In Episode 398 Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger stroll past the Spite Wall in Westminster, Massachusetts. Constructed in 1852 by Edmund Proctor, the giant colonial wall was made to block the view from Proctor’s neighbor, Farwell Morse, a religious zealot who didn’t approve of his neighbor working on the sabbath day. The wall still stands today as a testament to spite.
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Produced and hosted by: Jeff Belanger and Ray Auger
Edited by: Ray Auger
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
*A note on the text: Please forgive punctuation, spelling, and grammar mistakes. Like us, the transcripts ain’t perfect.
[DRIVING]
RAY: So we’re driving down North Common Road in Westminster, Massachusetts.
JEFF: We are.
RAY: There are some nice houses and properties out here. The homes are pretty spread out, and the yards and grounds are large.
JEFF: A lot of this used to be farmland back in the early days of Colonial settlement.
RAY: I could see that.
JEFF: Our destination is coming up at the intersection up ahead. You can pull over anywhere you see enough room.
RAY: Got it.
[CAR STOPS]
[DOORS OPEN/CLOSE]
JEFF: Okay, what we’re looking for is right over there.
RAY: Where? I don’t see anything but a stone wall. Is what we’re looking for on the other side?
JEFF: No the stone wall is the destination. Ray, we’ve come to Westminster, Massachusetts, to explore the Great Wall of Spite.
[INTRODUCTION]
JEFF: I’m Jeff Belanger, and welcome to Episode 398 of the New England Legends podcast.
RAY: And I’m Ray Auger, thanks for joining us on our mission to chronicle every legend in New England one story at a time. Did you know most of our story leads come from you? This one did. Thanks to Douglas Caron, a school teacher who has been known to share our podcast episodes in his classroom. We love that! Like Douglas you can reach out to us anytime through our website to share your ideas on future stories.
JEFF: We’ll explore this Great Wall of Spite right after this word from our sponsor.
SPONSOR
RAY: Jeff, this isn’t the first construction project we’ve visited that was built out of spite.
JEFF: No, not at all. If we’ve learned one thing it’s that Yankees are stubborn.
RAY: We covered Rhode Island’s Spite Tower back in Episode 289.
JEFF: That’s right.
RAY: And the Great Wall of Sandwich in New Hampshire. Built out of spite for the town.
JEFF: There’s nothing like anger to fuel a construction project.
RAY: Here’s a little more background on the town of Westminster, Massachusetts. It’s located at the base of Mt. Wachusett, in the northern part of central Mass between Gardner, Fitchburg, and Leominster. The first European settlers came here in 1737, but the town incorporated in 1770. It was mostly farms in those early days. It’s still pretty rural today.
JEFF: That it is. A pretty town with lots of woods and rolling hills around Mt. Wachusett. To find out how this wall got here, let’s head back to the year 1852.
[TRANSITION]
RAY: It’s May of 1852 here in Westminster, Massachusetts. Millard Filmore is president of the United States, the Governor of Massachusetts is George Boutwell, and lots of people are heading out west for the gold rush in California. Here in Massachusetts, industry is booming.
JEFF: When industry booms, so does everything else. Demand starts at the bottom, and works its way up. It always has in economics. When things are going well, people spend money, and that increases demand all the way to the top. It starts with farms.
RAY: Enter Edmund Proctor. The 35 year-old Proctor just moved to Westminster from Lunenburg about ten miles northeast from here. He and his wife, Mary, have eight children together, and each of the eight kids has the same first two initials: A.H.
JEFF: There’s Augustus Howard, Albert Hamlin, Alson Hows, Alden Herman, Ammer Hale, Abbot Herd, Amboy Harlem and their daughter Angia Holbrook.
RAY: It’s quite the eccentric family. So, Proctor just purchased some land and intends to make a go at farming here in town.
[COW MOOS/CHICKENS]
RAY: It’s an exciting time. And of course, it’s a lot of work. But Proctor is cut out for it. He doesn’t mind. Hard work never scared him in the least. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to make his farm a success.
JEFF: That includes working from sun-up to sun-down. Proctor doesn’t mind. He feels invigorated knowing he’s giving his all to his land. Some of his new neighbors are impressed too. Everyone loves to see someone working hard. It’s inspiring.
RAY: Look at Proctor out there plowing his field. He’s told his family the soil is good but it’s full of rocks.
[CLUNK – MTAL ON ROCK]
[PROCTOR: AHHH GARBLED SWEAR!]
RAY: Wow, I guess Proctor has a mouth on him, huh?! Each time Proctor finds another rock, he moves it to the edge of his property. Just like countless other New England farmers before him.
