15. Rain continues-Worcester bridge not passablefreshet higher than a fortnight since. 17. Many mills, Bridges &c. carried away, and much damage done by freshet. 18. Another remarkable freshet. 19. Company to supper on Venison. 23. No sleighing for more than a fortnight past. 24. 8 inches snow. Bad Colds very prevalent. 25. Supped with Col. Clap.1 New painted room made me very sick. 26. Pleasant. Went to Lancaster with Eliza, and to Harvard & Sterling. 27. Dined at Sterling-returned to Worcester. March, 1807. 2. Town meeting. Town objected to the Deed Land I gave for a Charity House." of 3. Miss H. Weld went to Boston with my son in the stage. Dined yesterday with Mr. Dan'. Waldo, jun'. at his father's.3 1 Daniel Clap as a boy served an apprenticeship to a carpenter. In April, 1774, he served on the famous grand jury which refused to be sworn if Chief Justice Oliver presided on the bench, and presented a formal protest to the court, which was one of the earliest overt acts of the Revolution. He was Register of Deeds from 1784 to 1814, and represented Worcester in the General Court from 1806 to 1810. He lived at the south corner of Main and Park streets in the house which was afterwards owned and occupied by Charles Allen. [Born, Sudbury, 1740. Died, Worcester, 23 March, 1827.] 2 Mr. Thomas offered to the town a lot of land at the east end of Thomas street for a poor-farm, upon certain conditions which, however, do not appear upon the records. See entry and note, 5 January, 1818. 3 Daniel Waldo, the son of Cornelius and Faith Savage Waldo, was a hardware merchant in Boston as early as 1749. In 1776 he removed to Providence, and in March of the following year to Lancaster. Five years later he came to Worcester and opened a store at Lincoln square, near the bridge over Mill 6. Mrs. Legate, Miss Calef and Miss Morris came from Leominster. 7. Dined with Mr. Sam'. Chandler. My son returned from Boston. 9. Company to dine & sup. Bad colds very prevalent. for sometime past and at present. 12. Rev. Sam'. Stillman of Boston died." 16. Dined with S. Chandler. 18. At Coolidge's." 3 19. Dined with the British Consul, Dr. Paine, S. Waldo & S. Chandler at Coolidge's. brook, and soon after took his son into partnership with him. He built for their store the first brick block in Worcester, just south of Court Hill, where Granite Row later stood, and their business has been carried on by their successors, on the same spot, to the present time. In 1791 he relinquished the business to his son. Mr. Waldo lived in the John Chandler house on the east side of Lincoln square. He married, 3 May, 1757, Rebecca, daughter of Nicholas and Martha Saunders Salisbury, of Boston. [Born, Boston, 29 October, 1724. Died, Worcester, 8 December, 1808.] 1 Rev. Samuel Stillman, minister of the First Baptist Church in Boston, 17651807. 2 In 1806, Nathaniel Coolidge succeeded Moses Chapin as keeper of the Heywood Tavern, or Central Hotel. In April, 1808, he relinquished this and opened another inn "a few rods east of the South Meeting-house." 3 William Paine, the eldest son of Timothy and Sarah Chandler Paine of Worcester, was graduated from Harvard in 1768, his name being the second in a class of forty, at a time when the names were arranged according to the dignity of families. He studied medicine with Dr. Edward A. Holyoke of Salem, a distinguished physician of that time, and began to practice in Worcester in 1771. 18 January, 1773, he entered into partnership with Levi Shephard and Ebenezer Hunt of Northampton "as Traders in the Art, Mystery & Business [of] an apothecary and of the Practice of Physick," and opened the first drug store in Worcester, at Lincoln square. This partnership lasted until July, 1783. Dr. Paine early attached himself to the loyalist cause, and is supposed to have assisted his uncle, James Putnam, in drawing up the famous protest of the fiftytwo loyalists of Worcester, in 1774. In the autumn of that year he went to England for the purpose, it is said, of completing his medical studies, but on his return in May, 1775, he found that he had been denounced as a loyalist, and he immediately took passage again for England. In the following November he received the degree of M. D. from the University of Aberdeen and was soon after appointed an apothe 21. Bad travelling. S. Armstrong, jun'.1 was at Worcester. 22. British Consul dined with [me], as did D'. Paine & Mr. Bancroft. My eyes much inflamed. cary to the English forces in America. He served in Rhode Island and New York until January, 1781, when he sailed for England with Lord Winchelsea and his family, but the vessel being driven out of her course by storms, they landed at Lisbon, and he spent several months on the continent as physician to that family. While he was in London in 1782, he was admitted licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians. He returned to New York in March of that year, and in October was appointed "Physician to His Majesty's Hospitals within the district of North America commanded by Sir Guy Carleton" and was stationed at Halifax. After the withdrawal of the troops in 1783 he was retired on half pay, and the island of La Tète, in Passamaquoddy Bay, having been granted to him for his services, he took possession of it in the following year, and built a house, intending to live there permanently; but he remained there for a few months only, and then removed to St. John and resumed his practice. While there he was elected a member of the Assembly of New Brunswick, and served as its clerk, was a justice for the county of Sunbury, and in October, 1785, was appointed by Sir John Wentworth Principal Deputy Surveyor of Woods in the Province of New Brunswick. In the summer of 1787, by permission of the War Office, he went to Salem, where he had a good professional business, and after the death of his father, 17 July, 1793, he returned to Worcester, and occupied the family estate on Lincoln street until his death. Dr. Paine was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries of Copenhagen. In 1790 he was elected an honorary member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and was also a member of the Linnean Society, the Essex Historical Society, and one of the founders of the American Antiquarian Society, of which he was vice-president from 1813 to 1816. He married, 23 September, 1773, Lois, daughter of Timothy Orne of Salem, by whom he had six children. [Born, Worcester, 5 June, 1750. Died, Worcester, 19 April, 1833.] 