USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 30
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slighted, and which he pieces together in an effective whole, that Goffe might have been spirited away to Hart- ford some time early in King Philip's War, during the confused and congested condition of Hadley when it was the headquarters of troops, and that he might have re- mained concealed there (as he is known to have been for an indefinite period) till his infirmities had increased and he seemed bereft of most of his earlier friends, when he made his secret way back to Hadley to die under the shelter of the friend who never failed him for a moment.
The meeting-house of Parson Russell's time stood in the middle of the green, opposite the parsonage. Its lineal descendant is seen in the First Church, of early nineteenth century model, on Middle Street. In near neighborhood is Hopkins Academy, the successor of the grammar school established by the town in or about 1667, by means of its part of the fund bequeathed for various educational purposes by Edward Hopkins, second governor of Connecticut. The school became the academy nearly a century ago, and is reminiscent of the schooldays of some famous Hadley boys. Another excellent institution, the gift of a townsman, is the public library. These interest in their different ways; but the æsthetic visitor lingers most fondly about the frequent colonial mansions under the Hadley elms which give the ripe town its distinctive character. One regrets the loss by fire in recent years of the homestead at the north end of West Street which was the birthplace of General Joseph Hooker, whose sobriquet of "Fighting Joe Hooker," so deprecated by him, clings permanently to his memory. In another part of the town, however, yet remains the choice Huntington homestead, " Elm Valley," birthplace of the late Bishop Frederic Dan Huntington of Central New York, and one of the finest
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"Elm Valley "- The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Homestead, Hadley. "One of the finest types of the Colonial Farm Seat in the Valley."
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types in the Valley, of the colonial farm-seat the history of which reaches back to the middle of the eighteenth century, with family records illustrating the best of the old-time New England life.
This is, properly speaking, the Porter-Phelps-Hunt- ington homestead. It occupies a rarely beautiful spot two miles north of old West Street, in the north village. The original farm was taken up and the house built by Bishop Huntington's maternal great-grandfather, Captain Moses Porter, in 1752, when there was no dwelling in Hadley township north of West Street, and the nearest houses were across the River in Hatfield village. Captain Porter was allied to one of the families first settling in Hadley, and, a young farmer, had just married Elizabeth Pitkin, who came of a pioneer Hartford family, and whose mother had been the third wife of Parson Russell of Hadley. Only three years afterward Captain Porter went north with his Hadley company in the French war, leaving his young wife and their child, a second Elizabeth, alone at the homestead. In her letters to her husband in camp the lonely wife passed lightly over her perils on the isolated farm when Indians prowled about the house, at night often " showing their savage features at the windows." Captain Porter was early captured and killed near Lake George. Upon his loss the widow bravely took the direction of the farm, and carried it on successfully till Elizabeth Porter had grown up and had married Charles Phelps of an early Northampton family. Then began the Phelps regime under which the homestead was enlarged, and the farm bounds so expanded as to include nearly the whole of Mount Warner, where were great sheep pastures and rich woodland. As time passed on Squire Phelps with his growing family gave distinction to the place. Dr. Dwight
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in his " Travels " makes especial allusion to its exceptional character. Visiting the homestead on a May day in 1798, when he enjoyed its hospitality at "tea," Dr. Dwight was particularly charmed with the daughter of the house, - a third Elizabeth, then nineteen and blooming, and upon his return to New Haven he discanted cleverly on her virtues to one of his favorite young tutors. This was Dan Huntington, native of Litchfield, Connecticut (his mother a descendant of Adrian Scrope, alias Throop, one of the "regicides "), a Yale graduate and an ordained min- ister, about to "settle " in Litchfield. Six months after Dr. Dwight's visit the young minister preached at Hadley one Sunday, and also " took tea " at the Phelps homestead. Then on New Years' day, 1801, Dan and Elizabeth were married in the " Long Room " of the homestead, before a grand party of relatives. After a dozen years spent in the Litchfield parsonage, and two or three more with a parish in Middletown in the Lower Valley, the Huntingtons, now with a quiver full of younglings, returned to live perma- nently at the homestead. So, in 1816, began the Hunt- ington regime. Frederick Dan was born in the ancestral home in 1819, the eleventh and last child of the family, and youngest of seven sons. The place as developed from Captain Porter's beginning and through the Huntington regime, is thus pleasantly sketched in Miss Arria S. Hunt- ington's Under a Colonial Rooftree :
The house was originally of ample size. Its main structure bore the same features as to-day, except that the gambrel roof was added the next century. ... A broad hall with an open stairway leading to the floor above divided good sized rooms on either hand, a parlor bedroom and the "Long Room " only used for state occasions. Another hall at a right angle led to the little door-yard filled with lilacs and syringas. This south entrance had its flagged walk, and
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Round Hill, Northampton, in the Eighteen-thirties (the period of Cogswell and Bancroft's Round Hill School for Boys here). From an old print.
