Chandler Street
From Worcester Activist wiki
Also LOYALISTS There were many dramatic moments during the American Revolution apart from tea in salty Boston Harbor-like the time Mrs. John Chandler sat in her chair in her Main street house while the world broke over her head. Col. John Chandler, her husband, was descended from Worcester’s most distinguished family, and the first judge of Worcester County. Col. Chandler was born in Worcester Feb. 26, 1720. He was selectman, town treasurer, town clerk, county treasurer, sheriff, judge of Probate Court, representative to the General Court, colonel of the Worcester Regiment, member of His Majesty’s Council and commissioned to the Court of General Sessions of the Peace. In 1779, his estates in Worcester, Boylston, Leominster and Hampshire County were assessed at £76,515. Today that is more than $306,060. Chances are John Chandler didn’t have a worry in his life until the boys in Worcester County began to revolt against the king. Then there were troubles enough for a lifetime. For John Chandler was loyal to the British. “Tory John,” Worcester dubbed him. He signed a paper with others protesting treatment of Tories. The rebels humiliated him in public by making him take it back and forced his son, Town Clerk Clark Chandler, to dip his fingers in ink and obliterate the record. Chandler fled to Boston in 1774 with his sons, Rufus, Nathaniel and William; supported them by selling the family silverware. The Sons of Liberty forbade their return to Worcester under pain of death. Mrs. Chandler stayed in Worcester. The Loyalists sold the furniture at auction and a chair on which she sat was sold from under her. “She bore it well,” wrote a later historian, “and never put herself down by losing her dignity.” From Boston, Col. Chandler went to Halifax, then to England. They called him the “Honest Refugee” because his claim of damages was so low. He died at 80 in 1800 and is buried in Islington.
He was the grandfather of two governors’ wives-Mrs. Levi Lincoln and Mrs. John Davis, and of George Bancroft, the historian.
Objective historians have since acknowledged that the American patriots committed many excesses; their treatment of the Chandlers among them.
For this famous Worcester family, Chandler street is named. It stretches from Main street northwest to Pleasant street; first took its name in 1845.
The core of this article comes from A History of Your City Streets.
