USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 26
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On September 2, 1653, the land was purchased from the Indian chiefs, Wawhillowa, Nenessahalant and Nassachohee, for the usual composite consideration of wampum, clothing and various articles, much valued by the Indians, which may best be described as knickknacks. The territory purchased included the present Towns of North- South- East- and Westhampton, about 100 square miles.
On October 3, 1653, the proprietors held their first meeting. in Springfield, and agreed that any proprietor who had failed to effect a permanent settlement with his family, by the following spring, should forfeit his land. This meeting was attended by ten of the petitioners and ten other persons who had joined them. Of the twenty-four petitioners, William Clark, Edward Elmore. Robert Bartlett, William Holton, William Janes, William Miller, Thomas Root and John Webb, were the only ones to settle in - Northampton.
Another meeting of the proprietors was held on November 15, 1653, when it was determined that the first twenty families to settle there, in the spring of 1654, should have forty acres, each
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family, of the meadow land, and that no land could be sold or leased till after four years of residence, unless the Town voted to grant permission for such sale, or lease. Their desire was for a permanent settlement and the elimination of land specula- tion. It was also provided, that any property owner who left the settlement permanently before the expiration of four years, should forfeit his land.
Although the actual settlement did not take place till 1654, tradition says, that a family built a house near and to the east
SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON.
of what is now Hawley street, in 1652, and that the family lived there during the winter of 1652, and '53. So Nonotuck was settled and Northampton incorporated in 1654. The different ways in which Nonotuck is spelled in old records, old letters and old books are confusing. Some of them are; Nolwottoge, Nalwottoge, Norwottocke. The meaning is not actually known, but it is supposed to convey the idea, that it is a place in the midst , of a river. Both Hadley and Northampton are so situated, for Hadley is bounded by the river on the north, west and south ; and Northampton, on the north, east and south, because of two great
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bends in the Connecticut where Hadley and Northampton are situated. As Nonotuck was applied to both places by the In- dians, this definition is at least a good one, if not the right one.
Among the settlers whose names have been continued for the 250 years since the settlement, were Samuel Allen, James Bridge- man, Robert Bartlett, Thomas Bascom, David Burt, Alexander Edwards, William Hannum, William Hulbert, John Lyman, Richard Lyman, John King, Nathaniel Phelps, Joseph Parsons, Thomas Root, William Miller, Samuel Wright, Isaac Sheldon, and John Stebbins, all of whom had made a settlement before 1659. From 1658, to '62, Alexander Alvord, Edward Baker, William Clark, Aaron Cook, Jonathan Hunt, Enos Kingsley. Eleazer Mather, Medad Pomeroy, John Strong, John Searl and John Taylor. After 1662, Preserved Clapp, Robert Danks, Samuel Judd, Thomas Judd, Caleb Pomeroy, Israel Rust and Solomon Stoddard, settled in Northampton.
The oldest portion of Northampton is the territory bounded by Market, Hawley, Pleasant and King streets. Up to 1658, all but six of the thirty-eight families had built their homes on those streets. As the number of inhabitants increased, homes were built in the vicinity of Main and West streets and across Mill River, in the vicinity of the northern end of South street, and a little later, a few homes were built down South street, near the clay- pits.
Nonotuck was rather thickly populated by Indians - up to the time of King Philip's War in 1675 - but they lived in peace with the English. Notwithstanding this fact, the inhabitants of Northampton felt that it was necessary for the English to have possession of the fertile meadow lands on both sides of the Connecticut River, because of their fertility, and because a settle- ment on both sides of the river would add greatly to the general safety in case of an Indian uprising. In order that this might be accomplished, they sold to the people of Hartford and Wethers- field who were in the midst of a Church war, in October. 1658, the meadow called Capawonk, which was the Indian name for Hatfield. This meadow contained nearly 1,000 acres. The money part of the price was merely nominal, being but fio, to be paid in wheat and pease; the other part was of great value and im- portance to the Northampton people. It was, that the purchasers
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should effect settlements on both sides of the river and maintain them for seven years. The whole settlement was first called Newtown, but when it was incorporated in 1661, the portion of the settlement on the east side of the river became Hadley, and in 1670 that on the west side became Hatfield.
