and his two sons, William S. Allen and Jeremiah S.
Allen. On the 1st of June, 1832, Mr. Allen started
the Daily Herald. In 1834 the whole establishment
was sold to Joseph B. Morse and William H. Brew-
ster, who conducted it until January 1, 1854, when
the Daily Evening Union, which had for five years



been a competitor of the Herald, was united with it,
and its proprietor, William H. Huse, became part
proprietor of the Herald. In 18.i6 Me.'srs. Morse and
Brewster retired, and William H. Huse & Co. became
the sole proprietors. Since 1856 Mr. Huse has had
associated with him George J. L. Colby, from 1856 to
1862; J. Q. A. Stone, from 1856 to 1859; George
Wood, from 1859 to 1866; John Coombs, from 1862
to 1871, and Arthur L. Huse and Caleb B. Huse
from 1859 to the present time, and Arthur L. Huse
from 1871 to the present time. In 1880 a Daily Eve-
ning Herald was started, and the establishment now
issues a Weekly Herald on Fridays, at $1.50 per year ;
a Daily Herald at $6.00 per year, and an Evening
Herald at one cent for each paper. The Daily Herald
was the first daily paper in Ma-ssachusetts outside of
Boston, and has always maintained a reputation for
enterprise and for intelligent management.

The Merrimac Valley Visitor was established in
1872 and is published every Saturday by Colby &
Coombs, with George J. L. Colby as editor. During
the life of the Herald many papers have appeared
and disappeared, but the Visitor, under its able
management, long since found a firm footing and has
established itself as a permanent enterprise.

Of the organizations not yet mentioned, now in ex-
istence, there is the Gushing Guard (Company A of
the Eighth Regiment). This company was originally
organized October 24, 1775, as the Newburyport
Artillery Company. In 1844 its name was changed
to the Washington Light Guard, and in 1852, in
honor of Hon. Caleb Gushing, it was changed to the
Gushing Guard. Its service in the war has been al-
ready referred to.

There is also Company Bof the Eighth Regiment,
called the " City Cadets," which did service also dur-
ing the war.

In addition to the above is the " Newburyport
Veteran Artillery Association," composed of men
above thirty-five years of age. It was organized
August 1, 1854, by ex-members of the Newburyport
Artillery Company.

It will be proper to mention also among the organ-
izations. Post 49 of the Grand Army of the Republic,
named in honor of Capt. Albert W. Bartlett, who
commanded the Gushing Guard in the War of the
Rebellion, and also the Newburyport Commandery
of Knights Templar, instituted in 1795 and chartered
in 1808; the King Gyrus Chapter, Royal Arch
Masons, instituted a.l. 6790 ; the St. Mark's Lodge,
instituted a.l. 5803; and the St. John's Lodge, insti-
tuted A. L. 5766.

Odd Fellowship was inaugurated in Newburyport,
March 7, 1844, and now has the Merrimac Encamp-
ment, No. 7, the Quascacunquen Lodge, No. 39, and
the Canton Harmony, No. 47, Patriarch Militant.
There are also among the organizations and institu-
tions the Merrimac Humane Society, incorporated in
1804; the Howard Benevolent Society, instituted in



1S04



HISTOKY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.



1818 ; the General Charitable Society, organized in
1850; the Royal Arcanum Council, No. 112; the
United Order of the Golden Cross ; the Newbury-
port Lodge, No. 512, Knights of Honor; the Knights
and Ladies of Honor, Harbor Lodge, No. 260 ; the
American Legion of Honor; the Ancient Order of
United Workmen, Merrimac Lodge, No. 31 ; the
United Order of Pilgrim Fathers, George Whitefield
Colony, No. 68 ; the Improved Order of Red Men ;
Monomack Tribe, No. 22 ; the Mountain Hill Lodge,
No. 45 (a temperance organization) ; the Woman's
Temperance Union ; the Union Division Sons of
Temperance ; the Young Men's Christian Association ;
the Newburyport Mutual Benefit Association ; the
Newburyport Bethel Society ; the Old Ladies' Home ;
the Garfield Associates ; the Anne Jacques Hospital ;
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ;
the Freedman Aid Society ; the Merrimac Bible So-
ciety ; the Women's Christian Association ; the New-
buryport Female Charitable Society ; and the Father
Lennon Benevolent Association.