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small gate opening into a large space where carriages drove up. The front door, with its big brass knocker, was seldom used; the grass grew close up to the steps of the white porch. In a wing at the rear stood a huge chimney occupying space enough for a small room, with great fireplace and ovens. Another large chimney was erected when the present kitchen, cheese-room, &c., were added. An enclosed piazza with seats along the sides, known as the " stoop," extended along the whole western length of the house. In harvest time a long table was set there for the reapers. All through the summer the churning, washing and other household work was there carried on. At nightfall it afforded a grateful retreat after the la- bors of the day. To those of later generations it has been a favorite social gathering place at that hour. . .. Through the stillness we may hear the tread of horses' hoofs crossing the bridge by the mill a mile away. The clear notes of the thrush sound from the trees along the shore.
Over the threshold of this ancestral house were carried the three Elizabeths in direct succession, at the close of their long lives, to their last resting-place in the Old Hadley burying-ground. And here the bishop, whose summer home it had been throughout his life, died, in July, 1904, full of years like his father before him, and was buried with his kindred in the village graveyard.
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Northampton, the "Meadow City " - Its Crop of Exceptional Men - The Dwights and the Whitneys -Sites of Jonathan Edwards's Home and Pulpit-Scenes of the Ely Insurrection and of Shays's Rebellion - Smith College- An Educational Centre - Mounts Tom and Holyoke - Holyoke, the " Paper City " - Its great Hydraulic Works - Chicopee and its notable Manufactures- Springfield, the " Queen City " - Beauty of its Setting - Its choice Institutions -The United States Arsenal - Scene of the over- throw of Shays's Rebellion.
N ORTHAMPTON is the uppermost city of the Valley, yet with all its metropolitan dignity it remains the " queen village of the meads fronting the sunrise and in beauty throned," as when Holland wrote. Citified struc- tures have indeed replaced many of the rural buildings of the town; the Smith College establishment has developed to impressive proportions ; and a municipal theatre has become an assured institution ; nevertheless an exquisitely refined village atmosphere still pervades the place, the municipality sits as superbly as the town on the terraced banks, and the great deep level meadows unspoiled still fringe the River coursing through the lovely vale between Mounts Holyoke and Tom.
It has produced, with other fine things, a rare crop of exceptional men. First in importance were those three remarkable town ministers one after another, - Eleazar Mather, Solomon Stoddard, and Jonathan Edwards. Next, the political " River gods," the three men, following John Pynchon of Springfield and Samuel Partridge of Hatfield, who were in succession the Western Massachusetts leaders
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Jonathan Edwards. From a portrait of 1740, the most authentic portrait existing.
Wife of Jonathan Edwards. From a portrait of 1740.
