It is rather curious to notice such indications as the mineral clause in Wilkins's deed affords of the prevalent expectation, at the beginning of settlements in this region, that valuable minerals would be found in it. What makes it worthy of particular inquiry is, that they were found and wrought for some time, but that no one thinks of looking after them now. Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Dennison, and John Putnam put up and carried on together, upon a large scale, iron-works, in 1674, at Rowley Village, now Boxford. Samuel and Nathan Leonard were employed to construct them, and carried them on by contract. These iron-works were long regarded as a promising enterprise and valuable investment. The Leonards were probably of the same family that, at Raynham and the neighborhood, engaged in this business to a great extent, and for a long period, making it a source of wealth and the foundation of eminent families. We know that the business was carried on extensively in Lynn, and that Governor Endicott was quite sure that he had found copper on his Orchard Farm. Who knows but that modern science and more searching methods of detection may yet discover the hidden treasures of which the fathers caught a glimpse, and their enterprises be revived and conducted with permanent energy and success?
In 1669, Joseph Houlton testified, that, when he was about twenty years of age, in 1641, he was "a servant to Richard Ingersoll," and worked on his land at Ingersoll's Point. About the year 1652, he married Sarah, daughter of Richard Ingersoll, and widow of William Haynes. By her he had five sons and two daughters, who lived to maturity. He gave to each of them a farm; and their houses were in his near neighborhood. The sons were respectable and substantial citizens, and persons of just views and amiable sentiments. The father was one of the honored heads of the village, and lived to a good old age. He died May 30, 1705. From him, it is probable, all of the name in this country have sprung. It will be for ever preserved in the public annals and on the geographical face of the country. Samuel Houlton, great-grandson of the original Joseph, was a representative of Massachusetts for ten years in the old Congress of the Confederation, for a time presiding over its deliberations. He was also a member of the first Congress under the Constitution, and subsequently, for a very long period, Judge of Probate for the county of Essex. He was a true patriot and wise legislator; enjoyed to an extraordinary degree the confidence and love of the people; had a commanding person and a noble and venerable aspect; and was always conspicuous by the dignity and courtesy of his manners. He was a physician by profession; but his whole life was spent in the public service. He was in both branches of the Legislature of the State, also in the Executive Council. He was major of the Essex regiment at the opening of the Revolution; was a member of the Committee of Safety, and of every convention for the framing of the Government; and, for more than thirty years, a judge of the Court of Common Pleas. He died, where he was born and had his home for the greater part of his life, in Salem Village, Jan. 2, 1816, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.
In 1724 a petition was presented to the Legislature, commencing as follows: "Whereas Salem is a most ancient town of Massachusetts Province, and very much straitened for land," the petitioners pray for a grant in the western part of the province. The petition was allowed on condition that one lot be reserved for the first settled minister, one for the ministry, and one for a school. Each grantee was required to give a bond of twenty-five pounds to be on the spot; have a house of seven feet stud and eighteen square at least, seven acres of English hay ready to be mowed, and help to build a meeting-house and settle a minister, within five years. A grandson of Joseph Houlton, of the same name, led the company that emigrated to the assigned location. The first result was the town of New Salem, in Franklin County, incorporated in 1753; named in honor of the old town from which their leading founder had come. But the people were not satisfied with having merely a school. They must have an academy. They went to work with a will, and an academy was established and incorporated in 1795. This was the second result. The academy did not flourish to an extent to suit their views, and they beset the Legislature to grant them a township of land in the woods of Maine to enable them to endow it. They carried their point, and in 1797 obtained the grant. The effort had been great, and great was the rejoicing at its successful issue. But, as bad luck would have it, just at that time land could not be sold at any price. The grant became worthless; and deep and bitter was the disappointment of the people of New Salem. The doom of the academy seemed to be settled, and its days numbered and finished. But there were men in New Salem who were determined that the academy should be saved. They met in consultation, and, under the lead of still another Joseph Houlton, of the same descent, fixed their purpose. They sold or mortgaged their farms, which more than half a century of labor had rendered productive, and which every association and every sentiment rendered dear to them. With the money thus raised they bought the granted tract, paying a good price for it. The preservation and endowment of the academy were thus secured; but all benefit from it to themselves or their descendants was wholly relinquished. It was the only way in which the academy could be saved. Some must make the sacrifice, and they made it. They packed up bag and