Then, after the primeval wilderness had been subdued under the patient tillage of more than one generation of sturdy farmers, there opens a second period extending to the present date,—busy years of modern industry, when the nervous spirit of enterprise and the restless fever for gain have stimulated brain and brawn to ceaseless endeavor.
It would be difficult for the present dwellers in the thriving villages of Attleboro to imagine a time when but a single white inhabitant had a fixed abode within the limits of Capt. Willett's extensive purchase, when Ten-Mile River had never reflected a pale face or turned a mill-wheel, and when the site of humming Robinsonville was occupied by a clump of Indian wigwams in a beaver clearing. The historic elm on the Carpenter estate, under which Whitefield preached so eloquently, had not yet sprouted from the seed; the falling leaves had scarcely obliterated the footprints of persecuted Roger Williams, making his toilsome retreat from the new settlement on the Bay to the headwaters of the Narragansett; and the Bay road was only an uncertain path blazed through a dense forest, along which not a hundred pairs of Anglo-Saxon feet had ever trudged.
In this vast solitude the intrepid William Blaxton had spent thirty lonely years before the original purchase was made. He built his rude house on the extreme western frontier of Attleboro Gore, beside the river which now bears his name with altered spelling, made friends with his Indian neighbors, planted the first apple-orchard in North America, and trained an imported bull to serve him as a saddle-horse. There, like Thoreau in his Walden hut, the old divine encountered nature in her rougher aspects and studied her wonderful book untrammelled by even the slight social conventionalities that obtained in colonial Boston.
The first settlement within the limits of the present town was made beside a stream which crossed the Bay road, on the site of the Hatch tavern, opposite Barden's building in North Attleboro; and because this stream marked a journey of ten miles from Seekonk, the early travellers named it Ten-Mile River. Here the famous John Woodcock took up his abode in 1663 or 1664, and established a garrison which afterwards formed one of a chain of strongholds extending from Boston to Rhode Island. An avowed foe of the red race who surrounded him, he found them hostile and treacherous, and had no recourse but to fortify himself behind his stockades, and keep the stealthy warriors at bay with his musket. At this dangerous outpost Woodcock bravely defended his little family for many years, until quite a community of white people had placed themselves under his protection, and he became a sort of feudal lord, into whose rude castle they might retreat in time of danger. He was a restless spirit, fond of hazardous adventure, to whom civilized life was unendurably tame, and many are the current traditions of his prowess and bloody encounters with the savage aborigines. In 1670 he opened a licensed ordinary on his premises, the first public house in the country; and from that time a hostelry was kept on that spot for nearly two centuries.
Other settlements were naturally made in the open meadows easily accessible from the Bay road; and so we find the next community growing up in what is now the Falls Village, where a corn mill was erected in 1686. Then a few new families, immigrating from Rehoboth, made themselves a home in the south part of the town; and near the close of the century settlers found their way down the winding Ten-Mile River, and built houses at Mechanics.
For obvious reasons the east precinct, as Attleboro-bred people are wont to call it, is the newest part of the town; the north and the south sections were traversed by the one thoroughfare then open as a highway between the home of the Puritans and the shores of Narragansett Bay, and for years after these began to number a very respectable colonial population, the now thickly settled area in the east village bounded by Peck, Pleasant, Pine, Capron, and Main streets, contained no buildings except the Balcom Tavern with its contiguous barn, a small dwelling-house near the present site of the old straw shop, and another house about forty rods further to the south.
Lying in the very heart of the Narragansett country, this town was constantly menaced by King Philip and his braves during the period of the Indian wars, and two of the bloodiest fights occurred within the limits of Attleboro Gore. The settlers found it necessary to go about their daily work armed, lest some red man skulking in the borders of the forest should attack and slay them. John Woodcock, the leading spirit among them, was a special object of savage hatred, and in the summer of 1676 he and his sons were surprised while at work in a field, and, before they could retreat within the garrison, one son was killed outright, and another was severely wounded.
On Sunday morning, March 26, 1676, Captain Pierce, who, with a company of sixty-three white men and twenty Cape Indians, was advancing upon the enemy, was surrounded by about nine hundred Indians at a point on the Blackstone not far from William Blaxton's house. With true Spartan courage he and his little band resolved to sell their lives at a high price; so forming a circle back to back, they made a desperate resistance for two mortal hours, and after they had fallen it was found that about three hundred of their cruel captors had perished with them.
In the same war another brutal butchery entailed upon another spot in the Gore just north of Camp Swamp the name of "Nine Men's Misery." There three triads of white soldiers, finding themselves surrounded by a large force of savages who had been lying in wait for them, placed their backs against a huge rock and fought like heroic knights in the old Arthurian days, until all were slain. Afterwards their nine bodies were buried in one wide grave, which was marked by a heap of stones; and many years later a company of young Boston physicians exhumed the bones, and one skeleton was identified as that of Bucklin of Rehoboth, because the jaws contained a set of double front teeth.
In the Revolutionary struggle Attleboro men bore an active and honorable part, and some of her noblest sons were under fire in the hottest engagements of the eight years' war. A respected citizen of the town recently told the writer that immediately after the battle of Bunker Hill, Caleb Parmenter, Thomas French, and Isaac Perry proceeded to Boston on foot, and joined the army then in command of General Ward; and the first of the three, on whom Governor Samuel Adams afterwards conferred a lieutenant's commission, was present at Cambridge when General Washington assumed charge of the army. A company of men was also raised in Attleboro for service at the siege of Newport, R. I., and in the engagement at Quaker Hill they pushed bayonets with the British three times in a single day, and two of their number, Israel Dyer and Valentine Wilmarth, were slain.