USA > Connecticut > Historic towns of the Connecticut River Valley > Part 29
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This first church was worshipped in for forty-seven years. A committee was appointed consisting of Samuel Porter, Lieutenant Nehemiah Dickinson, Sergeant Daniel Marsh, Peter Montague, and Samuel Bernard, in 1713, to take charge of the erection of a new church, in the middle of the town. Colonel Eleazer Porter (whose home built in 1713, is shown in the pictures) asked and received permission to replace the old pulpit and sounding board with new ones, in 1739. On the north side of the church was a steeple, the first in Hampshire County. The assignment of seats was a very important business and by it the wealth, station and age of the individuals were fixed, or rather confirmed. This business of seating, and the placing of " Mr." before a man's name, was the nearest approach to the various titles of the Old Country, that was to be found in the Colonies.
The minister, the Rev. John Russell, was a member of the third class to be graduated from Harvard - 1645 - and a man of sound judgment, strong opinions and great moral courage. He did not fail to express himself as he believed duty demanded, because one or another of his parishoners might be offended by what he said. As a public speaker he was regarded with high esteem and in 1665, he was chosen to preach the "Election Ser- mon " at Hartford. He was thrifty and even a good man of business, for he left his children the very considerable fortune of £830.
The second minister was the Rev. Isaac Chauncey, of Stamford, Connecticut. He was a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1693, and a grandson of President Chauncey, the second president of Harvard. He was ordained about 1696. His salary was £80 a year and his firewood, and the parish gave him twenty acres of meadow, and the home lot with the buildings on it that had
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belonged to the former minister, the Rev. John Russell. Mr. Chauncey was possessed of a better education than his prede- cessor, Mr. Russell, but he was not so prominent, not so much a man of affairs in the town as was Mr. Russell, probably be- cause the times were more settled in his pastorate, less strenuous. Mr. Chauncey's death occurred in 1745, in the seventy-fifth year of his age and the fiftieth of his ministry.
The third minister was the Rev. Chester Williams, of Pomfret,
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FINE SPECIMEN OF COLONIAL DOOR IN COLONEL ELEAZER PORTER'S HOUSE, BUILT IN 1713.
Connecticut. He was a graduate of Yale in the class of 1735, and for two years after graduation was a tutor. His ordination took place in 1741: That he was a man of the finest courage was shown by his opposition to that ambitious, ecclesiastical auto- crat, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards; that religious contractor who paved hell with the skulls of infants. Through his wife, the daughter of Colonel Eleazer Porter, Mr. Williams became possessed of a considerable fortune. He was a man who was
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nice, and even elegant in his dress, and was said to ride the best horse in Hampshire County.
The Rev. Samuel Hopkins, a graduate of Yale, became minister in 1755.
He was a nephew of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards. As was frequently done in those days, when to be single was anything but to be blessed, Mr. Hopkins married the widow of his prede-
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JENNIE LYND ELM, HATFIELD.
cessor. His ministry continued through fifty-four years, his death occurring in 1809.
It is an interesting fact that the first scythe ever made in the Colonies was made in Hadley. It was made by Benjamin Colt, the ancestor of the inventor of the famous Colt's revolver.
HATFIELD.
T HAT portion of Hadley lying on the west side of the Con- necticut River was the first of Hadley's offspring to ob- tain an independent existence by incorporation, in 1670. The situation of Hatfield made it easy of attack by Indians and,
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as a fact, it was a great sufferer from them. Its first experience was in King Philip's War when, on October 19, 1675, an army of nearly 800 Indians made a descent upon that settlement from Deerfield, where they killed and destroyed to such an extent, that they thought to continue their success at Hatfield.
Several small companies of settlers, which were out scouting, had been cut off from the settlement by the attacking Indians. The Indians then hurried to the village and attacked it from several directions, but they were met by Captain Poole and Cap-
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BIRTHPLACE OF FOUNDER OF SMITH COLLEGE ( IN FOREGROUND) AND HOUSE WHERE SHE DIED (IN BACKGROUND).
tain Mosely who, with their companies, were in the village. Cap- tain Poole defended one end of the village and Captain Mosely held the center and then, just in time to turn the fight for the settlers, Captain Appleton arrived from Hadley with his company and defended the other end of the village. But the Indians were not repulsed with ease. The fight was terrific while it lasted, for. the Indians were full of confidence from their recent victory at Deerfield and so fought with unusual courage. When they
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realized that the day had gone against them, they fled with such haste that many of them lost their arms, and their ammunition was ruined by the water while they were fording or swimming Mill River, across which they were driven by the victorious settlers. They succeeded in setting fire to several buildings be- fore they were driven from the village, and in driving off some cattle and sheep. As it was just before dark when they were put to flight the settlers did not pursue them.
