It is my pleasure as chairman of the Chelmsford Historical Commission to be here this evening to make a presentation of a special award. The commission has decided some time ago that it would seem appropriate for us to be able to give an award to groups within the town who did something to help to preserve Chelmsford's historic heritage. And for that reason, we have come up with a little flag, a little certificate of appreciation. And this one here is to the Chelmsford Historical Society for maintaining the Barrett-Byam homestead and opening it to the public as a museum. Dick, congratulations. Thank you very much, John.
And while we are in the mood, Mr. Parkhurst is going to present us with something. We got the Historical Commission out of the way, but now we get to the Bicentennial Commission. The Bicentennial Commission, as you will hear, has inaugurated a plan whereby we will recognize certain activities in town that are associated with the bicentennial as sanctioned activity of the celebration. This doesn't give you a check for $1,000. I don't know just what good it does, except that this would be mentioned in any publicity program from the commission. It makes it sort of an exclusive in that the commission sends out an application, and when it's completed, what you want to do. Now, this might be a sale, as in this case, a sale of goods. It could be a dinner, a ball. It could be a series of open houses.
Any activity which is not for personal gain is in the spirit of the celebration and could by some stretch of the imagination be associated with the bicentennial. I can't imagine anything that couldn't, so there's really only two requirements. This particular certificate reads, Chemisthood Revolutionary War Bicentennial Celebrations Commission recognizes as a sanctioned activity of the Chemisthood Bicentennial Celebration sale of bicentennial pewter plates, mugs, spoons, and jewelry by the Chemisthood Historical Society and authorizes the use of the official seal of the commission on literature and advertising directly associated with this activity. If someone else came in and wanted to be sanctioned for selling the same thing, we would say, sorry, somebody already has it. That wouldn't prevent them from selling it, but we wouldn't issue a certificate. They couldn't use the bicentennial seal in defense of any value. Thank you very much, George. I've been looking forward to this. Now, Mrs. Goodwin, if you will, please.
I first speak to tonight's speaker, one of our members, Mr. Gideon Davis, who will talk on Chelmsford's role in 1775. And this is a talk that was given at the regional historical society meeting we went to a few weeks ago. Mr. Davis. Well, I was asked to make a few notes for the meeting a couple of weeks ago. And looking through Waters' history of Chelmsford, we don't find any real good account of the Revolutionary War that's in story form. And I tried to put some of these scraps together to make a story for myself. So perhaps you'll bear with me while I try to do that. Chelmsford in 1775 was quite a bit bigger than it is today geographically. But yet it was only about half of its original grant because the town of Westford had succeeded in splitting off because they didn't like the long ride from Padmack Hill down to this meeting house, and I don't really blame them.
So about half of the original grant went to Westford. And the Colonel King's Farm on the southern end of Kingsborough, which was a pretty good-sized farm for these parts, was 3,000 acres, was annexed to Dunstable in 1755. But yet we had Womaset, which is really downtown Lowell as we know it today, and in olden times was often known as the Neck. We still have River Neck Road. That was still part of Chelmsford and was a farming community. A few of the farmhouses are still left there. If you drive through Lowell, you'll come across two or three of them still left. They don't look like farmhouses anymore, but they're still there. Carlisle had not yet appeared as a town, although there was a district here, and some of Chelmsford was still Carlisle. Of course, there was no West Chelmsford as we know it now. It was just a Stony Brook area. But Chelmsford was really a farming community. It had started out as a wilderness town, a pioneer town. By 1775, it was pretty much a farming community. Much of the land had been cleared, although I'm sure there was more woods than there are now.
The farms consisted usually of two or three cows, maybe a horse if the farmer was rich, or two horses, and a yoke of oxen. They had hogs. The hogs were allowed to run wild at certain seasons of the year, two years in the fall, and they had flocks of sheep. These cattle were kept in common land sometimes, but sometimes they got out. There was very little industry as such as we know it today, and as we knew it right after the Revolution. There was exploitation of the natural resources because they did saw up wood and send it lumber, joists as they called it, old joists, I suppose those were joists. They carried them over the road to Salem and Woburn and Boston, Charlestown. They also made slit work, which was the thin boards for cladboards and shingles. One industry they did have was cooperage.
