USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > Historical address delivered before the citizens of Springfield in Massachusetts at the public celebration, May 26, 1911, of the two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the settlement; with five appendices, viz: Meaning of Indian local names, The cartography of Springfield, Old place names in Springfield, Unrecorded deed of Nippumsuit, Unrecorded deed of Paupsunnuck > Part 1
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Gc 974.402 Sp8ba 1781177
M. L.
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 00084 5450
AN Historical Address
Delivered before the citizens of Springfield in Massachusetts at the public celebration May 26 1911
275th
of the Dinner
Two Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Settlement
WITH Five Appendices
viz .: Meaning of Indian Local Names
The Cartography of Springfield Old Place Names of Springfield Unrecorded Deed of Nippumsuit Unrecorded Deed of Paupsunnuck
BY Charles H. Barrows
PUBLISHED BY THE Connecticut Valley Historical Society Springfield, Mass. 1916
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historicaladdres00barr_0
1781177
COPYRIGHT 1916 by CONNECTICUT VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
849 .08
Barrows, Charles Henry, 1853-
các
CHELY CARD
An historical address delivered before the valgus af Springfield in Massachusetts at the public celebration. May 26, 1911. of the two hundred and seventy-tak ami- versary of the settlement; with five appendices. VIa: Meaning of Indian local names. The cartography of Springfield, Old place names of Springfield, Unrecorded deed of Nippumsuit, Unrecorded deed of Vaupstuck. By Charles IL. Barrows. Springfield. Mass .. Commecticut Valley historical society, 19T6. 2 p. 1., 3-100 p. illus. 233ºm.
(Continu I-on-next-rd) 10-15737
500344
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THE F. A. BASSETTE CO. PRINTERS SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
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Contents
PAGE
HISTORICAL ADDRESS
5
MEANING OF INDIAN LOCAL NAMES
14
THE CARTOGRAPHY OF SPRINGFIELD
20
PLACE NAMES OF OLD SPRINGFIELD
23
DEED OF NIPPUMSUIT .
88
DEED OF PAUPSUNNUCK .
90
THE MEMORIES OF THE CIVIL WAR
. 92
C
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Historical Address
1636-1911
The year 1636 is memorable in the annals of the Com- monwealth for the foundation of her great university; it is scarcely less for the settlement of one of her largest cities. It was then at the beginning of things for New England. Peregrine White, born on the Mayflower, as she lay in the harbor of Cape Cod, was but a boy of fifteen when a few dozen people, men, women and children, having followed Indian trails for several days, travelling westward from the vicinity of Boston, arrived on the shores of the Connecticut. We know not whether the arrival was in the morning or at mid- day or at the coming of night; nor whether the day itself showed the mild rays of the sun of May shining in a cloudless heaven and setting forth all nature, bird and beast, tree and flower, in the colors of active and joyous life or was not rather one of those that come in those seasons of rain after an early drouth when, nature, though renewing herself for still further beauty, nevertheless is draped in gloom, the bird sheltering himself in the thicket and the flower closing its petals against a sunless sky. We could wish that these settlers had the in- spiration of bright days, coming as they did to a spot where the house built a few months before in the meadows of Aga- wam offered the only protecting roof. They had need of cour- age and hope. Behind them, behind most of them forever, were the comfortable cottages and rose-embowered gardens of the homeland and friends of whom they might dream but whom they should never see. They were to deal with stern and elemental forces, a soil never ploughed, a forest not re- duced, the New England winter with its relentless cold, the ravening wolf and the prowling panther; nay, an aboriginal man, at first friendly, but at last, persuaded of the hopeless rivalry of red with white, to exhibit those traits of cruelty and revenge that made the savage a more dreadful neighbor than the beast of prey. Such were the surroundings of our immi-
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grant predecessors. As comers into a new country they underwent the trials peculiar to their day. We take the les- son to ourselves and honor their memory, if, comfortably seated in a land that has been prepared for us by them, we reach out in sympathy toward the immigrant of our own time, who leaving kindred and friends behind, sets foot among a strange people whose laws and institutions are a mystery and whose language is to them a jargon of repellant sounds, serv- ing too often to conceal a practiced cunning lying in wait to ensnare the ignorant and the innocent.