The next attack was made by 700 Indians on May 30, 1676.
MILL RIVER, HATFIELD. Across which the Indians were driven in the fight of October 19, 1675.
This time they were more successful. While one party was at- tacking the fortified houses of the settlement, another burned a dozen or more houses and barns and a third drove off nearly, if not all of the cattle. The loss of life and property would have been much greater, had it not been for the fine courage of twenty-five young men of Hadley who crossed the river and, fighting with a savagery that awed the Indians, broke through them and entered the village in time to render much needed as-
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sistance. Thus, a second time Hadley had saved its first offspring from destruction. In the same year Hatfield men took part in the Falls fight - Turners Falls -and Hatfield's first minister, the Rev. Hope Atherton, was the chaplain in that famous fight. He became separated from the soldiers after the fight and soon was lost in the forest. After wandering about till nearly worn out, he started to give himself up to the Indians, but they regarding him as a great medicine-man retreated before him and would not let him approach them. They knew enough about the settlements to know from his clerical dress that he was the "medicine-man " of the settlers, and the fact that he was seeking them no doubt filled them with fear, as they would naturally regard such ac- tion as being due to his power to destroy, or in some way injure them, with his " bad medicine ". The poor gentleman wandered about for a number of days, exhausted by fatigue and hunger. At last he came upon the river and followed its course south to Hatfield.
The people of the settlement were occupied on September 19, 1677, with a house-raising, when they were suddenly set upon by a band of fifty Indians who captured or killed about twenty of the settlers, two of the captives being Mrs. Benjamin Wait and Mrs. Stephen Jennings. Later in the year, a party set out for Canada to ransom the captives and after eight months absence they returned with nineteen of them.
AMHERST.
H ADLEY East, or Hadley Third Precinct, became the Town of Amherst in 1759, by incorporation. The Pre- cinct had its first Church, and settled the Rev. David Parsons as its first minister, in 1739. The word precinct was an ecclesiastical term synonymous with parish.
The land was divided among the proprietors of Hadley, in 1703, by Captain Aaron Clark, Lieutenant Nehemiah Dickinson, and Samuel Porter, the Town Surveyors. The original highways, or roads, were forty rods wide - about 650 feet - but they were reduced in 1754, some to twenty rods and others twelve rods in width, and in 1788 to six rods.
Just when the first house was built is uncertain, but in 1703,
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a man named Foote from Hatfield built a house of rough logs near the site of the meeting-house of the second parish. Foote was a hunter and trapper and he expected to make a living at his calling but failed to do so and finally moved away. The neighborhood where he built his hut was known for many years as Foote-folly Swamp. The Indian wars and their frequent raids, between wars, made it dangerous for any one to settle at any distance from the older settlements, so the Third Precinct, or Amherst, was not permanently settled till about 1727. There were eighteen settlers in 1731. They were, John and Jonathan Cowles, John Ingram, father and son; Stephen, Aaron and Nathaniel Smith, Samuel Boltwood, Samuel Hawley, Nathaniel Church, John and Joseph Wells, Richard Chauncey, John Nash, Jr., Ebenezer Ingram, Ebenezer Scoville, and Ebenezer Dickinson. By 1760, Amherst had increased so greatly in population that it was larger than Hadley, and in 1790, its 1,200 inhabitants made it just twice the size of Hadley in population.
