Framingham Legends & Lore

by James L. Parr

  THUNDER SENT FROM HEAVEN

  On June 3, 1777, John Clayes, a prominent farmer and great-grandson of accused witch Sarah (Towne) Clayes, agreed to assist Framingham’s new minister Laban Wheaton in the purchase of a horse and gathered several friends together at his farm on Salem End Road to look over the animal. While the skies on that late spring day were slightly overcast, they gave no warning of the tragedy that was about to occur. One of the friends, Selectman Peter Parker, mounted the horse and took it for a short run across the field and back as a few drops of light rain fell. After Parker dismounted, the forty-two-year-old Clayes grabbed the reins and, in an instant, was on the ground, dead. A bolt of lightning had struck the horse, traveled through the animal into the earth and knocked the entire party to the ground. The lightning had also killed the horse, as well as eighty-one-year-old Abraham Rice. Peter Parker, Simon Pratt and Pratt’s young son Ephraim were injured, Parker and the elder Pratt severely so. The event provided citizens of the day an opportunity to contemplate the deeper meanings of life and its unexpected sorrows. A contemporary account of the incident was published “to this world of sorrow and death as a momento [sic] for the improvement of life.” An elegy written by Framingham schoolteacher and poet Lydia Learned helped promote the idea that the victims were being punished by God for conducting business on the Sabbath, although the tragedy actually occurred on a Tuesday:

  Gravestone of lightning victims John Clayes and Abraham Rice, with verse by Lydia Learned. Photo by Edward P. Barry. Gravestone of lightning victims John Clayes and Abraham Rice, with verse by Lydia Learned. Photo by Edward P. Barry.

  Oh may you all both far and near

  Who of this dispensation hear

  Now harken to the call of heaven

  And take the warning God has given

  Surprising death to you soon may

  Come in some unsuspecting way

  Pray that all make it their care

  For sudden death now to prepare

  My trembling heart with grief o’erflows

  While I record the death of those

  Who died by thunder sent from heaven

  In seventeen hundred seventy-seven

  Almost a century and a half later, another lightning strike hit Framingham, again with tragic results. Members of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia had just completed a ceremony on the old Musterfield on the afternoon of August 17, 1917, when a storm of biblical size suddenly broke over the camp. A bolt of lightning struck the center of the parade ground, knocking fifty soldiers to the ground. Corporal Edward P. Clark of Natick and Private Patrick J. Sullivan of Framingham were killed instantly and a dozen others were seriously injured. Several of the injured were revived by the use of a “pulmotor,” an early artificial respiration device. The erratic nature of lightning caused an unusual injury to Sergeant Martin Fair of Natick, who was left with the shape of a cross burned into his arm after the strike.

  THE OLD BURYING GROUND

  Peter Clayes and Abraham Rice, the two men killed by lightning in 1777, were buried in the Old Burying Ground, under an unusual double gravestone with the first few stanzas of Lydia Learned’s poem carved into it.

  The Old Burying Ground on Main Street, sometimes called the Church Hill Burying Ground, is situated on a shady hill overlooking the Sudbury River. Rows of gray slate stones tipping at various angles line the grassy paths, the occasional American flag designating the grave of a war veteran. At first glance, the graveyard looks like a typical one found across New England; a closer inspection reveals stories behind the stones that are unique to Framingham.

  The burying ground was laid out next to the new meetinghouse in 1698, although the oldest surviving stones date back to 1704. It is possible that the first graves were marked with wood, simple boulders or not marked at all. Sometimes a grave was covered with a large stone rectangle called a “wolf” stone, placed there to keep out scavenging animals. Eventually, the meetinghouse was relocated and the graveyard became the municipal burial ground. The town hired Samuel Barton as the official gravedigger, paying him three shillings per adult grave dug. Until the town purchased a hearse in 1794, coffins were carried to burial services on the shoulders of male mourners. One of the primary responsibilities of the caretaker was to keep the grass neat and tidy. This job could entail chasing cows away, as caretaker Jonathan Maynard was called upon to do, or supervising sheep as they pastured in the burial ground keeping the briers down, as Lawson Buckminster was paid to do in 1826.

