Leave it to consummate researcher and Lynn Public Library reference room worker Lisa Bourque to shed light on the mystery enshrouding the 170-year-old poster hanging in the city collector’s office.
With the sentence “Freemen of Lynn!” emblazoned across the top of the faded paper, the poster was a rallying cry for people opposed to Lynn transitioning from town to city government who warned against “… putting the people under the guardianship of a corrupt clique, in the centre of town.”
Written in the flowery, often funny language of the mid-19th century, the poster advertises an April 14, 1849 meeting organized by self-styled “free soilers of Lynn” aligned against Lynn becoming a city.
Bourque’s copious research unveiled how the battle over a city charter dominated Lynn newspapers of the era, igniting sharp words between letter writers.
The furious debate swirled around proposals for a city charter and at the center of the storm stood the man who would become Lynn’s first mayor: George Hood.
One of the histories dug up by Bourque fleshes out a portrait of Hood as a politician who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for lieutenant governor in 1846.
History is full of ironies and Hood’s position on the town versus city government debate was no exception. He viewed city government as less democratic and drove home the charge to defeat the proposed charter that was the object of the free soilers’ scorn in 1849.
That defeat only heaped more fuel on the town-versus-city flames and by 1850 the battle over a second charter was fully joined. The battles between the editorial pages of The Bay State and the Lynn News (the Daily Evening Item started publishing in 1877) were fully joined.
Free soilers warned a city charter would become the foundation for higher taxes and high rents. A charter supporter made fun of a free soil writer who claimed (The Bay State, April 18, 1850) “… that a City Charter will demoralize the people, or divide them into classes, or create a love of show, or bring down upon our beloved heads all the wickedness and immorality which has collected for years in the great metropolis.”
On the following day, almost a year to the day the first charter was defeated, Lynn residents voted 1,047-987 (according to the Lynn Sunday Post, Nov. 12, 1972) to make Lynn Massachusetts’ ninth city.
A city needs a mayor and Hood stepped into the ring opposite long-time Town Clerk Thomas Bowler to fight it out for the job. With Bowler cast as the “Citizens Party” ticket and Hood running for the “People’s Party,” the race unfolded over two weeks.
On May 4, Hood received 1,123 votes to Bowler’s 1,082.
Walk today into City Hall and the first steps you will take will be across the foyer carpet featuring the city seal with the words, “Instituted a city May 14th 1850.”
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Thanks to the resident expert who recalled the great days of Lynn bowling alleys like the one underneath Spector Drug on Essex Street. Was there another basement alley just outside Central Square on Union Street?
I also appreciate cousin Eddie’s tales of Floating Bridge, including how the horses once housed in the former National Guard depot on Highland Avenue refused to clip-clop across the bridge and, instead, detoured around what is now Victory Road.
Thanks also to Jonathan Hart for providing additional information about historical sources on Egg Rock and to Lauren Mezzetti for her fun recollections about how the late Tim Ring loved Red Rock and even in jest suggested chipping off pieces of the rock and selling them on eBay extolling their healing powers. Vintage Tim Ring.