AUSTIN BACON AND OLIVER N. BACON OF NATICK

Transcription

1 AUSTIN BACON AND OLIVER N. BACON OF NATICK AUSTIN BACON OLIVER N. BACON [George Partridge] Bradford [a Brook Farmer from Plymouth], [the Reverend John Lewis] Russell [of Salem], and Austin Bacon of Natick are acknowledged in the preface to George B. Emerson s report on the trees and shrubs of Massachusetts. This preface approximates a directory of Massachusetts botanists in Austin Bacon ( ) was a surveyor-naturalist. Thoreau paid a visit to him on August 24, 1857, and was shown a number of Natick s botanical highlights. Thoreau s interest in Natick no doubt arose from his reading of Oliver N. Bacon s HISTORY OF NATICK, which included a list of unusual plants (January 19, 1856, JOURNAL). Ray Angelo, Thoreau as Botanist NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Bacons of Natick

2 1813 February 4, Thursday: Austin Bacon was born in Natick, Massachusetts to Jonathan Bacon ( ) and Submit Bacon ( ). Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS 5th day 4th of 2nd M / Our Meeting was small but I thought favor d to me however it was a season of life tho towards the last of it was somewhat tried with roving. C R had a few words to communicate which felt savory. Many friends were absent at Providence to attend the Quarterly Meeting whom I have often thought of & should have been glad to have been with, but such are my circumstances & situation that I cannot do as my inclination leads CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Bacons of Natick Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

3 1854 June 14, Wednesday: Henry Thoreau was visited by another amateur botanist, Austin Bacon of Natick, and they walked to Concord s limekiln. [George Partridge] Bradford [of Plymouth, a Brook Farmer], [the Reverend John Lewis] Russell [of Salem], and Austin Bacon of Natick are acknowledged in the preface to George B. Emerson s report on the trees and shrubs of Massachusetts. This preface approximates a directory of Massachusetts botanists in Austin Bacon ( ) was a surveyor-naturalist. Thoreau paid a visit to him on August 24, 1857, and was shown a number of Natick s botanical highlights. Thoreau s interest in Natick no doubt arose from his reading of Oliver N. Bacon s HISTORY OF NATICK, which included a list of unusual plants (January 19, 1856, JOURNAL). Ray Angelo, Thoreau as Botanist On page 2 of the New York Daily Times appeared an article about steamboating on the upper Mississippi River, identified only as by a special correspondent, W : Perhaps you have beheld such sublimity in dreams, but surely never in daylight walking elsewhere in this wonderful world. Over one hundred and fifty miles of unimaginable fairy-land, genii-land, and world of visions, have we passed during the last twenty-four hours... Throw away your guide books; heed not the statements of travelers; deal not with seekers after and retailers of the picturesque; believe on man, but see for yourself the Mississippi River above Dubuque. 1 June 14. Pm to Lime kiln with Mr Bacon of Natic Sisymbrium amphibium (?) of Big. some days at foot of Loring s land. Common Mallows well out how long? What is that sisymbrium or Mustard-like plant at foot of Loring s? Erigeron strigosum?? out earliest say yesterday >>> Observed a ribwort near Simon Brown s barn by road with elongated spikes & only pistillate flowers Hedge mustard how long? Pepper grass how long sometime Scirpus lactustris maybe some days. I see a black caterpillar on the black willows nowadays with red spots. Mr Bacon thinks that cherry birds are abundant where canker worms are says that only female mosquitoes sting (not his observation alone) That there is one or two arbor vitae s native in Natic He has found the lygodium palmatum there Pearl I think he called her. He thought those the exuviae of mosquitoes on the river weeds under water Makes his own microscopes & uses garnets He called the huckleberry apple a parasitic plant pterospora which grows on & changes the nature of the huckleberry. Observed a diseased andromed paniculata twig prematurely in blossom Caught a locust properly Harvest-fly (cicada) drumming on a birch which Bacon & Hill (of Waltham) think like the septemdecim except that ours has not red eyes, but black ones. Harris s other kind the Dog day Cicada (canicularis) or harvest fly He says it begins to be heard invariably at the beginning of Dog days he Harris heard it for many years in succession with few exceptions on the 25th of July. Bacon says he has seen pitch pine pollen in a cloud going over a hill a mile off is pretty sure 1. Notice, please, that this is precisely the steamboat adventure upon which Thoreau would embark during May 1861, in order to approach Minnesota.