  The stones in the burial ground are adorned with a variety of symbols. From ominous winged skulls to peaceful angels, hopeful fingers pointing skyward, willows and urns, the carvings reflect the changing attitudes toward death over the centuries. Many of the names carved on the markers are the same as those found on street signs and public buildings across town—Buckminster, Eames, Hemenway, Maynard. The oldest stone in the graveyard is marked simply with the date of death, September 25, 1704. Some local historians have speculated that this grave may be that of Salem refugee Sarah Clayes, who died that year. Eighty-one soldiers who fought in the Revolution are buried here, including, of course, Peter Salem, the hero of Bunker Hill. Most of the other figures we have met in the preceding pages were also laid to rest here: Jonathan Maynard (1752–1835); Deacon William Brown (1723–1793), who had owned Crispus Attucks; Thomas Nixon Jr. (1762–1842), the Revolutionary War fifer; Jonas Clayes (1788–1856), who fashioned House Rock into millstones; and the Reverend John Swift (1679–1745), the town’s first minister, whose table monument occupies a special position in the graveyard on the spot where the pulpit had stood in the original 1698 meetinghouse.

  The “recycled” gravestone of the Twitchell children. Photo by Edward P. Barry.

  An ornate wrought-iron fence surrounds the plot of the Buckminster family, signifying their wealth and prestige in town. At its center, raised above the other stones, is the monument to Colonel Joseph Buckminster (1697–1780), who played such a memorable role in town affairs, as chronicled in these pages. Also inside the plot is the relatively recent and unusual stone of Joan Buckminster Marcy, who died in 1942 at the age of fourteen. Atop the flat bronze marker inscribed with her name and birth and death dates is the statue of a whimsical bronze turtle.

  Not far from the Buckminster plot is the poignant grave of the Twitchell children. Susanna, Anna, Calvin and Cynthia, ranging in age from one to eight years, all died within a two-day period in December 1776. Over the years, time and weather heaved the marker so that another, upside-down inscription began to appear. Eventually the whole stone was uprooted from the ground, revealing the entire surface. The bottom of the Twitchell stone is in fact the top of a stone that may have been reused by the carver after making a mistake. A winged angel and the partial inscription “Here lies deposited the remains of” are carved into the curved end of the stone. Such “recycled” stones are fairly common in old New England graveyards.

  THE SMALLPOX GRAVEYARD

  Not all of Framingham’s dead were interred in town cemeteries. Many families chose to bury their loved ones close to home in pastures and woodlands, especially in the sparsely populated north side of town. When former farmland began to be developed for housing in the mid-twentieth century, contractors and town officials had to deal with the problem of these random, isolated graves. The existence of a smallpox graveyard was no secret in 1964 when the Lanewood subdivision was being built off Pleasant Street. Finding the graves and relocating them was a different story.

  Framingham experienced an outbreak of smallpox in 1793. As we have already seen in the tragic case of the four Twitchell children, the spread of fatal contagious diseases was a constant threat in the era before modern medicine. Most of these devastating outbreaks probably went unrecorded, especially if they only affected a household or two. There were some larger ones—the first four months of 1754 brought a “fatal distemper” to the region, which became known as the “Great Sickness.” It was especially lethal in Holliston, where it killed
fifty-three, but it also struck Framingham. Smallpox itself had already come twice before in the decades prior to the 1793 outbreak—in 1764, when it was carried back by the returning servicemen from the French and Indian War, and in 1777, when it was probably likewise brought to the town by the extensive travel occasioned by the Revolution.

  The 1793 case was traced to a single individual, David Butler of Peterborough, New Hampshire. He was brought to Framingham by Abijah Parmenter, to whose wife Butler was related, in order to be treated for “dropsy” by Dr. Kittredge. After no improvement was seen, another doctor was sent for, who “scarified him, and drew away a considerable quantity of water.” Two weeks after this “treatment,” Butler came down with smallpox. Eventually seventeen people were afflicted, including Revolutionary War veteran Samuel Angier, whose remote Pleasant Street home was designated as a “pest house” by town officials in an attempt to quarantine the disease. In all, six people died, including Cyrus Woolson, who had served in the Revolution with Angier. The six victims were buried in a common grave near the home, far removed from the center of town, where they lay undisturbed for almost two hundred years. (Interestingly, a seventh person was buried alongside them—Nancy Coolidge, who had committed suicide, and therefore presumably could not have been buried in the consecrated ground of a normal graveyard.)

