Monthly Archives: July 2025

After 300 Years, Who Are We Today?

Do the traits of our ancestors affect who we are today? Does the character of our town still bear the imprint of its founders? When we look at the lives of Stoneham’s early settlers, we see, as historian William B. Stevens calls it, “the best traits of English yeomanry.”

But what does Stevens mean by referring to those who carved out small farms in the hilly terrain north of Charlestown as “yeomen.”

Today, the word has come to mean someone who works hard at a something and is skilled at it, a ground-level worker.

In Chaucer’s medieval England, yeomen were small farmers, foresters and skilled fighters. Historians credit the long bows of English yeomen with turning the tide when the English defeated the French at Agincourt in 1415.

What Stevens is getting at is not far from the original meaning. Silas Dean, whose brief history reaches back to the first settlers, writes of a Scotsman named Hay, who “came over from Lynnfield with his ax and gun.”

What made our 17th century village different is that there were no wealthy settlers, no people of rank, no nobility. There were no massive land grants, or plantations, or any from the top tier of Puritan society. There were also, at first, no slaves. They were farmers and blacksmiths, shoe-makers and weavers.

They included deserters from British ships anchored in the Boston harbor, and some escaping indentured service. They plowed and traded, planted orchards and corn fields. They harvested the abundant cedar trees around Spot Pond, turning them into posts, shingles and clapboards. They built saw mills and grist mills.

Most of the women, as well as the men, knew what to do with a musket. They hunted deer and turkeys, fought Indians and wolves, and drank rum when they could get it, often when they came together to slaughter the pigs, or to build a school or a church. They went to church, religiously.

Stevens writes: “The foundations of Stoneham were laid, not by men of culture or wealth, but by the brawn and courage of laborious yeoman.”

Yet Stevens, an attorney, judge and the grandson of Stoneham’s longest serving minister, the Rev. John H. Stevens, seems to take pride in the town’s humble beginnings.

To bolster his point, he catalogs the possessions of several of the first settlers at their death. I find the details fascinating. He starts with Thomas Cutler, who died in 1683.

He left 25 acres of land and a house valued at 40 pounds; 3 cows, 4 young cattle, 18 pounds; 1 mare, 2 colts, 2 pounds; 10 swine, 40 bushels Indian corn and some rye and oats and barley, 9 pounds and ten shillings; 1 plough and ax and implements for husbandman’s work; 2 beds with bedding; 3 pair sheets with other linen, woolen and flax, 2 pounds, 4 shillings; 5 yards home-made cloth and some yarn, 2 iron pots with iron things and pewter and brass, 2 pounds, 5 shillings; chests and boxes with other usable things in house, 1 pound 10 shillings; wearing clothes, 2 pounds; gun and sword, 1 pound.

After listing the estates of several early settlers, Stevens notes that there were no carriages, no glassware, and only chairs and boxes for furniture. They had no carpets or curtains, watches or clocks. Their staples “were Indian corn, wheat, rye barley and pork, with mutton and beef at intervals, and doubtless veal and lamb now and then.”

They consumed plenty of milk, butter and cheese, but grew few vegetables. They supplemented their diet with meat from wild game. And they planted orchards. Later, when the trees had matured, they harvested the apples. As Stevens notes, “and afterward great quantities of cider were made and consumed.”

With the passing of time, came more comforts of life. In the 18th century personal wealth increased, and in the 19th century, fortunes were made, as the Industrial Revolution brought capitol, mechanization and employment to a town of farmers, traders and shoemakers.

Today, a suburban town of some 23 thousand souls, we celebrate our origins as a community forged by the labor and creativity of hard-working men and women. I like to think that the spirit of our yeoman ancestors is still alive.

Note: Excerpted from If the Shoe Fits: Stories of Stonehan, Then & Now, by Ben Jacques, available at the Book Oasis on Main Street and at the Stoneham Historical Society & Museum.

‘Gimme Shelter’

An “illegal alien” finds a home in Stoneham

I guess you could call him an illegal alien. It was sometime in the 17th century, and a British sailor by the name of Hadley had just jumped ship in Boston and high-tailed it inland, looking for a place to hide. The man who found him was a farmer named Gould, one of the first settlers of our town.

A century later town clerk Silas Dean told the story. Dean, also a longtime church deacon, had an ear for stories, and this is how he told it:

A man by the name of Gould . . . on a certain morning during the first settlement of the town, while at his barn at a very early hour, a man approached him, stark naked, and told him he came over to this country on board a war ship. The night previous he had deserted from the ship, and being fearful that his clothes might retard his escape, or the procuring of them cause some alarm, he left the vessel in a state of nudity.

He also stated to Gould that if he would provide him clothes, and afford him means to keep himself secreted till after the vessel left Boston, he would work for him for a sufficient length of time to satisfy him for all the trouble he might be at. The proposal was agreed to, and by this means Hadley took up his abode in this town, and from him all of that name now living in town descended.

This wasn’t the first time desperate sailors sought refuge in Stoneham. In Colonial times, serving in the British navy was no picnic. “Recruits” were often men seized in taverns or sentenced in court to a grueling life at sea.

Silas Dean tells of another deserter, who hid under the floor in a saw mill in Stoneham. British soldiers sent to find him entered the mill and stamped about on the floor, but never discovered him.

Flash forward to the 1830s and we find Stoneham is again a refuge for runaways, this time, runaway slaves. Here we turn to a history of Stoneham written by Marina Memmo in 2010.  She writes:

The issue of African slavery divided the town in the 1830s, but by 1850, Stoneham had fully embraced the abolitionist cause. Members of the Congregational Church led the reform. In 1838, Deacon Abijah Bryant, Levi D. Smith and 60 others formed the Stoneham branch of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and Bryant’s home on Main St. became a “station” on the Underground Railroad. When Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Rev. William C. Whitcomb expressed his outrage in a sermon that was later published. In it, he urged the people to fight for their enslaved brethren, even if it meant suffering and death.

From a village on the outskirts of Colonial civilization to the present, our suburban town has been a place of refuge and opportunity, a place where men and women have come to plant their fields, open their shops, work in the mills, or simply raise their families. They have come from around the world.

Among those who live or work among us today are more recent immigrants, and some of them are living in fear. Whether they lack proper documentation, or have had their legal status revoked, they, like those before them simply need a safe place to live. They want to know that their children won’t be taken from them, and their children know a parent will be there when they come home from school or camp.

You know the stories. You’ve been watching the news. Being true to our history, being true to our best selves, we must protect the rights and humanity of all who live among us.