USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Mount Washington > History of Taconic and Mount Washington, Berkshire County, Massachusetts : its location, scenery and history, from 1692 to 1892 > Part 1
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 03286 6086
GC 974.402 M865ke Keith, Herbert F. History of Taconic and Mount Washington, Berkshire County, Massachusetts
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MOUNT WASHINGTON
BERKSHIRE COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS
PART ONE "LOCATION AND SCENERY"
Keith
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/historyoftaconic00keit
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PLANTIN BROOK ABOVE THE BEAR ROCK FALLS
GILDER POND, MOUNT WASHINGTON
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HISTORY OF TACONIC AND
MOUNT WASHINGTON
BERKSHIRE COUNTY MASSACHUSETTS
ITS LOCATION, SCENERY AND HISTORY.
FROM 1692 TO 1892 -
TO BE PUBLISHED IN SERIAL NUMBERS
Number Two will contain names of the early set- tlers, 1692 to 1752, and the beginning of the contest for possession with Robert Livingston.
BY HERBERT F. KEITH
BERKSHIRE COURIER PRINT Great Barrington, Mass. 1912
Allen County Public Library 900 Webster Street PO Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801-2270
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Deut. 32-7: Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations ; ask thy father, and he will show thee ; thy elders, and they will tell thee.
I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing in the generations to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength, and His wonderful works that He hath done.
From all over the continent, as the generations go on, the descendents of the men who settled these little New Eng- land towns will come, as on a pilgrimage. to find the memo- rials and graves of their ancestors. Those of us who have stayed on the old spots owe them, at least, the duty of pre- serving their history. It is a noble and touching story. There is no more noble and touching story from the beginning of time .- Senator George F. Hoar, 1896, in a letter to the author.
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DESCRIPTION AND SCENERY
N EAR the south-west corner of Massachusetts, the trav- eler through Southern Berkshire will see the dome- like summit of Mount Everett, or Bald Mountain, rising in noble grandeur 2,000 feet above the valley of the Housatonic, or 2,624 feet above tide-water, flanked by a short lower range on either side, extending north and south. Be- hind, to the west two or three miles, is another range, along the state line of New York, of nearly equal height, above the Harlem railroad. which skirts its western base. Between these two ranges is an elevated, fertile, inhabited area from one to two miles in width from east to west, and seven from north to south-the town of Mount Washington.
The mountain ranges along the east and west borders of the town are covered with forests to their summits and give rise to many springs and clear brooks, which give a never- failing water supply to the inhabitants.
Although no one in town, perhaps, gets his living by farming, it has as large a proportion of good land as most of the hill towns of the county, and all the staple products of the state can be raised here, but hay, oats, buckwheat, rye and potatoes do rather better than corn. Henry S. Goodale. a former owner of "Sky Farm," for a number of years raised from 200 to 700 bushels of potatoes per acre from some of the varieties he originated there.
Although the present fruit crop is small, from the long neglect of the inhabitants to set out trees, apples, pears, etc., can readily be raised. As early as 1752 the report of the General Courts Committee speaks of Indian corn, wheat and "49 bbls. of syder" then raised. Small fruits and berries of all kinds grow wild in profusion, but the local demand is greater than the supply, and special cultivation would pay well. A recent effort by Mr. Bates of New York in raspberry culture resulted in a crop of many bushels per acre, and garden strawberries do equally as well.
This "town among the clouds," as it were, is not only rich in picturesque scenery, but has an eventful and interesting history. Its location and height above the neighboring towns places it at a disadvantage as a business town. but as a
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health resort, winter or summer, no town in Berkshire county is as favorably situated and accessible by means of the Har- lem, Central New England and other railroads at and near Copake Iron Works, 104 miles from the City of New York.