  In 1964, a local developer announced plans to build a subdivision on the old Thompson pasture where the graves were known to be located. Town Veterans Benefits officer John Murtaugh then enlisted the help of public works employee Alec Turner in finding the graves. Two stone markers commemorating the war service of Woolson and Angier were easily found, but these stones did not mark the actual burial site.

  After carefully scraping away thin layers of earth in the vicinity of the markers, the men began their search. In the end, they were able to find only two sets of remains. The bodies were reinterred in the Soldiers’ Lot at Edgell Grove Cemetery, although there was no way to determine whether they were actually the remains of the two soldiers.

  THE EDGELL GROVE CEMETERY

  Over the years, a number of other graveyards came into use in Framingham. The Old South Burying Ground was opened in 1824, Edwards Cemetery in Saxonville in 1829, St. George’s Cemetery (the first Catholic cemetery in town) in 1860 and St. Tarcisius in 1918, among others. Yet only one rises to historical significance based on its design and not only on the identities of the individuals buried there—the Edgell Grove Cemetery.

  In the nineteenth century, burial grounds began to be known by the more comforting term “cemetery,” from the Greek meaning “sleeping place.” Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, laid out in 1831, was the country’s first “garden” cemetery. Garden cemeteries were beautifully landscaped with park-like features such as ponds and ornamental trees, providing an Eden-like final resting place for the dead and a tranquil, inspirational spot for the living. In 1848, Framingham opened its own version of the garden cemetery at Edgell Grove. The cemetery was consecrated on October 13 of that year, an occasion marked by bands, the officiation of four ministers—Birdsey G. Northrup (Edwards Congregational Church in Saxonville), Increase N. Tarbox (Hollis Evangelical Society, now the Plymouth Church, Congregationalist), Chester Field (Methodist) and Jonathan Aldrich (Baptist)—all Protestants. There was also the singing of a special hymn written for the event by Elizabeth (Willard) Barry, the wife of William Barry, the town’s former minister and author of the town history published in 1847.

  The land had been procured from Colonel Moses Edgell, grandson of Simon Edgell, who had led a company of Minutemen to the Battle of Lexington and Concord. Moses Edgell, a founder of the Framingham Bank, the first in town in 1833, and later the Framingham Savings Bank in 1846, would later also provide funding for the Edgell Memorial Library at Framingham Centre. Another member of the original committee was Warren Nixon, the skilled draughtsman, surveyor and “runaway son” of Thomas Nixon. Both Edgell and Warren Nixon were buried here, along with the members of most of Framingham’s established families for the next one hundred years and beyond.

  Edgell Grove is normally the serene and beautiful environment envisioned by its planners, but it became a scene of chaos and devastation when the hurricane of 1938 toppled dozens of trees on its grounds. That storm was but the most destructive of many to hit Framingham over the years.

  THE “WHIRLWIND” OF 1741

  September 22, 1741, was the first recorded instance of a tornado striking Framingham. According to the Boston Weekly News-Letter, “a very severe Wind (or Whirlwind) hapned [sic] there, with Thunder, Lightning and Rain, the like not known in that Part of the Country; it took a large Piece of Timber of 40 Feet in length, and 13 Inches square lying on the upper side of a Bridge…and carried it some Distance…; and passing along to an Orchard it tore down 25 Apple Trees, and took off the Roof of a Barn, and broke down a great deal of the Fence” before proceeding to Sudbury.

  THE “HURRICANE” OF 1787

  On August 15, 1787, Middlesex County was hit by a storm of enormous strength and destructive power. While contemporary headlines speak of the “hurricane” that struck that day, the storm was most likely an unusually large and sustained tornado that developed over Hartford, Connecticut, before heading north and leaving ruined homes and fields in its wake.

