USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 28
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July with but one shower in all those weeks. At last, when the rains did fall, the courage of the people was repaid, for they gathered fine crops of all kinds and they had no further trouble with the Indians.
In 1750, a new prosperity arrived. The neglected farms were again worked and produced full crops; new families from other parts joined the settlement and new houses were built, and re- newed attention was given to the education of the youth of the community. In 1751, Waitstill Strong, Jr., Eleazer Hannum and Stephen Sheldon were appointed a committee to have charge of the building of a schoolhouse. In 1753, the Town of South- ampton was incorporated and the first time that name was used in the town records was on March 5, of that year.
In 1755, when the army was raised to take Crown Point, ten men of Southampton joined it and two of them, Eliakim Wright and Ebenezer Kingsley, Jr., never returned. When Fort Willian: Henry was surrendered to the treacherous French, in 1757, upon the promise that they would not give the surrendered men over to the Indians ( which was what the French did) Joel Clapp and Nathaniel Loomis, of Southampton, escaped, naked, from the Indians after a terrible run of fourteen miles through the forest.
When the war with Great Britain began, the men of South- ampton were ready to fight and die, if necessary, for the rights of the Colonies and for independence. So many young men joined the Patriot army that hardly one of them was to be seen in Church. Those men of Southampton who were too feeble, or for any other reason could not join the army as fighters, joined the army as wagon drivers, loaders, in fact in any capacity suited to their strength, while still others banded themselves together at home to work the fields, that crops might be raised for the families of those who were smelling powder burnt in fierce battle, and that the soldiers might be supplied with food. In this small settlement of unselfish patriots, who lived in the town "where nothin' didn't ever happen to write about ", the Rev. Jonathan Judd stands out as an example of the unselfish patriotism which distinguished so many of New England's clergymen. In 1768, when the first suspicion of trouble with the Old Country became almost a certainty, the Town records show, that Mr. Judd volun- tcered to meet a committee from the people, for the purpose of
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reducing his salary to the lowest living point, so that the people could have that much more to devote to the common cause.
Deacon Elias Lyman, who had already been a delegate to the Provincial Congress, which met in Concord on October II, was .in 1775, again sent to the Congress, at Cambridge, and Jonathan Judd, Jr., Samuel Burt, Elias Lyman, Aaron Clark, Jonathan Clark, Timothy Clark, Samuel Pomeroy, Samuel Clapp, and Israel Sheldon, were appointed a Committee of Correspondence for the Southampton district. The people voted nine days after the fight at Lexington, to pay two-thirds of the cost of the pro- visions for Captain Lemuel Pomeroy's company, and a committee was appointed to collect the provisions and send them by wagon to the army.
The Rev. Jonathan Judd, who was for sixty years the minister of the Southampton Church, the son of William Judd, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 4, 1719. He was a great- great-grandson of Deacon Thomas Judd, the first America an- cestor of the Judd family in New England, who came from Eng- land in the Rev. Thomas Hooker's company, in 1633, and went with him to Hartford from Newtown (Cambridge) where he lived for a time, and then moved to Farmington and was the first representative of that Town to the General Court. After the death of his wife he moved to Northampton, and there married the widow of Thomas Mason.
Mr. Judd, the first minister of the Southampton Church, was educated at Yale, graduating at the age of twenty-two, in the class of 1741, which was one of the famous classes of Yale's youth. Among his classmates were William Livingston, who became Governor of New Jersey; and the Rev. Drs. Samuel Hopkins, Samuel Buel, Richard Mansfield, and Noah Welles. Mr. Judd was ordained in the November after graduation and married Silence Sheldon, daughter of Captain Thomas Sheldon, of Suf- field, previously of Northampton. They had four sons and three daughters. Mrs. Judd died in October, 1783. Seven years later, in 1790, Mr. Judd married Ruth, the widow of the Rev. Adonijah Bidwell, of Tyringham. Mr. Judd died at the age of eighty- three, in the sixtieth year of his ministry in Southampton, on July 28, 1803, and his second wife died in her eighty-sixth year, in December, 1815.