The motives that brought men and women to this spot nearly three centuries ago, were essentially the same as are bringing men and women from other lands to ours to-day, a desire for political freedom, for escape from religious persecu- tion, and, mainly in the seventeenth century, as in the twen- tieth, a praiseworthy ambition to better the condition of them- selves and their families. Thus has immigration, as a purify- ing force, sifted the enterprising from the stupid, the fore- handed from the shiftless, the better from the worse, those with an ideal from those who are content to crawl in the mole- tracks of old custom and decay. From the earliest overflow out of the original home of the race on Asian plains there has been a course of empire westward, ever westward, and they who followed its star have been the conquerors, simply be- cause they had the courage, the strength, the indomitable will, to follow. Built on the best that is in man, the new em- pire rises, for predestined reasons, superior to the old.
To the settlers of our town, in choosing this particular location for a home, there were two natural features of great importance, the meadows and the river. They came as im- mediate immigrants from a town whose adaptation to agri- culture they did not like, Roxbury, whose very name commem- orates the rocky character of its soil. The Old Colony of Plymouth was for the most part sandy and lean, good for pines and poor for grain. Far otherwise was this valley. For uncounted ages, nature, by her benign but powerful forces had had in course of preparation those superb meadows whose soil is deep and level and bears gracefully upon its bosom the tasselled corn and the soaring elm. And what shall we say of the river, flowing broad and strong from sources even now but seldom visited, a stream in comparison with which, the
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Mersey and the Tyne, the Thames and the Severn seem like meandering brooks. It is not strange that, although knowing its Indian name, they called it in daily speech and in formal record, "The Great River," nor changed their practice for a hundred years. It was the central thing in their landscape. To the north was the mountain gateway through which it came; to the east and west the granite ranges that framed its valley. The Mississippi, Father of Waters, being to them unknown, the Connecticut must have aroused their admira- tion, if not their awe, as one of the wonders of the new world, a thing of majestic beauty that broke the monotony of track- less forests and opened up their vision to the sky. Whatever we may say of the greater wonders of our greater land, let poets never cease to sing its praises, like that Brainard who, standing on some headland like the one which terminates our Forest Park, exclaimed in loving apostrophe:
"Fair, noble, glorious river! in thy wave The sunniest slopes and sweetest pastures lave; The mountain torrent with its wintry roar Springs from its home and leaps upon thy shore: The promontories love thee-and for this Turn their rough cheeks and stay thee for thy kiss."
But to our pioneers the river had a more than sentimen- tal, in fact, a very human interest. It was their outlet to the world, the mode of passage for their small ships, the avenue by which their bare, destitute and solitary life, should be sup- plied with something of the conveniences, if not many of the comforts, of a civilized existence. Compelled as they were to the pursuit of agriculture and forced at last even to the pur- chase of a blacksmith, the unlucky slave of border warfare between England and Scotland, we can see the preciousness to them of every product of the mechanic arts. Even as late as the eighteenth century a probate inventory from West Springfield sets forth the bale of a kettle as having to the ap- praisers a definite value. With the Connecticut at their doors and the pelts of beaver and otter in their hands they had a standing in the world's markets. Consider, too, that they chose a point, if not unlike, at least superior to any from Canada to the Sound. The confluence of the Connecticut
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with the Agawam and the Chicopee marked the central point of the fur trade. Boston had been established on the one hand, Albany on the other, both in almost the same parallel of latitude; both admirably situated for commerce and both destined to be the largest cities within an extended circle. Boston, by its harbor invited foreign shipping and Albany, by the Mohawk valley, and later by the Erie Canal, opened the west to trade. Between these our settlement was central. To Boston the overland journey was easy by the valley of the Chicopee and the Quinebaug; to Albany the Woronoco River had cut a path for itself and civilization from almost the ridge of the Berkshire Hills. When we consider how all these natu- ral ways, reaching to the four quarters of the compass con- verged so perfectly at this point, giving place in due time to stage routes and finally to railroads, we recognize that our later problems of transportation, are really but modifications of one that was solved by those who went long before. The site was well chosen and we would not exchange with Holyoke or Hartford, with Northampton or Greenfield.
