“Mr Felch is delivering a course of Phrenological Lectures”

Walton Felch was born in Royalston, Massachusetts, in 1790, youngest in a large family. Eventually his parents and some siblings moved to Vermont, forming the village of Felchville in Reading.

Walton Felch appears to have gone to work in one of Rhode Island’s early industrial mills as a teenager. Ambitious and eager for knowledge, he rose to management ranks. He then did something even more unusual, turning his experience into poetry.

In 1816 Felch published The Manufacturer’s Pocket-Piece, or, The Cotton-Mill Moralized: A Poem, with Illustrative Notes. The notes about how mills of this time really operated appear to have had more lasting value than the poetry.

Felch continued to write poetry his whole life. He composed verses on fire, the stars, his ancestors, and other topics. When he died, a big part of his legacy to his family was hundreds of unpublished poems.

The year before The Manufacturer’s Pocket-Piece appeared, Felch married Lydia Inman of Smithfield, Rhode Island. He was then listed as living in Attleboro, and the couple may soon have moved to Medway. Walton and Lydia had at least three children: Hiram (house builder and assessor who stayed in Massachusetts), Walton Cheever (trained as a printer, moved to California in the Gold Rush), and Sarah (married a man named Dunbar).

Walton Felch was living in Hubbardston in 1831 when he married again, to Mrs. Nancy Sullivan. By 1840 he was in the area of Oakham called Coldbrook Springs, and he was living there at the end of his life—but didn’t necessarily remain there the whole time.

Felch was certainly intellectually restive. He enjoyed the lyceum movement of the time, particularly the Barre Lyceum, right over the town line. He spoke there in 1834 on the subject of geology. The next year, he participated in a debate: “Does the strength of temptation lessen the turpitude of crime?” In 1837 he spoke on the costs and benefits of government-sponsored South Sea exploration.

One of Felch’s most consuming interests was grammar. In December 1834 he lectured on his “Architectural System of the English Grammar.” He then published A Comprehensive Grammar, Presenting Some New Views of the Structure of Language (1837) and Grammatical Primer: Comprising the Outlines of the Compositive System (1841). The Norfolk Democrat credited Felch with “a very amusing and instructive Lecture” on the topic in January 1840.

The Barre Gazette of 23 Feb 1838 signaled a new interest:

Oakham Lyceum Meets on Monday evening, the 26th inst. Lecture by Mr Felch on Phrenology.

Phrenology was a relatively new scientific pursuit—diagnosing people’s personalities, strengths, and deficits from the bumps on their skulls, usually as felt through through hair and skin. By the next year, Felch felt he had mastered it enough to publish A Phrenological Chart: And Table of Combinations.

On 15 Nov 1839 the Christian Freeman and Family Visitor of Waltham published this item:

Phrenological Lectures.

Mr Felch is delivering a course of Phrenological Lectures in Rumford Hall [shown above]. We perceive from letters in his possession, that he shares the confidence of Mr [George] Combe, and has given great satisfaction where he has lectured. He has not only read extensively on the science upon which he lectures, but is a close observer of mankind, and an original thinker. We were pleased and instructed by his lecture last Tuesday evening, which was the first of a course of six, to be delivered on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. Admission 12 1-2 cents each evening.

That expertise seems to have been enough to persuade the selectmen of Lincoln to let Felch take the skulls of two British soldiers killed on 19 Apr 1775 from the town’s old burying-ground. Indeed, according to Henry David Thoreau’s understanding, Felch actually had those skulls “dug up” particularly for his phrenological investigation.

TOMORROW: When Felch took his skulls to Concord.

Elisha Adams’s Admission

Last night author Nathaniel Philbrick and I talked about the Battle of Bunker Hill at Cambridge Forum. That was taped to make a radio show or podcast, and I’ll post the link when it’s ready.

In the meantime, here’s a record of something else happening that same day, 17 June 1775, from the Boston Public Library’s collection, made available through archive.org.