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In theology, Mr. Judd was equally as liberal as was the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton. He was a member of the council that dismissed the Rev. Jonathan Edwards from the Northampton Church, as the result of Mr. Edwards' "infallibil- ity " pronouncement, which practically declared his grandfather, the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, whose successor he was, unorthodox, misguided and totally wrong.
Mr. Judd's successor was the Rev. Vinson Gould, who became his assistant, on August 26, 1801, on account of Mr. Judd's fail- ing health. In Mr. Gould's pastorate, new interest in education was aroused by the opening of Sheldon Academy, which was largely made possible through the generosity of Silas Sheldon. Had this institution grown, as did the Collegiate Institute, of Saybrook, the name of Shelden would be as well known in the educational world as is that of Yale. His gifts of money were as large as were Governor Yale's. All of his money was made on a farm, rather unproductive, by his personal labor and energy while Governor Yale's great fortune was partly an inheritance and partly his salary as Governor of the East India Company. The comparison is not to disparage Governor Yale's much needed generosity, but to emphasize Mr. Shelden's magnificent muni- ficence. His gift toward establishing the Academy was $2,500. Besides this, he gave in his life time, $1,000 to Amherst College ; $1,000 to the Hampshire Education Society and many smaller gifts for other public purposes. Several young men were enabled to study for the ministry because of the money he loaned them and, having no children, he adopted several and gave them good educations. This interest in educational matters continued and increased through the generations that followed. While South- ampton has remained a frontier, back-woods settlement, geogra- phically, it is doubtful if any other town in the United States, similarly situated and of the same small population, has sent as many men to college and into the professions as has Southampton, where " nothin' didn't ever happen to write about ".
The Rev. Vinson Gould, Mr. Judd's successor, was born in Sharon, Connecticut, in August, 1774. In 1795, he entered the sophomore class of Williams College and was graduated in '97. Then, for a year, he was in charge of the Sharon Academy, when he gave that up to study for the Church under the Rev. Dr.
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Backus, of Somers, Connecticut. From October, 1800, to June, 1801, he was tutor in Williams and then went to the Church in Southampton as assistant to the venerable Mr. Judd. Mr. Gould married Mindwell, the only daughter of Dr. Sylvester Wood- bridge of Southampton .. It became evident that Mrs. Gould harkened to the admonition given by her parents at her christen- . ing - Mindwell - for she became well known all over the county for her extraordinary mental power and cultivation. Mr. Gould was dismissed from the Southampton Church, on January 5, 1832, and then went to South Hadley, where he taught school. Mrs. Gould died in 1838, and he in 1841, in his home in Southampton.
A home was a somewhat simple and primitive affair in the early days and for the first ten years the only home containing two rooms was Nathaniel Searl's. Mr. Searl had a typical Yankee family of nine sons and this is, no doubt, the reason why he indulged in the luxury of two rooms. For this reason, Mr. Searl's home was where the ministers stopped who preached in Southampton before the settlement of Mr. Judd, and where the council, that ordained him, was entertained. The Searl and Edwards families are two of the oldest Hampshire families. The first of the family, John Searl, was one of the settlers of Spring- field, where he died in January, 1642. His widow Mary ( Bald- win) Searl married Alexander Edwards, who moved from Springfield to Northampton and became the founder of the North- ampton, Southampton and Westhampton Edwards families. Na- thaniel Searl, of Southampton, was the great-grandson of John Searl of Springfield. It is an odd fact, that nearly 250 years later, a descendant of Mary Searl married a descendant of Alexander Edwards, both of Northampton.
The men of Southampton who were in the Continental army were Captain Abner Pomeroy, Sergeants Gershom Pomeroy, Jacob Pomeroy, and Lemuel Rust; Corporals Stephen Clapp, Samuel Edwards, and Ezekiel Wood; Ebenezer Geer, Obadiah Frary, Elisha Edwards, Stephen Sheldon, Roswell Strong, Darius Searl, Aaron Strong, Oliver Pomeroy, Joseph Bartlett, Elisha Bundy, Samuel Coleman, Silas Pomeroy, Gad Pomeroy, Noble Squires, and Phineas Searl.
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HADLEY.
