privileges and appurtenances thereunto belonging, unto the said Samuel Endicott and Hannah his wife, to his and her own proper use and behoof forever; and after their decease I give the said tract of land to their son Samuel Endicott. In case he should depart this life without issue, then to be given to the next heir of the said Samuel and Hannah.—In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal.—Dated the ninth of January one thousand six hundred and ninety one.—Benjamin Scarlett, his mark."
It is to be observed, that Governor Endicott had died twenty-six years, and his son Zerubabel seven years, before the date of the foregoing deed. No writings had passed between them in reference to the final disposition Scarlett was conditionally to make of the estate. There were no living witnesses of the original understanding. But the old man was true to the sentiments of honor and gratitude. The master to whom he had been apprenticed in his boyhood had been kind and generous to him, and he was faithful to the letter and spirit of his engagement. He evidently made a point to have the language of the deed as strong as it could be. He did not leave the matter to be settled by a will, but determined to enjoy, while living, the satisfaction of being true to his plighted faith. He was known, in his later years, as "old Ben Scarlett." He did not feel ashamed to call himself a servant. But humble and unpretending as he was, I feel a pride in rescuing his name from oblivion. Old Ben Scarlett will for ever hold his place among nature's nobles,—honest men.