In transcribing this manuscript talk, Judge Keyes’s idiosyncratic capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and syntax have for the most part been preserved.
The Middlesex Hotel not only the old ruin now so fairly in the course of demolition, but the predecessor on the same site may well claim a little attention as antiquities before they pass into oblivion.
The Wright tavern on the common, and the Jones tavern on the main street, answered the needs of Concord for public houses, till after the revolution. Then in 1790, the building a new Court House, and a new County Jail on the square, induced John Richardson to build the brick house now occupied by the Catholic Priest, and open it as a hotel. The main partition between the rooms on the lower floor and on the second story, were made with panelled frames, and hung on hinges at the tops, so they could be swung up to the ceilings and thus converted into large halls for dinners and dances.
But this tho. fine was not the Middlesex Hotel and as the county owned the house and lot next south, using it for the jailers residence, Richardson swapped with the county giving the new brick tavern for a county house, and taking the old county house and the corner lot, on which he proceeded to build the Middlesex Hotel. This like its successor was a three story structure of about the same dimensions, and covering very nearly the same place on the lot. It had a rounded corner on the southeast, which gave to the bar room on the ground floor, and to the public room over that, and to the dance hall in the third story a pleasant feature as will be seen by looking at the picture in our collection. Projecting over this rounded corner was a copper globe with the name of the hotel on it, and a lantern that lighted up the access to the South door, and the barn drive way.
The bar room was warmed by a huge stove in the centre, in which great logs of wood were burned, giving a glow of brightness to the circle of teamsters and tipplers that sat about it, and the loggerheads for mixing & heating the mugs of flip were kept red hot in the coal of the stove.
The dining room was on the South West corner of the main floor connecting with the Kitchen, and private dining rooms and reception parlors for private parties and the officers of the Courts, were in the North East corner of this floor. The public room over the bar room was used by the more respectable of the citizens and town officials for a resort for business, and drinks, that in those days were a necessity of every meeting of committees &c., before their purpose could be accomplished.
Whether this was built entirely of new material, or from that of the two dwelling houses standing on this lot at the time of the Revolution, does not appear. Probably these were removed, though they may have been torn down and the lumber of them used in building the hotel. The well from which these were supplied still exists, covered up, but in frosty mornings can sometimes be traced by the thawing of the circle over it. These houses are conspicuous in the wood cuts of the British raid here, on the 19th of April 1775.
A good story illustrative of this drinking habit is told of one of the earliest temperance lectures given in the old Court House by Nathan Brooks, Esq. the father of Judge Brooks. This was about 1815 and the committee of citizens who invited him to speak headed by the minister adjourned after the lecture to this Public room at the Middlesex, and sent for Mr. Brooks to join them. Thanking him warmly for his eloquence and sense in the lecture, they requested a copy for publication, and ordered more mugs of flip while they discussed the question of printing. Seeing the effect of his lecture in the beaming countenances of the committee, as they sipped their flips about the table, Mr. Brooks declined to furnish the copy, as this was a result he had not anticipated from his temperance address, and the world lost the chance of reading what might have been wittier than this story.
The dance hall, of the most interest to the youngsters of the Town, was at the south end of the third story. It occupied one half of that floor, was rounded on the end over the bar room, opened directly at the head of the main Stairway, had a dressing room at the east and west sides and a gallery for the music at the south west corner. Stairs to this gallery enclosed a closet the doors of which were made of small panes of mirrors set in sashes, giving a pretty and useful feature to this the head of the hall. On each side sconces for candles hung with reflectors behind the candles, exact patterns of the … reflectors of the present day, and made of bits of mirror set in circles. The originals, perhaps less scientific but the brightest objects of the decorations. The cannon of the Artillery Co. now or soon to be reposing in the new hall of the State House, were laboriously got up to this hall for the military balls, and stood on their muzzles, framing a most elaborate military trophy.
John Richardson who built this Middlesex Hotel opened it, and kept it for several years, during which he furnished meals to the prisoners in the new county jail. The kitchen of the hotel was quite as handy for feeding the prisoners as that of the county house, then occupied by the Sheriff of the County.
After John Richardson as Landlord of the hotel, we hear of a Major Paine who had served in the revolution, and would harbor and treat handsomely any of the Soldiers of the Revolution who came to it. To hear their good stories of the Revolution the Doctor, Lawyer and Minister would be invited in, and the public room up stairs could have repeated many wonderful tales had it possessed a phonograph.