The grand and beautiful scenery in the drive of four miles from Copake, by two routes, the one following the Bash-Bish stream through a deep and picturesque ravine, passing near the well-known Bash-Bish Falls, the other skirt- ing the western slope of the mountain and giving a pano- ramic view of the Hudson River valley, with the entire range of the Catskill mountains in the background, both making a pleasant change from the eighteen-mile longer railroad ride up the Housatonic to Sheffield. The principal, and at pres- ent the only good carriage road from Berkshire county, is by the excellent roads from Sheffield or Great Barrington, nine miles, passing through South Egremont to the base of the mountain, about two miles west of the village. Then, after following a mountain brook through the forest, between two ranges of mountains, about two and a half miles, to the sum- mit, near "Sky Farm," a view unique (and without a rival in New England) bursts upon the vision. The view to the north from "Sky Farm" down through the gorge through which you came, to the farthest extremity of Berkshire, with Greylock and the mountains of Vermont in the distance, and Lenox, Stockbridge, Monument Mountain, etc., in the inter- vening distance. The various views of the interior undulat- ing plateau, forming the settled portion of the town, 1,000 feet above the valley of the Housatonic, girt round about with mountains, with its cultivated fields and scattered white farm houses ; the views of the country beyond from the vari- ous surrounding peaks of Mount Ethel, Sunset, Prospect, Fray, Cedar, Alander, and that monarch of all, Mt. Everett, from whose dome-like summit you have an unrivalled view of the whole of Berkshire county, southern Vermont, New York state to the Catskills, north-western Connecticut and a bird's-eye view of the fine scenery of the town and its sur- rounding mountain peaks which lie beneath you.
It is both grand and beautiful.
From the bright silvery lakes in Salisbury to the deep blue of the Catskills; from the distant hills and moun- tains of Berkshire to the rich and fertile valley of the Housa- tonic and the Hudson and their cultivated fields, the eye will continue to return to the nearer grand mountain ranges, which, like natural rampants, form the boundaries of this ro- mantic town. It is like a fortress such as God alone can make, an endurable and grand corner-stone to the old Bay State.
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In the extreme south-eastern part of the town, partly in Connecticut, is Sage's Ravine, through which for a mile or more a clear mountain stream of almost icy coldness in mid- summer plunges through a dense forest by successive leaps from a few feet to sixty teet or more. About one mile north of this stream flowing from Plantin Pond, which nestles among the hills 1,000 feet above the Housatonic valley, after flowing a quarter of a mile through a wild forest. plunges over an almost perpendicular cliff at Bear Rock, nearly 500 feet, and disappears in the forest below, and thence by a less rapid descent flows southerly and joins the brook from Sage's Ravine at the base of the mountain just across the state line in Connecticut, and thus united as if reluctant to leave their mountain home and beautiful Berkshire, flows slowly several miles north-easterly into Berkshire again to join the Housa- tonic in the village of Sheffield. From the top of the forest- covered cliff over which these waters plunge, one of the finest views in New England is obtained. With the roaring brook at your back, rushing onward through the forest to its final plunge, you look down upon a scene which lingers long in the memory of all who witness it. The forest, 500 feet beneath you, in which the brook is soon lost after its final plunge, the fertile valley of the Housatonic, Twin Lakes in Salisbury, with perhaps a train passing across them (over the Central New England Railway) three miles distant, the hills of Can- aan and Norfolk in Connecticut, and New Marlboro, Sandis- field and Great Barrington across the valley of the Housa- tonic, with the scattered villages and the farm houses of western Sheffield beneath you, combine to make a landscape of surpassing beauty.
Such, in brief, are some of the views of this town, among the clouds. of less than the average area, which, combined with a dry and sunny atmosphere, even temperature and the purest water from its numerous springs and mountain brooks, never yet failed to give relief and increased strength to all exhausted by business or disease.
The beautiful and fragrant arbutus and azalia, succeeded by the laurel which line its roadways and woodland paths, its gorgeous sunsets viewed from its many peaks and passes, and the gathering thunder clouds over the Catskills, form a continual succession of beautiful and interesting changes through the summer. All these with the gorgeous tints which nature gives to every hillside and wooded peak in Autumn are a continual reminder of Him who doeth all things well.
Among the early noted visitors who have described the scenery of the town are Dr. Timothy Dwight, president of
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Yale university in 1781, and Prof. Edward Hitchcock in his geological report of the state in 1839. Prof. Dwight says :
"In the year 1781 I ascended the loftiest summit of the mountain ( from Sheffield) and found a most extensive and splendid prospect spread around me. On the north rose Saddle Mountain at the head of the Hooestennuck valley, at the distance of 40 miles. At the same distance the Catskill Mountains formed, on the west, the boundary of the vast val- ley of the Hudson. In the south-west rose Butter Hill, the most northern summit of the Highlands on the western side of that river, and the majestic front of an immense range receding gradually from the sight, limited the view beneath us towards that quarter of the horizon. The chain of the Green Mountains, on the east, stretched its long succession of summits from north to south a prodiduous length, while cver them, at the distance of 40 miles, were the single, soli- tary point of Mt. Tom, and farther still at the termination of 50 or 60 miles, ascended successively various eminences in the Lyme Range, Monadnoc, at the distance of 70 miles on the north-east. is distinctly visible in a day sufficiently clear. Immediately around us spread a collection of flourishing set- t!ements and finely varied the grandeur with their beauty."