In 1734, when the settlement had increased enough for the in- habitants to feel that they were entitled to be formed into a sepa- rate parish, Hadley opposed it successfully through its representa- tive, Captain Luke Smith, who was sent to Boston for that pur- pose. In the winter of that year the petition was renewed and granted with the understanding, that a meeting-house should be built and a minister settled (orthodox, of course) within three years. Hadley Third Precinct was seven miles long and two and three-quarters miles wide. In October, 1735, the people voted to build a meeting-house and settle a minister. The Rev. David Par- sons, Jr., was the choice. He began to preach as Amherst's first minister in 1735, and was ordained in 1739. Mr. Parsons was a graduate of Harvard. The first meeting-house was begun in 1738, and was worshipped in before it was finished, in 1753. It was situated on what later became the site of Amherst College, not far from the Observatory.
Amherst was greatly disturbed by bitter fights connected with religion. Mr. Parsons, the first minister, died in 1781, and was succeeded by his son, the Rev. Dr. David Parsons. Captain Ebenezer Mattoon and his followers strongly opposed his settle- ment, and a year or two later the fight became so strenuous that they left the Church and formed the second parish, at East Street.
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AMHERST COLLEGE.
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But this was not the first trouble, for when an attempt was made to fix upon a site for the first meeting-house it resulted in a quarrel ; nor was it the last, for when it was proposed to build the second meeting-house, just before the Revolution, another fight was started, which jarred the foundations of the Church organization, of society, and started feuds between neighbors that lasted for many years.
As the first meeting-house was too small for the congregation in 1771, it was decided to build one larger, and the attempt to select a site was the beginning of the trouble. The first perma- nent settlers had built their houses near the center of the present village. As all of the lots in that part of the settlement were soon occupied, the new inhabitants, who came along later, were obliged to build their houses on the outskirts of the settlement, toward the north and the south. It was not long before these settlements at the north and south contained more inhabitants than the center.
The north and south-enders were keen politicians as well as church members. That they might benefit themselves at the ex- pense of the older portion of the settlement in the center, they proposed to divide the District in two, by a line passing through the center from east to west. (A District was a town in every- thing but the right to send representative to the Legislature. This was due to the King's fear of the increasing power of the Towns through their representatives.) Their idea was to event- ually form each half of the divided District into a separate Dis- trict or Town. In 1772, a majority voted to divide the District, and in 1773, it voted to build two meeting-houses remote from the center, but both were to be built at the expense of the whole Dis- trict without regard to the division. This plan would have placed the greater portion of the expense of building the two churches upon the inhabitants of the center, and would have left them fur- ther from the two churches than the inhabitants at the north and south ends of the settlement.
Of the 120 property owners in the District a majority - seventy - were opposed to dividing the District and in favor of building the new and larger meeting-house at the center. And as only property owners could vote on such matters, the north and south-enders would have been in a deep hole had they not been
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resourceful. In those two neighborhoods there were some twenty- five legal voters who were not property owners, and nearly all were sons of farmers. To them their fathers deeded small pieces of land and thus were they made eligible to vote upon the ques- tion at issue, and so the majority in the center became the minor- ity. The only resource of the people at the center was to petition the Legislature for a stay in the proceedings. The Legislature granted the petition and sent Artemus Ward, Mr. Pickering and Colonel Bacon as a committee to investigate and report. This
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was in February, 1774. This action of the Legislature, and the war with Great Britain, stopped all further action in the matter. A new meeting-house was built at the center in 1788.
When the Colonies had decided upon complete independence, Amherst was found to be well supplied with soldiers and officers of experience. These men had been trained to hardship and mili- tary service in the Indian troubles at the beginning of the second half of the eighteenth century. In 1744, in King George's War, the following men from Amherst learned to shoot to kill, to
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bear hunger and cold without complaint, to know and fear danger and meet it with bravery and courage; with a hero- ism that would have been impossible had they not known and feared it. They were : Joseph Alexander, Ensign Solomon Bolt- wood, Sergeant Solomon Keyes, Corporal William Montague, Corporal Joseph Hawley, Hezekiah Belding, William Boltwood, Joseph Clary, Josiah Chauncey, Jonathan Dickinson, Ebenezer Dickinson, John and Samuel Ingram, Joseph Kellogg, Anson Smith, Peletiah Smith, David Nash, Eleazar Mattoon, Gideon Parsons, Reuben Smith, Eleazar Nash, Stephen Smith. In 1757, when Fort William Henry was besieged, Lieutenant Jonathan Dickinson and his company of sixteen men of Amherst, were ordered to help defend the western frontiers. In the expedition to Crown Point, in 1755, Sergeant Reuben Dickinson and five other men of Amherst were in Captain Moses Porter's company. They were in the " Bloody Morning Scout " of September 8, of that year, in Colonel Ephraim Williams' command. In this same expedition, Samuel Hawley and his three sons were in Captain Nathaniel Dwight's company.