H ADLEY bears about the same relation to Connecticut that New England bears to Old England, for it was settled as a place of refuge, where peace from religious troubles might be had. It is difficult to conceive of a more peaceful or charming situation for a valley settlement, than that chosen by Governor John Webster and the Rev. John Russell, and their followers, on the low, level peninsula where Hadley was founded.
Hadley is bounded on the north, west and south by the Con- necticut River, which makes a great bend there, and the village was laid out with the main street running north and south across this peninsula, either end of the street SWORD GIVEN TO CAPT. SMITH BY BURGOYNE. ending at the river. After the surrender, Burgoyne stopped over night in the hospitable home of Captain Smith, in Hadley, on his way to Boston. The street is a mile long and 333 feet feet wide, or twenty rods as the stipulation was. A green, or common, extends its entire length, through the middle, with a road on either side of the common and double rows of magnificent trees, mostly elms, between the roads and the houses.
In 1659, Governor Webster and Mr. Russell settled in Hadley. Governor Webster had thirty followers and the Rev. Mr. Russell the same number, but the settlement was made by forty-two per- sons, not all of the sixty going there. The majority of the settlers were from Hartford, the others being from Windsor and Wethers- field, Mr. Russell being the minister of the last named settlement.
Professor Alexander Johnson says, in regard to the trouble in the Hartford Church, which was the cause of the settlement of Hadley :
The first great church dispute, which rent the Hartford church, from 1654, to 1659, has been so complicated with the names of the actors and with doctrinal points, that one who is not a profound theologian can hardly [346]
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make anything of it. There are indications, however, that an explanation may be found in the effort to accommodate the original church and state system to the changing conditions of the people, and that the actors, how- ever prominent, were merely floating on the surface of opposing currents whose nature even they did not understand quite clearly. Three points are of interest; the church establishment; the connection of church and state, or rather town; and the changes in the people, with its effects. The first code of Connecticut, in 1650, required that all persons should be taxed for church as well as for state; and the taxes for support of the minister, and for all other ecclesiastical purposes, were to be levied and collected like other taxes. So long as a trace of the establishment existed, even down to the adoption of the constitution of 1818, the connection with the civil power continued. The church society used the civil tax lists in levy- ing its rates; the conditions of suffrage in society meetings were the same as in civil town meetings; and the penalties for voting by unqualified per- sons were the same. The civil power collected the taxes for the church by distraint. If the church refused or neglected to support its minister, the general assembly settled the proper rate of maintainance and enforced it in the church; and if a church remained without a minister for more than a year, the general assembly could name a proper amount for minis- terial purposes, and compel the church to raise and expend it. * * Considering the churches recognized in 1650, as established, the com- monwealth forbade any persons to form a new church within the colony, without consent of the general court and the neighboring churches. The man, therefore, who, not being a member of one of the established churches, found himself within the territory of a church, was unable to vote in purely church matters; but he was compelled to vote taxes and pay taxes for the support of a minister in whose call he had had no voice. From their establishment, the churches had been strict in regard to baptism, and their inquisitions into the personal experience of candi- dates for membership were searching. As the numbers increased of those who could not respond to such inquisitions'and were thus barred from the church, dissatisfaction must have increased with them. It often took the shape of complaints that the children of such persons were refused bap- tism; but it may be suspected that the natural wish to share in the con- trol of the church whose expenses they helped to pay, had a great deal to do with it. Either the right of suffrage must be restricted to church mern- bers, or all voters must be let into the church. * * In 1657, the * general eourt called for a council of the New England churches at Boston, to consider certain propositions of the general court .. The object of these propositions was well understood to be the widening of church-member- ship. * * * It declared that baptized infants were bound, on arriving
at years of discretion, to own the covenant and become formal church- members; and that the church was bound to accept them, if they were not of scandalous life and understood the grounds of religion, and was bound to baptize their children, thus continuing the chain of claims to church-membership to all generations. It was commonly known
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as the Half-way Covenant. * * * After the death of Hooker in 1647, Goodwin, the ruling elder, wanted Michael Wigglesworth as Hooker's successor ; and Stone, the surviving minister, refused to allow the proposi- tion to be put to vote. The Goodwin party, twenty-one in number, in- cluding Deputy Governor Webster, withdrew from the church; the Stone party undertook to discipline them; a council of Connecticut and New Haven churches failed to reconcile the parties ; the general court kindly assumed the office of mediator, and succeeded in making both parties furious; and finally a council at Boston in 1659, induced the Goodwin minority, now some sixty in number, to remove to Hadley, Mass.