No sketch of Newburyport could make any claim
to completeness without a reference to the literary
character of its people and to the writers in poetry
and prose which it has developed. Few towns have
manifested a love of home so strongly as that which
characterizes the natives of that city, and the col-
umns of its press show that they never tire of recall-
ing memories of the past and of the men who distin-
guished it. The offspring of this love is alwaj's and
everywhere discovered in a sentiment which finds its
most fitting expression in verse, and in the city on the
shores of the Merrimac, with a surrounding scenery
which lends its inspiring aid, we find no exception
to the rule. Though the list of writers and poets is
long, it is worthy of a place in this record. Caleb
Gushing and George Lunt and John Pierpont have
been already referred to; but to these must be added
the names of Susie W. Moulton, Hannah F. Gould,
William W. Caldwell, Harriet Prescott Spofford, Al-
bert Pike, Robert S. Coffin, Samuel L. Knapp, George
D. Wildes, Foster Sweetser, George Bancroft Grif-
fith, Henry C. Knight, Frederick Knight, Anne G.
Hale, Ann E. Porter, Lucy Hooper, Anna Cabot
Lowell, Mrs. George Lee, Daniel Dana, Thomas
Tracy, 0. B. Merrill, S. J. Spaulding, Mrs. E. Vale
Smith and James Parton, a son of Newburyport by
adoption.

The population of Newburyport by the census of
1885 was 13,716, and its valuation in 1886 was
$8,523,113. The expenditures for 1886 were $167,-
666.26, and the debt of the city on the 18th of De-
cember of that year was $384,243.46. The city prop-
erty, at the same date, amounted to $331,100, made
up of the following items; real estate, $94,400;
school-houses, $97,500 ; engine-houses, $12,600; per-
sonal property, $126,600.

With these few statistics, this history of Newbury-
port must be brought to a close. Its many imperfec-



tions must be attributed to the fact that its author
was not to the manor born, and has consequently
encountered obstacles which it was by no means easy
for a stranger to overcome.

Note. — The writer wishes to acknowlcdKe tlie aid he has received ia
the preparation of this history from Hon. John James Currier, lx>th per-
sonally and as executor of the will of the late Ben ; Perley Poore ; from
William II. Huse, Esq., editor of the yembunjport Herald, and from the
files of that journal ; from Hon. Eben F. Stone and Hon. R. S. Spofford,
of Newburyport, and from Georgo H. Stevens, Esq., the city clerk of
Newburyport. W. T. 1).

Plymouth, Novembers, 1887.



BIOGRAPHICAL.

HON. WILLIAM BARTLET.^

Mr. Bartlet spelled his name with one t. He said
there was no use in making two letters where one
would do as well ; but as there have been several ways
of spelling it, that is of little consequence. He was
a great man and a good man, one of the greatest and
best that Newburyport, so rich in distinguished citi-
zens, ever produced. He was great physically ; great
mentally ; great morally ; great in his conceptions and
his power of executing his designs, having counige
where ordinary men would have failed ; great in his
influence and in his manner of perpetuating that in-
fluence to succeeding generations, aye, adown the
ages. All this will appear in any sketch of his life
that does justice to the man. He was of gigantic
form, endurance and strength. Tall, over-topping the
average man by half a foot; full-chested, broad
shouldered, firm -set, sinewy, weighing — as we call him
to mind — about two hundred and fifty pounds. He
moved lion-like among the crowd, not arrogant or
proud, but seemingly as conscious of his ability as
Napoleon was in riding into battle.

Thus William Bartlet could be and do, since he was
born an athlete. Knowing him only in his old age, it
seems to us as though he never was an infant, never
had seen an hour of weakness. He was descended
from the old Norman knights of the era of the
Crusades; from the men who followed William the
Conqueror into England, to give to that island, to be
the cradle of the modern Romans, new life and new
laws, new government and a new destiny ; creating
for them that high place in history they have so
nobly filled ; moving them on to the empire so vast
that the sun never sets upon it, whose morning and
evening drum-beat is heard around the globe ; which
empire may yet, for aught that now appears, hold
universal dominion. The grand army that con-
quered the world under Alexander the Great
marched eastward, and have died ; the Anglo-Nor-
mans marched west to greater victories, for they found
other worlds to conquer.

The uame Bartlet was originally Bartelot ; and the



' By George J. L. Colby.




wehaEmismi iB^minLiE'n'.



NEWBURY PORT.