Prof. Hitchcock, in 1839, says:
"It is surprising how little is known of Mount Washing- ton, and especially of its scenery, in other parts of Massachu- setts. I doubt whether nine out of ten of our intelligent citizens, beyond Berkshire county, are not ignorant of the existence of such a township within our limits. And even in the vicinity very few have ever heard of scenery in that place, which would almost repay a lover of nature for a voyage across the Atlantic. *
* Through Egremont, passing up along a vast uncultivated slope to the height of nearly 2,000 feet, you at length reach the broad valley where the few scattered inhabitants of the town reside
'A lonely vale. and yet uplifted high Among the mountains: even as if the spot Had been from oldest time, by wish of theirs, So placed to be shut out from all the world.
"The western side of this valley is formed by the Taconic ridge, which, towards the Connecticut line, must rise nearly 1,000 feet above the valley ; and there it takes the name of Alander Mountain. * But there is no particular part of the mountain that calls for specific description.
"On the east side of this valley rises Mount Everett. Its central part is a somewhat conical, almost naked, emi- nence, except that numerous yellow pines, two or three feet
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high, and wortleberry bushes, have fixed themselves where- ever the crevices of the rock afford sufficient soil. Hence the view from the summit is entirely unobstructed. And what a view !
'In depth, in heighth, in circuit. how serene The spectacle, how pure !- Of Nature's works In earth and air,- A revelation infinite it seems.'
"You feel yourself to be standing above everything around you; and feel the proud consciousness of literally looking down upon all terrestrial scenes. Before you on the east the valley, through which the Housatonic meanders, stretches far northward in Massachusetts, and southward in- to Connecticut; sprinkled over with copse and glebe, with small sheets of water, and beautiful villages. To the south- east, especially, a large sheet of water (Twin Lakes in Salis- bury) appears, of surpassing beauty. In the south-west the gigantic Alander, Riga, and the other mountains more re- mote, seem to bear the blue heavens on their heads in calm majesty ; while stretching across the far distant west, the Catskills hang like the curtains of the sky. O what a glori- ous display of mountains all around you! And how does one in such a spot turn round and round, and drink in new glo- ries, and feel his heart swelling more and more with emotions of sublimity, until the tired optic nerve shrinks from its office. "This certainly is the grandest prospect in Massachu- setts, though others are more beautiful, and the first hour that one spends in such a spot is among the richest treasures that memory lays up in her storehouse.
Of Bash-Bish Falls he says :
"Although the most remarkable and interesting gorge and cascade in Massachusetts. it was only by accident that I learnt their existence, after having been in Mount Washington some time; and at that time I could scarcely find anyone in the neighboring towns who had heard of the spot. * * *
"In the first place, it is an enterprise of no small magni- tude to get to the spot: especially for ladies, none of whom but the most resolute and vigorous should attempt it, until the roads are improved. or rather made, for the main diffi- culty is there are no roads that are tolerable for carriages within two miles of the place. A few years since there was a very decent road from Copake in New York. it being only four miles east of Miller's tavern. But the powerful rains of the summer of 1838 completely ruined it. so that it will be quite as easy to make a new one as to repair the old one. The best course to reach this spot is to go into Mount Wash-
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ington from Egremont, * and when you have pro- ceeded as far as the first school house you will find yourself in the vicinity of a Mr. Schutt (now owned by his son), at whose house it is better to leave your carriage, and go on foot the remaining two miles. The course lies mostly through the woods, and passes near the thermal spring (that which supplies Mr. Schutt's house). * * * A little be- yond this, and just west of the highest ridge of the mountain, where is some cleared land, (known as the Bush lot) a very commanding prospect opens into New York, through the deep valley which is formed by a small stream, bounded on the right and left by the steep slopes of the mountain thus discovered, and showing ridge beyond ridge, and checkered with woods and cultivated fields, and now and then a sheet of water, until at length the noble Catskills loom up above. everything else in the far distant horizon.