Several other Landlords successfully occupied the hotel, one of them a very quiet sedate man whose son a wild youth had brought home from the East Indies a monkey, that basked by the big stove in the bar room in the cold weather. One day some rogue of a teamster hitched the loggerhead to the tail of the monkey asleep by the fire. Something startled the monkey, who made a spring swinging the hot loggerhead around the room in his fright, and smashing all the glasses bottles & decanters off the bar in one grand smash much to the alarm and danger of those present. When the monkey was released and quiet was restored, the Landlord remarked “I say Tilly … ”
Richardson remained the owner till 1825, when he sold the estate to Thomas D. Wesson and Gershom Fay, who together kept the hotel for a couple of years, when Fay sold out to Wesson, who continued his occupation till the fire.
By this time the Dancing School taught in both summer and winter, in the hall of the Middlesex had become the most interesting to the younger set of all the functions. The teacher for seven years a Mr. Simpson who played the fiddle for the music & taught the steps, bow in hand & practicing the deportment he claimed to teach. The lads and ladies arranged on appropriate sides of the hall, perhaps a score of each sex, were given cards numbered in order, and when Gentleman & Lady … were called by the teacher each stood up & took their places on the floor. There was no changing of partners, and every one had their share of the exercises.
Contra Dances were the favorite, and no such wickedness as round dances was permitted. A single cotillion was perhaps taught, in a session of the school, but there were neither quadrilles nor the Lancers.
To the last half of the lessons of a term, the older scholars of previous seasons were admitted, on payment of half price, perhaps $1 or $2, and a little more freedom allowed. The Landlords daughter a graceful dancer and a friend of hers received extra instruction on fancy steps and dancing, and made a feature of the Exhibition ball at the close of the School.
The military balls of the Artillery Co. and the more select private parties got up on special occasions, has much prominence in the gaiety of the hotel, with their elaborate suppers in the dancing rooms, and their full bands of music, and at these there were no round dances & but few cotillions, the figures of the contra dances being called by the prompter of the musicians.
The daily life of the Hotel went on, the teams of the better class put up there nights, their loaded wagons sheltered in the wide driveway of the spacious barns. The stages carrying the daily mail, leaving Boston at an early hour in the morning, stopped to change the mail at the Post Office in the green store, where the Catholic church now stands, then drove up to the hotel where the horses were changed. The passengers hungry or thirsty or both got a breakfast, and something hot with or before it, and went on their routes refreshed. About eleven o’clock an exodus of working men from the shops on the mill dam filed to the hospitable bar room for their grog or toddy, for every one drank then, & there were no license laws that interfered. Dinner was served to the travellers by private conveyances, and the regular boarders. Again at 4 P.M. the same thirsty files sought the bar, and the toddy stick crunched the lump sugar & stirred the rum with a pleasant sound. The Courts in 1825 and for years afterward were an important feature of the life of the Town, and of the Middlesex Hotel. The Common Pleas began the year by the March Term, with its Grand Jury for criminal cases and its other juries for civil cases filling the hotel with the lawyers, clients, witnesses, and court officers for two or 3 weeks, and sitting till the jail was cleared of all the more common and ordinary criminals. This was followed in April by a term of the Supreme Judicial Court, at which more important civil and criminal cases were tried, including the capital trials of the numerous offences, then punishable by death. Then in June the Common Pleas held another even longer term than the March with a larger attendance on its sessions and more of a crowd at the hotel. But the September Term of this Court was the crowning glory of the year. On all the farms in the county the corn stocks must be cut, and the haying finished, or the hired men and boys could not attend September Court. The Middlesex & the other taverns couldn’t hold the crowd. Booths for the sale of liquors food, and other articles lined the Common interspersed with shows and gambling & rowdy saloons, and horse racing over the causeway, now Lowell St. went on daily and nightly till the fun and uproar became fast and furious. Sometimes the rows and fights and tumults became too offensive, and the Court would adjourn till the Sheriff and deputies with the jurors &c. for a posse, would sally forth to put down the riot and arrest the ringleaders to be tried the nex[t] day for the disturbance.
One used to the quiet of the Middlesex in these last years, can hardly imagine the lively crowd that thronged its rooms, & surged through its halls at September Court. Old Wesson the Landlord always said he could pay his keep [?] for the year, from the profit to the house of three days each season, this court day in Sept.[,] the county cattle show, and the convention day of the political parties, these always held there for the county offices.
