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Gc 974.401 H17j v. I 1127394
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00085 0484
3 vols
2 17.50
HAMPDEN COUNTY 1636-1936
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/hampdencounty 16301john
THIS set, "Hampden County, 1636-1936," by Clifton
Johnson, is one of a series produced over the past half century by noted historiaus and educators, each work a distinct entity, but joined with the others to form a library of regional history that stands without parallel in the publishing field.
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC.
THE
AMERICAN
INC
ORICAL SOCIETY
SUNRISE ON THE CONNECTICUT, 1650
--
HAMPDEN COUNTY 1636 - 1936
By CLIFTON JOHNSON
Historian and Author
VOLUME I
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC. NEW YORK 1936
COPYRIGHT THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC. 1936
1127394 INTRODUCTORY NOTE
.A people which takes no pride in the achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered by remote descendants.
-T. B. MACAULAY.
T HE plan in these volumes has been to write a readable account of the most interesting and important events which have taken place here since William Pynchon made his first settlement by the Great River in 1636. Long and frequent quotations from poorly- spelled, ancient records might interest the historian but would only bore the average reader, so they have been omitted. Lists of names and pages of statistics are also left out as unsuited to a general history.
The information in these volumes has been drawn from many sources, too many to be acknowledged individually. I wish to express my indebtedness to the historians of the past and my grateful appre- ciation to the many still living who have contributed to the prepara- tion of this history.
CLIFTON JOHNSON.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I-Hampden County and John Hampden 3
II-Geology of the Region. 9
III-William Pynchon Comes to the Connecticut Valley 17
IV-Agawam Plantation 35
V-Troubles of the Traders. 5.5
VI-Springfield Around 1650. 73
VII-The Heresy of William Pynchon 89
VIII-Pioneer Life of the New County 103
IX-Settlers and Soldiers. 123
137
X-Indian Wars
XI-More Indian Wars.
163
XII-The Regicides 177
XIII-Mr. Breck Disturbs the Town.
195
XIV-The Revolution and Its Aftermath 21 3
XV-In Field and Forest. 229
XVI-How the People Lived. 245
XVII-Memories of Springfield 259
XVIII-The Early Eighteen Hundreds 275
XIX-Springfield Newpapers 291
XX-People and Events . 3II
351
XXII-Some Interesting Items
373
XXIII-Springfield Is Made a City
385
XXIV-Boyhood Memories of a Springfield Mayor
401
XXV-Schools and Teachers. 413
XXVI-The Spanish-American War. 425
XXVII -- Justice and Law 435
XXI-Four Unusual Citizens.
%
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XXVIII -- Racial Groups in Hampden County 45I
XXIX-Industrial Springfield 507
XXX-Municipal Springfield 529
XXXI-Education and Institutions. 557
XXXII-Libraries and Museums. 575
XXXIII -- From the World War to the Tercentenary 595
PART II.
REGIONAL.
I-Chicopee and Skipmuck .. 617
II-Holyoke, the Paper City 667
III-Westfield, or Woronoco 733
IV-Agawam, the Mother of Springfield Plantation. 777
V-Blandford, Settled by the Scotch-Irish. 787
VI-Brimfield, and Steerage Rock. 803
VII-Chester, With Its Emery Mines .. 825
VIII-East Longmeadow, and the Brownstone Quarries 843
IX-Granville, Home of the Drum Industry. 853
X-Hampden and the Scantic River. 863
XI-Holland, Settled by Pioneer Blodgett. 873
XII-Longmeadow, With Its Beautiful Homes 883
XIII-Ludlow, Minnechaug or Berryland. 907
XIV-Monson and Its Early Woolen Mills.
927
XV-Montgomery Among the Hills 943
XVI-Palmer, the "Elbow Tract". 95I XVII-Russell, Which Includes Woronoco. 967
XVIII-Southwick, and Congamond Lakes
XIX-Tolland for Hunting and Fishing 975
983
XX-Wales, With Its Early Varied Manufactures 989
XXI-West Springfield, Home of the Eastern States Exposi- tion 997
XXII-Wilbraham and Its Academy 1023
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Sunrise on the Connecticut. Frontispiece, Volume I
St. Gaudens' Puritan Statue, Springfield. .. Frontispiece, Volume II The Connecticut River at Springfield . 13
Chicopee Falls 23
Ancient Springfield Mile-stone
31
Hampden County Courthouse, Erected 1874
48
View at Ludlow 64
The Old Tavern at North Wilbraham 78
The Old First Church, Springfield. 91
Pynchon Memorial Museum, Springfield 105
Memorial Bridge, Springfield. II5
Longmeadow Common 130
A Cove Near the Sawmill, Holyoke
143
Town House at Hampden. 157
East Street, Ludlow. 171
188
Holyoke Dam
The Old Wooden Bridge Across the River to West Springfield 201
Old Day House, Preserved as a Museum, West Springfield. . . 214
Crafts Tavern, Holyoke. 224
The Old Pynchon Fort 230 246
William Pynchon
252
Stage Advertisement
Old View of Court Square, Springfield. 262
Entrance to the Old Toll Bridge 276
The First Home of the "Springfield Republican" 300
Samuel Bowles 302
George Ashmun 312
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
The Old Town House, State Street
320
Parsons' Tavern, 1776. 326
Cock on Old First Church, Court Square 334
The Old Springfield Depot. 340
Early Western Railroad Advertisement
352
John Brown 357
Forest Park, Springfield.