When the war with Philip began, in 1675, Northampton es- tablished a small guard and in the next year it consisted of fifty men. In 1677, the meeting-house was fortified, and in 1690, the village was surrounded by palisades. In the French and
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A BIT OF DEAR OLD NEW ENGLAND.
Indian War of 1745, the log towers, called "mounds " were built, and the village was divided into fourteen sections in cach of which one house was fortified as a place of safety for the women and children in case of attack.
Northampton's first minister was the Rev. Eleazer Mather. He was a son of Richard Mather and was born in Dorchester, Massa- chusetts, on May 13, 1637. He was graduated at Harvard, in 1656, and began to preach in Northampton in 1658. The meet- ing-house had been built three years before, but Mr. Mather was
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not ordained till the Church was organized, on June 18, 1661. His wife was Esther Warham, daughter of the Rev. John War- ham, the first minister of Windsor, Conneetieut. Mr. Mather died July 24, 1669, and his widow married the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, his sueeessor.
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STODDARD-EDWARDS.
The Rev. Solomon Stoddard was possessed of so great a spirit and so great a mind; whose power of loving was so simple and profound; that he was one of the few ministers -or for that matter men - of very early times who lived in the Love of the Lord instead of the Fear of Him. His life, his example and his teaching have made Northampton famous for more than two centuries, for its broad-minded, catholic spirit in denominational matters. Not that the people of Northampton were, or are un- faithful to their individual Churches or Creeds, but rather, that they recognize the Christian Church is E pluribus unum.
The Rev. Solomon Stoddard was ordained as the minister of the Church in Northampton, on September II, 1672, by the Rev. John Whiting, minister of the Second Church of Hartford and John Strong, Ruling Elder of the Northampton Chureh. Mr. Stoddard was known all over New England, and was held in high esteem. His power over his auditors was great and some of the most notable revivals of his time were the result of his strong, earnest preaching. No better idea of Mr. Stoddard and his liberal views may be had, at a time when liberality was not popular in New England, than from the article by the Rev. Dr. George Leon Walker on: " Jonathan Edwards and the Half-way Covenant ".
On November 5, 1672, two months after Mr. Stoddard's settle- ment, he put on reeord, as was customary, the different forms of covenant to be used in admitting members to the different privi- leges of the Church. One of them was a form to be used in ad- mitting members into a state of education, and was known as The Half-way Covenant ; the other was for the admission of members into full eommunion.
Prof. Alexander Johnston defines the Half-way Covenant as declaring, that baptized infants were bound to own the covenant and become church members, upon arriving at years of discretion
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and that the Church was bound to accept them, if they were not of scandalous life and understood the grounds of religion ; and that the Church was bound to baptize their children.
The full Covenant, if it may be so called, required Godliness, , sanctification, personal experience of religion, as qualifications for full membership and partaking of the Lord's Supper.
The early Congregational Church, it seems, believed that the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper was a sort of religious luxury for sanctified members of that Church, until the Half-way Cove-
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The old portion to the right was a famous school for boys kept by George Bancroft and John Cogswell early in eighteen hundred.
nant was presented, when a considerable portion of the Congre- gational Church believed, as did Mr. Stoddard, that " The Lord's Supper is Instituted to be a means of Regeneration ". In other words, that this Sacrament was a source of spiritual courage, strength and help for such sinners as had repented of their sins and truly wished to get rid of them.
Mr. Stoddard preached to his people on this subject : "That Sanctification is not a necessary qualification for the Lord's Sup- per " and that " the Lord's Supper is a converting ordinance ".
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Mr. Stoddard's view, of course, broke down and obliterated the line of distinction between those who had only "owned the covenant " and those who, according to the general New England usage and the very express rules of the Northampton Church, had been admitted to complete membership.
Mr. Stoddard continued in the Northampton pastorate twenty- nine years after the first public proclamation of his views on this subject, and twenty years after his reply to Increase Mather's allegation of " Strange Doctrine " against him; time enough, as it proved for his views on this subject of the converting char- acter of the Lord's Supper and the uselessness of any distinction between the half-way covenant and the full communion member- ship, to thoroughly penetrate and take possession of his con- gregation.
