1860: THE YEAR THE WORCESTER PUBLIC LIBRARY CAME TO TOWN

The future looked pretty uncertain for the citizens of Worcester as the year 1860 ended.  An economic downturn which started in 1857 had come to a head, and as incoming mayor, Isaac Davis, said his inaugural address on January 7 1861 "Confidence is shaken, business is paralyzed, the monetary system is deranged, the merry shuttle is ceasing to dance to the music of our waterfall, the busy hum of industry is dying away”….and “many industrious citizens are thrown out of employment and exposed to chill penury and want”.  The city was threatened with bankruptcy.  And the cause of these “sudden and disastrous results” said Mayor Davis was the fact that “our glorious Union is in danger of dissolution.” Abraham Lincoln, who had visited Worcester in 1848, had been elected president in November and the writing was on the wall. Two centuries of tension between North and South over the issue of slavery had finally reached a breaking point.

Still, not all the news was bad. The population of the city was now 24,960, up from 17,049 in 1850.  While the majority of Worcester’s residents were native born and of English descent, at least 25% were immigrants, most of them young men ( and some women) from Ireland  who had come to build the Blackstone Canal and stayed to build the railroads.  A smattering of other ethnicities were represented here as well, including a small enclave of free African Americans who were known to give refuge to at least a few escaped slaves, with the tacit approval, if not outright encouragement, of Worcester city government.

Steam to power machinery and railroads to carry goods had, over the previous fifty years, transformed Worcester from a fairly sleepy county seat, to a lively commercial and industrial center.  In 1860, despite the dire economic situation, Washburn made wire (including the wire that lined fashionable hoop skirts) in the Washburn works on Grove Street.  Loring Coes produced the wrenches he’d invented at his factory in “New Worcester”, now Webster Square. George Crompton manufactured looms. Esther Howland crafted valentines. Samuel Winslow produced skates and, in 1858, two brothers named Norton opened a small pottery on Main Street.  The city teemed with “mechanics”, ambitious young tinkers, builders, inventors, and entrepreneurs who left the farm and moved to the city armed with home-grown skills and big ideas.  They formed the Worcester County Mechanics Association and, in 1857, opened an imposing headquarters, Mechanics Hall on Main Street which soon became the city’s premier venue for lectures, concerts and entertainment of all kinds.  

Life for most Worcester citizens revolved around the city center, an area defined by the courthouse on the north end of Main Street, the town hall on the south, and the Common in the middle.  However, some residents clustered in “mill villages” including New Worcester and Quinsigamond, while others farmed tracts of land in Greendale and other outlying areas.   Many families, whether urban or rural, kept a cow or a few chickens.  Meanwhile, wealthy and prominent citizens had begun a steady migration away from the noise and bustle of downtown to the leafy precincts of the Westside.

In 1860 the city of Worcester maintained 59 schools, including one high school, Classical and English, which competed with Worcester Academy and other private options for the children of the wealthy and prominent.  One such private school, the Oread Institute on Union Hill, boasted a four-year curriculum for “young ladies”, the first in the nation to do so.  A total of 4,824 pupils between the ages of five and fifteen were registered in the Worcester Public Schools, although not all were able to attend regularly due to competing responsibilities at home. Fifty- five students achieved perfect attendance by the end of the year, their names enshrined for posterity in the School Committee’s annual report. Then, as now, teaching was a profession dominated by women with seven males and 68 females employed to educate the city’s children. While most area colleges and universities had not yet been established, the College of the Holy Cross, the first Catholic college in New England had been serving the sons of the faithful for several decades.

For those Worcester residents not engaged in study or employment trouble was always an option. In 1860, a total of 819 complaints were made to the Police Court for various offenses, well over 100 of them related to the sale and consumption of alcohol. Others included attempting to procure an abortion, keeping a disorderly house, throwing stones, disturbing public worship, breaking windows, fast driving and swearing.  Interestingly, not a single murder was recorded, a welcome decrease from the prior year when there had been exactly one.

Poverty too, was a problem. In 1860 the city’s Overseers of the Poor reported that 703 persons had received some kind of public assistance. 356 of them were of them Irish immigrants, a statistic not likely to stamp out the fire of anti-immigrant sentiment that simmered beneath the surface in Worcester County.  Thirty-one persons resided at the city’s Almshouse where four births and two deaths occurred over the course of the year.  As far as public health was concerned, Worcester State “Lunatic Asylum” founded several decades before as a humane alternative for the treatment of the  mentally ill cared for troubled minds, while physicians, among them Dr. John Green in his iconic horse and buggy, made house calls on the physically ill.

And what did Worcester residents with the money and good health to enjoy a bit of leisure do with their time?  Well, for one thing they went to church. In 1860, the city boasted 21 churches, all but two, St John’s and St Anne’s, Protestant. Most churches were social hubs as well as houses of worship sponsoring Sunday schools for children as well as “ladies auxiliaries” for women, eager to find an acceptable outlet for their talents and energies outside the home.   Those who preferred secular pursuits could catch a lecture at Mechanics Hall, attend a concert sponsored by the Mozart Society, or enjoy a drink (or two) at one of the city’s taverns. Conversely, those opposed to the consumption of alcohol, could join one of several temperance societies, among them the Father Matthew Total Abstinence Society, founded by an Irish priest to encourage Irishmen to “abjure alcohol.”   Worcester had always been hospitable to social reform and those so inclined could participate in the anti-slavery movement or join Abby Kelley Foster and her husband Stephen in advocating for women’s rights.  Those more interested in athletic pursuits could row on Lake Quinsigamond, try out a pair of Samuel Winslow’s skates, or hike the Worcester hills. A stroll through Elm Park would have to wait since, in 1860 the park, then called the “New Common” was little more than a swamp.

Finally there were libraries. In 1860, the American Antiquarian Society possessed an impressive collection of early American imprints along with a random hodgepodge of artifacts the organization would eventually jettison.  The Mechanics Association, the Horticultural Society, the Worcester Lyceum, and the Worcester District Medical Society, as well as many private individuals maintained substantial libraries.  So why was the opening of the Worcester Public Library on April 30th 1860 such a significant event? One of the brightest spots in an  otherwise troubled time?  Stay tuned for part 2.