Tag Archives: indentured

In Graves Unmarked

Memorial placed in the OBG

In autumn the Old Burying Ground in Stoneham changes its colors. Yellow and orange leaves fall about the gravestones of the founders of our town. The Goulds, Greens, Holtens and Hays. The Spragues, Stevens, Richardsons and Wrights.

But beyond the cluster of 18th and 19th century stones, there are open areas where no markers disrupt the gentle slope of the earth. Here lie those with no status in early Stoneham. Here are buried the town’s paupers, natives and slaves.

On a recent Saturday, thanks to the Stoneham Historical Commission, Stoneham folk gathered  in the Old Burying Ground to remember all those buried in unmarked graves. How many were there? It’s impossible to know, even with radar ground studies. But a scouring of town and church records suggests there were over five hundred.

Who were they, these men and women who, along with our better-off European ancestors, built Stoneham? Who, in the case of slaves, toiled without pay or hope of freedom. Who, in some cases, married, had children and attended church, but were prescribed to the lowest rungs of society?

The first white settlers in Stoneham, then called Charlestown End, arrived in the mid-17th century, about two decades after English colonists led by John Winthrop founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Not long after, came the slaves.

The earliest record I could find of slaves in the Stoneham area is in Elbridge Goss’ History of Melrose. It appears in a 1653 order from the General Court, stipulating that a slave owned by Job Lane, named Ebedmeleck, must be punished for “stealing victuals and breaking open a window on the Lord’s day.” He shall “be whipt with five stripes.”

In the century before the American Revolution, at least nine families in Stoneham owned slaves, including the Greens, who settled in the eastern and southeastern area of our town. The Green farm, extending from the Melrose line to Pond Street, would be the home of five generations of the Greens. Forty-two Greens would be buried in the Old Burying Ground.

An inventory of Captain Jonathan Green’s possessions in 1761 includes, along with 3 horses, 6 oxen, 9 cows, and 20 sheep, “2 servants for life.”

Jonathan Green’s name also shows up in the indenture contract binding a 7-year-old girl to the Green family for eleven years. My column of September 11 tells her story.

The Rev. Ken McGarry offers dedication prayer for all those buried in unmarked graves in the Old Burying Ground in Stoneham.

Indenture in New England was one way of dealing with poor, illegitimate or otherwise destitute children. If they were fortunate, they learned a trade, or, in the case of young women, found a husband after completing their term. Adults were also indentured, often as house servants.  In an inventory of the late town minister, James Osgood, is found, along with his other possessions, one Negro woman and one white servant.

Towns also had poor houses, as did Stoneham, although it was customary for officials to “warn out” paupers coming into town, so they would not become a drain on resources.

The earliest mention of an almshouse in Stoneham is a note by Silas Dean that in 1760 town leaders explored working with Reading and Woburn to establish a “work house,” a place for the poor.

The next reference I found is in William B. Stevens’ History of Stoneham, where he records the 1823 purchase of a farm in northeast Stoneham as a place for the poor. As in communities throughout New England, poor farms were funded by towns and cities at public expense. But they were also working homes for the able bodied who could either farm, cook, do laundry, or work at a trade. Here you might find a widow, a disabled or indigent worker, or an orphan.

As Stoneham’s population increased, a larger facility was needed. In 1852 the town purchased 17 acres on Elm Street and began construction of a new Almshouse. Additional acres were later purchased, and the house was enlarged and a shop added where the shoemakers in the home could work. In 1890 the Stoneham Almshouse had 30 residents. Today, it is our Senior Center.

The Old Burying Ground was also the burial place of Native Americans. We know of two because it made the papers. In February of 1813, ruffians murdered a Penobscot couple that had set up camp by Spot Pond. Their names were Nicholas and Sally Crevay. I tell their story in my book, If the Shoe Fits: Stories  of Stoneham, Then & Now.

The next time you visit the Old Burying Ground, pause a moment at the beautifully designed memorial placed there by the Historical Commission. It honors the hundreds buried there in unmarked graves, people who lived among us and helped build our town. As we celebrate our Tricentennial, it’s the right thing to do.

‘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.