1805



first of the family in England, like the first man in
the creation of the world, was named Adam ; and as
the human race dates not back of Adam, it is not well
to go deeper into the mists of antiquity, for this fam-
ily, than to Adam Bartelot or Bartlet. He, with
sixty thousand other followers of the Conqueror, the
Norman knights and their vassals, had the promise of
the spoils of victory ; and from 1066, when the battle
of Hastings was fought, the barons of England love
to date their honors and names. In the pavement of
the old stone church, on the ancestral estate of seven
thousand acres, in Sussex County, in England, the
Bartlets can trace their genealogy — the foot-prints of
a noble family. It is one of the finest estates in
Great Britain ; has been in their hands more than
eight hundred years, and can never be sold or pass
from them. Their coat-of-arms witnesses to the heroic
deeds of men whose portraits hang in the halls of that
ancient castle ; whose Christian names are the inher-
ited appellations in our own country and age, as
William, Edmund, Richard, John and Thomas — the
names they brought over the seas and have trans-
mitted.

The first Bartlet immigrants in America were three,
— the sons of Edmund, whose landed estate was in
Ernley, which, by the law of primogeniture, passed to
their brother Edmund, and left them — Richard, John
and Thomas — to inferiority or to make to themselves
new homes elsewhere. They came to America in
1634. Thomas settled in Watertown and left no sons.
John and Richard carae to Newbury in 1635, with the
first settlers ; and two years later they had left the
banks of the Parker and settled at " Bartlet Cove,"
in a beautiful bend of the Merrimac, nearly opposite
the Powow, as it empties into the Merrimac. There
they built themselves houses, and there their descend-
ants have lived to this day. John had but one son,
and Richard had three, with several daughters. It
is with the latter and those of his lineage that we
have to do.

Richard Bartlet, the shoemaker, was a man of
sterling character and marked piety ; and his son,
Richard, Jr., was one of the leading men of the
town; for several years Representative in the General
Court.

A third Richard, son of Richard, Jr., born in 1649,
married Hannah Emery; and as the Emerys have
always been thrifty, she may have added to his real
estate. Certainly she did to his personal estate, for
she bore him ten children, — eight sons and two
daughters, the latter beginning and ending the brood.
Her last son was Thomas, and a grandson of that
Thomas was the Hon. William Bartlet, who?e por-
trait we here give. He was born in 1748, and died in
his ninety-fourth year; but his " eye was not dim,
nor his natural force abated."

Already the Bartlets had become numerous and
some of them distinguished. They had learning,
energy, piety and patriotism. One of them, Samuel,



on the first intimation of the outbreak against Gov-
ernor Andros, mounted his horse, started for Boston,
and was there in time to participate in the arrest and
imprisonment of the obnoxious chief magistrate. It
is a tradition that he rode so fast that his long sword,
dragging over the 'ground, left a stream of fire all the
way.

Another was the celebrated Josiah Bartlet, from
Stephen, the seventh son of Richard and Hannah
Emery, a man of varied attainments. He stood in
the first rank of his profession as a physician and
was the founder of the Medical Society in New
Hampshire, where he lived ; was a member of the
Legislature and of Congress; was the last President
and the first Governor of the State ; was a signer of
the Declaration of Independence and a colonel in the
Revolutionary army, serving with General John
Starke; was a judge in the Inferior and Supreme
Courts and chief justice of the State.

But had the family made no record before. General
William F. Bartlet, by his daring in the late inter-
State war, would have redeemed them all. A student
in Harvard when the bugle sounded, summoning the
citizens to defend the Union and its flag, he at once
enlisted and became a captain in the Twentieth
Massachusetts Regiment. Before Yorktown, Va., a
rifle-shot required the amputation of one leg. Six
months later he was again in the field, colonel of the
Fifty-ninth Regiment, and at Port Hudson, leading
the assault, the only man on horseback, and there-
fore in the most hazardous position, he was again
disabled by a shot in the wrist. A truce being
declared to bury the dead, the first inquiry of the
Confederate officer was, " Who was that man on
horseback?" Being told, he said, "He is a gallant
fellow ; a brave man ; the bravest and most daring
we have met during the war. We thought him too
brave to die, and ordered our men not to fire at
him !" Recovering from his wound, he was again in
the field, colonel of the Fifty -second Regiment; was
promoted to a brigadier-general ; captured in assault-
ing the enemy's works at Petersburg; shut up in
Libby Prison three months, and at the close of the
war found him in command of the Ninth Corps, in
Virginia. He was a soldier, a scholar and an orator ;
magnetic in word and action.