baggage; sold off all they could not carry; gathered their families together; bid farewell to the scenes of their birth and childhood, the homes of their life, and the fruits of their labor; and started in wagons and carts on the journey to Boston. Their location was hundreds of miles distant, far down in the eastern wilderness, and inaccessible from the extremes of settlement at that time on the Penobscot. As the only alternative, they embarked in a coasting-vessel; went down the Bay of Fundy to St. John, N.B.; took a river-sloop up to Fredericton,—a hundred miles; got up the river as they could, in barges or canoes, eighty miles further to Woodstock; and there, turning to the left, struck into the forest, until they reached their location. The third result of this emigration, in successive generations and stages, from Salem Farms, is to be seen to-day in a handsome and flourishing village, interspersed and surrounded with well-cultivated fields,—the shire town of the county of Aroostook, in the State of Maine; which bears the name of the leader of this disinterested, self-sacrificing, and noble company. Three times was it the lot of this one family to encounter and conquer the difficulties, endure and triumph over the privations, and carry through the herculean labors, of subduing a rugged wilderness, and bringing it into the domain of civilization,—at Salem Village, New Salem, and Houlton. It would be difficult to find, in all our history, a story that more strikingly than this illustrates the elements of the glory and strength of New England,—zeal for education,—enterprise invigorated by difficulties,—and prowess equal to all emergencies.
John Burton came early to Salem by way of Barbadoes. He combined the pursuits of a farmer and a tanner. He was a sturdy old Englishman, who, while probably holding the theological sentiments that prevailed in his day, abhorred the spirit of persecution, and was unwilling to live where it was allowed to bear sway. He does not appear to have been a Quaker, but sympathized with all who suffered wrong. In 1658, he went off in their company to Rhode Island, sharing their banishment. But his conscience would not let him rest in voluntary flight. He came back in 1661, to bear his testimony against oppression. He was brought before the Court, as an abettor and shelterer of Quakers. He told the justices that they were robbers and destroyers of the widows and fatherless, that their priests divined for money, and that their worship was not the worship of God. They commanded him to keep silent. He commanded them to keep silent. They thought it best to bring the colloquy to a close by ordering him to the stocks. They finally concluded, upon the whole, to let him alone; and he remained here the rest of his life. His descendants are through a daughter (who married William Osborne) and his son Isaac. They are numerous, under both names. Isaac was an active and respectable citizen of the village, and a farmer of enterprise and energy. He carried on, under a lease, Governor Endicott's farm of over five hundred acres on Ipswich River, and had lands of his own. In subsequent generations, this family branched off in various directions to Connecticut, Vermont, and elsewhere. One detachment of them went to Wilton, N.H., where the family still remains on the original homestead. The late Warren Burton, who was born in Wilton,—a graduate of Harvard College in the class of 1821, and well known for his invaluable services in the cause of education, philanthropy, and letters,—was a direct descendant of John Burton, and as true to the rights of conscience as the old tanner, who bearded the lion of persecution in the day of his utmost wrath, and in his very den.
Henry Herrick, who, as has been stated, purchased the Cherry-Hill farm of Alford, was the fifth son of Sir William Herrick, of Beau Manor Park, in the parish of Loughborough, in the county of Leicester, England. He came first to Virginia, and then to Salem. He was accompanied to America by another emigrant from Loughborough, named Cleaveland. Herrick became a member of the First Church at Salem in 1629, and his wife Edith about the same time. Their fifth son, Joseph, baptized Aug. 6, 1645, owned and occupied Cherry Hill in 1692. He married Sarah, daughter of Richard Leach, Feb. 7, 1667. He was a man of great firmness and dignity of character, and, in addition to the care and management of his large farm, was engaged in foreign commerce. As he bore the title of Governor, he had probably been at some time in command of a military post or district, or perhaps of a West-India colony. His descendants are numerous, and have occupied distinguished stations, often exhibiting a transmitted military stamp. Joseph Herrick was in the Narragansett fight. It illustrates the state of things at that time, that this eminent citizen, a large landholder, engaged in prosperous mercantile affairs, and who had been abroad, was, in 1692, when forty-seven years of age, a corporal in the village company. He was the acting constable of the place, and, as such, concerned in the early proceedings connected with the witchcraft prosecutions. For a while he was under the influence of the delusion; but his strong and enlightened mind soon led him out of it. He was one of the petitioners in behalf of an accused person, when intercession, by any for any, was highly dangerous; and he was a leader in the party that rose against the fanaticism, and vindicated the characters of its victims. He inherited a repugnance to oppression, and sympathy for the persecuted. His father and mother appear, by a record of Court, to have been fined "for aiding and comforting an excommunicated person, contrary to order."
