The OK Corral

Town pounds and a lawn day's journey continued

by Sally Cragin

During the very first Town Meeting of Lunenburg, in 1728, money was granted to build "Seets and Pulpit," but the very next item for expenditure on the docket was a town pound. Pre-Revolutionary-era New England relied on equal parts self-reliance and community spirit, and the town pound celebrated both beliefs.

The native tribes practiced agriculture, hunting, and fishing, but their nomadic ways and inherent respect for the land were at odds with the "plow-one-field" philosophy of the invading Europeans (they were called settlers for a reason). One of our oldest sayings is: "Good fences make good neighbors," and it goes back to the founding of the Bay Colony. Why do you need fences? If you're breeding cattle, horses, sheep, or goats, you need to make sure they don't run off. But in the early days, fences weren't needed as animals foraged during the hills and forests throughout the season, and there weren't that many to begin with. It took a couple of decades for livestock to be successful here, but one species flourished almost from the beginning: pigs.

Swine breed quickly, and in the mid-17th century they were the scourge of many small communities, rooting in the fields, running wild, and threatening crops and small children. As early as 1635, the Bay Colony leaders ordered towns to build animal pounds (a concept borrowed from the Old World). We might think that our habits of destroying woodland and fields a convention of the modern age, but in 1631, Governor Bradford deplored the number of livestock roaming the land, trampling trees and plants, and using up resources. "They were scattered all over the Bay quickly and the town in which they lived compactly till now was left very thin and in a short time almost desolate." More land was needed, more forests cut down, and more fences built.

As the population increased, and the town got more settled, the only thing that got folks more riled up than politics were questions of property. The town pound was the perfect solution. Any inattentive farmer would discover that a wandering flock might end up in the pound, a small, gated enclosure. The poundkeeper would notify the negligent farmer, who would be charged a daily rate for the care and feeding of his animals until he could redeem them.

Fitchburg only got around to building a pound toward the close of the 18th century, nearly 50 years after incorporating as a town. (This suggests that only as the 19th century began did the population increase to the point where stray animals were a problem there.) The Fitchburg pound was constructed by Thomas Cowdin, son of a revolutionary war captain. According to The City and the River, the superb history of Fitchburg by Doris Kirkpatrick: "The new pound built of `stone two rods square' by Captain Cowdin's son Thomas Jr., thirty three dollars and fifty cents provided safekeeping for stray cattle. Although nobody objected when it was voted that `swine run at large,' for spring roads were little better than mudholes."

In nearby Westminster, in 1760, townsfolk voted on having a town pound and the human equivalent: public stocks ("for the punishment of misdemeanors and light offenses against the peace and good order of society"). During that meeting, the pound was voted in, but the stocks were voted down. But in 1793, town records show that Thomas Knower was paid 10 shillings for making town stocks but "no names of culprits sentenced have been found." Westminster ended up having to move the town pound three times as the population grew, as pounds are usually located near a brook or pond for the convenience of watering the animals. Nowadays, you can find these quaint, tranquil enclosures, usually overgrown with nettles or blackberries, bearing mute witness to a somewhat stormy agrarian past.

A personal note here: when my brother, Hal, and I were growing up in Lunenburg, my father was very active in town affairs, serving on the Water Commission and acting as town poundkeeper. Before he passed away last summer, he told me a little bit about tending the pound. The Lunenburg town pound is located next to Marshall Pond down the road from our house. It's a smallish square enclosure with an iron gate and a metal sign reading, "Lunenburg town pound, circa. 1728." My father's duties included clearing the brush from inside the pound, but he also contributed the sign that hangs from the stone wall to this day. (The sign was made by Cragin & Wilkins, my grandfather's sheet-metal and plumbing-supply company in nearby Leominster.) "You'll notice it says circa," my father explained, "because no one really knew when it was put in."

On one ocassion, he told me, there was a "pound emergency."

"One time a horse got loose, and Freddy Hobbs (then Chief of Police) said `Call the Keeper of the Pound!'" My father ended up riding around in the cruiser looking for the roving beast, though he wasn't sure what he would do if he found it, but "under the terms of the oath," he was obligated to be there, and he was, carrying on a tradition more than 200 years old.

WHEN LAST OBSERVED, HOLLIS the Mountain Man was happily playing lawn cowboy on his father's Ride-Em 2000 Lawn King Tractor-Mower. For a man who reveres the outdoors, silence, and the wonders of the natural world, he adapted surprisingly quickly to the spirit-numbing whine of a gas-powered lawn mower. He had visions of felling the trees and meadowland of the Mountain Lair merely for the pleasures of mowing an emerald-green expanse of velvety lawn. Since that day, he's spent some time at the Tritown Library reading up on early hominids, and shares his finds with Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great- great-grandmother).

"There are several theories about how human beings evolved as social beings," he begins portentously. "One has it that it wasn't until hominids -- early humans to you! -- learned to band together in social groups for mutual protection, food-gathering, and child-rearing that the species began growing bigger brains to accommodate these complicated social interactions."

"So brain size followed behavior? Or vice versa," asks Delia.

"Not sure," Hollis says. "Couldn't get a straight answer out of the anthropology books. In any event, when the landscape started to change, and where there used to be jungle and there was now rich meadowland, there were disadvantages and advantages. The disadvantage was that early humans were much more exposed to predators, and their fellows. How do you hide where there are no trees? But the other theory has it that once hominids were in social groups, they regarded the savannah as a `safe place,' because someone could always be on the lookout."

"Of course, by this time, their tool-making was much more sophisticated," adds Delia. "Rather than pick up a rock for a weapon wherever you were, hominids learned to carry their tools -- and their young -- as they went on to the next safe hunting ground."

Hollis narrows his eyes. "Hey, how did you know so much about hominids?"

Delia smiles slyly. "The minute I heard about your scheme to level the Mountain Lair, I wondered whether a more atavistic urge might be at work. Ozzie the Wiz (the resident Tritown sage, and librarian, expert in all fields -- well, most of them), steered me toward the anthropology section of the library."

"Very clever," snaps Hollis. "And what did you learn?"

"Just that ever since that undetermined point -- 100,000 years ago? More? Human beings, especially the hunters of the hunter-gatherer duo, just feel more safe when surrounded by what's called `savannah' or `veldt' -- the `open grassland' environment."

"Thus my father's addiction to watching golf on the tube," sighs Hollis. "In this case, not only does the apple not fall far from the tree, but the tree is nearly a half-million years old."

"Still want a Ride-Em 2000 Lawn King Tractor-Mower?" Delia teases.

Hollis buries his summer-bearded chin in his hands. "Yes," he concludes. "But I'm evolving out of it."

Sally Cragin teaches Creative Writing at Fitchburg Art Museum.

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