4 1856 We have here what is right now something of a minor mystery. Thoreau would go around inspecting the local botany with Natick botanist and surveyor Austin Bacon, but then when he would read about Natick in this year, he would read not Austin Bacon s book about Natick but Oliver N. Bacon s book. Both these books were published, however, in this year. So, why was that? (The answer may well be straightforward, since Thoreau had done this reading by January 19th. It may be simply that the work by Austin had not as yet have made its way through the printing presses in Boston, or it may be simply that the work by Oliver was so very much more extensive that it was for Thoreau a preferable source. The issue is uncompelling and merely indicates a part of the investigation that has not yet been put to bed.) In Boston during this year, S.D. Hosmer, Daniel Wight, and Austin Bacon s HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF NATICK was published, HISTORY OF THE TOWN and also Oliver N. Bacon and Samuel Hunt s A HISTORY OF NATICK, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT IN 1651 TO THE PRESENT TIME: WITH NOTICES OF THE FIRST WHITE FAMILIES, AND ALSO AN ACCOUNT OF THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, OCT. 16, 1851, REV. MR. [SAMUEL] HUNT S ADDRESS AT THE CONSECRATION OF DELL PARK CEMETERY, &C., &C., &C. (Damrell & Moore, printers). A HISTORY OF NATICK Here is what Oliver N. Bacon had to say about himself in the pages of this book: he had been teaching while preparing himself for the law and had recently hung out his shingle as a lawyer in this town. ATTORNEYS AT LAW. But very few of this class of citizens have ever made Natick their place of residence, the town clerks having done the greater part of the business appropriately belonging to that profession. But it is probable that gentlemen of the profession in neighboring towns have not been losers by this fact just mentioned. It is usually attributed to the peaceable disposition of the people, and a regard for their own welfare. Ira Cleavland was the first of the profession who opened an office in the place; but not obtaining sufficient encouragement, he soon after removed to Dedham, where he has since been engaged in a successful practice. John W. Bacon entered the practice here in He was born in Natick in the year 1818, July 12, graduated at Harvard College in He received his legal education in the law school at Cambridge, and in the office of Charles T. Russell, Esq., Boston. He was admitted to the Bar in 1846, and has since been endeavoring to persuade the citizens of Natick that the strict enforcement of law, in most cases, is the best method of securing permanent peace and prosperity. Benjamin F. Ham has been in the practice in this place for the

5 last three years. He was born at Farmington, County of Strafford, and State of New Hampshire, July 2, He studied law with John W. Bacon, Esq., was admitted to the Bar at the March term of the Court of Common Pleas, holden at Concord, Oliver N. Bacon has just opened an office here. He has been engaged for several seasons as a teacher; studied law a portion of the term in the office of John W. Bacon, Esq., the remainder in that of Lyman Mason, Esq., in Boston. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Bacons of Natick Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

6 1839 November 10, Sunday: Austin Bacon of Natick, Massachusetts got married with Nancy Coolidge (May 25, January 22, 1905). The couple would produce Theoda C. [Coolidge?] Bacon in 1840 and Lucy Ann Bacon in THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Bacons of Natick

7 January 19, Saturday: The great elm in from of postmaster Charles B. Davis s house in Concord was chopped down, as explained in Henry Thoreau s journal: Davis and the neighbors were much alarmed by the creaking in the late storms, for fear it would fall on their roofs. It stands two or three feet into Davis s yard Four men, cutting at once, began to fell the big elm at 10 A.M., went to dinner at 12, and got through at 2:30 P.M. They used a block and tackle with five balls, fastened to the base of a buttonwood, and drawn by a horse... The tree was so sound I think it might have lived fifty years longer; but Mrs. Davis said that she would not like to spend another such a week at the last before it was cut down. Afterwards, Thoreau would write: I have attended the felling and, so to speak, the funeral of this old citizen of the town... (we note that someone has planted another elm in place of that old tree, on the east side of the Concord Art Center). Thoreau for the 10th time (Dr. Bradley P. Dean has noticed) deployed in his journal a weather term that had been originated by Luke Howard: There were eight or ten courses of clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of blue sky they occupied the whole width of the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky. Thoreau made a reference to Natick, Massachusetts and to Oliver N. Bacon s and Samuel Hunt s A HISTORY OF NATICK, FROM ITS FIRST SETTLEMENT IN 1651 TO THE PRESENT TIME: WITH NOTICES OF THE FIRST WHITE FAMILIES, AND ALSO AN ACCOUNT OF THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION, OCT. 16, 1851, REV. MR. HUNT S ADDRESS AT THE CONSECRATION OF DELL PARK CEMETERY, &C... A HISTORY OF NATICK January 19: Another bright winter day. P.M. To river to get some water asclepias to see what birds nests are made of. The only open place in the river between Hunt s Bridge and the railroad bridge is a small space against Merrick s pasture just below the Rock. 2 As usual, just below a curve, in shallow water, with the added force of 2. Hubbard s Bridge and, I have no doubt. Lee s Bridge, as I learned in my walk the next day.