367
Entrance to United States Armory on State Street, Springfield
387
Masonic Building, Springfield.
396
Springfield Post Office. 408
Christ Church Cathedral, Springfield 420
The Campanile, Municipal Group, Springfield 436
Springfield Hospital
452
The Fire and Marine Insurance Building, Flanked by the Church of the Unity. 520
The Massachusetts Mutual Building 522
Springfield College Building. 558
Mercy Hospital, Springfield
562
Shrine Hospital, Springfield.
564
Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church, in the Forest Park Sec- tion, Springfield 566
St. Michael's Cathedral, Springfield. 567
Entrance to Springfield Cemetery.
571
Title Page, William Pynchon, "The Meritorious Price"
576
Springfield City Library
580
High School, Chicopee.
627
George W. Stearns. 640
Edward Bellamy 654 Fisk Tire and Rubber Company Plant at Chicopee Falls 661
Part of Residential District, Holyoke, from the Air 672
Holy Cross Church, Holyoke. 683
Part of Industrial Section, Holyoke. 687
xiii
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Holyoke Public Library 691
Second Congregational Church, Holyoke 695
Holyoke Hospital 700
William Skinner and Sons Plant, Holyoke 707
Holyoke High School. 717
Whiting Paper Company Plant 720
Sand Bag Barricade.
725
City Hall, Holyoke ..
Old Southern Views in Central Part of Westfield
728 738 744
Westfield Normal School
Westfield Athenæum
756
Westfield High School. 763 804
Steerage Rock, Brimfield.
Old North View of Congregational Church, Longmeadow 886
"Baconsfield," Oldest House Now Standing in Longmeadow. . 899
Longmeadow Golf Club. 903
Palmer National Bank. 962
Springfield Country Club 1018
Wilbraham Academy 1043
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
T "HIS history of Hampden County appears at the close of the county's tercentennial year. We place it in the hands of the public with confidence in their enjoyment of it, and quote the comments of Frank Walcott Hutt, Secretary of the Old Colony His- torical Society, Taunton, Massachusetts, upon reading advance sheets :
"You will never have a more interesting history in your hands than the present Hampden County story. . It will be read and be memorable, for it is popularized already with memories, personali- ties, countless incidents of the every-day life of successive times and people."
To the author the publishers express appreciation of effective and prompt cooperation, while grateful recognition is likewise made to the Advisory Council which served with him throughout the prepa- ration of the work, as follows :
Springfield: A. G. Baker, W. G. Ballantine, George G. Bulkley, Waldo L. Cook, Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Davies, D. D., Carlos B. Ellis, Dr. James G. Gilkey, Hon. Wallace R. Heady, Frederic M. Jones, Dr. Charles F. Lynch, John MacDuffie, Horace A. Moses, Samuel Price, John C. Robinson, Mrs. Meta M. Seaman, Dr. Frederick B. Sweet, A. B. Wallace; Holyoke : Nathan P. Avery, Robert E. Bar-
xvi
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
rett, Mrs. Minnie R. Dwight, Joseph Skinner, William F. Whiting; Westfield: Harold T. Dougherty, Miss Lucy Gillette, Hon. Rob- ert E. Parker; West Springfield: John R. Fausey; Palmer: D. L. Bodfish; Chicopee Falls: N. P. Ames Carter; Chicopee : Preston C. Pond; Wilbraham: Ralph E. Peck.
Winfield Scott Downs, Litt. D., Managing Editor, The American Historical Society, Inc.
