BEN SAWIN

Benjamin Nelson Sawin

Ben Sawin came to Dover at an early age when his father bought the Captain Morse farm on Claybrook Road, thirty-six acres on both sides of Main Street, much of it where Wakeland Road is now and the Heinlein field. born in Natick on February 9, 1823, he was the the son of Calvin and Hannah Felch Sawin, and had two brothers, Calvin and Warren.

After his father died in 1847 he took over the family farm and became one of the most industrious and successful farmers in town. Subscribing to the latest scientific methods, he applied business principles to farming and demonstrated actual costs for raising corn and other crops.

One of the founders of the Needham Farmers and Mechanics Association, he often hosted educational meetings at his own home. Fortunately for future generations of Dover people, he also had a keen sense of history along with an abiding interest in written records.

In 1844 he penned the first entry in a series of diarys that he kept for fifty years. In them he preserved details of everyday life in Dover. His one or two line entries are simple matter of fact records of daily activities, his work and the comings and goings of friends and relations. Today they provide insight into day to day life in Dover in the 1800's and are an important historical resource.

BEN SAWIN STARTED keeping his daily
diaries as early as 1844 when he
was twenty-one years old.

But even with their brevity his diarys give a sense of the man and his values. A man of boundless energy and strong mindedness, he tended to his responsibilities with a deep belief in God and the stern moral values that held his community together.

His diaries are filled with the colorful and pungent everyday language on farms in the 1800's. He "chored and jobbed around, or shod the sled, or lotted out wood, drawed off vinegar, tryed out lard and made sausages, or turned manure in the cellar, opened and cocked up hay, got some loam for hogs guts or buried up cider in the sand in the cellar...."

His dairies also show the variety of work skills and practical knowledge needed to run a farm. On any given day ben sawin might make a pair of shoes, mend a harness, make a hive for bees or build a cart body or a harrow, or get up some iron for an ice run, or dress a hog and smoke some meat.

Ben Sawin's Homestead on Claybrook Road
Dover Historical Society Photo

Besides farming he found time to run an insurance agency, representing two fire insurance companies. He wrote policies for just about everyone in Dover who could afford insurance, and his everyday business records and diagrams of local properties are today an important historical resource.

He ran an ice business on Claybrook Road by the Charles River and a picnic grove enjoyed by thousands who came from miles around.

Ben Sawin's land along Claybrook Road

But busy as Ben Sawin was with all his enterprises, he still found time and energy to maintain a lively interest in community affairs, serving as selectman, assessor and school committeeman. He served as a park and cemetery commissioner at a time when that meant mowing the grass and digging graves himself. He built much of the stonework on the cemetery wall facing centre street.

Late in life, at age 40, he married Mary Bacon, a Dover girl from a good old Dover family. Daughter Nellie was born in 1864 and a son, Georgie, five years later.

Then - in the spring of 1874, life for Ben Sawin took a tragic turn. Little Nellie, age ten, took sick with diptheria. little brother Georgie caught it next. They called the doctor but there was little he could do.

Nellie died on March 10, and just three days later little brother Georgie, age 5, followed her to the grave.

It was a devastating blow but Benjamin and Mary Sawin carried on.

Fourteen years later, Mary Bacon Sawin died and Ben lived on alone at the farm on Claybrook Road.

Through all his sorrow he faithfully kept his diaries.

After a few years as a widower his diaries began to include brief sketchy entries about "Eudora" and visits to the Shumway place up on Farm Street. and we find a sample of Ben's sense of humor and mischief in his surprise diary entry on October 12, 1893..."Went a ridin' to Chelmsford with Miss Eudora Shumway today and come home with Mrs. Eudora Sawin..."

Eudora Shumway Sawin
Dover Historical Society Photo

Fifty-two years old, she was described as a "woman of high ideals and pure womanhood.... interested in every movement calculated to advance the welfare of mankind ...and not unmindful of measures especially calculated to advance the interests of woman..."

Deeply interested in temperance and in the moral and religious education of the young , she was a Sunday school teacher, a charter member of the Grange, and, like her husband, was interested in local history and its preservation.

Ben and Eudora Sawin continued as prominent citizens in Dover affairs and in 1895 were leaders in establishing the Dover Historical and Natural History Society.

But fate struck yet one more time when Eudora died just seven years later and Ben was left alone again.

There is nothing in his diarys to tell when he and Eudora decided to establish a museum, but when one looks at Ben Sawin's life, his dedication to the town and his sense of history, his writings and records, one might have predicted their course.

And one also might have predicted the thoroughness with which he planned his bequest.

When Ben died in 1905 at the age of 82, he surprised everyone in town when he willed the old homestead and farm to the Dover Historical and Natural History Society along with his picnic grove, ice house and river meadow.

Antique household articles donated to the Museum
Frank Smith 'History of Dover' Photo

He gave his antique chair, his ancient writing desk, old fashioned furniture, a spinning wheel, a flax wheel, brass andirons, and all the "antique ware and other property" that Eudora had stored in the attic.

and... he gave all his personal diarys, records and papers.

But the bequests were given only if the Society would erect a building for its museum and library and name it the "Sawin Memorial Building" ...

Not one to leave loose ends, he set a time limit of two years for construction and specified that the name be placed on the front of the building in an "attractive and enduring manner". he even selected his own building committee, old friends - Eben Higgins, George E. Chickering and George L. Howe.

The museum was completed in 1906 and is a fitting legacy for a man who did so much to preserve Dover's past. But his writings and records are a legacy too, for they provide understanding of what daily life was like in Dover in the 1800's.

Ben Sawin's Museum under construction
Dover Historical Society Photo

Ben Sawin rests now at Highland Cemetery with Mary Bacon Sawin and little Nellie and Georgie, and with Eudora Shumway Sawin, among stone monuments Ben himself erected more than a hundred years ago.

He has his own special place in the history of Dover.