"The history of the Plymouth colony of 1620, which preceded the embarkation of the Massachusetts colony, was blistered with the results of a bitter and apparently relentless destiny, against which it would have been scarcely possible for any people but the Massachusetts Puritans and Pilgrims to have secured a triumph like that which the Deity they worshipped vouchsafed to them.
"Its founders were fugitives from England and exiles from Holland. They gladly accepted the chances of suffering and death in the New World, to gain liberty of conscience and freedom to worship God. For the first ten years of its existence population increased slowly, and numbered but three hundred souls in 1630.
"The Massachusetts colony, with which Plymouth was united, left the Old World under happier auspices. It started with concessions and congratulations from the Crown. The best men in England were ambitious to share its fortunes. Winthrop, Saltonstall and Sir Harry Vane—'the sad and starry Vane'—were among its leaders; and such men as John Hampden, Pym, Oliver Cromwell, and many others of that heroic type, were restrained from emigration at the moment of embarkation by the order of the king. Four thousand families—twenty thousand souls—people of culture, capacity and character, no decayed courtiers or adventurers, but merchants, seamen, husbandmen and others devoted to the highest interests of man, had landed in Boston in ten years from the foundation of the city.
"Among them came, in 1630, Edward Garfield, the paternal ancestor of the late President of the United States. He was a man of gentle blood, of military instincts and training, possessing some property, and a thoughtful and vigorous habit of mind and body. The earliest record of his name in the annals of the colony indicated an origin from some one of the great German families of Europe, and his alliance by marriage with a lady of that blood and birth confirmed the original impression of the people with whom he identified his fortunes. His emigration suggested a purpose consistent with his capacity and character, and with the higher aspirations of the colony. He coveted possession of land, and for that reason probably, among others, settled in Watertown, where territory was abundant, and boundary lines yet delicate and dim, especially toward the west, where they were mainly defined by the receding and vanishing forms of the aboriginal inhabitants of the country. In the realm they had abandoned it was a maxim among men that home was where the heart was. But in the New World the colonists had discovered that both home and heart were where there were liberty and land.
"He chose a residence near Charles River, a stream unsurpassed in beauty by any water that flows, since honored by the residence and immortalized by the verse of Longfellow, and the original and marvellous industries that enrich its peaceful and prosperous people.
"Edward Garfield, the founder of this new American family, did not long linger near the boundaries of Boston. His first share in the distribution of land to the freemen, by the town, was a small lot or homestall of six acres, on the line of territory afterwards incorporated as the town of Waltham. Another general grant of land by the town, in 1636, 'to the freemen and all the townsmen then inhabiting,' one hundred and twenty in number, called the Great Dividends, gave to Garfield a tract of thirty acres, the whole of which was within the territory set off to Waltham. In 1650 the land allotted to Mr. Phillips, the first minister of Watertown (about forty acres, in the same locality), was sold by his heirs to Garfield and his sons. A portion of this estate was purchased from the heirs of Garfield by Governor Gore, who constructed upon it, from imported plans and materials, on his return from England, a country seat, still admired as one of the most elegant and stately residences in America. The first distinctive title ever given to the territory now embraced within the limits of Waltham was that of 'The Precinct of Captain Garfield's Company.' It is said that, after the incorporation of that town, this name rarely appears on the records of Watertown.
"While citizens of Watertown, Garfield and his descendants were assigned to responsible military commands by the governors of the colony, and frequently chosen for the board of selectmen and other town offices. Captain Benjamin Garfield held a captain's commission from the governor, was nine times elected representative of the town, and appointed to many other offices. Others were honored in a similar manner in Watertown, in Waltham, and wherever they planted themselves.
"They did not hive in the settled and safe centres of the colony, but struck out boldly for the frontier, where danger was to be encountered and duty performed. They adhered zealously to the principles of the colony, and the controversies that arose from considerations of that nature, at the very outset of its history, settled upon an unchangeable basis the character of its government.
"An important and instructive illustration of this free spirit of the people occurred in the second year of its settlement. Without previous consultation of the several towns, the governor and assistants levied, in 1632, an assessment of eight pounds sterling upon them for construction of military defences in what is now Cambridge. This order was declared to be subversive of their rights, and the people of Watertown, the most populous and influential inland town, met in church, with their pastor and elders, according to their custom, and after much debate deliberately refused to pay the money, on the ground, they said, 'that it was not safe to pay monies after that sort, for fear of bringing themselves and their posterity into bondage.'
"When summoned before the governor they were obliged to retract the declaration and submit; but they set on foot such an agitation through the colony as to secure, within three months of their original debate, an order for the appointment of two persons from each town to advise with the governor and assistants as to the best method of raising public moneys. This order ripened, in 1634, into the creation of a representative body of deputies elected by the people, having full power to act for all freemen, except in elections. This was the origin of the House of Representatives in Massachusetts. After ten years' contest the body of assistants to the governor was separated from the body of deputies, and, sitting as a Senate, left to the deputies chosen by the towns an absolute negative upon the legislation of the colony. Thus was established, substantially as it now exists, the Legislature of Massachusetts.