The Indian name for all this territory was Norwottocke, mean- ing in the midst of the river. The Indian word given many dif-
SITE OF REGICIDE HOUSE, HADLEY.
ferent spellings in the old days perhaps survives as Mt. Nonotuck. The Mt. Holyoke range was Petowamachu; Mt. Toby, Kunck- quachu ; and Capawonk, was the Indian name of the lower Hat- field meadow.
On May 28, 1659, Captain Pynchon, Lieutenant Holyoke and Deacon Chapin of Springfield; William Holton and Richard Lyman, of Northampton, were appointed by the General Court to fix the boundaries of Hadley and to take charge of Town and Church work. The northern boundary was at Mt. Toby; the
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southern, at the head of the falls south of Mt. Holyoke. The eastern boundary was a line nine miles east from the Connecticut, but the town never extended so far east as nine miles. The west- ern boundary began at Mill River, in the present Town of Hat- field, two miles west from the Connecticut, and extended north to Sugar Loaf Mountain, which the Indians called Wequamps. This portion of Hadley to the west of the Connecticut was set- Ited by the Dickinson, Graves, Belding, White, Warner, Billings, Allis, and Meekins families, from Braintree, Massachusetts. By the time Hadley was purchased from the Indians, property values had advanced in the Colonies. The rate paid for Hadley was higher per acre, than had been paid to the original owners by any New England settlers, up to that year. The money value of the articles given to the Indians for the land they sold was £150. Five years later, in 1664, land values had increased so much, that 700 acres in that portion of Hadley on the west side of the Connecticut -- Hatfield - a portion of the Bradstreet farm, sold for f200, or £50 more than was paid to the Indians for the whole vast area comprising the Hadley purchase.
The village was laid out very nearly as it appears to-day. The rich, low land along the river was called meadows, instead of flats, and were given names, instead of numbers, as was done by the settlers of Schenectady in the Mohawk Valley, which was settled at about the same time as Hadley. They were called; to the north, Forty-acre Meadow; south-east, Fort Meadow; south, Hockanum Meadow; west, Great Meadow, including the peninsula bounded by the mile's length of the village street and the great bend of the Connecticut River.
The few lucky fishermen who have coaxed black bass from the "honey pot", near the point of the peninsula, where the river bends and turns toward the south-west, probably do not know that this deep hole, where the big black bass hide from the hot sun as well as from man, was named more than 200 years ago by the first settlers.
Over on the west side of the Connecticut (in Hatfield) were, Capawonk, a meadow at the south toward Northampton; Great and Little Meadows and Wequettayag, or the South Meadow, which included an Indian reservation called Indian Hollow.
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THE ONLY REMAINING PORTION OF CAPTAIN SMITH'S HOUSE, WHERE BURGOYNE SPENT THE NIGHT WHILE ON HIS WAY TO BOSTON AFTER THE SURRENDER.
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Wequettayag and Capawonk were divided by Mill River and were frequently also known as Great and Little Pansett.
Hadley began road making as early as 1667, when a cart path was made to North Hadley, then called Mill Brook. Roads were kept in reasonable repair up and down the river, that a com- munication with Hartford might be maintained. There were Indian trails to Boston, over which a man could ride a horse, but there was no cart path or road. In fact, no wheeled vehicle made the journey between Boston and Hadley till the end of the seventeenth century. The produce from the rich and fertile meadows was conveyed to Boston, by way of the Connecticut River and the Sound.
After suffering from the inconvenience and, in the winter, the danger of crossing the Connecticut and the meadows, to attend Church in Hadley village, the people in that portion of the town lying on the west side of the river, petitioned to be set off as a separate town, and asked that they might have a Church of their own. The reasons they gave why this petition should be granted - in addition to the danger and hardships of the ferry - were, that the work required in getting over the ferry was a desecration of the Sabbath, and that, when the weather and water were rough, it caused the women and children to " screech and unfitted them for the ordinances." And besides they said, it is necessary to leave some of the people at home " a prey to the heathen ". All of which were excellent arguments, and one house had actually been burnt by Indians, while the men were all gone to Church across the river.