As it proved also, the same view, based largely on the great authority of Mr. Stoddard's name, extended to some other Churches in the vieinity, and at the period with which we are dealing it is quite proper to speak of it as the Northampton peculiarity; originating with the Northampton pastor and extending by reason of his influence to a few Churches around.
The successor to the Rev. Solomon Stoddard was his grandson, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards. He was ordained on February 22, 1726-7. The last trembling entry in the Church record made by his venerable and honored grandfather, Mr. Stoddard, was in re- gard to his grandson's ordination.
Jonathan Edwards continued the same policy in regard to the requirements for full membership in the Church, that had been his grandfather's for many years.
The doubtfulness of the propriety of admitting members into the Church who made no pretence to real Godliness, gradually inereased upon Mr. Edwards, till he came to the conclusion that he could not with an easy conscienee, be active in admitting any more members in the former man- ner (his grandfather's) without better satisfaction.
It is a significant token of the dead spiritual condition of things after what is called "the great awakening" in New England, from 1735 to 1743, that Mr. Edwards had to wait several years, after arriving at the aforementioned conclusion before any one applied for membership in the Church, upon whom the new test could be made. In December, 1748, a young man applied and in February, 1749, a young woman applied. Mr. Edwards stated to them both, his new views concerning the qualifieations for communicants, i. e. a personal experience of religion. They both de-
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clined. The young man, because he could not come up to the standard; the young woman, because though she was ready to testify to such religi- ous experience, she was afraid, by what she had heard, that there would be a tumult, if she came into the Church in that way.
Her reason for not joining Mr. Edwards' Church seems to show that the liberal spirit of their former minister, Mr. Stoddard, had taken firm hold upon the people.
The announcement of the pastor's stand, that personal piety was a neces- sary prerequisite to complete membership in the Church and to sacra- mental privileges, threw the town in an uproar. The Church and the minister entered upon a futile and harassing series of attempts to find a common standing ground. The Church voted, overwhelmingly, that it would not hear the minister's arguments.
As he could not gain a hearing he tried to reach the people through a pamphlet, but even that the people would not have and Mr. Edwards complained, " that only twenty copies were brought to Northampton, and even those were not read". On June 22, 1750, after twenty-three years spent as minister of the Church, Jonathan Edwards was dismissed and the dismissing body warned him " to take proper notice of the heavy frown of Divine Provi- dence in suffering the church and its minister to be reduced to such a state as to render a separation necessary ".
Jonathan Edwards was a great man in his day, and a profound thinker. His great ability was known and confessed in Great Britain. This meant much, for the great men of Great Britain were little apt to acknowledge greatness in a Colonial. But, not- withstanding his undoubted greatness, from an intellectual stand- point, the life of Mr. Edwards and the seemingly unnecessary religious controversy which he started, suggests the idea that he was conceited and self-centered, and ambitious.
As the successor of his grandfather and minister of the North- ampton Church, Mr. Edwards was merely one of many brilliant ministers. This was hardly satisfactory to a man of his make up. After following in the footsteps of his fine, great-hearted grand- father for many years, he finally discovered his own greatness, but no one else seemed to be aware of it -in just the way that he was - so, in order that he might impress his greatness upon his grandfather's people, he practically stamped his grandfather as being an ecclesiastical ignoramus and started a new system of
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salvation of his own. And if, as tradition tells us, he ever uttered the sentiment ; "Hell is paved with infants' skulls"; he stamped himself as being the prince of egotists, for the Master whom he professed to serve had, centuries before, declared that ; " Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven ".
This view of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards is suggested by his life and acts. He may have been a Christian, who was possessed of as great humility and earnest faithfulness as his grandfather, the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, but if he was, he possessed undoubted ability in concealing that fact. He was, however, from a purely intellectual standpoint, one of the greatest divines of the early Congregational Church.