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in the colony, the province, and the state : Colonel John Stoddard, Major Joseph Hawley, a powerful influence with Samuel Adams and John Adams in the pre-revolu- tionary moves, and Caleb Strong, governor of the com- monwealth for eleven years, including the period of the war of 1812. Then there were the three Timothy Dwights. The first, Colonel Timothy (born in Hatfield, 1694), son of Judge Nathaniel and Mehitable Dwight (she a daughter of Samuel Partridge), who, moving from Hatfield to North- ampton soon after their marriage, began the Northampton line of Dwights ; a lawyer of "great respectability," a judge, a military man, and a squire in the town. The second, Major Timothy, Colonel Timothy's son (born at Fort Dummer, 1726, when his father was stationed there), married in 1750 to Mary Edwards, one of Jonathan Edwards's daughters, when she was but sixteen, a merchant, civil officer, judge, and a tory at the Revolution. The third, Doctor Timothy, Major Timothy's son (born in Northamp- ton, 1752), the eldest of seventeen children, eight of them sons, theologian, poet, author, and president of Yale. Also, Dr Timothy's brother Theodore (born in 1765), one of the " Hartford Wits," secretary of the Hartford Convention of 1814, and later its historian. Then the Whitneys, related to the Dwights, a family eminent for scholarship, begin- ning here with Josiah Dwight Whitney (born in Westfield, 1786), a merchant and son of a merchant, grandson of a sterling New England minister, and on the maternal side great-grandson to a Hatfield Dwight - Captain Henry, brother to Judge Nathaniel. Coming to Northampton at twenty-one to keep a country store as a branch of Jonathan Dwight & Sons, his kinsfolk, after eight years' apprentice- ship in their main Springfield store he married first Sarah Williston, of the Valley Williston family, notable in
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educational work, and second, Clarissa James, of the North- ampton Lymans on the maternal side, and had in all thirteen children, nine living to maturity and remarkable for varied intellectual attainments. Of Sarah Williston Whitney's offspring were Professor Josiah Dwight Whit- ney (born 1819), the eminent geologist in whose honor the highest mountain in the United States, outside of Alaska, is named, Professor William Dwight Whitney (born 1827), as eminent as a philologist and Sanskrit scholar, and Maria Whitney (born 1830) sometime professor of modern languages in Smith College. Of Clarissa James Whitney's : James Lyman Whitney (born 1835), bibliographer, and dean of American librarians by virtue of his forty years' service in the Boston Public Library, and Henry Mitchell Whitney (born 1843), former professor of English at Beloit College, Wisconsin. The head of the family had the sat- isfaction of recording in his autobiography, written down in a family " Fact Book," that he had been able to give all of his nine children a liberal education, although obliged to help his seven brothers and sisters from the death of his father, when he was but twenty years old. After twenty-six years of mercantile life he became a banker, cashier for fourteen years and for one year president of the Northampton bank, in those primitive days of finance receiving an annual salary as cashier of from one thousand to twelve hundred dollars, and as president, six hundred dollars. His creditable life closed at eighty-two. The Whitneys, like the Dwights, were devotedly attached to the interests of Yale College.
Other families of leading were the Pomeroys, most conspicuous among them General Seth Pomeroy, the " gunsmith of Northampton " at the siege of Louisburg, and a soldier of the Revolution, entering the conflict at
The Jonathan Edwards Elm, Northampton: in front of the Whitney house on the site of the house of Jonathan Edwards.
The Whitney family grouped about the tree : at the spectator's right, Professor Josiah Dwight Whitney, the geologist ; in front of him, seated, his wife ; next to him, James Lyman Whitney, the bibliographer; at the left of the ladder, Professor William Dwight Whitney, the philologist ; at his right, his wife; between them, Miss Maria Whitney, professor of modern languages ; in the tree above the ladder, Henry Mitchell Whitney, professor of English literature ; at the spectator's left. Edward Baldwin Whitney, son of William D). Whitney, former assistant Attorney General of the United States.
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sixty-nine with the ardor of youth; the Lymans, putting forth soldiers, lawyers, and judges ; the Ashmun and Bates families, distinguished by United States senators. Here also George Bancroft, then in his twenties, and a school- master with his friend Dr. Cogswell at their Round Hill School of lofty ideals, began his " History "; Dr. Josiah G. Holland spent part of his youth and later made the place the scene of his Kathrina ; and here George W. Cable established his northern home of "Tarryawhile."
Along the picturesquely irregular streets which proceed from the centre over and around the terraces "with no very distant resemblance to the claws of a crab," as Dr. Dwight described them, is an unusual number of old dwell- ings with histories, and the sites of other historic structures. Naturally the site of Jonathan Edwards's home, with the elm, survivor of the two which he planted in front, is first sought. Here is now the Whitney homestead, built by Josiah Dwight Whitney in 1827-28, in place of the then dilapidated Edwards house, and identified with the youth of his scholarly sons and daughters. Next south of the Edwards house was the mansion of Major Timothy Dwight, in which Dr. Dwight and his brother and sisters were born. Here Madam Mary Edwards Dwight long reigned, a strong, almost imperious personality, vigorous of mind, inheriting much of her father's intellectual superiority, though small of stature, - in her young womanhood so small and dainty that Dr. Dwight related, " her husband (who was as much above the medium height as she was below it) would some- times carry her around the room on his open palm held out at arm's length."