There were apparently some cooper shops around because there are records in the middle 1700s of loads of barrels going to Salem for fish and rum while Charlestown and Boston. They had the lime kilns going presumably. At one time there were five lime kilns in Chelmsford making lime, and there were tanning pits, and there was probably some tar because there are records of tar being hauled to Boston for ship work. So there was some industry, but essentially it was a farming community. In size, Chelmsford was not too big. It was bigger than some of the surrounding towns, but not as big as the older towns of Salem and Woburn and Charlestown. It was 1,341 in the census of 1776, and that included 106 displaced persons from Boston. Ordinarily the town would not accept people like this, but the Provincial Congress with the unsettled conditions in Boston made it mandatory for all the outlying towns to accept some people. A year later we find there were only five strangers in town, and zero Quakers. They always listed that. Quakers were unwanted and unwelcome. During this period there were about eight or ten slaves, Negro slaves, and there was at least one Negro freeman. He was well in demand later because he was a fifer and he was in all the militia companies that he could get hold of them. He also dabbled on the drum. So the town still kept going during the altercation.
In 1776 we find all the town officers that we have today, most of them the selectmen and the treasurer and the clerk and so forth, but there were a few other officers that are not as familiar to some of us. Maybe a few of us can remember them. There were hog reefs. I said the hogs ran wild. Well, somebody had to watch the hogs to see that they didn't get into the corn and so on, so they had hog reefs. And they had field drivers keep the cows in the assigned places, either the common land or the farmer's land, and the field drivers had to take them to the pound to prevent them from damaging crops. Another office was fence fewer. Well, not too many years since we had them here. The fence fewer had to walk the fences to make sure that they were maintained so that the animals didn't get out into the neighbor's land.
It's said that they gave this job very often to the youngest married man they could find, presumably to keep him away from home. There was early attempts at conservation because they had deer reefs. Now, the deer reefs were to prevent excess slaughter of the deer. The deer were much more common than they are now. And they also had two protectors of fish to watch the fish in the Concord and Merrimack because people were taking them out by the thousands of barrels in the fish runs. One other town office was the tithing man. And they elected a tithing man to serve in this church here, and of course you know what he did. He had a staff which the town paid for. One end was a brass and a wooden knob which he could wrap sleeping parishioners on the head. On the other end was a rabbit's foot which he, out of courtesy, used on ladies. The church was still pretty much Puritan theology. It had come down from the early Puritans in 1655 that started the town.
And attendance was supposed to be mandatory. The laws were pretty strict. But there were occasionally dissenters. We find them from the earliest days. But about this time there were a couple of people who decided they didn't like Carson Bridges preaching. There's always somebody that doesn't like to minister. And one Mary Steadman took to going over to Concord and other places. And she was admonished, but she didn't come back. And another man did the same thing. He went to Billeric and Concord. He wouldn't come to church. But they didn't do much about it. Some earlier people had hailed him to court in Charlestown. But I'm sure you'll be relieved to find that after 18 years, Mary Steadman saw the error of her ways and the other man after 26 years, and they were accepted back into the congregation. So the minister did have other problems.
With civilization advancing in the town, we had a number of taverns around various places, which was fine because this provided a means of communication. There was no daily newspaper or radio or anything. This was one way that people got information. But it bothered Carson Bridge and his predecessors occasionally because it got so popular that the men and boys stayed at the tavern sometimes. They never got to church. If they did get to church, it was on at least one occasion when he had to close the service down because it was so noisy. So he had his problems. They had other problems in the church, too. Even though we were right in the midst of the Revolution in 1776, people were so excited about singing in the church that they had an article in the town warrant about persons to tune the sands. And they voted finally, after much allocation, to allow the choristers to sit in the second row of the front of the balcony. Of course, the women had to sit on one side and the men on the other. But you see, they didn't forget important matters, even though the Revolution was going on. As I said, this was a frontier town for the first 75 years or so, and they were always in fear of Indians. So we didn't suffer as badly here as some of the other towns. But Chelmsford partook in most of the campaigns of the so-called Province Wars.
They were in Phillip's War. And we had many men that went around on various expeditions. It's amazing to think how far they went. They went to Quebec, and they went to Ticonderoga and Fort Henry and Rhode Island, various places. But the main advantage of all of this was that this was the training ground for the Revolutionary soldiers and officers. We had numerous officers that came out of the French and Indian Wars. Luckily, this—well, I don't know if it was luckily, but it lasted a long time, and it was all over, and the peace was signed in 1763. One would have thought the town would have been able to settle down, but they only had a couple of years of apparent quiet because things started happening in Boston and other places. The Stamp Act came in 1765, and this created great upheaval in the discussions in town here.
They were very upset by this, and there were many letters written. Of course, during this period, the provincial congresses had started asking for committees of correspondence, and Shenstead had a committee of correspondence. There were usually different people on it each year. It was a rotating sort of thing. But they wrote some very interesting letters, and it was easy to see that there was much anxiety in the town about what was happening. It was King George and his governors.
