Old Days at Beverly Farms

by Mary Larcom Dow

I wish I could get a picture of Beverly Farms as it looked to my child's eyes. I came over to "the Road," as it was called by my maternal relatives, when I was five years old. They lived in that Paradise now occupied by millionaires, the region that holds the Gordon Dexter place, the Moore place, the Swift place, and part of the Paine place. At that time, the whole section was long green fields bordered by woods, the "log brook" running through it. There were then three roads in Beverly Farms, the road now called Hale Street, the beautiful old Sandy Hill Road (West Street) and the Wenham road (Hart Street). My two homes after my mother's widowhood were at the Gordon Dexter place, and at my father's old homestead, at Mingo's Beach (where Bishop McVickar lived). There were about twenty houses at that time, between Beach Hill and Saw Mill Brook. This was West Farms and the Schoolhouse stood just back of Pride's Crossing station—afterwards removed to where it now stands as a dwelling house, occupied by the heirs of Thomas Pierce.

There was then no railroad and the main road ran by Mr. Bradley's greenhouses, and along where the railroad now is, coming out near the schoolhouse. That part of Hale Street where the Catholic church is, was then Miller's Hill, a pasture, where I have often tried to pick berries. The railroad came in 1845. The little shanties where the laborers who were building the road lived temporarily with their families, were a great curiosity. I used to run away and peep into them and I can remember how they smelled. My mother, who did the work of twenty women every day almost as long as she lived, made knotted "comforters" for these shanties. Our way of getting to Beverly and Salem was by stage coaches between Gloucester and Salem. In my few journeys in these delightful conveyances I used to clamber to the top seat and sit with Mr. Page the kindly driver, who was one of our first conductors on the railroad.

To the house where I now live my happy life, I was brought at five years. I could then read about as well as I can now. I found in this old house a garret, a beautiful garret, where bundles of herbs hung from the rafters, and where books, books galore had collected in old sea chests. Fancy my delight, at finding, one red letter day, Christopher North's, "Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life."

There were other books not so well fitted for the education of a child, but it was all fish that came to my net, and I calmly read up to my tenth year, "The Criminal Calendar," "Tales of Shipwrecks," Barber's "Historical Massachusetts," Paley's "Moral Philosophy," Pollock's "Course of Time," Alleine's "Alarm to the Unconverted," Richardson's "Pamela" and the "Spectator!" Some years afterwards, when I had read the covers off this miscellaneous collection of books, some of the earlier summer people, the elder Lorings and Kings, I think, put a small library into Uncle Pride's house and gave us Jacob Abbott's Rollo Stories and a few other delights. Please picture to yourself the "light of other days" by which the reading and sewing and knitting of old Beverly Farms used to go on at night.

Luckily, there was as much daylight then, as now. The lamp that illuminated my childish evenings was a glass lamp, that held about a cup full of whale oil, "sperm oil," it was called. There were two metal tubes at the top of this lamp, thro' which protruded two cotton wicks. These wicks could be pulled up for more light or pulled down for economy, by means of a pin. No protection whatever was afforded from the flame, and my hair was singed in front most of the time, as I crept close with book or stocking, to this illumination. One use of the old oil lamp was medicinal. If there were a croupy child in the house, he might be treated immediately, in the absence of a doctor, to a dose from the lamp on the mantel. I remember my blessed brother David being ministered unto in that way. After this, came the fluid lamp, with an alcoholic mixture that was dangerous, but clean.

In hunting about among ancestors, I am sometimes reminded of the story of Dr. Samuel Johnson's marriage. The lady to whom he proposed, demurred a little. She said she had an uncle who was hanged. Dr. Johnson assured her that that need make no difficulty, for he had no doubt that he had several who ought to have been hanged. I remember my disgust at finding that I was related thro' my maternal grandmother, Molly Standley, to "Aunt Massy." Aunt Massy, (her real name was Mercy) was a mildly insane, gray-haired, stoutish woman, who lived just before you reach the fountain at the top of the hill, on Hale St. There was a well with a windlass and bucket at one side of her old house and Aunt Massy used to lean on the well curb and abuse the passers by. She remembered all the mean things one's relatives ever did, and how she could scold! I was often sent to Mr. Perry's grocery store where Pump Cottage now stands and I used to try to get by without hearing her uplifted voice. But if I had a new gown there was no escape.

The two districts I have mentioned, (East and West Farms) were divided by "Saw Mill Brook," the little half choked stream that now filters under the road between Mr. Hardy's and Mr. Simpkins' places. It was a beautiful brook in those old days, clear water running through fields, with trout in it. The saw mill must have stood about where that collection of tenement houses now is.

The "child in the mill pond" belongs to the legendary history of Beverly Farms.

Coming down the hill towards Beverly, the most terrible shrieks would often be heard, but if one crossed the brook to West Farms, all was silent. I never heard these shrieks, I took good care never to be caught over there after dark. I should have liked to see the little screech owl, who, no doubt, had his quiet home up back of the mill, and sang his evening song, after the miller had closed his gates. We villagers have a question to propose to all our friends of uncertain age,—"Do you remember the saw-mill?" If, inadvertently, they confess to its acquaintance, it settles the question of age. It is as good as a Family Bible.