Little can be said of the supply of goods and chattels which the settlers brought with them but much will always be made of the sound principles which they laid, once for all, at the base of our civil life. One of those, all-important and per- vasive as the Puritan influence, however slightly it may have been formulated, which existed actively in their thought and practice, was that the body politic is no mere compact for expedient ends; nor any mere expression of sovereignty, either of king or people, irresponsible and unmoral, but a thing of divine origin, a veritable moral organism, responsible as a whole and in its units, to the Creator and Sustainer of all things, Kant, Locke, Hobbes, Rousseau, to the contrary not- withstanding. In truth, man in all his relations, in the family and in the state, exists as a part of the moral order of the uni- verse and this he knows by his uncorrupted spiritual instincts. As in private, so as a citizen, he seeks, when uncorrupted, to know and to do the divine will. He. also worships, recogniz- ing that, as in past ages, so in future times, "The nation that ceases to worship, begins to die and the nation is but the aggre- gate of the individual." This theory was old a thousand years ago when Charles the Great in his rude and grand way undertook to build upon it the foundation of empire. We
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have but to look into the Psalms and read there of Jehovah, "By him kings reign and princes decree justice." Greece recognized it; Rome grew great upon it and sank when she lost the thought, making the Cæsar divine. The new order acknowledged it and the Jew of Tarsus wrote, even in the evil days of Nero, that "The powers that be are ordained of God."
It follows from this theory that the municipality, like a private citizen is bound by justice and mercy; that it has no right to encourage a ruinous competition in the award of con- tracts or to pay its employees less than a fair living wage; that the citizen is bound to exercise the suffrage as a divine obligation, and that personal convenience should not be al- lowed to interfere with jury service. It does not however, follow that there should be the slightest connection between the state and any religious organization, howsoever this may have worked in a homogeneous community like ours in the seventeenth century. The union of the two aspects of life, the civil and the religious, was curiously symbolized in the name of the building devoted to their public use. In the vote passed February 28, 1644, authorizing a contract with Thomas Cooper for a structure of that kind there is nothing said of "town house" or "church edifice" but it was provided that in consideration of eighty pounds, to be paid in wheat, pease, pork and wampum, debts and labor, he should build a "meet- ing house," a building which was neither one nor the other, but both, and was for a time, in part used for storing grain. Our spired churches and towered civic buildings speak a new order, but let there ever be the mystic and informal union of civic life with morality and religion.
How does this principle of divine authority in the state consist with personal liberty? There is no contradiction. Freedom co-existent with authority, whether executed by king or sovereign people, is the natural condition of the human race and every organized society must recognize this fact or fall. It is the glory of the Puritans that they discerned the true meeting point of authority and freedom, thus avoiding despotism on the one hand and anarchy on the other. For this reason the town meeting, that most vital expression of political freedom, never ran away with itself; for this reason independence was not declared until the struggle with an autocratic king had long passed the breaking point. Our
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS
own town records illuminate this. No Aristides could have been banished from Springfield because people were tired of hearing him called good; nor do we read of any village Cæsar inflate with power which he was unworthy to wield. It does appear by the records of 1660 that Quince Smith, a new comer, was ordered to depart the town, but although our predecessors were careful whom they admitted, it appears to have been conduct and not opinion that determined the choice.
Who and of what sort were the men and, like unto them, the women, that laid deep in this community, the principles of true government and social life? Their racial origin was various. Most of them were from England; John Stewart was from Scotland; Rice Bedortha was from Wales; John Riley from Ireland; Peter Swink was a black; it is thus that the Celt, the Saxon and the African, in this early political blend, became the type of a far greater composite that shall mark the future, uniting very diverse elements whose ulti- mate and successful fusion will lead the historian in a distant age to look upon us who celebrate a two hundred and seventy- fifth anniversary as not having gone far with the superstruc- ture even if we are not now working at the foundation.