They were quite incensed about the British trying to sell things, so in town meeting in 1767, they had voted to encourage local manufactories, and later they had a committee of inspection. They had several of them, in fact, to look at what was being sold and make sure that it was local manufacture and to discourage imports from England. Of course, during this time, the royal governor was levying taxes, and they didn't like some of them, and they refused to levy one of the taxes. In town meeting in 1768, the town voted to defend the assessors and the tax collector for not collecting the tax for one of the levies. So they didn't want to create too much trouble, but they made it very definite as to where they stood. Of course, 1770 came the Boston Massacre, and all of these things, of course, were known to these people very quickly, sometimes the same day that they happened.
There was no mail services as we know it today. A man would go to Boston about every two weeks in ordinary times to pick up the mail, but if something urgent or stupefying happened, the people knew this within a few hours, somebody would come by messenger, and they were well aware of what was going on. 1773 was the Tea Party. They knew about that very shortly. Some of the Indians in the Tea Party came here not long after and settled here. The one thing that really upset them was the Siege of Boston and the Boston Port Bill, and they wrote many things about this. This upset them, as I said, a great deal. They collected 40 bushels of rye and sent them to the poor people in Boston, and later they collected some sheep and cattle and hired a man to drive them over the road to Boston for helping the people there. The position papers that they wrote during this period were some quite remarkable.
There was a young man by the name of Austin Lake who went to the first Provincial Congress and was held in Concord. The Provincial Congress was held around different places, and he wrote a paper called The Middlesex Resolves, which is considered to be a very important statement of position and better than some of the others that were written later. The Minutemen had been around for a while. In 1774, they formally voted to have 50 Minutemen. Now, of course, there had been militia ever since the early days of King Philip's War and so on, but they organized a company of militia. In 1775, in March, early in March, they voted again to have 50 Minutemen, to have eight half-days training to get eight pence per half-day. So they never got to have the full eight days training because April 19th came along, and the men answered the call, as we know, from right out in front here in the little common down in front of the church. Parson Bridge tried to get them to stop here and have prayers before they left, but they were too much in a hurry for that, and they left as soon as they arrived. Some of them had left before the alarm came.
They had heard by messenger, and messengers went around through the town. One of the warrants fired alarm guns, and over 100 men answered the call. As I say, they didn't go as a body, but they went. And it's interesting to see that in Massachusetts, 19,680 Minutemen turned out. Now, they all didn't get to Concord, but that was quite a large number. The Chelmsford Minutemen were very prominent in the battle, along with Acton and Concord and Bedford, and took a major part in it. Sergeant Ford, who had a mill over by Pawtucket Falls, was very active, and he said killed five of the Redcoats. So he made a name for himself because within a month he was a captain of the 1st Chelmsford Company of Militia. Some of them just served a day, some served two days, and that was the only service they saw in the Revolution.
But Chelmsford did take a major part in the fight. Some of them didn't get there until the British had started to retreat, but they went along after them. Well, this 19,000 men embarrassed the military and government authorities because they didn't know how to control them. So they went to work immediately and organized them into companies of militia, and Chelmsford during this period had several companies. They had two at the time of Bunker Hill. Captain Ford was the captain of one of them, and they got to Bunker Hill on June 17th. One of the companies of artillery had abandoned its pieces. They got scared because they weren't professional soldiers, and the higher officers told Captain Ford to have the Chelmsford men take the artillery. Well, they didn't want to do this, and they argued a little bit, but finally Captain Ford got them to do it, and they did take charge of the guns and put them into position and used them and fired them until one of them blew up. They claimed that some of the soldiers were starting to shake when the British fired, and some man started singing Old Hundred and that calmed them down. The second Chelmsford company had Captain Walker, who was in Charlestown with his company, and then he went over to the other side, over toward the Mystic, and during the fight he was wounded in the left leg, and Captain Ford started to carry him out, but Captain Walker said, leave me and save yourself, so he left him, and he, of course, was captured by the British and put in prison. They amputated his leg.
About the same time, another Chelmsford officer, Lieutenant Colonel Parker, was wounded in the leg also. He was the grandson of the very first settler who lived down on Billerica Street, and the same thing happened to him. They captured him and amputated his leg. News of this was sent to Chelmsford. At first they thought they were killed, but within a few days they found out they weren't. And it's interesting to note that they asked for clean linen and some food, and so the wives of these two officers walked to Boston. There was no bus to take and there was no stagecoach ring, so they bundled up some things in a sheet and walked to Boston, but the British would not let them into the prison. They accepted the food and clothing, and so the women had to walk back without seeing their husbands, and they both died, one on July 4th and one in the middle of August. The first shot at Bunker Hill was fired by a Chelmsford man.