"After leaving this spot, you descend a steep hill nearly 1,000 feet, and find yourself on the margin of a small stream, not more than a rod wide, a little above the point where it begins to plunge and roar down the deep and dark gulf. For a few rods it descends rapidly towards the west, between perpendicular walls of rock nearly 100 feet high. This rock is talcose slate, whose layers here stand nearly perpendicular, and run north and south, that is across the course of the cur- rent. But ere long the descending stream strikes against a perpendicular mass of rock which it has not yet been able to force out of its place, and is thereby made to turn almost at right angles to the left, and then to rush down a declivity sloping at an angle of about 80 degrees in a trough between the strata. This fall cannot be less than 50 or 60 feet; and here the water has performed its greatest wonders. Having for centuries been dashing against the edges of the strata, while at the time its bed has been sinking, it has worn out a. dome-shaped cavity to the depth of 194 feet ; that is measur- ing from the top of the overhanging cliff to the foot of the. fall. * * *
"Following the stream still further down from this upper fall, we find it rapidly descending by several smaller cascades, which together amount to at least 50 feet, half hidden by huge . bowlders and overhanging trees. At length we arrive at a' larger and in fact the principal fall. The water which is divided into two parts by an enormous bowlder poised upor the brink, here falls over a nearly straight and perpendicular precipice of about 60 feet. into a deep basin, two or three rods across. *
* * But I feel the poverty of description tor delineating such scenery. From the top of the highest
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precipice to the foot of the lower falls, I estimate the perpen- dicular height to be 320 feet. " *
* The town contains an unusual amount of
objects of scenographical interest. To examine the most important, two days, at least, are indispensable ; one to ascend . Mount Everett, and the other to explore the scenery of Bash- Bish Falls. To one who has a taste for the wild, the ro- mantic and the grand in nature, these two days will be a . season of delightful emotions."
To these two days Prof. Hitchcock could now add a week for seeing the various new views since opened, notably
SAGE'S RAVINE.
This is one of the wildest and most beautiful successions of cascades through a deep forest-covered ravine to be found in New England. The earliest mention of this is by the committee who ran the boundary line between Massachusetts and Connecticut in 1717, who say: "On the west bank (of the Housatonic) we set up a stake and heap of stones and proceeded five miles, which ends on a mountain we call Mount Eshcoll, from the mighty clusters of grapes there growing, and in a stony gutter by estimation 200 feet deep, through which runs a stream of water which is crossed by the line and falls from the mountain several hundred feet, and the course of the stream may be seen at many miles distant. We have also marked many trees in the line between station and station, the last of which is a maple at the foot of Mount Eshcoll on the north side of the stream at six feet west from which is a large rock at the edge of the water. The line ter- minates on the top of the mountain in the gutter at a right angle from the North Mountain at a place uncapable to have a monument made at it.
Sam'l Porter, Matthew Allen, Sam'l Thaxter, Wm. Whiting. John Chandler. Nathaniel Burnham. Commissioners.
Westfield, Sept. 20, 1717."
To the old-time tribute I will only add the two following from many of more recent date:
The Rev. J. T. Headley says of the view from Mount Everett :
"You are the center of a circle of at least 350 miles in circumference. And such a circle! I cannot tell of the prodigality of beauty that meets the eye at every turn. You seem to look on the outer wall of creation, and this old Dome .seems to be the spot on which Nature set her great compasses
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when she drew the circle of the heavens. A more beautiful horizon I have never seen than sweeps around you from this spot. The charm of the view is perfect on every side-a panorama, which becomes a moving one if you will but take the trouble to turn it round."
Mrs. Goodale says : "High amid the hills of extreme Southern Berkshire, uplifted skyward where light and air, color, perfume, song and silence of the summer days all come and go, pure, free, spontaneous, each with its own delicious, subtle charm, lies Mount Washington. Girt about with everlasting hills in their serene steadfastness, with the west- ern outlook bounded by the beautiful range of the Catskills, in no part of Berkshire is to be found more of the native majesty and loveliness of Nature. Green fields, cattle upon the hills, and scattered farm houses speak of the hand of man, and yet there are broad stretches of woodland answering only to the rythmic fingers of the wind, and echoing no harsher sounds than the cooing of the wood-dove or the persistent cooing of the whip-poor-will."