Hampden County and John Hampden
Hampden-1
CHAPTER I
Hampden County and John Hampden
Hampden County is a fairly young civil division of Massachu- setts, which with all the rest of the western part of the State was originally included in Hampshire County. This was established by an act of the General Court in 1662 and had only three towns, Spring- field, Northampton, and Hadley. The committee then appointed to have charge of county affairs was Captain John Pynchon, Henry Clarke, Captain Aaron Cooke, Lieutenant David Milton and Elizur Holyoke. The first year Springfield was the shire town. The follow- ing year they decided that the shire meetings should be held alter- nately in Springfield and Northampton. This plan prevailed until 1794, when for the convenience of the inhabitants generally North- ampton was made the shire town, and all public records and properties were transferred to that place.
The removal of the seat of justice from Springfield to Northamp- ton was not favored by the people living in the south part of the county and naturally they complained that the change was injurious to their interests. But it was not until February 25, 1812, that Hamp- den County was set off by itself. It included the towns of Spring- field, Longmeadow, Wilbraham, Monson, Holland, Brimfield, South Brimfield, Palmer, Ludlow, West Springfield, Westfield, Montgom- ery, Russell, Blandford, Granville, Southwick, Tolland and Chester. Springfield was made the shiretown. Its population was then only 2,700, a little more than that of Northampton, and the population of the whole new county of Hampden was only 25,000.
John Hampden, for whom Hampden County is named, was a soldier and an English statesman, a cousin by marriage of Oliver Cromwell. He laid down the two conditions under which resistance to the King became the duty of a good subject. Those conditions were an attack on religion and an attack on the fundamental laws. Hamp- den was an opponent of episcopacy, and distrusted the bishops as he
HAMPDEN COUNTY
Scale of Miles 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
North o Chester
CHESTER Littleville Chester
Mt Tom
-
Smiths Ferry
Huntington .Montgomery
MONTGOMERY
Fairview
1
.Russell
1
Willimansett ( CHICOPEE
Indian
Three Rivers
PALMER .Palmer
Chicopee
-
WEST SPRINGFIELD
Chicopee
North Wilbraham FoWilbrahamN
BRIMFIELD Brimfield
H
Westfield/ M Brightwood
SPRINGFIELD
New Boston
Springfield
Monson
Tolland; TOLLAND
GRANVILLE
-
1
MONSON
0
West Granville
Granville Center Granville SOUTHWICK Southwick d
AGAWAM Agawamº Long Meado
T EAST East Long Meadow LONG
1
1
1
1
Hampden |
LONG
MEADOW I
MEADOW
1
1
Waleso | WALES
Holland of
1
HOLLAND
--
P Highland
WILBRAHAM 1
West Springfield
Orchard XRLudlow River
'Woronoco ' RUSSELL 1
WESTFIELD
Chicopee Falls
Bondsville,
Thorndike
BLANDFORD
Holyoke HOLYOKE
LUDLOW
Blandford |
Chicoper
Westi
Eastº Brimfield
1
-. 1
Feeding Hills
HAMPDEN
5
HAMPDEN COUNTY AND JOHN HAMPDEN
distrusted the monarchy. In 1637 his resistance to the payment of "ship-money" gained for his name a lustre which it has never since lost. This tax was first planned to be levied on the maritime counties alone and only in time of war, so when Charles I demanded ship money from the whole country and in a time of peace it aroused a great deal of opposition. Moreover, this was done without the sanction of Parliament and increased the growing belief of the people that the King was determined to dispense with government by that body altogether. John Hampden, then a wealthy Buckinghamshire landowner, refused to pay the tax and the case was taken to court, where the trial lasted for six months. Seven of the twelve judges gave a verdict for the crown, but not long afterward an end was put to such practices. Hampden struggled, not so much to win his own case, as to establish the supremacy of the House of Commons.
As a military officer in the war between King and people, Hampden raised a regiment of his own Buckinghamshire men for the parliamen- tary cause. Wounds received on Chalgrove Field brought about his death in 1643.
Geology of the Region
CHAPTER II Geology of the Region
The Story of Hampden County as Nature Has Written It in the Rocks and Streams
For a long period a nameless valley here, devoid of human inhabi- tants, was the savage playfellow of the elements. The primeval rocks formed and wore away, and reformed again and again. There was internal fire and vast upheavals. It was no place for people and indeed they could not have existed during the desolation of most of the slow formative era.
The Connecticut Valley, from the northern border of Massachu- setts to the sea, is not an ordinary river-channel, but is, in fact, a wide trough between two systems of mountains. On the west lie the worn- down remnants of the once lofty Berkshire Mountains; on the east, the yet more worn-down ridges that we may call the Central Massa- chusetts set of mountain ranges. These old mountains were elevated at different times. That on the east was probably the first to begin its upward movement in very ancient days. The elevation of the Berkshire chain most likely began at a little later date. As these mountain chains grew they left between them a broad trough, from ten to thirty miles wide, extending from the sea to some distance north of Springfield. The trough probably assumed something like its present form just after the close of the coal-measures. During the coal-making time this valley was most likely a region of forests, but shortly afterward the thick and extensive beds of sandstone were laid down directly on the surface of the old crystalline rocks which then, as well as now, were the valley's sides and floor.