He was so excited, a young fellow, that he fired it, and General Putnam was so enraged at this that he hit him over the head with his sword and cut the hat, and they kept the hat proudly for quite a few years. But Mr. Spaulding had the honor of the first shot. There was great anxiety in the town over what was happening, and in fact some people even left their houses and moved elsewhere in the town, thinking the British might be coming this way. But Chelmsford did its part in Bunker Hill, and there were something like 12 men wounded, including Colonel Bridge, who was the son of Parson Bridge, and he was one of the chief officers at Bunker Hill. But he tried on the charge of being delinquent in his duty, but he was acquitted and served importantly later. Well, of course, Chelmsford kept on after this period. Captain Ford took another company up to Saratoga. He didn't get there in time for the fighting, but he got there in time to bring prisoners back to Ticonderoga, and other Chelmsford men went all over the eastern part of the country. They went to Ticonderoga and Rhode Island. They were at Valley Forge. They were at West Point. Some went even to the West Indies. The service was very varied, as I said. It went from a day or two at the time of the conquered fight to a number of years, but most of them were not in for a long stretch. They were in for three weeks or three months because they had to come home and work on the farms, and besides, there was no money to pay them.
The town was always getting levies to try and raise money to pay for the soldiers and pay for their food and their uniforms. So very often the service was limited to three months, and they'd come home and work a while. Then they'd need another levy, and they'd raise another company or enlist in a company from Westford or somewhere else and go off again for a few weeks. So it was kind of a hard existence. The soldiers did not have the benefits that our people have today in the military. They had to supply most of their own weapons. The town in June of 1775 had only seven-pound muskets. They had accumulated some powder and ball, but they used a lot of that at Bunker Hill, and they tried to collect it later. They were going to charge the soldiers who didn't turn back the powder and ball that they didn't expend at Bunker Hill.
The soldiers had to walk back from when they were dismissed or wounded very often. Some of them never made it back. Others were very sick when they got here. So it was a pretty hard existence. Numerous bills sent into the town for loss of equipment, such as a coat or a musket or a bayonet, and they got paid sometimes, but they usually got paid about a third of what the bill they put in. So it was not a profit-making venture for these people. The kind of food that they had sort of interested me. This was a few years earlier, but I assume it was typical of what they had in 75. One day's allowance was a pound of bread, a pound of pork, a jill of rum, and a half pint of peas or beans. Now, for the wheat, they had additionally two ounces of ginger, a pint of molasses, a half a pound of sugar, a pint of Indian meal, four ounces of butter, and some flour. And the total of this came to one pound sixteen shillings and four pence. So it was not a very rich diet. The civilians also had their hardships. As I said, they had these levies and subscriptions and so on. People got together lists, and some man would guarantee a pair of shoes, another person a pair of stockings, and another one a shirt or two shirts.
And this is the way they raised effects for the soldiers. The women and children, particularly the widows, had it quite hard. When the men were away, they had to run these farms themselves oftentimes, so the town had to do something it never wanted to do and discouraged in previous times, and that was grant aid to these people. They didn't like to do this because aid was not encouraged in this community. There was no welfare if they could help it. But during the wartime conditions, they had to do it, obviously, for the people who were left here. Inflation took hold. We're seeing a little of that right now, but it was amazing. And Carson Bridge notes in his diary that in just two years that the price of a cask of communion wine had gone from £8 to £50.
And his salary a couple of years later had gone up to £3,600, where formerly it had been only £200 or £300. The price of a horse blanket in 1780 had gone up to £911, which was tremendous. An ordinary blanket was £100. One of the people they sent to the Provincial Congress in Cambridge, his bill was £990 for 55 days. Before, at the most, it would have been a pound a day for a very bounteous living, but £990 for 55 days. In which the various towns are urged to stress the historical heritage of their town, explain it, tell people about it, educate them. It's interesting, perhaps, in this connection to note that when money has been handed out in very small quantities, admittedly, to the states, each state, including Hawaii and Alaska, gets the same amount of money as does Massachusetts, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. So does the, I think it's the Virgin Islands, they got a little bit less. But it isn't concentrated on the states in existence at the time of the Revolution.
There's probably a good reason for this. It's the 200th birthday of what I think is the greatest nation on earth. There are people that disagree with me. There are people that don't think the present time is the time to celebrate. And I think that they are missing the boat. The celebration is to celebrate the aims that people fought for in the Revolution and the Constitution was written. And if we're not following those exactly, now is a good time to call it to people's attention and do something about it. We're not celebrating the United States five years ago, two years ago, a week ago. But I think it really is worth celebrating, and we hope to have a celebration in town. Now, we speak of the celebration. I always hate that word in this connection because when you say celebration, people think of a festival, a fair, a pageant, a lot of parades, things like that. The second phase of the, quote, celebration, unquote, is Festival USA. This is concentrated in many places, particularly around Boston, in ethnic festivals where the different ethnic groups are having celebrations in which they are stressing the activities of their particular ethnic group. This is all right. I agree with that. But we aren't doing too much on the festival end here, at least plans aren't doing. The third phase is Horizons 76. Now, Horizons is looking ahead, obviously, and we are hopeful, everyone in connection with the Bicentennial is hopeful, that there will be activities which will be lasting after the celebration.