At each of these occasions every room in the hotel would be occupied, meals would be served every hour, the bar with half a dozen special attendants, would be filled with thirsty or drunken customers. Every stall in the stables, and long lines of posts down to the Mill Brook occupied by horses, while the carriages in close ranks were wheeled out in front of the hotel on the common, leaving only narrow roads through for travellers and late comers. Of a fine day more than 300 of these chaises wagons and carriages, could be counted on the green, while twice that number of their occupants were entertained in the hotel.
This prosperous tavern keeping lasted a dozen years till the temperance movement procured the passage of the ‘15 gallon law’ so called, and the relations between the hotel and the authorities became strained, not to say hostile. Prosecutions were begun, and carried on with much zeal but without much success. The bar room became less openly patronized, but the thirsty could always find in some quiet corner, or closet, the wherewithal they sought, and the [----] of Uncle Tom, as Mr. Wesson was universally called generally failed to convict, for want of sufficient evidence.
He was a popular landlord, except to the temperance reformers, a good neighbour, easy going, indolent, and the victim of many practical jokes from his comrades, especially Capt. Moore the jailer next door. The captain’s favorite one was to rush up to the bar when Uncle Tom was busy, and ask him to change a bill for five quarters. This in numerous instances would be done without thought, and when discovered by the brags of the Capt., or the laugh of the bystanders, would be settled over a drink all round, and be repeated at a favorable opportunity.
A Mr. Patch who kept for a time the Jones Tavern on the Main Street wanting a big tub for a horse trough at his pump applied to Capt. Moore for one which the Capt. furnished, but declined to take any pay for it, saying he [would] call occasionally with a friend and get a drink by way of interest on the tub. After Patch left the Jones tavern he was employed by Mr. Wesson at court times as bartender of the Middlesex, and during the Term Capt. Moore insisting that the interest on that tub was still due would get together several of his brother officers and call on Patch for the drinks on that old account. This preposterous claim was submitted to by Mr. Wesson, and the bar-tender would produce the liquor of the Middlesex to the thirsty crowd. This went on for several seasons till Uncle Tom or Patch getting tired of the extortion for that old tub which would have been filled by the liquor drank as interest on it decided on taking strenuous measures to end it. On the final call of Capt. Moore for the interest, either the liquor set out was of unwatered strength, or in some way doctored so that the Captain took more than he could carry and when the bout was over he was unable to to get to his house at the next door. What should done? Some of the party procured the big clothes basket for soiled clothes. The Capt. a short stout man was tumbled into it covered with dirty linen, and borne by the soberest of the party out the back way to his house, and left to sleep it off in the basket. Whether that was returned to the Middlesex tradition does not tell but the Captain never again called for the interest.
Another instance of Capt. Moores practical jokes was his inviting Wesson to drive to Cambridge with him and a prisoner he was taking to the jail there. Uncle Tom accepted but when the Captain proposed handcuffing the burly negro to Uncle Tom to prevent his escape there was a great objection and quite a row before they started. Arrived at Cambridge jail the Capt. gave a wink to the officers and the prisoner and Mr.Wesson were hustled into a cell the door locked, and it was some time before with many apologies the cell was opened and Uncle Tom liberated. It is safe to say that he never accepted another offer of a ride to Cambridge in the company of the Captain.
Mr. Wesson was an expert marksman with the rifle and had many matches with Mr. Pratt the gunsmith, and Mr. [----] the jeweller, the targets of the winner ornamenting the bar room. He unlike most landlords cared little for horses, and seldom drove himself. He wanted his gains in woodland, and in lots on Bedford Street, when laid out, and his most public service was in building the Universalist Meeting House.
In the Unitarian & Trinitarian pulpits of the Town Temperance had been preached, till the liberal element had become tired and wanted something different. After some consultations among the Landlords and their customers this notice was prepared & posted: “All person[s] in favor of the Universal Salvation of all mankind are requested to meet at the Middlesex Hotel on (date forgotten) to choose Officers.” The out come of this meeting was the formation of a Universalist Society which with Mr.Wesson as a leader built the Universalist Meeting house on Bedford Street since turned round and now the property of the Roman Catholics. When the constant attendants on the Universalist preaching had become fully converted to this faith their interest died out and the Society was given up Mr Wesson owning most of the street at last.