This sandstone extends from near the north line of the State to the shores of Long Island Sound. It is a good building stone, and there are extensive quarries at East Longmeadow. Evidence obtained from
IO
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
borings for artesian wells indicates that the entire deposit of sand- stone is from three thousand to ten thousand feet in thickness. Some- times the sandstone layers show interesting traces of ancient life in the region. Slabs have been found imprinted with the feet of animals that probably were akin to the reptiles and amphibians of the present day. In other instances there are the traces of insects, impressions by waves and ripples, mud cracks caused by the drying of the deposits, and marks of rain drops made by passing showers on the plastic material.
Edward Hitchcock, professor of geology in Amherst College. and afterward president of the college, made an extensive collection of the impressions, and recorded the results in a report published in 1858.
In general the surface of the valley is level, but there is one note- worthy exception in the ridges of hills associated with Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. In Hampden County the ridges pass through the western part of Holyoke, West Springfield and Agawam. Their structure can be effectively observed on the line of the Boston and Albany Railroad between Mittineague and Westfield. From there two distinct ridges are in sight. One is lower than the other and has a cutting through it just west of Tatham station. The rock is dark gray in color and is compact and crystalline. Some of it is a porous, spongy sort of stone, and has cavities that often are filled with quartz.
About three-fourths of a mile west is the higher ridge which is of traprock, and in it a large quarry has been opened. Great quantities of this rock are used in road-building. The quarry walls are dis- tinctly columnar in character, and both ridges are the result of suc- cessive outflows of lava. Probably the lava flowed over the muddy bottom that intruded from the sea, and then was covered by more layers of mud and sand. Finally these hardened into stone, and there was a second, but smaller, lava flow which in turn was covered by sandstone. The tilting and faulting of the region and the subsequent erosion, causing the trap ridges to stand out in bold relief on the southern slopes of Mount Tom, are distinct evidences of volcanic action, and lava plugs and other remains of ancient volcanoes have been mapped by students of local geology.
During this time there was formed a shallow arm of the sea, extending nearly as far north as the present Vermont line. It prob-
II
GEOLOGY OF THE REGION
ably received a number of large streams rising in the hills to the east and west, and at its head was the delta of the upper Connecticut. This period of the New Red Sandstone occupied a long portion in the earth's history, and saw many great changes of climate. More than once it was a region of extensive glaciers that discharged a great deal of pebbly sediment into their Connecticut basin. These pebbles were sorted and arranged in strata, and now appear in the extensive reddish-colored pudding-stone beds that abound in the valley.
Enough is known of other regions to make it pretty certain that at the outset of the glacial period there was a climate here not very different from that now prevailing in this region. Many large animals existed then that are no longer found, including the elephant, called the mammoth, and his smaller kinsman, the mastodon, himself as large as an ordinary elephant.
The last one of the glacial periods came suddenly, but what caused the change we do not know. It is probable that without any great change in the average temperature of the year, the summers became much cooler and the winters less cold, while the deposit of water in the form of snow was greatly increased, so that the cool and short summer could not melt it away. Even with our present warm sum- mer, if the snowfall were to be increased so that the winter fall gave a depth on the average of ten feet, the likelihood is it would stay unmelted on the highlands of the Berkshire and Central Massachu- setts mountain ranges, and reinforced by the snowfall of the following winter, give us glaciers that would creep down the valleys and slowly possess the lowlands.
Be this as it may, the glacial sheets grew in this country until the Connecticut Valley was filled far above the tops of the hills on each side. At its time of greatest thickness this sheet was probably about a half mile deep. It flowed slowly, a few feet a day, down the valley to the sea. The ice stream was not peculiar to this valley, but was part of a great sheet that covered nearly all the northern half of North America. In New England the ice extended south to beyond Long Island, and ended in a vast sea-wall of ice that stretched as a vast rolling icy plain far to the north. It swept over the top of Mount Washington in the White Mountains, though that mountain rises three-quarters of a mile above the general level of the country on which it stands.
12
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
From the valley of the Hudson, where the ice was even deeper than in the Connecticut basin, it flowed over the Berkshire Hills, increasing the tide of frozen water. As this enormous weight of ice ground its way to the sea, it wore down the rocks over which it moved. The soft red sandstones and shales gave way readily, and a large part of their beds that were in the Connecticut Valley before the glacial period were ground away by the ice-mill. Where there were thick masses of lava, a much denser and harder rock, these parts remained projecting, and formed the sharp ridges such as Mount Tom. The pudding-stones were also solid enough to resist better than the sandstones, and so frequently stand up in ridges while the softer rocks were worn down on either side of them.