The Stoddard house in which Parson Stoddard lived through the greater part of his long ministry of fifty-seven years (1672-1729), and the grander gambrel-roofed addi-
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tion that his son, the colonel, subsequently erected, making the older house an ell, are still to be seen on well-named Pleasant Street, in the " Hinckley place," but separated, the minister's house being set off as a stable, and the colo- nel's addition embodied in the present dwelling. Parson Stoddard put up his house here in 1684. He lived first in the Mather parsonage, which he occupied upon his marriage to Esther Mather, his predecessor's widow. This house stood on the west corner of Main and Pleasant Streets. Here was born Eunice Mather, who became the wife of Parson Williams of Deerfield, and the " martyr of the Sack of 1704." Esther Mather-Stoddard outlived Parson Stod- dard for seven years, attaining the age of ninety-two. He died at eighty-six, two years after his grandson, Jonathan Edwards, had become his colleague.
The pulpit has gone with the old meeting-houses from which Jonathan Edwards preached for twenty-three years (1727 to 1750) and laid the foundation of his fame as one of the great metaphysicians of his age; from which he led those soul-straining revivals described in his Narrative of Surprising Conversions, and whence he was finally so ruthlessly dismissed, the culmination of the tremendous theological controversy over his change in the test for the communion, making this rite the end rather than the means of conversion, -the controversy heightened doubtless by his plain speaking from the pulpit on the morals of the youth of his congregation, which hit some of the elders. But in the present First Church, the suc- cessor of the earlier meeting-houses on the same site, is seen a memorial tablet displaying his figure in relief, and fittingly inscribed, which was set up on the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his dismissal, a tardy recognition of his fame and worth.
Smith College-College Hall. From photographs by Katherine E. McClellan, Northampton.
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The Court House is on the site of the Court House of the Revolutionary period, the scene of the first public step in the agitation begun in the closing year of the Revolution for relief from the burdens of debt and taxes oppressing the people, and culminating four years later in the Shays's Rebellion. Northampton also was the scene of the open- ing act of that rebellion ; and here, too, after it was finally crushed, the last acts in the Valley were performed : the trial of a bunch of the captured leaders, when six were convicted of high treason and sentenced to death, and seven found guilty of stirring up sedition were variously sentenced ; the subsequent pardon of four of the six con- demned to the gallows; the issue of warrants for the execution of the other two; and their reprieve as the nooses were dangling above their necks.
To stop the machinery of law was the first intent of the demonstrations throughout the whole period of these insurrections. Courts and lawyers were warred against because the former were used to enforce the collection of debts and taxes, and the latter under the sanction of the courts compelled payments. With the courts stopped it was argued that radical reforms would immediately fol- low. Back of the acts of the mob were conventions of delegates from the people which proceeded in accordance with the prescribed order of popular assemblies, and for- mulated the various grievances for presentation to the General Court in the ordinary way. But in these conven- tions demagogues vied with soberer-headed leaders for control, and when they gained it inflamed the passions of the malcontents to violent action. While many of the grievances enumerated were endorsed by men of standing in the community, and their efforts were exerted to secure relief and reform through wise legislation, most of this
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class could only condemn and resist the high-handed policy that would force these ends at the behest of the mob. In the conflicts that ensued there was much parleying between the "insurgents " and the representatives of law and order, for neighbors, friends, and acquaintances were arrayed on either side.