Uncle Tom’s pretty daughter the belle of the dancing schools became engaged to the smart active and good looking Sam. Staples at first the hostler then the bar tender and at last the manager of the Middlesex Hotel. They were married in 1839 by the Rev. Ralph Waldo Emerson in the parlor of the hotel in the presence of the family and of two English disciples of Mr Emerson then visiting at his house. The scene was perhaps the most peculiar of any the hotel witnessed, Uncle Tom only contented with the marriage by the presence of Emerson and the absence of the other ministers of the Town, enemies of his because of their temperance views. His only son John Wesson an underwitted tho musical youth, who had learned to play the violin, and had fiddled for the dances and parties at the hotel looking on at the ceremony, but whether he played the wedding march, or only the wind up of the festivities “to kinder Solemnise the thing” as Wesson would say on other occasions does not appear.
After this Mr.& Mrs. Staples ran the hotel relieving the old folks of the care, till Staples was appointed Jailer and moved into the County house, and fed the prisoners from the hotel kitchen, till the fire that ended the Mdsx.
The June Term of the Court in 1845 assembled on a lovely summer morning, the court bell with its sharp quick strokes called to the Court house the crowd from the hotel and the calling of the docket began, when an alarm of fire, fire the Middlesex is on fire startled the Court. This adjourned as lawyers Jurors and parties rushed across the common to save their belongings in the hotel. The fire took from an overheated oven in the old kitchen with a defective flue, and spread rapidly through the halls filling it with smoke. Through this the guests scrambled for their baggage. One eminent lawyer rushed to his room seized a valise and bore it out doors and on looking it over found it was not his own. With true legal forethought and his own conscientious conservatism he carried it back to the room and set it down where he took it found his own property and with some risk got it to a place of safety leaving his room mates valise to the fire. He never till after he became Judge heard the last of the instance of this presence of mind.
The fire swept through the hotel and in a few hours all that was left of the building was a pile of ashes in the cellar.
The engine companies had all they could do to save the stables and the county house while the prisoners in the jail added to the excitement by their yells for release from the heat and smoke, tho in no danger in their stone cells.
It was an appalling calamity to Mr. Wesson, and fairly stunned the old man. After a time he revived and obstinately planned to rebuild against the advice of all his friends. The railroad opened to Concord in 1844, had been completed to Fitchburg and the stages and teams had forsaken the highway for the rails. This change he could not be made to comprehend and he insisted on rebuilding the hotel as nearly as possible like the old. Another of the changes made by the growth of the county and the railroads was the removal of the April and September Courts to Lowell thus leaving only the March and June terms at Concord. This took away from the hotel a large half of its court business, and the starting of Cattle Shows at Framingham and Lowell diminished the attendance at Concord on the fairs of the old Middlesex Agricultural Society.
No persuasion could induce Mr. Wesson to build a more modern structure with suits [suites] of rooms connecting in place of single chambers. The only alteration to which he consented was to have the dancing hall at the north end of the new building as a spring floor was considered a necessity for a dance hall, the floor timbers for this new one were laid spanning the whole width of the building, unsupported except on the outer walls of the hotel. This made a spring when a large party were dancing that shook the whole house, blew open the doors of the rooms underneath and shook the people in these rooms trying to sleep out of their beds. Externally there was added the two story porch on the south end and instead of the one story piazza extending round both fronts of the old hotel, a new one was built on the east front, and thereby hangs a tale.
The granite blocks for bases to the posts of the new piazza not being of sufficient number Mr. Wesson looking round for more cast his wishful eye on the corner stone of the old monument to the Concord Fight. This was laid on the 19th of April 1825 nearly where the fountain on the common now stands with imposing ceremonies an oration by Edward Everett a display of military including a score or more of Revolutionary soldiers. Owing to a difference of opinion as to the location whether there or at the Battle Ground, the monument never materialized above this corner stone which was a cube of granite about four feet in dimension. After a year or two finding no progress in the work, the young men of the town erected a pile of oil casks and tar barrels over this corner stone 30 feet high and setting it on fire after dark one 19th of April burnt it down with much hurrahing & excitement. The heat of this fire splintered off the … corners of the corner stone and in this dilapidated state it remained a good horse block for a help to mount those who dismounted at the town pump in front of it, now the watering trough. Uncle Tom, perhaps suggested by Sam sent his workmen to split it up into bases for the posts of the piazza this relic of the first monument and used them for that purpose saying to all objectors that if [any]body could show a title to the stone he’d pay what it was worth for granite. Those bases are the last of the foundations of the hotel now undergoing demolition. Whether they can be … set up for memorials on the park now the town’s is yet to be determined.