Now, this can be anything. I have the paper that's put out for the State of New York, connection with the Bicentennial, I have several of these, and it can be an improvement in your local government. It can be planting trees, the town of Bedford, for instance, the garden club there bought a lot of trees, sold them to the townspeople, I believe, to plant on their land. It can be almost anything that is going to be lasting. A fireworks display isn't very lasting, that would come under the festival. That I am not interested in. I'm interested in the historical heritage and the horizons. Now, we started, town appointed a committee to plan the celebration. I don't know how long ago, three or four years ago, I've only been on the commission for a little over a year, and I don't know whether we were ahead of the game or behind. We're ahead of a lot of the towns. We don't want to end up almost missing out on it, so we're proceeding. I heard a story when I was down at the meeting of the Society of Preservation of Antiquities with Dr. Mary Lahill that it is perhaps appropriate about almost missing the boat. When this gasoline shortage started, a gentleman decided that he wouldn't drive to work, he'd take the train. He went right to his hometown, although he hadn't used it much. So about the first or second day, getting ready to come home from work, he got on the train and sat down, and they pulled out of the station.
The conductor came along and looked at his ticket. He said, gee, I'm sorry. I said, this is an express. We don't stop at your town. We go right through. I said, what am I going to do? I'm not going to walk back from 30 miles beyond. Well, he said, the conductor was cooperative. He said, I think I can help you. We aren't allowed to stop, but I can notify the locomotive engineer. They had a locomotive on it. That when you come to your town, we'll slow down almost to a stop and we'll still be within the law. You get out on the platform, and when I yell at you, you jump off the train. You start running in the direction the train goes. Obviously, if you went the other way, you'd fall over backwards. So as they approached the train, the conductor tapped the man on the shoulder, and they went back into the vestibule in the car, about the middle of a three- or fourcar train, opened the door, and as the train slowed way down, the conductor gave the man a tap on the shoulder.
He said, jump. So the man jumped, and he started running as fast as he could in the same direction the train was going. And, of course, the train accelerated at about the same time, and he passed the man. Well, the brakeman happened to be out on the rear platform, and he looked out, and he saw this man running. So he grabbed him by the arm and pulled him on board. He said, boy, you almost missed this one. If I hadn't been there, you'd never made it. I don't know whether we're going to miss the bicentennial. I hope not. I'd like to tell you first what it is not. I have already mentioned it. It is not a parade. It's not fireworks, although we will have a parade probably. It's not a queen contest, although I had proposed that perhaps as part of the celebration we should do that to get some interest in a certain group in the town. But it's a collection of activities run by groups such as the Historical Society, the Garden Club, the Conservation Commission, the Recreation Commission, anyone that were willing to do it.
And we ask them to do their own thing. I feel that if a person does one, they start up. They'll do a better job. They'll be more interested in it. So if I go out into groups, as I probably will and speak, I would ask them, what would you like to do? What would be appropriate to your group? And in case they throw up their hands and say I have any idea, I figure we've always got to have at least one suggestion. It may not be any good, but start them thinking. At least they can say, that's no good. We can do better than that. So that the commission, which did have five people, has been enlarged to 11 now. And it'll be enlarged again, I think. It's really a policy body, a coordinating body. We will run a few activities. One of them is the sale of this history of Chelmsford, which I don't know if Catherine knows what she pointed out. According to Waters' history, it was the first town history published in the United States that had the dignity of a volume. Farmers' Memoirs of Billington were published three or four years before, but that was a pamphlet, I don't know, 36 pages, something like that.
So this is sort of a historic document. I wrote to the Library of Congress to see if I could confirm that, and I couldn't, but they refused to deny it. They had no record of anything earlier. So we're sticking with our guns. This is the first town history. I'm going to show you some pictures that I've put together that are perhaps examples of what is being done in town. A lot of towns are putting out a medal, so we want to be unique. We're not putting out a medal. I think the market's going to be flooded with them, frankly, but we aren't planning to. And one reason we're not planning to is we don't have any money. Two years ago, the town appropriated $500 to a special account, which the state has authorized. It can be held for the bicentennial celebration. It doesn't revert to the deficit and deficiency account on the end of the fiscal year. We got $500. Last year we asked for $500 more.
