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GYICOLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
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HISTORY
OF THE
TOWN OF CHESHIRE,
BERKSHIRE COUNTY, MASS.
BY MRS. ELLEN M. RAYNOR AND MRS. EMMA L. PETITCLERC.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
BY JUDGE JAMES M. BARKER.
CLARK W. BRYAN & COMPANY, PRINTERS, HOLYOKE, MASS. AND NEW YORK CITY, 1885.
Copyrighted, 1885, MRS. FLLEN M. RAYNOR AND MRS. EMMA I. PETITCLERC. CHRSHIRE, MASS.
Good Speed - 7.50
1158882
TO THE
PRESENT SELECTMEN OF CHESHIRE
GEORGE Z. DEAN HENRY F. WOOD
FRANK REYNOLDS
AND THEIR SUCCESSORS
THIS BOOK IS RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED
By the Authors
PREFACE.
In offering to the public this simple history of a picturesque Berkshire town, the authors believe the occasion appropriate for an explanation of the circumstances that led to the undertaking.
From our earliest recollections, the study of the history, and the progress of the town, has afforded us a greater degree of pleasure than we have de- rived from but few other sources. The memories of childhood recall the delightful emotions we experienced when sitting in the chimney corner we listened to the thrilling tales of the early settlers as told by their immediate descendants, and a passion for a knowledge of the beginning, rise and prog- ress of the little colony has marked the years in their passage.
In the delicious days of childhood every feature of the surrounding land- seape was as familiar as household words. In the bright June days we wandered through the glens, from the hollows we plucked the violets, from the knolls the delicate blood root blossoms, and in autumn climbed the wooded hills for nuts. We knew the green islands in the river, the beds of white sand, the village streets and lanes, the yellowish spire of the ancient church where we went with our parents to worship God. Every house- every person-we knew them all in those olden days.
Since then, the graveyards have grown larger. It is there that we find the town of our childhood rather than in the village homes, or treading the village streets, and as a labor of love we commenced to gather the ma- terials and trace the history from the log cabins of the settlers, and the stormy days of the long war to the present time.
We have noted the character, progress and final success of those brave men and women who came from the colony of Roger Williams to win by their labor a wilderness into smiles.
The task was not begun, nor the collection made with a view to immedi- ate publication, but at the instigation of the Berkshire Historical Society, which had as an ultimate object the publishing of the histories of towns throughout the county.
PREFACE.
The letter of Professor Perry, its president, given in full, explains the relation sustained toward the Society.
An increasing interest, the natural and incidental result of researches made, induced finally, the plan we have followed. Nearly every spot of note has been visited, every tale and tradition investigated, while facts have been carefully gathered for the purpose of forming an intelligent judgment and correct conclusions concerning the events of times past, and of the people who figured in those shadowy days. Possibly, more anecdotes are related than fall, usually, to the pages of history ; but we tell them as they have come down-told by neighbor to neighbor, by father to son, by winter fires, when the mug of cider and the basket of rosy apples passed merrily around, and repeated here because through them one may better read the characters of those who left their impress on the town. Although not free from errors and imperfections, this book will be found to contain a faith- ful narrative of events that have transpired, and is, we fully believe, deserv- ing the attention of those who have a local pride, as well as of the younger people to whom the stories of our pioneer ancestors are almost lost in the hazy distance.
To all, we send forth our little volume with a wish and a prayer that it may find interested readers and meet with favor in the pleasant homes of our town.
CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS.
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER .. 9
1-FROM 1767 TO 1777, II-FROM 1777 TO 1787, 41 III-FROM 1787 TO 1797, 63
IV-FROM 1997 TO 1807, 83
V-FROM 1807 TO 1817, 95
VI-FROM 1817 TO 1827, VII-FROM 1827 TO 1837,
112
126
VIII-FROM 1837 TO 1847, IX-FROM 1847 TO 1857, 146
134
X-FROM 1857 TO 1867. 155
XI-FROM 1867 TO 1884, 169
XII-SKETCH OF REV. JOHN LELAND, 181
APPENDIX, 193
INDEX, 215
WILLIAMS COLLEGE, Oct. 22, 1884.