It took more than a year and a half to build and furnish the hotel and the great question was mooted who should be the Landlord. There were several applicants but old Wesson most unluckily decided on a boon companion of his a farmer on the Virginia road with a clumsy oaf of a son to open the new hotel. It was the worst choice he could make and Colburn Hadlock and his lout of a son became the first landlords of the new Middlesex. They opened it April 19 1847, with a grand ball and supper attended by all Uncle Tom’s friends in the Town and by many of the citizens and their wives and daughters who wished success to the undertaking. The writer led the first dance.
The success never came, the Landlord was unfitted for the work, the son as clerk and bartender soon disgusted and drove away all the better class of guests, and the temperance objections to the management grew rapidly to the point of prosecutions. This Landlord held on for a year or two when he returned to his farm a poorer if not a wiser man satisfied he could not keep a hotel.
He was succeeded by two young men from Boston Ashley & Doton spruce and well mannered with some experience of city hotel work. They tried to improve the character of the house with only partial success. Ashley soon left the firm but Doton held on to its waning fortunes a few years.
In 1854, Mr. Wesson sold the estate to Heman Newton & B. … King. Newton was an old tavern keeper from Worcester County and became Landlord while King the son of Daniel P. King of Danvers member of Congress from the Essex District passed a considerable property married Newton’s daughter, lived at the hotel and furnished the capital. This lasted a dozen years the business of the hotel falling away and the house needing extensive repairs.
It was purchased in 1866 by Marshall Davis and George W. Todd, and the house repaired and refurnished by them. The Dancing hall with its spring floor was cut up into suites of rooms, and a thorough renovation of the Interior made so that the hotel started on a new life. Davis who had been successful as a tavern keeper at Stow, Mass. managed the house and Todd who had experience as a livery stabler took charge of the stables of the hotel. Davis retired in 1868 selling out to Todd who kept on for a year and then sold out to a liquor dealer in Boston. This owner leased the hotel to [Samuel A.] Hartshorn who ran it a year or two and then traded it to Abel Gardner Heywood and Julia his wife for the Abel Heywood farm on Monument St. now the residence of D.G. Lang. “Gard” Heywood the son of a drunken father and an insane mother had been brought up, or rather came up on that farm, and no qualification for a Landlord except a very smart and capable wife. Meantime all the courts had been removed from Concord, the jail sold and taken down. In 1871 Mrs. Julia Heywood bought a piece of the old jail yard, straightening the line of the hotel estate to the Millbrook. This enabled her to make quite an improvement to the rear of the house. Mrs. Heywood struggled along with the management of the hotel and the bad habits of her husband till 1874. Then she mortgaged all the estate for $1200, subject to a mortgage to the Savings Bank of $6000, to George Heywood, which was the beginning of his title to the Middlesex Hotel. In 1875 she gave up the hotel to George Heywood who foreclosed on the mortgage and became the owner. Then one William Wood, or Bill Wood, the son of the Acton pencil maker took the hotel. He was a big burly chap too good a customer of his own bar, and the house ran down in his short career as Landlord, the first under George Heywood. He [George Heywood] leased the hotel to J.W. Jacobs who had experience in the business and knew how to keep a hotel but this one could not be made a success. Each year the Middlesex became less attractive, doing some business over the bar when the Town occasionally voted ‘License’ but finally when “No License” became the settled policy of the Town Mr. Jacobs gave up, and the hotel was closed in 1883, never to be reopened.
Thus it has stood growing more dilapidated and ruinous each year infested by tramps and other vermin, becoming an eyesore to the Town and a disgrace to the owner. In 1900, a public spirited syndicate Messrs. Emerson, Barrett, Buttrick & Keyes bought the property, and conveyed it to the Town at cost, as a permanent memorial of the 19th of April, Thus inducing the Town to secure the lot for municipal purposes and tear down the hotel, of which the work is rapidly progressing, and we are soon to see the last of the old Middlesex.
April 2, 1900.