8 BOTANIZING the Assabet. The willow osiers of last year s growth on the pollards in Shattuck s row, Merrick s pasture, from four to seven feet long, are perhaps as bright as in the spring, the lower half yellow, the upper red, but they are a little shriveled in the bark. Measured against the great elm in front of Charles Davis s on the Boston road, which he is having cut down. The chopper, White, has taken off most of the limbs and just begun, tried his axe, on the foot of the tree. He will probably fall it on Monday, or the 21st. At the smallest place between the ground and the limbs, seven feet from the ground, it is fifteen feet and two inches in circumference; at one foot from the ground on the lowest side, twenty-three feet and nine inches. White is to have ten dollars for taking off the necessary limbs and cutting it down merely, help being found him, He began on Wednesday. Davis and the neighbors were much alarmed by the creaking in the late storms, for fear it would fall on their roofs. It stands two or three feet into Davis s yard. As I came home through the village at 8.15 P.M., by a bright moonlight, the moon nearly full and not more than 18 from the zenith, the wind northwest, but not strong, and the air pretty cold, I saw the melon-rind arrangement of the clouds on a larger scale and more distinct than ever before. There were eight or ten courses of clouds, so broad that with equal intervals of blue sky they occupied the whole width of the heavens, broad white cirro-stratus in perfectly regular curves from west to east across the whole sky. The four middle ones, occupying the greater part of the visible cope, were particularly distinct. They were all as regularly arranged as the lines on a melon, and with much straighter sides, as if cut with a knife. I hear that it attracted the attention of those who were abroad at 7 P.M., and now, at 9 P.M., it is scarcely less remarkable. On one side of the heavens, north or south, the intervals of blue look almost black by contrast. There is now, at nine, a strong wind from the northwest. Why do these bars extend cast and west? Is it the influence of the sun, which set so long ago? or of the rotation of the earth? The bars which I notice so often, morning and evening, are apparently connected with the sun at those periods, In Oliver N. Bacon s History of Natick, page 235, it is said that, of phænogamous plants, upwards of 800 species were collected from Natick soil in three years time, by 11 single individual. I suspect it was Bacon the surveyor. There is given a list of those which are rare in that vicinity. Among them are the following which I do not know to grow here: Actæa rubra (W.), 3 Asclepias tuberosa, 4 Alopecurus pratensis, 5 Corallorhiza odontorhiza (?) (Nutt.), Drosera filiformis (Nutt.), Ledum latifolium, 6 Malaxis lilifolia (W.) (what in Gray?), Sagina procumbens. 7 Among these rare there but common here are Calla Virginica, Glecoma hederacea, Iris prismatica, Lycopus Virginicus, Mikania scandens, Prunus borealis, Rhodora Canadensis, Xyris aquatica, Zizania aquatica. They, as well as we, have Equisetum hyemale, Kalmia glauca, Liatris scariosa, Ulmus fulva, Linnæa borealis, Pyrola maculata, etc., etc. Bacon quotes White, who quotes Old Colony Memorial account of manners and customs, etc., of our ancestors. Bacon says that the finest elm in Natick stands in front of Thomas F. Hammond s house, and was set out about the year The trunk, five feet from the ground, measures fifteen and a half feet. G. Emerson gives it different account, q.v. Observed within the material of a robin s nest, this afternoon, a cherry-stone. Gathered some dry water milkweed stems to compare with the materials of the bird s nest [Yellow Warbler Dendroica petechia] of the 18th. The bird used, I am almost certain, the fibres of the bark of the stem, not the pods, just beneath the epidermis; only the bird s is older and more fuzzy and finer, like worn twine or string. The fibres and bark have otherwise the same appearance under the microscope. I stripped off some bark about one sixteenth of an inch wide and six inches long and, separating ten or twelve fibres from the epidermis, rolled it in my fingers, making a thread about the ordinary size. This I could not break by direct pulling, and no man could. I doubt if a thread of flax or hemp of the same size could be made so strong. What an admirable material for the Indian s fish-line! I can easily get much longer fibres. I hold a piece of the dead weed in my hands, strip off a narrow shred of the bark before my neighbor s eyes and separate ten or twelve fibres as fine as hair, roll them in my fingers, and offer him the thread to try its strength. He is surprised and mortified to find that he cannot break it. Probably both the Indian and the bird discovered for themselves this same (so to call it) wild hemp. The corresponding fibres of the mikania seem not so divisible, become not so fine and fuzzy; though somewhat similar, are not nearly so strong. I have a hang-bird s nest from the riverside, made almost entirely of this, in narrow shreds or strips with the epidermis on, wound round and round the twigs and woven into a 3. Found since. 4. Probably here. 5. Found since. 6. Found since. 7. Found since.