MRS. E. C. RAYNOR AND MRS. E. L. PETITCLERC :
Mesdames,-You can say in your preface that the work was undertaken at the instance of the Berkshire Historical Society, that such parts of it as they shall choose to use will become a part of their History of the County under your names, and that the Society is very glad to have it pub- lished in fuller form preliminarily, so as possibly to draw in corrections and fuller information in reference to its ultimate publication under their auspices. I am ready as an individual, and as a president of the B. H. S., to testify to the care and zeal with which its facts have been gathered, and these facts clothed in accurate and elegant language.
Very kindly yours, A. L. PERRY.
NOTE OF THANKS.
To Mr. J. G. Northup. Town Clerk of Cheshire, we are under great obligations for assistance given in placing at our disposal books containing valuable knowledge, and in nnearthing papers long since supposed lost, or forgotten entirely.
To Professor A. L. Perry we are indebted for positive facts concerning the battle of Bennington.
To Joab Stafford of Canajoharie, N. Y., for statements of the gallant colonel for whom he was named.
To the town of Cheshire for the gift of $100 (one hundred dollars), and to all the following persons we owe our thanks for varied information : Mr. Edmond D. Foster, Mr. Henry C. Bowen and family, Dr. L. J. Cole, Mr. John B. Wells, Mr. Daniel Brown, Mr. Stewart White, Mr. Darius Mason, Mr. R. M. Cole, Mr. Owen Turtle, Mr. James Shea. Mrs. L. J. Cole. Mrs. Rebecca Dow. D. J. Northup, Mrs. Anna Richardson, Mrs. Warner Farnum. Mrs. Charles Bowen, Mrs. John Bneklin, Mrs. Julins Harmon (daughter of Squire Barker.)
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
BY
JUDGE JAMES BARKER.
EARLY SETTLEMENT OF CHESHIRE.
CAUSES LEADING TO THE INCORPORATION OF A TOWN. FIRST SALES OF
LAND. NICHOLAS COOK AND JOSEPH BENNET. NEW PROVIDENCE. CAPT. JOAB STAFFORD. THE NOTCH BURYING GROUND. JOHN WELLS. SCENERY. LAND GIVEN FOR THE SUPPORT OF THE GOSPEL. CAPT. SAMUEL LOW HOLDS SLAVES. EPITAPH OF ELDER PETER WERDEN.
THE town of Cheshire was incorporated on the 14th of March, 1793. The title of the Act indicated that its territory was made up of parts of the towns of Lanesborough, Windsor, Adams and of the District of New Ash- ford, the inhabitants of New Ashford not having been incorporated as a town until May 1st, 1836.
On the 6th of February, 1798, so much of the farm of Jacob Cole, of New Ashford, as lay in that district was, " together with the said Jacob and his personal estate, set off from the said district, and annexed to the town of Cheshire, there to do duty and receive privileges." This annexation added three more to the twenty corners made by its boundary lines, and established its pre-eminence in this respect over all the towns in the Com- monwealth on a so much firmer footing. Whether this predilection for corners came from the same cause which has made the population, and business and social life of the place desert its once thickly settled hill-tops, and congregate in that locality of the town known as Cheshire Corners, is a question which may at some future day be settled by the scientific branch of our Association. But it is reasonably certain that the bounds given in the Act of Incorporation, were not the result of an attempt to follow physical boundaries, but to bring into a community people of like tastes and religious feelings as far as possible. The attempt seems to have been remarkably successful, and the people of Cheshire to have been so remarkably unanimous even in political sentiment as to make current the
10
HISTORY OF CHESHIRE.
familiar tradition that when the first lone opposition ballot was put in the box by a citizen opposed in politics to all his neighbors, it was thrown out by the selectmen as having evidently been cast by mistake. It is among the earlier settlers of this territory that we must look for the leaven which was powerful enough to work throughont a township, creating the town in the first instance, and continuing its power until substantially all its citi- zens seem to have been united in sentiment. and vigorous and earnest in its expression.
These earlier settlers came more largely than the settlers of any other considerable portion of Berkshire from the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. They were descendants, some of them of the very men who were the first to follow Roger Williams to Rhode Island, and gen- erally they were men who had inherited and imbibed the spirit of her free institutions, and were educated in the religious beliefs prevalent in that colony rather than in the orthodoxy of the Massachusetts Colony.