Whereas I having been Suspected to be unfriendly and inimical to the Just rights & Liberties of America & the Constitution of the Province, Being Sensible that by Some imprudent Conversation & Conduct I have Justly Caused Such Suspicions, & more Especially in my Selling a horse on the way from Acton to Charlston ferry, but a Day or 2 before the late Hostilities Commenced at Concord, & also by Conversation with Katherine wife of Jonathan Adams sd. Relating to the Negro Plan for killing woman Children &c, And being Sensable of my Imprudence therein Do freely Say, That with Regard to Selling sd. horse I Sincerely Declare that I had no thought nor intention any way, whatsoever to Assist & Enable the British forces then at Boston to march into the Country, Neither Did I think any thing but that the sd. horse was to have been Sent Directly to Deerfield. But as it is Strongly Suspected the sd. horse was made use of in the sd. Hostilities, I am Sorry I Sold sd. horse as I Did, And with Regard to my Conversation with mrs. Adams Relative to the Negro plan afore sd., Altho. I had no unfriendly intention, yet I Acknowledg the sd. Conversation & Answers then made to Mrs. Adams Justly Aggravated the Suspicions Afore sd., and that thereby I manifested an unfriendly inhumane Disposition, for which unadvised Conduct I ask the forgiveness of my Neighbours & acquaintances & of Neighbour Adams & wife in Particular.

Elisha Adams
June 17 1775

Recreating the background of this document is a bit uncertain since there were so many families named Adams in Medway, where it’s from. But it looks like Elisha Adams (1719-1781) had been a big man in town: deacon, town clerk, and often selectman. He was Medway’s representative in the Massachusetts General Court for several years in the 1760s, but Jeremiah Adams had won that seat and held it since 1769.

Elisha’s neighbor Jonathan Adams (1737-1814) was some sort of cousin a generation younger. He may have recently become a selectman, or that might be another member of the same family.

In any event, Elisha Adams seems to have been less enthusiastic about the uprising against the royal government than his neighbors, and to have spread alarmist rumors about a slave revolt. There were similar alarms at other times in 1774 and 1775 with very little evidence behind them—it was simply a common fear in a slaveholding society. Other folks in Medway in turn assumed the worst about how Adams had sold his horse.

On 8 June Elisha Adams had signed another document declaring that he felt Parliament’s new laws were unconstitutional and that he would support the Continental Congress’s plans to counteract them. But the town’s committee of correspondence and selectmen evidently wanted a more specific admission of fault, hence this document.

All the Adamses remained in Medway during the war. Elisha paid a higher-than-average amount to maintain soldiers, presumably substitutes for himself or family members. He died in Medway in 1781 and is buried there.

Mystery and Myth in Millis

A regional section of the Boston Globe recently reported on a talk by Paul LaCroix, president of the Millis Historical Society, about archeological explorations of a site called the Fairbanks Stone House. The property extends over the border to Sherborn.

The newspaper states:

Town records indicated that the Stone House, built in the 1640s as a garrison during a Native American uprising, was torn down in the late 1800s but its exact location was undocumented. . . .

LaCroix found large amounts of slag in addition to the 3-by-3-foot stone foundation of a “bloomery,” the type of furnace used in the 17th century for smelting iron. British policy at that time did not allow the independent manufacturing of products, requiring that all raw resources be exported from the Colonies.

Yet the sheer amount of iron found and the absence of any other iron works in the area indicate that the Stone House bloomery was open from as early as 1643 to as late as 1760, when the property became uninhabited. The first official integrated iron-production operation in North America, the Saugus Iron Works in Saugus, was in operation from 1646 to 1688. The existence of this bloomery in Millis is significant in understanding Colonial industrial activity.

The end of the article quotes LaCroix this way: “I’m not an archaeologist, I’m a history buff,” LaCroix said. “But I learned the hard way, and now I’m a fair hand at it.”

LaCroix did the digging with “family members, community volunteers and the expertise of local archaeologists and surveyors.” However, the article doesn’t include comments from any full-time archeologists or historians. I’d be interested in knowing what they think of those conclusions.

Millis also claims a tavern where George Washington stopped on his way to Cambridge in 1775, shown above. This is apparently based on an unsourced statement by the Rev. E. O. Jameson in The History of Medway, Mass., 1713-1885, published in 1886. (Millis had been East Medway until that year.) Jameson wrote that Moses Richardson (1740-1826) had “kept a public house on the old Mendon Road, where George Washington dined on his way to Cambridge, Mass., in 1775.”

Gen. Washington’s visit seems unlikely since he traveled from Springfield through Worcester to Watertown, and that road didn’t go through Medway/Millis. Washington’s journey away from Cambridge in 1776 took him through Providence, so he probably didn’t see Richardson’s tavern then, either. (See maps here.)