Amherst was full of patriots when the Revolution broke out, and a few of her sons were loyal to their King and so proved themselves to be possessed of fine moral courage, for it requires the finest courage, when such a revolution is brewing and is ac- tually being fought, to be on the unpopular side. Foremost among the patriots were Ebenezer Mattoon, Jr., and Nathaniel Dickin- son, Jr. Among the Tories were the Rev. David Parsons, the minister ; Squire Isaac Chauncey and Lieutenant Robert Bolt- wood.
Mr. Mattoon was a man of cultivation and wisdom, who became Amherst's most distinguished son in public life. He was gradu- ated from Dartmouth College in the class of 1776, and imme- diately devoted his intelligence, his energy and his life to the in- dependence of the Colonies. As Representative at the age of but twenty-one, and later as Senator in the Legislature ; as Member of Congress, Sheriff of Hampshire County, and Adjutant General of Massachusetts, he proved himself to be "the first among equals ", as Governor Treadwell of Connecticut happily described the social and political condition of the typical New Englander.
Of the same fine patriotism, intellect and energy, was Nathaniel Dickinson. He was graduated from Harvard in 1771, and im-
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mediately began to study law in the office of Major Hawley, in Northampton. At the expiration of his law studies, in 1774, at the age of twenty-four, he found himself in the midst of condi- tions that offered greater opportunities for doing and accom- plishing than had ever before, or have since been presented to the young men of America. "Nat " Dickinson's temper was as hot as his patriotism, and it was well for him, whose lack of patriot- ism aroused Nat's temper ; to suddenly remember that he had an
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appointment in an adjoining county, and to make all possible speed in keeping it. On one occasion, when the minister, Mr. Parsons, was obliged to read a proclamation issued by the newly created State of Massachusetts, which ended with; "God save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts", Mr. Williams added : "But I say, God bless the King"; Mr. Dickinson sprang up in his pew and shouted ; " I say you are a damned rascal ".
Mr. Dickinson was a delegate to the first Provincial Congress and also to the second, which met in Cambridge, in February, 1775, and to the third, in Watertown, in the same year. He was
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a Representative in the Legislature in 1778, 1780, and 1783, but the Town Committees of Correspondence, of which he was a mem- ber, gave him the best opportunities for the display of his uncom- promising and fiery patriotism. In the offices of clerk, treasurer, assessor and selectman of the town he displayed excellent busi-
. ness ability and careful, painstaking work. In 1781, he was gen- erally known as "'Squire Nat " because of his appointment by Governor Hancock as a Justice of the Peace. His death occurred in his fifty-third year, in 1802.
Amherst's Committee of Correspondence in 1774, was composed of Moses, Reuben, and Nathaniel Dickinson, Jr. ; Jacob McDaniels and Joseph Williams.
There were just enough Tories in Amherst to make the patriots unusually suspicious and cautious. Josiah Chauncey had been commissioned as a captain of militia by Hutchinson, the Royal Governor, in 1773, and the Captain's patriot fellow citizens were , not satisfied with his protestations of patriotism, until he had burned all Royal commissions, of every kind, which he had re- ceived. This ceremony took place under a large tree with con- siderable formality.
As an educational center, Amherst has been notable for many generations. Noah Webster, the famous lexicographer, taught in the Amherst Academy, which he had helped to organize, and which was the beginning of Amherst College founded in 1821. Ir. addition to the Academy and College, there was a seminary known as Mount Pleasant Institution.
SOUTH HADLEY.