Would we speak of individuals? Without disparagement of their associates, we may say that what was most hopeful for the future of the settlement was embodied in the two Pynchons, father and son. In the great part they had, in the effective way in which they took it and in their strong indi- viduality, they suggest the two Adamses, whom Massachu- setts gave to the presidency of the nation. In the character- istics which the times required they were much alike, yet each had points of superiority over the other and perhaps, without either, certainly without both, the colony would not have been what it was. Is it too much to say that without the standards which they set in the beginning the city would not in the purity of its government or social life be just what it is? How William Pynchon stamped his character on the com- munity appears partly from the fact that in company with his son-in-law Henry Smith, and Jehu Burr, he organized the expedition and chose his companions. It was he in whom was vested almost all the executive and judicial power. He was the connecting link between comers and goers and of the first year settlers he alone remained for any length of time.
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The rest went either to Northampton, Windsor or other places; others came but only those were welcome to remain, or, it is likely, cared to come who could heartily support the Pynchon régime of a sober life, a firm government and a policy of jus- tice and friendliness towards the Indians. Thus the town may have been Pynchonized, but in so becoming it was well modelled. He was true to its interests and in his difficulties in church and state in Connecticut and with the General Court of Massachusetts Bay, its people stood loyally by him. In his honor they changed the name of the town from Agawam to Springfield, the place of his English home. When we con- sider this many-sided man, his force as a pioneer, his success- ful enterprise in private business, his discretion as a judge, his rare statecraft in dealing with red man and white, and his remarkable career as a lay theologian, we find in William Pynchon one whose place is secure in the history of the coun- try, as a great colonial leader. In the year 1905 some pupils of the Elm Street Grammar School, becoming interested in the narrative of William Pynchon, without suggestion from their teacher, but convinced that there should be some memorial of him, raised among themselves $3.82 as their contribution towards a statue. This sum remains in the hands of the Con- necticut Valley Historical Society to-day, the challenge of youth to age. Can it be that the 300th anniversary will arrive and this challenge not be met?
Enough of the settlement; enough of the settlers. They wrought well; so have those who came after them and the nineteenth century out of which we have just emerged is rapidly becoming historic. None of us saw it open; thousands among us did not see it close. Questions of transportation are now before us. In this particular the great events of the last century for Springfield were the building of the toll bridge and the coming of the railroad. The first bridge was finished in 1805, the present one in 1816. It is inevitable that wood should give way to stone and iron, but not without a sigh can any lover of the venerable, the quaint, the useful, the well- wrought, or the picturesque see the stout trusses and majes- tic arches of the old toll bridge part company forever. In this anniversary month, art, in very much a labor of love, has skillfully placed upon canvas a view of the rugged interior upon which those who come after us may look and say, "This
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS
interesting structure our forefathers had; did they appreciate it while as yet they had it?" As we who have so recently emerged from the nineteenth century, look reflectively back upon it, we see that great progress has been made in the sense of civic beauty and also in the deepening consciousness of the duty of the more favored to the less fortunate. Men of enter- prise like Charles Stearns, and John D. and William H. McKnight, in their extensive planning and building recog- nized that mere bricks and mortar, boards and shingles, thoughtlessly united and huddled together did not make a city that was lovely to look upon or good to dwell in; and the earnest women who founded the Home for the Friendless, the Day Nursery and gave themselves to the work of the Union Relief Association demonstrated the value of personal service by consecrated woman. Wealth, too, has in large measure given of its power for good unto the poor, the ignorant and the suffering, and when, a quarter century hence, the history of benefactions is written, with all the motives, self-denials and human sympathies that lay behind, so far as these can be disclosed, it will make a valuable story.
We have in these moments passed swiftly over the cen- turies and taken a glimpse of our inheritance from the past. Is it an inheritance of blood? No; on this day let us lay no stress on heredity in the physical sense. To a degree, we are what we are by the physical laws of heredity, but more are we creatures of environment, education, and the self-deter- mination to be and to do. Is the graft any less a part of the tree because it was taken from another and grafted on? Its identification with the tree is complete when it has made a full appropriation to itself of the sapflowing life of the tree. If the tree was healthy, adapted to the soil, well placed for sun and air, the graft will take to itself and in a true sense inherit, all those qualities. But it will contribute qualities of its own. Its peculiar fruitage is wanted or it would not have been grafted in. Of just this sort are many of us, coming, it may be, from afar, and becoming newly incorporate with a community, or perhaps, a nation, sharing in full sympathy its civic and moral life, its hopes, ideals, aspirations, institu- tions. Has it a splendid past? We inherit this. Has it a great future to make? It is ours, as much as anybody's, to help make it. Has it a flag, as has the nation, and the state,
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and as every noble city ought to have? Let us glory in that flag, floating over every civic procession.