The usual opposition by the other portion of the town was vigorous. The setting off of a portion of the town, with a Church of its own, added to the cost of maintaining the minister for each member of the opposition party. The matter was argued for three years and finally, in 1670, that part of Hadley lying on the west side of the Connecticut was incorporated and called Hatfield. The Rev. Hope Atherton, of Dorchester, Massachu- setts, from whom the Greenfield Athertons are descended, was the first minister of Hatfield. His salary was £60 a year, payable in pork and wheat.
Although the New Englanders were practical, hard-headed, unimaginative people, some of the superstition of the Old Country
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still lingered with them. On September 10, 1674, two years before the raid upon Hadley by Indians, when Goff's coolness and military knowledge turned the day for the settlers, strange noises were heard, like the. discharge of great cannon, and the earth shook so that every body was terrified. It was believed to be an omen of disaster. Whether it was an omen or not, the disasters followed, terrible and tragic.
The worst of them was the attack by 700 Indians while King Philip's War was in progress, on the morning of June 12, 1676, according to Barber. Plans for the attack had been made the previous day, by plac- ing a portion of the at- tacking party in ambush toward night at
the southern end of the village. At dawn the main body of the In- dians began the attack from the north, and the settlers met them at the palisades. The Indians fought with unusual courage and succeeded INDIAN TRAIL, HADLEY. in capturing a house at the north end of the street, and in burning a barn. They were soon driven back by the settlers with great loss, who fought as men do who are fighting for their families and their homes.
The Indians then attacked several points at once and although they were met with courage and determination, so eager were they to capture the place, that, instead of following their custom of retreating when the fight was against them, they still pressed the settlers with unabated fury.
Just as matters seemed the darkest for the settlers, General
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Goff, one of the regicides, a man of commanding and venerable presence, and an experienced soldier, came from concealment in the home of the Rev. John Russell, and revived the flagging energy and courage of the settlers. His knowledge of war gained in Cromwell's army made it possible for him to direct and place the settlers in such a manner that the best results could be ob- tained. At about the same time that Goff took command, a cannon was discharged into the midst of the Indians which, com- bined with Goff's coolness, had the effect of causing the Indians
COLONEL ELEAZER PORTER'S HOUSE, END VIEW.
to retire to a little distance. The purpose of the ambush at the southern end of the street, was the slaughter of the settlers when they should attempt to escape from the attack of the main body at the northern end. As the settlers fought, instead of trying to escape, the ambush amounted to nothing. This failure of their favorite mode of attack increased the discouragement of the Indians. The arrival of reinforcements, under Major Talcott from Northampton, just as the Indians withdrew, was most opportune. His force, joined with that of the settlers, attacked the Indians and drove them to the woods.
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The men of Hadley were harassed and some were killed by Indians for several years after this, and houses and barns were burned. In 1688, while Richard Church was hunting near Mt. Warner, he was killed and scalped by a hunting party of Indians. The Indians were captured near Mt. Toby, tried by the Court, condemned and executed by being shot. This seems to have made Hadley very unpopular with the Indians, and although they mur- dered and burned in neighboring settlements, they gave Hadley little or no trouble from that time on.
COLONEL ELEAZER PORTER'S HOUSE, HADLEY, BUILT IN 1713.
Besides the natural beauties of the village and its splendid street ; and that it was the secret home of Whalley and Goff the regicides for many years ; Hadley is notable for being the place where the first Church was organized on the Connecticut River, north of Springfield, the Church in Northampton was not or- ganized till the next year ; and where broom corn was first made into brooms and where the first scythes were made. The Town voted to build a meeting house in 1661, but it was not finished till 1670. It was built on a low elevation - long since removed -
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called meeting-house hill, near the north end of the village. It contained 128 seats. The men were seated on the right of the minister and the women on the left. If this was done after the manner of separating the sheep from the goats, history does not say. A bell was purchased for a sum equivalent to $25 and was paid for in wheat, at three shillings a bushel. Before the church was built, the people met in one of the homes of the settlement, for worship. In 1676, Hadley had its curfew, or nine o'clock bell, rung every night of the year.
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