9 basket. That is, this bird has used perhaps the strongest fibres which the fields afforded and which most civilized men have not detected. Knocked down the bottom of that summer yellowbird s nest made on the oak at the Island last summer. It is chiefly of fern wool and also, apparently, some sheep s wool(?), with a fine green moss (apparently that which grows on button-bushes) inmixed, and some milkweed fibre, and all very firmly agglutinated together. Some shreds of grape-vine bark about it. Do not know what portion of the whole nest it is.

10 1857 August 24, Monday: Henry Thoreau visited Austin Bacon and schmoozed and botanized with him in Natick. The New-York branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company failed, initiating a general financial panic. On October 3d there would be a sharp increase of withdrawals, and over the next few days withdrawals would nearly quadruple. Reports of financial instability, perhaps overstated, were being quickly communicated across the country by telegraph. The public s faith in the solvency of financial institutions would continue to sour, leading to a run on the banks and a collapse of financial institutions throughout the nation. The climax would arrive on October 14th with suspension of banking services throughout New England. A total of 4,932 US firms would be forced out of business during this economic crisis, now referred to as The Panic of The family of Richard Hildreth would be virtually wiped out. He would need to return to full-time journalism, as a writer and editor for the voice of the emerging Republican Party, Horace Greeley s New-York Tribune. His final years would be plagued by illness, discouragement, poverty, and increasing deafness and yet these Republicans would be interested in what he still had to offer. August 24, Monday: A.M. Ride to Austin Bacon s, Natick. On the left hand, just this side the centre of Wayland, I measure the largest, or northernmost, of two large elms standing in front of an old house. At four feet from the ground, where, looking from one side, is the smallest place between the ground and the branches, it is seventeen feet in circumference, but there is a bulge on the north side for five feet upward. At five feet it divides to two branches, and each of these soon divides again. A. Bacon showed me a drawing apparatus which he said he invented, very simple and convenient, also CYPRESS microscopes and many glasses for them which he made. Showed me an exotic called cypress, which he said had spread from the cemetery over the neighboring fields. Did not know what it was. Is it not Euphorbia Cyparissias? and does it not grow by the north roadside east of Jarvis s? 8 I measured a scarlet oak northeast of his house, on land of the heirs of John Bacon, which at seven feet from the ground, or the smallest place below the branches, was ten feet eight inches in circumference, at one foot from ground sixteen and one fourth feet in circumference. It branched at twelve feet into three. Its trunk tapered or lessened very gradually and regularly from the ground to the smallest place, after the true Eddystone Lighthouse fashion. It has a large and handsome top, rather high than spreading (spreads about three and a half rods), but the branches often dead at the ends. This has grown considerably since Emerson measured; vide his account. Bacon says that E. pronounced it the largest oak in the State. Showed us an elm on the north side of the same field, some ten feet in circumference, which he said was as large in 1714, his grandmother having remembered it nearly so long. There was a dead Rhus radicans on it two inches in diameter. 8.Also at J. Moore s front yard.