I N 1721, when a few families settled in South Hadley, having moved there from Hadley, the settlement was called the South Precinct, it being a part of the old Town of Hadley. For a number of years the people of the new settlement were obliged to travel six or seven miles, to Hadley, to attend Church. In 1732, the settlers had put up the frame for a church and the fol- lowing year they voted to partly finish the building, that it might be worshiped in, but it was not finished till 1737. This meeting- house was a tiny affair with only nine pews. The people were too few and too poor to have a bell, or even the customary drum for
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calling the congregation to meeting, so a conch shell was used for that purpose. Later, as the number of inhabitants increased, a little gallery was added for their accommodation, and in 1750 the church was too small to seat all the people so it was decided to build a new and larger meeting-house.
There were many church-site fights in the old New England towns, but it is doubtful if any of them continued for thirteen years as did the dispute in South Hadley and even then it was only settled by calling upon a number of ministers to act as peace- makers. After holding more than fifty meetings for the purpose of fixing upon a site, without success, it was finally decided to leave it to chance. Lots were drawn for the site and when the result was announced, that portion of the inhabitants which fa- vored another site was still dissatisfied, so a council of ministers was called. It was composed of the Rev. Dr. Stephen Williams, of Longmeadow ; the Rev. John Ballentine, of Westfield ; the Rev. Robert Breck, of Springfield; and the Rev. Joseph Lathrop, of West Springfield. This council decided that the site chosen by lot must stand: The first minister of the Church was the Rev. Grindall Rawson, who was settled in 1733. The second minister was the Rev. John Woodbridge, who was in charge of the Church from 1742, till 1782, and so was there during the dispute over the site.
The falls at South Hadley were famous for the size and great number of the shad caught there, and was resorted to by men from considerable distances. This made the business of inn keep- ing profitable, as the fisherman, whether he is such for sport, food or profit, is proverbially thirsty and hungry.
Samuel Smith kept the first inn in 1729, on the road to Spring- field, north of the falls. The first inn in the district known as Falls Woods was kept by Elijah Alvord, in 1755. Alvord also had a warehouse at the mouth of Stony Brook, where he carried on a considerable trade. Besides these inns, there were several others opened and all of them did a good business on account of the fishing and the transportation of produce and merchandise around the falls. As late as 1820, the Canal Hotel, on Front street at the falls, frequently provided dinners for from seventy- five to one hundred fishermen in a day.
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DEERFIELD.
W HEN the people of Dedham, Massachusetts, were at- tacked by an irresistible desire to move from their homes in the east, to that far and fertile portion of the Colony in the Connecticut Valley, they sent out men of ex- perience whom they trusted, to explore the country and find a place for the new settlement. These men explored carefully and finally chose that portion of the valley called Pocomtuck by the Indians, where Deerfield and Greenfield are situated. These explorers chose Pocomtuck because of the fertility of its soil and the great natural beauty of the locality, which combines meadows backed by uplands, and several individual, precipitous hills in the midst of the meadows. These hills seem like mountains be- cause of their isolation from other eminences, and the consider- able height which they attain. So, they chose their homes in the midst of great natural beauties, that are unsurpassed of their kind, and also upon a soil that has been famous for nearly three cen- turies for its fertility.
In 1669, the General Court, in Governor Bellingham's adminis- tration, granted 8,000 acres of land at Pocomtuck, to the people of Dedham. The proprietors met for the first time on March I, 1670, in Dedham, to make arrangements for the laying out of the grant and in 1673, the General Court incorporated the 8,000-acre grant as the Town of Deerfield which thus became the oldest town in Franklin County. The original territory of 8,000 acres ex- tended from the north bounds of Hatfield to the Pocomtuck River - which became the Deerfield River when the incorporation took place. Additional grants were later made that included the territory which later became the Towns of Greenfield, Conway, Shelburne Falls and Gill.
A deed for a part of the original grant was given, in 1665, by Sachem Chauk, of the Pocomtuck Indians, to William Pynchon, of Springfield. Wequonock was the witness for his tribe. This deed had the usual provision, that the Indians retained the right
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to hunt and fish, and to gather the natural products of the forest and fields, such as nuts and berries.
The actual settlement began about 1670, the main street of the little settlement being laid out north and south, on the upland to the west of, and immediately joining the meadows, which ex- tend down to the western bank of the Connecticut River. It is one of the most charming village streets in the valley. The situa- tion of Deerfield was unfortunate in one respect. It was in the midst of an Indian country and its immediate neighborhood was
REV. WILLIAMS' HOUSE, DEERFIELD.
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