William Edwards was the first American an- cestor of that family. He was in .Hartford for the first four or five years after its settlement and married the widow of William Spencer of that place. One child, Richard, was born in 1647, and there were three step-children.
" PARADISE," NORTHAMPTON, IN THE REAR OF SMITH COLLEGE.
Richard Edwards be- came a prominent citi- zen of Hartford. He was twice married and was the father of twelve children. The first child was Timothy, who was born in 1669. Timothy prepared for Harvard College and was graduated with honors, in the class of 1691. Three years later, he married Esther Stoddard, of Northampton, and went to East Windsor (then called Windsor Farms) where he was minister of the Church for sixty-three years. Jonathan, who became the pro- found thinker and ecclesiastical agitator, was born in East Wind-
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sor on October 5, 1703. He, with several other boys, was fitted for Yale by his father. Some idea of the profound scholarship required in those days for a College degree may be had when it is known that Jonathan was graduated from Yale just before he was seventeen years old, so, if the course was four years, he passed his entrance examinations just before he was thirteen.
Mr. Edwards remained in New Haven for two years after being graduated, occupying his time with several studies, some of them being preliminary to the ministry. When but nineteen, in 1772,
JONATHAN EDWARDS' ELM, NORTHAMPTON.
he was asked to supply the pulpit in a Presbyterian Church in New York, where he remained for nine months. This congre- gation was composed of a portion of the First Presbyterian Church which was dissatisfied with the minister, and so with- drew to a small building on William street, between Wall and Liberty streets.
While in New York, Mr. Edwards received a call from the Church of Bolton, Connecticut, a hill-town about fifteen miles east of Hartford. This was most pleasing to his parents and sisters, who lived in East Windsor, and seemingly so to young Edwards,
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for being so near, he could frequently see them. Mr. Edwards accepted the call on November 11, 1723, but although the Church kept the place open for two years, he never went there. The reason was, that at the time of his acceptance he was appointed as a tutor in Yale College. As the head of the College, Rector Tim- othy Cutler, and one of the tutors, had become Episcopalians, Mr. Edwards was persuaded that it was his duty to accept the tutor- ship as a sort of counter-irritant to the contagion of Episcopacy, which the Orthodox Church (meaning the only right Church) regarded with consterna- tion. As has already been said, Mr. Edwards became the minister of the North- ampton Church in 1727.
While in Yale Mr. Ed- wards became acquainted with the girl who later be- came his wife, as have so many Yale men of later generations. Sarah Pier- pont was but thirteen years old when the young student fell in love with her. In a written description of her he says; "She is pos- sessed of wonderful sweet- ness, calmness, and uni- IN "PARADISE." SMITH COLLEGE, NORTHAMPTON. versal benevolence of mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place singing sweetly, and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure, and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her ".
Evidently, a precocious and somewhat uncanny young person, but she captured Jonathan Edwards' affections and they were married after he had been installed in Northampton.
Jonathan Edwards was honestly possessed of his characteristics for his father, the Rev. Timothy Edwards, minister of the East Windsor Church, was a man of great will and stubbornness ; so
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great, that he was willing to see the Church disrupted and Chris- tianity smirched, rather than yield his point or his self-constituted absolute authority. They were both, from an intellectual stand- point, grcat divines, probably the greatest of their day in America, with few, if any superiors in the Old Country, but both were pos- sessed of what may be described as intellectual vanity and pride of ecclesiastical power, that governed all their acts as ministers. Neither was content to be " the first among cquals ". Had they been born Romanists instead of Protestants, nothing less than the Pontifical Chair or the Generalship of the Company of Jesus would have satisfied their ecclesiastical ambition. The elder Ed- wards showed these characteristics in the historical " Joseph Dig- gins' case ", in the East Windsor Church.
The Rev. John Hooker was the fourth minister. Hc was a descendant of the great preacher, the Rev. Thomas Hooker, Hart- ford's first minister. He was settled in 1754. Mr. Hooker was born in Farmington and was a graduate of Yalc, in the class of 1751. His death occurred in the twenty-third year of his pas- torate and the forty-eighth of his agc, on February 6, 1777.