JEFF: Eh. Who can blame him. Besides, farming is hard work, and he has ten mouths to feed. His work ethic is impressive. Motivating, even.
RAY: Well, not every neighbor is inspired. Just a few dozen feet from the corner of the Proctor farm sits the cottage of Farwell Morse. Proctor’s closest neighbor.
JEFF: Morse is a devout Congregationalist in town. He’s read his Bible, and he knows how people are supposed to act.
RAY: I guess Proctor’s swearing tirades are reaching the ears of his neighbor.
JEFF: They are. Swearing is one thing, but something Morse can NOT abide is working on Sunday. That’s the Lord’s day. Each time he sees his neighbor Proctor out there in his fields toiling on a Sunday, he marches over to give him an earful.
RAY: That’s a tough thing to hear from your next door neighbor.
JEFF: Proctor agrees. He tells his new neighbor that maybe he should mind his own business and worry about himself. But Morse disagrees. He says the Bible is clear on these matters. Sunday is the sabbath. No work allowed.
[DIGGING SOUNDS]
[METAL KITTING ROCK]
JEFF: Week after week this goes on. Proctor is working seven days per week, and each Sunday he catches holy hell from his neighbor, Farwell Morse. Morse yells that he doesn’t want to see any man working on the sabbath!
[DIGGING SOUNDS]
[METAL KITTING ROCK]
RAY: That’s when Proctor gets an idea. He’d been clearing rocks for weeks, and then moving them to the edge of his property, but now he’s carting all of the found rocks down to the corner of his property that borders the Morse land.
[ROCK ON ROCK]
RAY: Each day he piles up the rocks forming a wall.
JEFF: This is not a new idea. New England farmers have been doing this for centuries. Each time Proctor hits a rock with his shovel…
[DIGGING SOUNDS]
[METAL KITTING ROCK]
JEFF: He’s reminded of that old Yankee poem that goes: Nature in her boundless store, piled rock upon rock and did no more.
RAY: We do have plenty of rocks in the ground around here.
JEFF: As weeks pass, dozens of rocks turn into hundreds of them. And all of them are piling up in the corner of Proctor’s lot.
RAY: Proctor is building a wall along the side of his land that borders his neighbor.
[ROCK ON ROCK] [ROCK ON ROCK]
RAY: More weeks go by, and quickly Proctor’s wall grows. It’s getting wider in length, and getting thicker and taller by the day.
JEFF: Like most New England stone walls, these rocks aren’t fitted together to form a perfect wall. They’re just piled up into crude formations. That’s no problem if your wall is two or three feet high. But if you intend to go higher than that, the wall is going to get wider.
[ROCK ON ROCK] [ROCK ON ROCK]
RAY: And so it does. Within a few months, Proctor’s wall reaches 60 feet in length, 15 feet thick, and 11 feet tall at its highest point. When it’s done, it’s just enough to block the view of Farwell Morse.
JEFF: The wall is so audacious, anyone who sees it has to wonder why it’s there, and why it’s so tall. People around these parts have seen countless colonial stone walls. But this one is different.
RAY: Those who know Farwell Morse, know he’s a religious zealot, so when they hear the reason for the wall, it begins to make more sense. And that brings us back to today.
[TRANSITION]
JEFF: Though the farms are long gone and now developed into houses and lawns, the stone wall still sits here on the corner of North Common Road. For more than a century and a half, it’s best been known as the Spite Wall.
RAY: There’s even a sign in front of the wall. It says, quote “The Spite Wall. Built in 1852 by an industrious, and somewhat eccentric, farmer named Edmund Proctor, this unusual stone wall is 11 feet high at the corner, 15 feet along North Common Road and 60 feet along the property line… Morse frequently and bitterly criticized Proctor for working on the Sabbath. Proctor built this formidable wall so Morse would not be able to see him working on Sundays.”
JEFF: So there it is. The Spite Wall for all to see.
RAY: And to block the view of one man. Farwell Morse.
JEFF: Right.
RAY: No one likes to have the religious views of others pushed on them.
JEFF: No they don’t. People don’t want to change their behavior because someone else thinks it doesn’t line up with their own interpretation of their own religion. Plus, I was always curious what a day off looks like to a farmer. I mean, cows still need milking. Crops still need water and weeding no matter what day it is. Farming is an endless job.
RAY: So true.
JEFF: There’s an old expression that good fences make good neighbors. I guess if the fence is big enough to block your neighbor’s view, then they can’t complain.
[OUTTRO]
RAY: Please don’t go anywhere because you’ve reached After the Legend where we take a deeper dive into this week’s story and sometimes veer off course.
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To see some pictures of the Great Wall of Spite, click on the link in our episode description, or go to our website and click on Episode 398.
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