The Finance Committee said, it's not on your life. We'll wait and see how things are in 75. Well, come 75, it isn't going to do us any good. The fiscal year begins July 1st, and we hope our activities will be pretty well planned and pretty well over with by then. We do get some money around $400 or $500 each year for expenses. We incorporated our commission. I propose this for two reasons. One, it's perhaps a little protection for the members of the commission if they're going to get sued for half a million dollars. Well, that would be certainly a waste of a lawsuit in my case. But the percentenary commission in town looked into it quite carefully and decided to get incorporated. So that was a good reason, too. We also opened a savings account. All income that comes to the commission outside of money from the town, we're putting in the savings account. Any town money, of course, reverts back to the town at the end of the fiscal year if you don't spend it. Anything from the savings account won't revert back. We have avoided using any town funds in the publishing of this book. So there can be no question because there will be a profit. We admit there's going to be a profit if we sell them all. We've got to sell about 300 of the regular ones to break even. Beyond that, there'll be a profit. This profit will go into bicentennial activities. If the taxpayers, including me, don't want to support it, then we'll raise our own money. The committee working on this has done a terrific job, I think. We've made one payment of $925 to the publisher.
I've got a check here for $922.63 to mail off. There'll be two more after that. A little bit, about $3,600. But we'll get our money back. We may run one or two other activities. I would like to see an open house run by some organization for the benefit of the bicentennial. Actually, Chemsford started bicentennial activities, well, probably officially last year, a little over a year ago. We have a walk to Concord over the trail that the Minutemen took. And John Alden, who made the presentation from the Historical Commission, organized this with a man from the Boy Scouts.
Acton has done this in other towns in the past. Westwood has done it for two years now, I believe. They researched the trails the Minutemen took. And as far as we know, they went from the center of town probably up Route 27, that is, Acton Road by the street, the way the one-way traffic is, around back of the library and Adams Avenue, Boston Road. Boston Road, I believe, has been relocated to some extent, but they go down Boston Road. To Harvey, take Hazen Road up the back way to Concord Road and into Carlisle, right straight through Carlisle by the town hall. And on South Street, it becomes Estabrook Road at the Concord line. And then it becomes Estabrook Trail, which goes through the forest and comes out right near the Concord Bridge in that vicinity. And we believe the Minutemen went that way. On the 21st of April this year, there were about 300 Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and a few adults that hiked it. I would like to have, but I was like Will Rogers said, his people didn't come on the Mayflower. They met him when it landed, being chairman of the commission. I was asked to be at the Concord Bridge at 11 that morning and meet them. And that was how I drove myself. But this is something we started last year. We came out with a round patch with a specially designed insignia, which was given to everyone that walked this trail. This year, they received the same patch. The new people, the older ones that had walked it previously, I believe, had a little date to go over it. And the Bicentennial Commission sponsored this. We paid for it. We got our money back, a good percentage of it, because they charged the scouts a little. See, the scouts came in Friday night. And this year, they camped up at the Williams 4-H Center in Westford. Last year, they were down at the Rod Gunpoint. And I believe the Indian Culture League from Lowell put on entertainment for them. And oh, yeah, McDonald's fed them that night, I'm told. Then the next morning, they got up around 4 o'clock and cleaned up the area.
Incidentally, there were some Girl Scout troops. And I understand they slept in the Baptist Church in the hall, because that was the plan. And then in the morning, they had breakfast, pancake breakfast, congregational church. Then they came down to the center of town here and tapped the Liberty Pole. And their men were there. And then they started on their hike. And after the hike was over, buses brought them back to Kempton. There were troops came, Boy Scout troops came from several surrounding towns. I know there was a group that came from Adams, Mass. So about 300 people marched. We figured there might be as many as 1,000 next year. I don't know.
And they had reserved the Minuteman National Park grounds at the Butcher's Mansion for 10 to 12 or something like that. And they had a flag raising ceremony and handed out the patches. So this is something that we've done two years. We've got a shot on that, the history of something else. Now, if I could have the light, I hope. Yeah. Technical. This is the insignia, the logo, of the National Bicentennial. Well, I'm not sure whether it's an authority, administration, or commission. It's changed two or three times. This appeared on a postage stamp, you may recall. Incidentally, I can bring you fairly up-to-date on the commission's activities. Last night at town meeting, the representative from Senator McKenzie's office presented the town with a heavy white nylon flag. It's about four by six feet. Just like this. This insignia in it. And it's going to be flown under the American flag on the flagpole through 1976. They're out of perspective.