The Rev. Solomon Williams was ordained as the fifth minister of Northampton on Junc 4, 1778, eight years after being gradu- ated at Yale. Hc dicd at the age of eighty-two, after fifty-six years as minister of the Church, on November 9, 1834. Mr. Williams married Mary Hooker, daughter of his predecessor, the Rev. John Hooker, in 1779.
EASTHAMPTON.
T HE territory comprising the Town of Easthampton was . purchased from the Indians by John Pynchon, of Spring- ficld, in 1653, and was a part of Northampton till its in- corporation in 1809. Before that year, Easthampton possessed the privileges of a town, except that the people were obliged to vote in Northampton and were not represented at the General Court, individually, the representative of Northampton being their rcp- resentative.
An interesting item of the purchase price paid by John Pyn- chon was the plowing of sixteen acres of land in Hadley. The Indians, no doubt, considered this the most valuable part of the purchase price. It may be casily understood, that the turning up
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of sixteen acres with the primitive implements possessed by the Indians, or, even with spades, was slow and tedious and not nearly so good, from a crop standpoint, as the deeper work that would be done with a plow. While the Indians relinquished a vast ter- ritory for 600 feet of wampum, ten coats and the plowing, they were well paid, notwithstanding the fact that there are some Quixotically sentimental writers who persist in stating that the English robbed the Indians in all real estate transactions. Be- sides the price paid for the land, the Indians retained the right to hunt and fish where they liked, and to live and cultivate, under certain reasonable restrictions. The right to make improvements and profit by those improvements in the future, was about all the Indians sold of their rights. The right to improve was something upon which they set no value ; something they would not have taken advantage of had they known they possessed it.
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Easthampton was a favorite locality with the Indians. The situation of Nashawannuck, as they called the territory, met with their requirements for a village. The rivers, lowlands and sur- rounding hills and mountains, provided all the fish and game and fur-bearing animals they could possibly require. So, although they sold the land, they did not deprive themselves of the shad and salmon, which were plentiful in the Manhan River, or the deer, bear, beaver, and other fur-bearing animals.
The first settlement was at Pascommuck, near the foot of Mt. Tom, where John Webb built a log house some time before 1670, the year in which he died. Up to the war with King Phillip, in 1675, the Indians had lived peaceably near the white settlers. In that year, they all left to join Phillip and as they never returned, it is probable that the majority of them were killed. The first building erected upon the site of the present village of East- hampton was a sawmill, about 1674, and in 1686, or 1687, Samuel Bartlett built a gristmill, on the *Manhan near the falls. There seems to be little or no definite information in regard to the year the first dwelling was built in this part of Easthampton. This mill and the surrounding land was given to Joseph Bartlett by his father Samuel, in 1705. It may be, that the reason there was 110 permanent settlement sooner was due to a fear of trouble with the French and their Indian friends. However that may be, the
* The Indian word was Munhan, the island made at the "Ox Bow" of the Connecticut at Mt. Tom.
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people did not go there to make a settlement, for some reason, till about 1725. Joseph Bartlett, and Jonathan Clapp and his nephew, lived there in 1725, and when Bartlett died in 1755, he divided his property between his brothers and the Clapps, as he had no children. The greater part of it was given to the Clapps, who were relatives. This Joseph Bartlett was the principal man of the place, as well as the first permanent settler in that portion of the town that is now Easthampton village. He kept the first tavern, for which he was given a license in 1727, and continued to
WILLISTON SEMINARY, EASTHAMPTON.
keep it up to his death, eighteen years later. He seems to have been the first person to give money toward the building of a church. The property which he willed to his brothers was given with the agreement, that they should pay £4 8s IId to the Church that first held public worship and administered the Sacraments. Up to the building of the first church, religious services were held in Bartlett's tavern. About 1726, there were two or three fam- ilies by the name of Wait, who settled in Easthampton, but later, they moved elsewhere. David Bartlett, a brother of Joseph, built a house there. In the Revolution, Colonel Horsford died from
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small pox in David's house, he having been carried there from Northampton. The Rev. John Hooper, who succeeded Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, also died of small pox in this house, soon after the death of Colonel Horsford.
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