  The tornado hit Framingham in the late afternoon, carving an eight-mile path of destruction in the northern part of town and destroying or severely damaging orchards, crops, fences, large trees, stone walls, houses and barns. The incredible power of the tornado is evidenced in the damage done to the home of two elderly sisters named Shattuck. After tearing the roof off the neighboring Fairbanks home, the powerful winds destroyed the home of the Shattucks, lifting Widow Shattuck and her sister out of the house and carrying them several hundred feet away, where they sustained serious injuries. Two children sleeping in the same home when the storm struck were found over three miles away, still slumbering peacefully on the featherbed that carried them on the wind. Witnesses also reported seeing a hay cart, complete with its team of oxen, load of hay and young driver, lifted into the air and carried over one hundred feet away before crashing to the ground. The “hurricane” plowed through several other towns before finally dissipating near Rochester, New Hampshire.

  THE “GREAT BLOW” OF 1815

  The “Great Blow” of September 23, 1815, is described in detail by Josiah Temple in his 1887 history of the town. The hurricane caused great damage not far from the Temple home and, although he was barely six months old at the time, the event was most certainly recorded and retold at Temple family gatherings for years to come. Large white pines several feet in diameter were snapped off and torn from the ground by the roots in a one-mile path taken by the storm. The storm caused considerable damage from Providence to New Hampshire. Steeples across New England were blown over and Boston’s waterfront was especially hard hit. The “Great Blow” would soon fade from memory, and no other hurricanes would hit the town for over 120 years.

  THE GREAT NORTHEAST HURRICANE OF 1938

  In September 1938, Framingham experienced a storm of such ferocity that even the reserved Reverend Swift would have been compelled to write a few sentences about it in his journal had he witnessed it. The Great Northeast Hurricane of 1938 was the most powerful and destructive storm to hit New England in modern history. Over 680 people were killed, and property damage reached $400 million. Although weather forecasting technology had advanced tremendously since the “Great Blow” of 1815, Framingham residents were no better prepared for this storm than their eighteenth- and nineteenth-century counterparts would have been. Some weather historians cite the incredible speed of the hurricane after passing North Carolina as a factor in the lack of preparedness. Others blame the U.S. Weather Bureau, which predicted the storm would head out to sea. Whatever the cause, the citizens of Framingham were taken by surprise when the onslaught began in the late afternoon of September 21.

  Throughout the night, eighty-sev
en-mile-per-hour winds tore up the town. Shortly after the storm began, a 230-foot radio antenna operated by the State Police was blown over. In Saxonville, the steeple of the Methodist church and the smokestack of the Roxbury Carpet Company were toppled. The Framingham Normal School’s May Hall lost its distinctive pitched roof and turrets, now seen only in old photos and on the town seal. The statue of the Civil War soldier that stands in front of the Edgell Memorial Library was knocked off its pedestal when a large maple tree fell on it. Roofs and windows of houses, churches and businesses were smashed and destroyed in large numbers. Miraculously, only fourteen storm-related injuries were reported at Framingham Union Hospital, none of them serious.

  It was the tree population in town that suffered the worst damage. A few days after the storm, the Public Works Department estimated that 4,500 trees had been felled in cemeteries, parks and along highways in Framingham. The number of trees lost on private property added to that total, with over 125,000,000 trees knocked down across the state. For the next few weeks, the sounds of axes and saws were heard in every neighborhood in town as the cleanup progressed. Firewood from the downed trees was later distributed to needy families by the Board of Public Welfare. Just one week after the storm, the Framingham News reported that things were getting back to normal with little evidence left that a hurricane had ever struck. But those who lived through this “Big Blow” would never forget its effects, and the loss of so many trees that had stood for decades would alter the town’s landscape forever.

  OTHER NOTABLE STORMS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

  Several other storms of note struck Framingham in the twentieth century. An ice storm in 1921 caused extensive destruction but created a surreal, almost dream-like landscape in the town. Hurricane Carol in August 1954 caused damage similar to the 1938 storm, but on a much smaller scale. Once again, roads flooded, storefronts and signs were smashed and hundreds of trees were felled, causing power outages. Hurricane Diane struck a year later, dumping a record twelve inches of rain on Framingham, flooding roads and homes in low-lying areas as well as along the Sudbury River and washing out several bridges. The Blizzard of 1978, a strong nor’easter, struck so swiftly that February that it led to the memorable image of hundreds if not thousands of abandoned cars buried in snow on Route 128. Locally, it brought traffic on the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 9 to a halt for days, as Framingham was virtually shut down along with the rest of eastern Massachusetts.