After a long period of desolation, during which our region was in the condition that Greenland is now, the ice vanished as mysteriously as it came, leaving a vast amount of rocky waste strewn over the region. One of the peculiar features of the glacial period was that all the regions covered by the ice sheet seem to have been pressed down- ward to a depth proportionate to the thickness of the ice that had lain on their surfaces.
When the ice left, the land crept slowly up to something like its old level; but for a while the valley, in common with the neighboring regions, was much depressed. The sinking seems to have been great- est near its head. In the Long Island Sound vicinity it probably did not exceed a hundred feet; while as far up as Bellows Falls, the sink- ing was probably more than three hundred feet; so that, for a while after the glaciers disappeared from the valley, it seems to have returned to the conditions of the period when it was a broad but shal- low arm of the sea.
With the disappearance of the ice there was left a land surface deeply covered with a rubbish of sand, clay and boulders. The heavy rainfall that marked this ice period continued to exist, though prob- ably in a less intense form, after the ice had retreated toward the North Pole, so that much of this glacial trash was carried away by the streams; and from the hill region of the Connecticut Valley a vast amount of the lighter part of the waste that the streams could easily handle was swept out into the Connecticut Valley, and laid down beneath the water that covered the surface. The falling of glacial waste, transported and rearranged by the action of water
13
GEOLOGY OF THE REGION
-
THE CONNECTICUT RIVER AT SPRINGFIELD Viewed from the west shore
14
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
formed a very thick sheet in the Connecticut Valley. It was at least a hundred feet deep near the mouth and over three hundred feet thick in the region near the New Hampshire line.
Sometimes the glacial deposits are piled up in rounded hills known as drumlins, or they may be left in long ridges of gravel. McCarthy's Hill in East Longmeadow is a good example of a drumlin, and an example of the gravel ridges can be seen at Monson, east of the village.
Soon after the filling-in of mud, sand, and gravel was completed, the floor of the valley was lifted above the sea, and the river began to wear away the waste. It is the manner of rivers to swing to and fro in their valleys, cutting first against one bank and then the other. In these swings the Connecticut has crossed its valley at Springfield nearly from side to side, leaving here and there scraps of the old stratified drift in the form of terraces. They have been left at dif- ferent heights above the river's present level, and the highest are the oldest, the smallest in area, and the most ruined by the action of frost, rain, and snow.
The most prominent and extensive of these terraces in the Spring- field vicinity is at the height of about a hundred and eighty feet above the level of low water in the river.
If a person will go to some convenient hilltop that commands a wide view of the valley, and in his mind restore the vast mass of sand and gravel included below the level of the highest terraces and the present level of the river, he will then see how great has been the work done since the close of the post-glacial period. If he will remember that this post-glacial period probably occupies not over one five- hundredth part of the time that has elapsed since the building of this valley began, he will get a better idea of the wonderful changes that have been witnessed by it, only a small part of which have been recorded.
William Pynchon Comes to the Connecticut Valley
CHAPTER III William Pynchon Comes to the Connecticut Valley
Springfield, in its evolution, has been, not simply a town or city, but a controlling factor in the development of Western Massachusetts. At first, it was just a village in the wilderness, with Indians for close neighbors. Next it was a town, and after that a mother of towns. From such a start it has gone on and on until now the embryo hamlet is the mother of cities.
But to begin at the beginning, we must cross the Atlantic to another Springfield which is the parent of ours. It is in Essex, an eastern county of England, bounded on the north by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, east by the North Sea, and south by the river Thames. Essex has always been an agricultural county, and a writer in 1594 describes it as "most fat, fruitful, and full of profitable things." It continued rustic in spite of its nearness to London, which intimately associated it with all the great historical struggles. Several of the Essex men were concerned in the Gunpowder Plot and during the Civil War of the seventeenth century the county rendered valuable aid to the Parliament.
As we look back for a few hundred years we find an Old World weary of its burden of customs that had been the growth of centuries of ignorance and oppression, yet beginning to reach forth toward a new and better state of things. The discoveries of voyagers had revealed to Europe this continent in the west as an open field for its enterprise, and at once the Old World began to seek a better home in the New. Old systems of government were distrusted and old forms of religion began to be discarded. Men craved a change which would give them more hopeful conditions. As a consequence those who chafed under arbitrary government, and wanted greater freedom in religion, and more security in their persons and property, were
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