We'll have to break down and get another one after it's been whipped in the wind of us. But that happened last night, so it's fairly up-to-date. Now, the state came up with an insignia. Originally, they were going to have the Liberty Tree. And they had two or three designs of the Liberty Tree. But it happened in the state. They fired the director, and he came up with something else. They fired him, and he came up with this. I'm not sure what this does represent. It has a meaning, but I don't know just what it is. This is the cover of a poll that we got when we attended a meeting of the Bicentennial Commission for the conference for a weekend in Amherst some time ago. So that's the state bicentennial insignia. Not to be outdone, I figured Chemskit should have a logo, something you can tie to it. You've never seen a logo on most any project. What I did, I took the national one, this one here, and I put the town seal in the middle. That was easy. And then I went into the state and gave it to them, and they said, well, we'll send this over to Mrs. Ireland, who is in a JFK building in Boston. She's the director of Region One for the Bicentennial.
She has New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, I believe. The law says you can't print anything on that. This is reasonable. They don't want to use it for advertising. I don't think they'll let you do that with a town seal, but go ahead and do it because, to quote him, hell will freeze over before you get word out of Washington. About three days later, we got a letter saying, no, you can't do it. So I sat up a couple hours late Saturday night and did something similar. You see, we have the white star, and the red, white, and blue colors, and the town seal, which sort of ties in our town with the national program. And this appears on all our... This appears on our letterheads and on the certificates we sell and things like that. So we've got SOFA. Now, I went around and took a few color slides, hope to get some more eventually, of some of the things that might be tied in with the Bicentennial. This is signed on the center of town, which, in case you don't know what community we're discussing tonight, doesn't get you off on the right foot.
The town hall isn't a particularly historic building, although if it isn't burned down before then, I believe it was 100 years old in 79. I understand that it was almost destroyed within the last month or so, as the fire department tells me. I don't know just who did what to it. They were very careful to say, but they said it was just amazing that it didn't burn down. After all, that is the center of the town hall. It should be. This is the stone marking the approximate location of the first town meeting, Crosby Lane. It was moved when land was sold where it was located before. Some people say, how could it be moved? How could you move the site of the first town meeting? Well, it says near this spot. No one knows exactly, although there are some people in town who have publicized it, but they're hoping to get permission to maybe go in with a metal detector and look around and see if they can find the location of a house. This was the Fletcher house. They might be able to find a large number of nails under the ground, something like that, located. But this is where it all started, back in November of 1654. I went out to the cemetery and shot a few pictures there because in connection with the history, the heritage, I find that there aren't too many people in Chemsford know town history. Maybe everybody here does, but I don't believe that over 10% of the population that were here in Chemsford probably 10 years ago. You can't expect them to. This is the oldest gravestone in the cemetery out here. Grace Livermore, 1690.
It's the oldest one since Mars. There may be some blank stones there that may be older. I believe this is the oldest one. This, I should say, is one of the first three or four. Richard Hilda, 1693. It was only three years after Grace Livermore. It wasn't originally a granite stone. The Hilda family, in the early 20th century, had the slate, I guess the slate was mounted, in a piece of granite. I was interested because this is my wife's maiden name, of course. She had some ancestors. One or two lines came down from Richard and I had two lines myself descended from Richard Hilda. I thought this would be an interesting picture because we've got a stone to Reverend Smith, who was the first minister in Chemsford. This is the stone in honor of Reverend Wilson Waters who, I forget what year he died. I knew the man, well, 1933, 1933. I don't believe he's buried. I think he was buried in Marietta, Ohio where he was born. But he is the man that wrote What a City, Chemsford. Probably some of us thought that it was a good idea to put the two stones together.
And so I photographed them that way. This I photographed just to show that we did have some people in the American Revolution. It's rather difficult to read, but it says, In memory of Mrs. Hannah Foster, wife of Mr. William Foster, who died in 1995. This is also in memory of Mr. Noah Foster, son of Mr. William and Mrs. Hannah Foster, who died at Stillwater in the service of his country October 7, 1777. Now, I think that God spoke I know he spoke about Captain Ford going out to Stillwater, New York. I believe that was that they're going to surrender, which he said we didn't get there in time for the surrender, but we brought prisoners back. I have at home the expense account signed by Captain Ford for bringing prisoners from Stillwater back here. This I thought would tie it in with the Revolution. This is, if I ask people here, I bet even the Historical Society, there aren't too many to tell me where that was located. It's on Green Street. It sure is. I was going to say if you came out of Janet Lombard's front door and were running too fast you'd stop and you'd hit that. But I found out that I don't think even the Historical Commission knew where it was. It said pound, pound, 1654, 1895. I don't believe it was found all that time. I suspect the stone was at Mark in 1895. But this is on Bridge Street. We have lots of monuments, memorials around town.