11 In the meadow south of this field, we looked for the Drosera filiformis, which formerly grew there, but could not find it. Got a specimen of very red clover, said to be from the field of Waterloo, in front of the house near the schoolhouse on the hill. Returned eastward over a bare hill with some walnuts on it, formerly called Pine Hill, from whence a very good view of the new town of Natick. On the northeast base of this hill Bacon pointed out to me what he called Indian corn-hills, in heavy, moist pasture ground where had been a pine wood. The hillocks were in irregular rows four feet apart which ran along the side of the hill, and were much larger than you would expect after this lapse of time. I was confident that if Indian, they could not be very old, perhaps not more than a century or so, for such could never have been made with the ancient Indian hoes, clamshells, stones, or the like, but with the aid of plows and white men s hoes. Also pointed out to me what he thought the home site of an Indian squaw marked by a buckthorn bush by the wall.these hillocks were like tussocks with lichens thick on them, and B. thought that the rows were not running as a white man[ s] with furrow.we crossed the road which runs east and west, and, in the low ground on the south side, saw a white oak and a red maple, each forty or fifty feet high, which had fairly grown together for three or more feet upward from the ground. Also, near by, a large white ash which though healthy bore a mark or scar where a branch had been broken off and stripped down the trunk. B. said that one of his ancestors, perhaps his grandfather, before the Revolution, went to climb this tree, and reached up and took hold of this branch, which he stripped down, and this was the scar! Under the dead bark of this tree saw several large crickets of a rare kind. They had a peculiar naked and tender look, with branched legs and a rounded incurved front. Red cohosh grows along a wall in low ground close by. We ascended a ridge hill northeast of this, or east by south of Bacon s house, on the north end of which Squaw Poquet, as well as her father, who was a powwow, before her, lived. Bacon thought that powwows commonly withdrew at last to the northeast side of a hill and lived alone. We saw the remains of apple trees in the woods, which she had planted. B. thought apple trees did not now grow so large in New England as formerly, that they only grew to be one foot in diameter and then began to decay, whereas they formerly grew to be two or three and even sometimes four feet in diameter. The Corallorhiza multiflora was common in these woods, and out. The Galium circæzans leaves taste very much like licorice and, according to B., produce a great flow of water, also make you perspire and are good for a cold. We came down northward to the Boston and Worcester turnpike, by the side of which the Malaxis liliifolia grows, though we did not find it. We waded into Coos Swamp on the south side the turnpike to find the ledum, but did not succeed. B. is sure it grows there. This is a large swamp with a small pond, or pond-hole, in the midst and the usual variety of shrubs. I noticed small spruces, high blueberry, the water andromeda, rhodora, Vaccinium dumosum (hairy) ripe, Kalmia glauca, Decodon verticillatus, etc. B. says that the arbor-vitæ grows indigenously in pretty large patches in Needham; that Cochituate Pond is only between three and four miles long, or five including the meadows that are flowed, yet it has been called even ten miles long. B. gave me a stone with very pretty black markings like jungermannias, from a blasting on the aqueduct in Natick. Some refer it to electricity. According to Guizot at the Montreal meeting the other day, Mt. Washington is 6285 feet above high-water mark at Portland. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Bacons of Natick

12 1878 Oliver N. Bacon died, leaving in his will a bequest to the community that would become in 1881 the Bacon Free Library located at 58 Eliot Street in South Natick, Massachusetts overlooking the Charles River. The Natick Historical Society resides in the lower portion of the building, and entrance is free. Among the collections is an exceedingly rare copy of the Indian Bible of the 17th-Century missionary, the Reverend John Eliot, founder of the Natick Indian Community. Also included in the archives are some of the possessions of historical Natick residents such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, Horatio Alger, Jr., and Henry Wilson, 20th Vice- President of the United States of America (entrance to these archives will cost you a 1-day fee of $10). DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Bacons of Natick Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

13 1880 Publication of the 2d volume of Samuel Adams Drake s HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, containing quite a bit of information about Natick and other Massachusetts towns: MIDDLESEX TOWNS II

14 1888 April 13, Friday: Austin Bacon died in Natick, Massachusetts. MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Bacons of Natick

15 COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this read-only computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace resulting in navigation problems allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: April 27, 2014

16 ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot Laura (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.

17 Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.