Bigelow Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
“This is discipline indeed!” observed Gen. George Washington in Cambridge as a regiment of Worcester County men in review threw eyes front and caught the perfect rhythm of infantry.
Capt. Timothy Bigelow, commanding the Worcester company, must have thrilled at the remark. Six-foot-two, with flashing black eyes and ruddy complextion, he wore his brown hair gathered in a club under his tri- cornered hat; stood straight as a ramrod.
He was born in Worcester Aug. 12, 1739; spent his time away from his smithy reading books. His home was on the east corner of Main street and Lincoln square.
Anna Andrews, an heiress, lived nearby. They fell in love; courted on the Bridge of Sighs which once crossed old Mill Brook, now flowing under Union street as a sewer. Forbidden to marry, they eloped to Hampton, N.H. Tim Bigelow was probably Worcester’s most ardent patriot – a head man in the Sons of Liberty, member of the Committee of Correspondence, delegate to the Provincial Congress.
When he got news of the tea dumping in Boston, he left the forge, took a canister of tea from a closet, poured it into the fireplace, hurled the container after it and covered the whole with red hot coals.
When the war broke out, he marched to Cambridge the Worcester Minute Men he had tirelessly drilled on the Common.
Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, he watched Burgoyne fling down his arms in defeat; fought gloriously at Saratoga, Verplanck’s Point, Peekskill, Valley Forge, West Point, Monmouth and Yorktown. On the march to Canada under Benedict Arnold, he explored a new Maine mountain, today called Bigelow’s Mountain. He founded and named Montpelier Vt. Broken in health and after seven arduous years in the field, he returned to Worcester and attempted to found an ironworks. Both health and finances were unable to cope with a postwar inflation. Bigelow’s shrinking property was sold. A son died of tuberculosis.
On Feb. 15, 1790, Col. Timothy Bigelow (ret.) was thrown into Worcester Gaol – for debt. Forty-four days later the jailer recorded that the prisoner was discharged – by “death.”
Eighty-six years later, a grandson erected the white Tuscany marble monument on the Common. Worcester observed the event with full ceremonial.
Under the monument are Bigelow’s remains, a lock of his hair, lead ball cartridges forged by his own men in his barn, some Revolutionary powder and typical cornerstone relics.
Bigelow street runs from Lafayette street south to Endicott street. There is some doubt that Bigelow street, appearing in 1866, was named for the fighting patriot; none that Col. Timothy Bigelow Chapter, D.A.R., honors his memory.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
