THE LAWRENCE FARM. 6;^ 



the temperance movement was started about the year 1817. Dr. 

 Woods, of Andover, one of the leaders in this cause, told me 

 forty years afterward the reason he engaged in it so actively was 

 that he saw such abuse of ardent spirits among ministers ; for 

 he knew forty-four who drank so much as to affect their brains, 

 and he had assisted in putting four to bed on occasions like 

 ordinations. 



At the period above mentioned there was neither a woollen or 

 cotton mill in the State, and but few turnpikes ; the Middlesex 

 canal had just been opened from Chelmsford to Charlestown. 



The mode of living in Groton was economical in the extreme. 

 Books were rare indeed, few were published in the State, and 

 Paternoster Row was on the titlepage of all the juvenile literature 

 of that period. 



In my earliest years my father's house was thronged by Revolu- 

 tionary officers and soldiers, and I heard so much that I almost 

 thought I was at Bunker Hill on the glorious Seventeenth. My 

 father was an orderly to Col. Prescott, and knew all about the 

 doings at Cambridge after the troops arrived there till they went 

 to Bunker Hill. These soldiers acted Hke veterans in consequence 

 of their two months' daily drilling. Enough has not been said 

 on this point. The claim of Gen. Putnam's admirers never was 

 dreamed of till long after both generals had been dead. 



S. L. 



Stockbridge. Sept. 5th, 1877. 



THE LAWRENCE FARM. 



To the Honourable the General Court of the Commonwealth of 

 Massachusetts now Convened at Boston — 



Humbly shews Amos Lawrence of Groton that Captain Samuel 

 Tarbell late of said Groton Deceased — died Seized of a Farm con- 

 taining about one hundred acres of Land that after his Death the 

 same was divided into nine shares two whereof has been set off to his 

 son Samuel Tarbell now a Refugee in New York that the same two 

 shares have been since taken in execution for a Debt Due to the 

 Government, and your Petitioner having purchased the other shares, 

 it hath become necessary in order to his making a proper improve- 

 ment of the same that he should have the two shares aforesaid 