It is thus, although we come from the most various coun- tries of the globe, that we are the true heirs of those whose strivings here have already yielded fruit, of which we right- fully partake. Indeed it is thus that those who went before us in this city of ours had themselves become incorporate with what was good in the world's past; true children and heirs of ancient Greece, having opened their eyes to the intellectual light with which Athens has flooded the world; of imperial Rome, appro- priating to themselves principles of jurisprudence that lie forever at the basis of states; of Judæa, acknowledging the fact that nowhere, as in the land of the Jordan, has man in all the ages come so near to God. "Know ye not that they who be of faith, the same are the sons of Abraham?" Indeed, so far as this is true of America, to that extent, the Greek, the Italian and the Jew, in becoming Americans, are but entering into their own. Therefore whether we be longseated or newly implanted here, it is alike our privilege and duty to study the past of the city, to honor its heroes, mark its historic spots, and to teach its lessons to our children. All these things are ours by a true inheritance. It would be idle to speculate whether a city with such a past and such a possible future has reached, or when it will reach, its meridian. To a certain extent this is within the control of ourselves and those who follow us.
"Blest and thrice blest the Roman who sees Rome's bright- est day;
Who sees the long victorious pomp wind down the sacred way And through the bellowing forum and round the suppliant's grove
Up to the everlasting gates of Capitolian Jove."
APPENDIX A
MEANING AND DERIVATION OF INDIAN PLACE NAMES IN OLD SPRINGFIELD.
"In the interpretation of Indian place names so many difficulties have to be overcome that it is not surprising that the best authorities sometimes reach very different conclusions in regard to the same word. Some of the difficulties of translation are: the Indians had no written language; differ- ences of dialect of the various tribes; the introduction or omission of a letter by English writers for the sake of euphony; the corruption of place names in old records due to an interpreter. In the translation of Indian names, I believe it to be very essential that a knowledge of the exact locality should be obtained, as it is at present, and if possible as it was in the seven- teenth century. Very valuable information is sometimes found by searching local histories and land grants: often a local tradition or early colonial literature will furnish valuable clues. The Indians of New England were very practical in their place names, and almost every name described the locality to which it was affixed. Imagination was rarely if ever used, and any translation expressing this faculty must, I think, be taken with great caution. Our Indians use their imagination, however, in other words, almost poetically. Their name for the Pleiades was Chippapuock, "the brood hen;" for the belt of Orion, Shwishacuttowwauog, "a wigwam with three fires; for a trap, Appeh, from Uppacheau, "he waits for him." In their names of many plants and flowers great imagination and keen observation are expressed." Kinnicutt's Indian Names of Places in Worcester County.
AGAWAM. The name is very fully discussed in Wright's Deeds p. 13; see also Handbook of the American Indians sub. nom. In his Dictionaire Francais- Montagnais Lemoine gives Agawanus, as "unloading place".
C. N. B. Hewitt of the Bureau of Ethnology, who defined Agawam in the Handbook of American Indians writes further: - "The name Agawam was defined in the Handbook as 'fishcuring place,' by deriving the final m- sound from an existing-ng or nn, which is a phonetic change occurring in the Algonquian languages. The derivation from 'Agawanas,' 'an unloading place' seems too violent; its full form should be 'Agawanuts.' It would seem that the final m-sound is an essential part of the form from which 'Agawam' descends. The following are some forms of the word: Aggawom, Agawom, Augawoam, Oggawome, Agowaywam, Onkawam, Onkawoom, Angoam, Onkowam, Igwam and Auguam. So with a single exception the let- ter m is the final consonant in the word. In seeking for a definition of the word without knowing the history of its source and application any sugges- tion can be little more than conjecture. There is an explanation of the name
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