William Nichols, in 1651, bought two hundred acres, which had been granted to Henry Bartholomew, partly in the village, but mostly beyond the "six-mile extent," and consequently set off to Topsfield. He had several other lots of land. He distributed nearly all his real estate, during his lifetime, to his son John; his adopted son, Isaac Burton; his daughters, the wives of Thomas Wilkins and Thomas Cave; and his grand-daughter, the wife of Humphrey Case. His only son John had several sons, and from them the name has been widely dispersed. In a deposition dated May 14, 1694, William Nichols declares himself "aged upwards of one hundred years." As his will was offered for Probate Feb. 24, 1696, he must have been one hundred and two years of age at his death.
William Cantlebury was a large landholder, having purchased three-quarters of the Corwin grant. He died June 1, 1663. His name died with him, as he had no male issue. His property went to his daughters, who were represented, in 1692, under the names of Small, Sibley, and Buxton. The Flints, Popes, Uptons, Princes, Phillipses, Needhams, and Walcotts, had valuable farms, and appear, from the records and documents, to have been respectable, energetic, and intelligent people. Daniel Andrew was one of the strong men of the village; had been a deputy to the General Court, and acted a prominent part before and after the witchcraft convulsion. But the great family of the village—greater in numbers and in aggregate wealth than any other, and eminently conspicuous on both sides in the witchcraft proceedings—remains to be mentioned.
John Putnam had a grant of one hundred acres, Jan. 20, 1641. With his wife Priscilla, he came from Buckinghamshire, England, and was probably about fifty years of age on his arrival in this country. He was a man of great energy and industry, and acquired a large estate. He died in 1662, leaving three sons,—Thomas, born in 1616; Nathaniel, in 1620; and John, in 1628. For a more convenient classification, I shall, in speaking of this family, refer, not to the original John at all, but to the sons as its three heads.
Thomas, the eldest, inherited a double share of his father's lands. He was of age when he came to America, and had received a good education. He appears to have settled, in the first instance, in Lynn, where for several years he acted as a magistrate, holding local courts, by appointment of the General Court. Upon removing to Salem, he was chosen, as the town-records show, to the office of constable. This was considered at that time as quite a distinguished position, carrying with it a high authority, covering the whole executive local administration. Thomas Putnam was the first clerk of Salem Village, and acted prominently in military, ecclesiastical, and municipal affairs. He seems to have been a person of a quieter temperament than his younger brothers, and led a somewhat less stirring life. Possessing a large property by inheritance, he was not quite so active in increasing it; but, enjoying the society and friendship of the leading men, lived a more retired life. At the same time, he was always ready to serve the community if called for, as he often was, when occasion arose for the aid of his superior intelligence and personal influence. He married first, while in Lynn, Ann, daughter of Edward Holyoke, great-grandfather of the President of Harvard College of that name whose son, the venerable centenarian, Dr. Edward Augustus Holyoke, is remembered as a true Christian philosopher by the generation still lingering on the stage. Having lost his wife on the 1st of September, 1665, he married, on the 14th of November, 1666, Mary, widow of Nathaniel Veren; coming, through her, into possession of property in Jamaica and Barbadoes, in which places Veren had resided, more or less, in the prosecution of commercial business. His homestead, as shown on the [map], was occupied by his widow in 1692, and, after her death, by her son Joseph, the father of General Israel Putnam. He had also a town residence on the north side of Essex Street, extending back to the North River. Its front on Essex Street embraced the western part of the grounds now occupied by the North Church, and extended to a point beyond the head of Cambridge Street. He left the eastern half of this property to his son Thomas, and the western half to his son Joseph. To his son Edward he left another estate in the town, on the western side of St. Peter's Street, to the north of Federal Street.
Thomas Putnam died on the 5th of May, 1686. He left large estates in the village to each of his children, and a valuable piece of meadow land, of fifteen acres, to a faithful servant.