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BASH BISH FALLS, MOUNT WASHINGTON
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BEAR ROCK FALLS, 100 FEET BELOW
MOUNT WASHINGTON
BERKSHIRE COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS
PART TWO
"First Settlers, 1692-1752 and Beginning of Livingston Contest for Possession"
Keith
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UPPER END SAGE'S RAVINE, MOUNT WASHINGTON
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PART TWO
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FIRST SETTLERS, 1692-1752 And Beginning of the Livingston Contest for Possession
HERE is conclusive proof that several families were liv- ing in Mount Washington over two hundred and twenty years ago. In fact the first white settlement in Berk- shire county was in this town, about 1692. as shown by the petitions and unpublished papers of the Massachusetts arch- ives, and the Livingston papers, published in the third vol- ume of the documentary history of New York.
Bordering on the two states of Connecticut and New York. claimed by Robert Livingston and remote from the protection of the Massachusetts government, the early history of the town previous to the final settlement of the New York boundary line in 1787, was an eventful and exciting one. It was the scene of almost continual warfare between its inhabi- tants and Robert Livingston for many years, beginning in 1752.
EARLY INDIAN DEEDS AND GRANTS.
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During the year 1683, and subsequently, Robert Living- ston made various purchases of the Indian owners, for which he petitioned the Governor of New York to unite under a "patent of conformation." constituting the Manor of Living- ston and conferring feudal privileges upon the proprietors, which petition was granted by the Governor and the patent issued July 22, 1686.
The petitions for the patents were artfully worded by Livingston so as to convey the impression that the original grants taken together would comprise but a little over two thousand five hundred acres. This was increased by a sub- sequent survey for him in 1714 and its confirmation by Gov- ernor Hunter, October Ist, 1715, to over 175,000 acres, which survey included nearly two-fifths of the present town of Mount Washington.
There is not a particle of evidence that Livingston ever purchased the last-mentioned land from the Indians, or indeed any considerable portion of the tract which forms the north- eastern section of Copake, although he had caused them to be included within the manorial grant. This eminently char- acteristic piece of sharp practice was destined to cause his descendants no small amount of trouble.
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Prior to this survey and confirmation to Livingston in 1715, that known as the Westenhook Patent was granted and issued in four tracts March 6, 1705, by the Governor of New York, Edward Viscount Cornbury, to Peter Scuyler, Derrick Werrells, Jno. Abeel, John Janse Bleecker, Ebenezer Willson, Peter Fauconier, Dr. Daniel Cox, Thomas Wenham and Henry Smith. . The second tract included Mount Wash- ington, and is described as follows ::
"Situate, lying and being on the west side of ye said creek called Westenhook (Housatonic river) butting on the south side of ye flatt or plain called Tashamick, formerly be- longing to Nishotowa, Anaanpack and Ottonowa. consisting of 2 flatts or plains, the first or southermost plaine called Mach- aakquichkake, and the second or northermost called Kaphack, and so to an Indian burying place hard by the said latter plaine, which is the northermost bounds, and soe, keeping the same breadth, into ye woods westerly as far as the land be- longing to an Indian called Testamashatt, bearing near the land called Tachancke" (Copake.)
This tract included Mount Washington and probably the east part of Copake and Hillsdale, the Tachancke here men- tioned being a tract granted to Robert Livingston August 10, 1685, lying west and south of Copake lake. The Indians, Nishotowa and Testamashatt, above-named, being grantors in his deed .- Doc. Hist., N. Y., Vol. 3. Pages 371-377.
The conditions of the Westenhook Patent required the improvement of some portions of the lands within six years and the payment of an annual quit-rent of £7 10 shillings, which conditions appear not to have been complied with, owing probably to the Indian title being fraudulently ob- tained.
April 25, 1724, the Housatonic Indians sold to the Hou- s2tonic Proprietors, in consideration of the payment secured to them of "four hundred and sixty pounds, three barrels of sider and thirty quarts of rum. a certain tract of land lying upon Housatonach river, alias Westonook, bounding "south- erly upon ye divisional line between the Province of Massa- chusetts Bay and the Colony of Connecticut in New England, westwardly on ye patent or colony of New York, northward- ly upon ye Great Mountain known by ye name of Mau-ska- fee-haunk, and eastwardly to run four miles from ye afore- said river, and in a general way so to extend."
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