In the initial Northampton affair, which occurred in April, 1782, the "insurgents " assumed to act under the authority of a convention held in Hatfield the previous March, which resolved that " there be no County Court of the Sessions of Peace." Their leader, Samuel Ely, of Con- way, the town next west of Deerfield, was an unlicensed preacher, who " possessed the spirit and so far as his slen- der abilities would permit, the arts of a demagogue in an unusual degree." Such was Dr. Dwight's characterization of him, and his performances would seem to warrant it. On the day set for the opening of this court in Northamp- ton for the April term, Ely appeared with a number of fol- lowers from various places, and haranguing a crowd that assembled before the Court House, incited them against the court. Nothing further, however, was then attempted. Eight days later he reappeared with a larger following. Armed with a club, again before the Court House, he addressed this crowd, closing with an exhortation to "come on, my brave boys, we'll go to the woodpiles and get clubs enough to knock their grey wigs off !" They " came on" accordingly, and for some hours swarmed threateningly about the Court House; but a guard at the doors barred the entrance. Ely himself was early arrested, and, at once arraigned before the court which he was attempting to close, was bound over for trial by the Supreme Judicial Court to convene at the same place in May. So ended this demonstration.
Smith College -- The Students' Building.
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In the following May, when the Supreme Court had come in and Ely's case was reached, an armed mob gathered to attempt his release and to break up this court. The scheme was checked by the presence of militiamen held in reserve. Ely pleaded guilty and, sentenced to imprison- ment for six months, with other penalties, was taken to Springfield to be lodged in the jail there. In June a band of a hundred or more "resolute men," mostly from the towns above Northampton, set out to free him. A couple of hours after they had marched through Northampton " with great steadiness and good order," fifty Northampton " law and order " men were off to frustrate the design. But before they reached Springfield the mischief was done. The jail had been broken open with axes and cleavers and the rescuers were triumphantly returning northward with their man. Colonel Elisha Porter, of Hadley, the county high sheriff, appearing on the scene, got out a force in pur- suit. They were overtaken at South Hadley and a blood- less skirmish ensued. Then both forces encamped for the night in the open. Next morning the " insurgents " stole away and made for Amherst. A detachment sent out from Hadley caught them on their flank and another and livelier skirmish took place, resulting in several broken heads. Thereupon both sides came to parley, when it was agreed that all should repair peaceably to Northampton and endeavor there to adjust matters. Meanwhile Ely had managed to slip off. The Northampton conference resulted in an arrangement by which Ely was to be given up, and both sides were to unite in a petition to the General Court for measures of relief. Since Ely had fled and therefore could not be delivered, three hostages were given for his return. When the hostages were placed in the town jail the tumult broke out anew. Suspicious that they were
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being held really for punishment as insurgent leaders, the mob raised a clamor for their release, with threats to burn the town if the demand was not instantly complied with. That night the jail was guarded by volunteers. The fol- lowing day more malcontents came in from neighboring towns. Now Colonel Porter called out the posse comitatus. While they were gathering, Reuben Dickinson of Amherst, a strong insurgent leader, having a band of three hundred men at Hatfield, captured a squad marching down from Deerfield. Then he headed toward Northampton and soon a messenger brought to Porter a proposal from him for a conference one mile above the town. Porter declined. He had invoked aid from the towns down the River, and two hundred men were marching up from Springfield. Dickinson, with his force augmented, resumed his march. At about dusk he was before the town with his ultimatum : the release of the hostages within half an hour or an attack. Porter refused, but was ready to enter into any "reason- able agreement." Dickinson prepared for action, when another messenger appeared with a proposal from Porter for a meeting between the lines. This he accepted and the two came together with others from both sides. After a conference the conferees visited the jail. The hostages were found to be comfortably quartered and quite content. They had been treated fairly they declared, and earnestly advised a cessation of attempts for their release till the conditions of the bond were fulfilled. This put a new face on the affair. Their excellent advice was taken and the insurgents withdrew.
Thus this insurrection ended without serious damage to either side. In due course Ely was surrendered, the hostages released, and all the conditions of the bond met. Ely was taken to Boston and detained for some time as a
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Smith College-Seelye Hall. From photographs by Miss Katherine E. McClellan, Northampton.
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government prisoner. He did not appear again in the insurrection. A committee of the General Court, with Samuel Adams at the head, came up to inquire into the sit- uation, and endeavor to ease it. At the November session of the General Court pardon was granted to all the insur- gents, with the single exception of Ely. But little was accomplished toward redressing the grievances.
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