Having glanced at the heroism of the Bartlets in
war, we turn to their acts in peace, and these well
prove that "peace hath its victories as well as war."
We have stated their leading traits of character,
thrift, enterprise, intelligence, piety and personal
daring. They have been the accumulators of property
It is their inherited tendency, though, like all trans-
mitted faculties, it may not appear in every individual.
Their intelligence comes from the high culture of the
family for a thousand years, and beyond that to where
the record reaches not. In America more than a hundred
of them graduated from our colleges, and seven lineal
descendants from Richard Bartlet have been judges



HISTORY OF ESSEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS.



in the courts of New Hampshire alone ; and it has
been so in all the learned professions. They have
alwaj's been religiously inclined, and not one of them
more than William Bartlet, whose convictions were
strong, and who freely gave thousands and hundreds
of thousands of dollars for religions purposes. This,
too, has come down in the blood, the names of four of
them in England, who suffered martyrdom for their
faith, being given in Fox's " Book of Martyrs." For
personal daring they have done no discredit at any
time to him whose name is in the Battle Abbey roll,
or those who won the honors indicated by their "coat-
of-arms."

And now we come more particularly to William, the
merchant, born in the eighteenth century, and living
to the full age of ninety-three years. He was of com-
paratively poor parents, and of little education ; but
nature had done much for him, giving him what art
cannot creiite — a level head, quick perception, sound
judgment, and, what was more and better, agood heart,
backed by a predominant will, which secured to him
honesty and honor in his dealings.

We find him first with his father, learning the art
of making shoes. He served his seven years' appren-
ticeship, and then, at the demand of his father, six
months more to make up any lost time. That was
what apprentices then did under strict and " hard "
masters. Perhaps it was here that he learned how to
treat his own children, in whom he would not permit
the least disobedience of orders, and absolutely re-
moved his son William from the command of one of
hi= ships because he went beyond orders, though he
thereby made a prosperous voyage. The making or
losing was not a question with him, but strict construc-
tion of orders and energy in the performance of duty.
When he reached manhood "he stuck to his last," his
lapstone and his awl, and long years after, when he
had done with them, he preserved them as memorials
of young and happy days. There was then no discus-
sion of the hours of labor, and the holidays were few
and far between.

So great was his industry, in his humble occupation,
that the first sunbeams found him on his "seat," the
noonday saw him running to and from his dinner, for
he could not stop to walk, and the night hours were
struck high by the clock before he went to rest. A
person of less i)hysical power and a lower ambition
might have broken down and died, but he was ever
fresh for another day. By his savings at " cobbling "
he soon had a little money to invest in small matters,
within arm's reach, for trade.

This was the beginning of the man, afterwards the
greatest merchant Newburyport ever had, surpassed
by none of his time in Massachusetts, unless William
Grey, of Salem, and later of Boston, might have been
the single exception. He gave away and lost at sea
more property than any estate probated in the county
of Essex to that date, and still was a millionaire,
when there were not so many millionaires in the



whole country as can now be found in San Francisco
alone, upon which an American eye had then never
rested. So busy was this man, so indefatigable in
his labors, that in a hundred years, save seven, he
never, but once, was seventy miles from the house in
which he was born. He had no time to travel, when
his ships were in every quarter of the globe ; their car-
goes were piled in the stores of the leading seaports
of Europe, America, the East and West Indies ; and
his name so familiar in Amsterdam or London that
his credit would have been good with the English and ,

Dutch bankers for a half-million.

But we are runni ng ahead of our story. As soon as j

he was able, he tried an "adventure" at sea. An j

" adventure " was a small parcel of goods that a sea- '