The present paper will not be able to give the story of their emigration from Rhode Island, and their settlement in Berkshire in any connected form. or with a claim to that accuracy which ought to be attained in the documents prepared for an historical society. At most it will only gather the names and some facts in the lives of these early settlers, and call your attention to a village onee flourishing and beautiful, but which has now utterly dis- appeared. A Berkshire hill-top once crowned with a church, and hillsides once dotted with farm houses and tenanted by a vigorous, an intelligent and a thriving population, but from which the buildings have disappeared, and whose only tenants now are the inmates of those narrow homes on which no signs of " To Let " or " For Sale" are exhibited, and in another por- tion of Cheshire we find later, but still early settlers who followed the first from Rhode Island. and took up their abode in that part of the town which is included in or is near to the present village of Cheshire, and was then within the limits of Lanesborough.
The story of the men who made the New Providence Purchase, and in 1367 removed their families and goods from Rhode Island to the splendid eminence which they christened New Providence Hill in affectionate remembrance of the hill in Providence, and there essayed to found and did found a new community, is worthy to be told. We will try to name some of the actors in it, and to open the field for further research.
The portion of Cheshire to which we have already referred by its more ancient name of the New Providence Purchase and the crown of which was named by its early settlers New Providence Hill is now known as Stafford's Hill, a name derived from the Col. Joab Stafford who was one of
11
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
the prime movers in the emigration from Rhode Island to Berkshire, and one of the most prominent men in the settlement which they established. It appears certain that the territory embraced in the purchase was sold by the province in 1762 and was originally included in the township known as No. 6, the larger portion of which is now in the town of Savoy. An exam- ination of the Province records in the office of the Secretary of the Common- wealth at Boston, discloses a full statement of the action of the General Assembly and Council in ordering and making the sale of several townships of province land in the western part of the province in 1762, most of them in Berkshire which sale included those parts of Cheshire which were formed from Windsor and Adams. That part which was formerly Lanesborough had been sold at an earlier date, and was then known as New Framingham. The records of these sales which included the old town of Adams then known as East Hoosuck, and the territory now included in Hinsdale, Peru, Windsor, Savoy and other towns may be found in the archives of the His- torical Society, Pittsfield.
Of the townships there sold parts of two are within the limits of the present town of Cheshire, namely the northwestern portion of No. 4 and the west end of No. 6. Of these No. 4 seems to have been earliest settled. From deeds appearing on record it is evident that it had proprie- tors among whom there had been a division of common lands before the sale by order of the General Court in 1762.
There on the twelfth of June, 1762, James Burchard of a place called No. 4, in Berkshire County, conveys to his grandson, Matthew Wolf Jr., son of Matthew Wolf of the same town, house lot No. 66, on the southerly side of the same township butted and bounded according to the original survey as by the proprietors' book of records may appear, and as early as 1764, they were enjoying the luxury of selling lands for taxes in No. 4.
This township seems to have been as rich in names as Cheshire has been in corners, since it has borne successively the following in addition to No. 4; Dewey's Town, Bigot's Town, Williamsburg, Gageborough and Windsor.
The Noah Nash to whom it was sold in 1762 was a resident of Hatfield, and he continues to make deeds of lands in the township to 1784. Among these are deeds to David Parsons and many other names given in Barker's early history, page 24.
An examination of the latest county map shows that the New Providence Hill was directly north of the part of Windsor which was incorporated in the new town of Cheshire, and almost adjoining it the meeting of the five roads at the school house, one of which leads over the hill to Adams, and is on the line between No. 6, and No. 4.
.
12
HISTORY OF CHESHIRE.
In the vicinity of this portion of Windsor to the hill we find the moving force which brought it into the new town. Here too, lies one of the old burying grounds, to be noted further on, opposite the residence of W. P. Bennet.
It is not so easy to trace the history of the township known as No. 6. The present town of Savoy comprises the greater portion of the territory which was included within its bounds, as given in the order of sale of Feb. 11. 1762, and merely states that it, was originally No. 6.