I thought they were appropriate in reviewing the history. This, of course, is the stone down in the middle square in the center of town. It was erected by the D.A.R. in 1899. I believe he marked the spot where the Minutemen, at least some of them gathered before they proceeded to contest. D.A.R. spoke of the militia and he spoke of a pre-Negro that was a Piper. His name was L.E.W. He was a Cooper. I think 30 years old at that time, 6 feet tall, and a pre-Negro from Haiti. I got interested in him because, although I don't think he went to Concord, he did go to Ticonderoga as shown in the history on the rosters of men, because his descendant, I don't know his great-granddaughter, great-great-granddaughter, Phyllis Lowe, who works at Room 902 in the Saltonstown building in Boston, and I have occasion to be in their office about three times a week, and she's a direct descendant. Now I knew she was a Negro, and when I first met her, she said, my folks came from Lowe, we were one of the first settlers when I came here.
I hadn't read a lot of history, but I didn't remember that there were Negroes that far back. I came to find out it was true. So what I did, I photostatted all the rosters, his name appears maybe five, six times, I photostatted each one of those pages and presented them to Phyllis, and she got quite a thrill out of it, because she's sitting there as a receptionist in his office, and probably 90 percent of the, well maybe not 90, maybe 80 percent of the state employees that go by her desk are first or second generation Americans, and being a Negro or black, I don't want to look down on her, but they were surprised and said that this was one of my ancestors when he was fighting in the American Revolution, and I was there, some of them were surprised. Incidentally, her father was famous too, because he was known as Bucky Lou, he was the first professional Negro basketball player in the United States, so they say. She gave me clippings and I photocopied them. He lived in Lowell and played on pro teams, semi-pro teams. At first they wouldn't let a Negro on, so I am their team, but everybody was penalized, so they only had half a team left, and they let him play, and he became a hero, and he played professional basketball. It was interesting. Her aunt was a teacher at the Bartlett School, who got a law degree.
In fact, Phyllis showed me the other day a program for an entertainment at Boston University, raising funds for a scholarship named after her aunt. I would like to get hold of the pipe, I don't expect to. I'd like to get a photograph of it, I've never been to Chicago. It's been loaned by her cousin to a library somewhere in Chicago. I'm going to write to him, see if he'll take a picture of the pipe. Supposedly, the silly little carriage with the Chelmsford militia. Speaking of the minute man, there was another minute man that became somewhat wellknown from Chelmsford, although he lived in what was now Lowell, because of course downtown Lowell was Chelmsford until 1826, when it became a town, 1836 it became a city. This man lived right off Chelmsford Street, near Plain Street, and his farm was down on Powell Street, according to the history book. He heard the alarm guns and answered the alarm, and he advanced in rank so that he became a general. And later on after the war he moved to New Hampshire, he became governor of New Hampshire, and then he became father of a president of the United States, Benjamin Pierce, Franklin Pierce's father, who was a Chelmsford minute man. We've got an awful lot of history in this town that an awful lot of people don't know about. That's what I'm dedicating to you. This one here, I was surprised to see that Baptist Church is tipsy, I didn't think Baptist Church had got that way. I think I better retake that one sometime. This of course is a monument to the revolutionary soldiers.
Now this was erected by a group who had a banner, which is always carried in the Memorial Day Parade, but in my memory, which the Historical Society is having restored, is that right Nick? If we can raise $800. Is that all they want for it? Reading the history it tells who were the members of this organization, at least quite a few of them, and although the organization is disbanded, it points out that all descendants of the original members are for the end of lifetime members of this organization. I imagine that Warren, I can't remember his name, but I know that Jardine Davis, my grandfather was active in it. Maybe we'll reorganize the Men's Monument Association. This is a little more recent. This is the monument to the veterans of various wars. It was put up after World War II across the street from the fire station. I haven't in my collection yet, although I shall have this picture of the monument, it now comes close to World War I so just in case you don't recognize it, it's a little stone over on the monument, or on the comment, that marks the optimal location of the death school. Mary B. Rogers, assisted by Mary S. Byamor from here in 1856 to check this school, the first in America to successfully teach lip reading and speech to deaf children.
In 1867, which is only one year later admittedly, it was moved to Northampton as the site school for the deaf. And of course the school was in, building at one academy street where Julian Fulton was the resident. I believe that one of the students there, his name was Mabel Hubbard, I think it was Mabel Hubbard, who later married Alexander Graham Bell, and I understand his interest in helping her to communicate, had something to do with the telephone. This is the building. There's been some questions whether this was moved down the street, I don't know, frankly I don't think so, but it is very old. There are probably about 120, 130 buildings in town that were here in 1830, 1831, and part of the Historical Commission, I'm going around photographing them in black and white, just records, prints, nothing artistic, and we're getting them listed with the State Historical Commission. All this means is that if the state were to put through a highway, they're required by law to check with the State Historical Commission to see whether any listed properties there. I don't think the law says they can't tear them down, but at least they have to know they're there. It's also a prerequisite to being listed as a National Historic Site.