1 Samuel Turell Armstrong, after serving an apprenticeship to Manning and Loring, printers and booksellers, in Boston, began business on State street with Jonathan Belcher. At the dissolution of this partnership, which was of short duration, he opened a printing office in Charlestown and there published the first numbers of a religious magazine, the Panoplist. In 1811 he returned to Boston and began a successful career as a bookseller and publisher. He was twice a representative to the General Court from Boston, and for one year a senator from Suffolk; was lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts for two terms, and in 1834, on the resignation of Governor Davis, was acting governor for ten months; and was mayor of Boston in 1836. [Born, Dorchester, 29 April, 1784. Died, Boston, 26 March, 1850.] 23. Court Common Pleas. 25. Dined with my son, at his house with Company. 26. Company, the Court dined with me. 31. Mr. Bancroft removed.1 April, 1807. 6. Misses Canada removed into my house that Mr. Bancroft removed out of. 8. New Bills, called Facilities, which I projected for Worcester bank, were first put in circulation. 1 Rev. Aaron Bancroft first lived in Worcester on Salisbury street, in the house later occupied by Anthony Chase and John S. C. Knowlton, where the Armory now stands. He then occupied the house on the same street, in which George Bancroft was born, and at this time removed to the east side of Main street, a little south of Thomas, where he lived until his death in 1839. 2 The country banks had for some time previous to this been subjected to great annoyance by having their bills, as soon as they were issued, bought by Boston brokers, who demanded specie for their redemption, and by withdrawing them from the market, prevented their free circulation. As a result of this continued run upon them, those who owed the banks were compelled to pay installments on their notes in foreign bills, i. e. those issued by banks outside of Boston, many of which were counterfeits, and to pay a discount of one and one-half or two per cent. To put a stop to this practice, the Worcester Bank, with several others, issued notes called facilities, "to prevent," as the Massachusetts Spy announced, "the scandalous exertions constantly practiced on the public under a pretense that the bills of Country Banks are not so good as those of Boston, and thereby robbing the industrious and enterprising of the just profits of their exertions. To crush such vermin is the interest and duty of every good citizen. By encouraging the circulation of bills which do not allow these Harpies to drain the vaults of specie, a complete stop is put to their nefarious purposes." A protest immediately arose in Boston. The Boston Repertory of 19 May, 1807, under the heading, "Beware of Bank Notes which promise no payment." says that they are desired to "caution the public against being deceived by a new species of Bank Notes, which are receivable at the Banks from which they issue for debts due to those particular Banks, but which for other purposes are worth less than blank paper. We have yet seen these bills from two Banks only, viz. the Worcester and Coos Banks. To prove the grossness of this imposition, it is only necessary to copy the face of the Bill, which is-The President, Directors and Company of the Bank promise to RECEIVE of or Bearer, this Bill for FIVE DOLLARS, in payment of debts due at said Bank, &c." 9. Fast day. 14. Attended Court's Comee on turnpike 1 day. 15. My son went to Springfield.1 The Worcester Bank estimated the facilities in discounts at the same value as its other bills, and they were issued and accounted for as a part of the amount which by law it was permitted to discount on its capital. Traders took them in payment of debts and sold their goods for them at par with foreign bills. They were offered in exchange for foreign bills in the Worcester papers, and on 16 June, 1807, Mr. Thomas calls on all those who are indebted to him to make payment, and offers to receive Worcester Bank facilities equal to specie. They were evidently in circulation for several years, for on 6 January, 1810, in the only record made of them on the books of the bank, it was "voted that the bills denominated Facilities, which were put in circulation, and have been returned, be burnt, the sum of Forty eight Thousand two hundred & twenty dollars comprizing Twenty three hundred bills of five Dollars each, and Thirty six hundred and seventy two bills of ten Dollars each were accordingly burnt in our presence. DANIEL WALDO, President. SAMUEL FLAGG, BENJ. HEYWOOD, OLIVER FISKE, Directors." 'New Bookftore. ISAIAH THOMAS, JUN. NFORMS his Friends and the INE he is now opening in SPRINGFIELD, (directly under the Printingoffice of Mr. HENRY BOOKS & STATIONARY, All which will be fold at the loweft BOSTON prices. Corn, Rye, Wheat or Oats, will be received at the above Store the fame as cafh. -Massachusetts Spy, 21 August, 1805. Isaiah Thomas, Jr., at this time (1807) sold his Springfield store. |