History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts - citizen hylbom blog

120 HISTOBY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY.
had not ceased to exist. In 1693 John Sprague
was chosen master, wliich position he filled, at
times, for nearly twenty years. In 1703 Ezekiel
Jenkins resumed the rod, and taught until his death
in 1705. His gravestone informs us that "Maul-
dens Late School Master From a Painfull Life is
Gone to Take His Eest His Lord Hath Called
Him Whome." Nathaniel Wayte also taught sev-
eral years, and was at times " Improued " as a
moderator of town-meetings. The salary of the
master in 1701 was fifteen pounds, and he was
afterwards granted a nominal sum and the " Bene-
fit of the Scolars." In 1703 the school was kept
"jn y' watch-hous," and under Ezekiel Jenkins it
was convened " at his one hous." Later, it was
held in houses in different parts of the town. In
1710 the town was presented "for not haueing a
gramar School as the Law directs " ; but, it appearing
that the inhabitants were "many of them
needy rather than Capable of Supporting a grainar
School," the complaint was dismissed " as to a
gramar School," and the selectmen were ordered
" to provide them selues of a good able sufficient
Schoolmaster to teach their Children to write and
Read." In consequence of this order the town
finally engaged Samuel Wigglesworth, a son of the
Rev. Michael Wigglesworth, who, during his two
years' residence here, practised medichie and studied
divinity in addition to his school labors. He was
afterwards settled as the minister at Ipswich Ham-
let, where he died after fifty-four years of service.
His diary, covering the period of his residence in
Maiden, is still in existence. The first school-
house, an edifice twenty feet long and sixteen feet
wide, was built in 171;i; and the next year the
town voted to use it " for a wach hous when ther
js an ocasion And nott To disoblige y' school jn s"*
house at aney time." After this there was much
trouble in keeping the teacher's place filled by a
suitable person, and the town was several times ar-
raigned for its neglect. For nearly forty years the
roll of masters is filled with the names of many
persons, who in tiieir brief seasons probably taught
with varying success, until, in 1781, the shoe-
maker, Nathaniel Jenkins, wlio had prepared for
the situation by a year's study at the parson-
age, assumed with hesitancy the houdrs of the
school-house. This was llic " Masicr .Iciikiiis"
of yore, who taught the ymiih nf M;ihlrn for
nearly a quarter of a century, and whose vigorous
metliods of enforcing discijjline led one who had
suff'ered under him to write in his old a^e, " The
aifiictions of my childhood were neither few nor
far between."
In the latter years of the seventeenth century
the town appears to have been free from the dis-
turbing infiuences which had embroiled and har-
assed its inhabitants in the early days of their ex-
istence as an independent church and municipality.
After the dismission of Mr. Cheever from the pas-
torate, and the recovery of Mr. "Wigglesworth's
health, a period of jDcace ensued ; and the quaint
records of the time are full of entries which indicate
a general advance in the prosperity which the sturdy
yeomanry were shaping out of the wilderness.
Roads were laid out or made more definite, commons
were surveyed and divided, church supplies
were voted, and regulations for the preservation
and advancement of morals and property were considered
and fixed. Moreover, the people of Maiden
were not wholly engrossed by the work ^\hich they
found to do within their own borders, but they
cheerfully assumed and bore their share of the bur-
den which the common weal imposed upon them.
In the diff'erences which at that early day existed
with the mother country, they were with the party
of liberty; and the name of their representative.
Captain John Wayte, soon after speaker of the
house of deputies, stands on the roll of honor
among those patriots who were denounced by the
infamous Edward Randolph in his " Articles of
high misdemeanour." Later, in 1689, the men
of IMalden were not unrepresented in the crowds
which, pouring from the country into the streets
of Boston, overthrew the government of Andros
and the authority of the Stuarts in New England.
Returning, they met in town-meeting ; and, call-
ing upon the charter officers, who had been dis-
placed by Andros in 1686, to resume their powers,
they promised and engaged to "aid and assist them
to the utmost of our Power with our Persons and
estates."
In the glo(un and terror of the days of 1692,
when the delusion and insanity which reached its
strongest development in Salem threatened to
spread over New England, the town, in the per-
sons of its inhabitants, did not wholly escape.
Elizabeth Fosdick of Maiden and Elizabeth Paine
of Mystic-Side were arrested and placed in Salem
jail on a charge of witchcraft practised on the
bodies of those much-bewitched young rejirobates,
Mercy Lewis and Mary AVarren of Salem Village.
Peter Tufts of Mystic-Side, who many times dur-
ing a long life appears in tiie court records as a