man or ofiicer on a ship might carry free. That j

brought him profit, and he took the return home on a i

wheel-barrow. There was no " quarter " for a dray-
man when he could do the work himself. Next he I
purchased a part of a vessel, and then a whole one,
and finally fleets of shipping that were bringing iron ,
and hemp from Russia, carrying tallow from the !
Baltic to the Thames, coffee by the million pounds
and sugar by the cargo from the East Indies to Ant-
werp, when that was a great centre of trade ; salt from
Cadiz to America, and molasses, coffee and other mer- j
chandise from the West Indies, South America and
other parts of the world to his stores, which were first
on the Long wharf, which he made longer by building
further into the channel, now called Bartlet Wharf, at
the foot of Federal Street, and then others below
were added, covering the whole river-front, till he in-
cluded the Coombs Wharf, below Lime Street. At one
time he had three full ship-loads of coffee in Holland
and two more in Boston, and two of tallow in London.
His stores were full of hemp and iron, and other evi-
dences of his great wealth and business. The gov-
ernment decreed non-intercourse, embargoes and war,
but they did not check his enterprise, exhaust his
funds nr shake his credit. Something may be learned
of the man and the extent of his business by the dep-
redations made upon his shipping by European bellig-
erents in the last century and early in this, for which
he had claims, some of which were paid, and some
are held by his heirs to-day. His claims on France,
priorto 1800, were 8180,000; on Denmark, before 1812,
$173,000 ; on England, before the War of 1812-15,
SI 98,000. Here is a total against three governments
for losses of ships and cargoes valued at $551,000.
Other claims he had against Naples, Spain and Nor-
way, which, without counting interest, would swell
the whole to $650,000; but the exact sums against the
three last-named countries we cannot give. More or
less, they did not daunt him or impede his action.

Mr. Bartlet's largest loss was that of the ship
"Rose," Capt. William Chase, on her passage from
Surinam for Newburyport, with sugar, cotton, dye-
woods and other merchandise — captured by the
French privateer " L'Egypt Conquise," after a gal-



NEWBURYPORT.



1807



lant defense of nearly two hours. That was in 1799.
The "Rose" was two hundred and fifty-six tons bur-
den, and carried seven heavy guns. The privateer
was larger, with more guns and more men. Capt.
Chase was wounded early in the engagement. The
mate continued the defense, and even after the
enemy had boarded, refused to surrender, and was
literally cut to pieces on his own deck. Two seamen
were killed, two fatally wounded and thirteen injur-
ed before her flag came down. She was sent to
Gaudaloupe and confiscated. Her loss was one hun-
dred and three thousand dollars. Another captured
was the ship " Hesper," John N. Gushing, master,
who later in life was himself ihe first merchant and
the largest ship-owner in town. He was from Russia,
loaded with hemp and iron, for Newburyport, and
the vessel and cargo were valued at seventy-eight
thousand dollars. Many of the names of Mr. Bart-
let's captains are still familiar, as Joseph Tyler, who
lived on Lime Street; John Goon, on Federal
Street; William Chase, on Temple Street; Dennis
Condry, on High Street; Israel Young, on Greene
Street; Sewall Toppan, at the north end; Hector
Coffin, on. State Street ; Stephen Holland, John
Bailey, Friend Dole ; John March, father of the late
pastor of the Belleville Church ; William Wheel-
wright, in the " Rising Empire," lost near the river
La Plata, in South America, which carried him to
his great mission in that quarter of the world ; and
Ambrose White, who sailed the " Potomac," the last
ship Mr. Bartlet sent to sea.

Mr. Bartlet by no means confined his operations to
the seas. He was greatly interested in agriculture,
made it a study, and took delight in his garden and
fields in the town, and at one time owned one of
the finest farms in Essex County, at Methuen. He
was also largely in manufactures ; was the proprietor
of the mills in Byfield, which manufactured the first
cotton cloth in the United States, where every part
of the work was done under one roof. Later, in
1794, it had the first act of incorporation in the State
for a woolen-mill, and there was made flannels and
broad-cloth. The capital invested was fifty thousand
dollars, and when the other proprietors could no lon-
ger sustain the losses in this experiment, he bought
out the original holders and sold the property to
other parties who would continue it. Later he was
an owner in all the cotton-mills built in Newbury-
|>ort ; and it is doubtful if there ever would have
been one here, but for his enthusiasm in that direc-
tion causing him to invest two hundred thousand
dollars in those works. When the Bartlet Mill, No. 1,
was erected, he was told that the directors counted
upon his subscription for ten thousand dollars. His
reply was, " Very well ; you can make it twenty
thousand." Later when Mill No. 2 was commenced,
the work dragged for want of funds, and might have
been abandoned had not General James, the super-
intendent, asked of the directors a delay on the



vote for a half an hour, till he could see Mr. Bart-
let, then in his ninety-third year. Within the half-
hour he returned with Mr. Bartlet's subscription for
fifty thousand dollars, and his check for the money. As
old as he was, he had lost none of his mental vigor ; and
was an example to men of twenty-three or fifty-three
" the noblest Roman of them all ;" ever ready, even
to the time when other men would have been making
preparations for death, to do what he could for the
benefit of his town, his country and the world. H.
realized that the best preparation for another life
was usefulness in this life.

In all public matters he proved himself the man of
men, when Newburyport had hosts of other sons and