The Rev. David D. Field, in his history of Berkshire county, published in 1829, gave Bullock's grant as the foundation of the town. some other lands being incorporated with it. He states that Col. William Bullock of Rehoboth, as agent for the heirs of Capt. Samuel Gallop, received from the General Court of 1770 and 1771. a township of six miles square, in consid- eration of their services and sufferings in an expedition into Canada about the year 1690, in what was called King William's war. the township to be located in any unappropriated land belonging to Massachusetts, and that Col. Bullock located the grant to the southeast and north of Bernardston grant comprising the western and greater part of Florida, and which had been previously located. Recalling the bounds of No. 6, as given in the General Court's order of sale, the report of the committee, and the plan, it is certain that most, if not all, of this territory is included in No. 6, and also that the part of Cheshire which comprises the New Providence Pur- chase, or Stafford's Hill is in the same township of No. 6. This township was sold June 3d, 1762, by the committee to Abel Lawrence for $1,350. and his bond taken, with Charles Prescott. Esq., surety, for $1,330 of the purchase money.
Who this Abel Lawrence was does not appear, nor has the writer been able to ascertain in what manner the title conferred upon him by this sale was divested.
There is no deed of record from him in the Pittsfield Registry, and the whole township seems to have been traded after the sale, and a part of it within the term of five years, during which he was allowed to settle it ac- cording to the vote, as unappropriated land of the Province.
This break in the cham of title has been very provoking in the search for a record of the history of a settlement of Stafford's Hill, causing it at one time to be given up in despair. But information gained by sitting down to examine page by page, in course, the early volumes of records in the Registry of Deeds, enables ns to give a probable account or theory.
For some unknown reason Abel Lawrence surrendered to the Province his right to the township soon after his purchase. The town of Hatfield. portions of whose lands had been included in the new townships Nos. 5 and
.
13
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
7, which were sold by the same committee in June 1762, made claim for compensations for the land thus taken, and the General Court in the same year seems to have awarded to them an equivalent located in part, at least, on the west end of the township which had been sold as No. 6 to Abel Lawrence. This land the town of Hatfield placed in the market and we find a conveyance of it made in 1765 by Israel and William Williams of Hatfield, and Israel Stoddard of Pittsfield. This tract was of 1,176 acres in one rectangular parcel, 432 rods east and west, by 435 rods and 14 links north and south and bounded southerly by the line of New Framingham, afterward Lanesborough.
Another and larger parcel of No. 6, seems,-upon evidence similarly found-to have been granted to Aaron Willard, Jr. Esq., and his associates purchasers of the new township No. 3, now Worthington, as an equivalent for a deficiency of land taken off from No. 3, and in 1766, we find "John Worth- ington and Josiah Dwight both of Springfield, Timothy Dwight of North- ampton, Salah Barnard of Deerfield, and Aaron Willard Jr., of Lancaster in the County of Worcester, Esq's.," conveying three thousand seven hun- dred and forty acres and fourteen perch of land lying north of, and adjoin- ing to Lanesborough, incorporated from New Framingham in 1765, and encircling on three sides the former parcel granted to Hatfield. These two parcels undoubtedly cover all that part of the original No. 6 which is now within the limits of Cheshire, and together they constitute the New Provi- dence Purchase, and it was on them that the definite settlement to which Cheshire is traceable was made. The deeds run to "Nicholas Cook of Providence, in the County of Providence in the Colony of Rhode Island, Esq., and to Joseph Bennet, in Coventry, in the County of Kent in the Colony of Rhode Island, Esq.," making them equal tenants in common of both trades. The copies of these deeds are on page 31 of Barker's History.
This Nicholas Cook of Providence and Joseph Bennet of Coventry are the prime movers in the settlement of Cheshire, and of the early emigra- tion from Rhode Island to Berkshire. Prior to their purchase there is mention in the Registry of Deeds only of one conveyance to an inhabitant of Rhode Island so described, of lands in the county. On the 28th of June, 1763, one Moses Warren of Hopkinton, Rhode Island, Clothier, buys of Joseph Warren of Tyringham, lot No. 137, in Tyringham, 70 acres "where- of," says Joseph Warren, "I was the original proprietor." Whether Joseph Warren also came from Rhode Island and afterwards induced a brother to follow him does not appear; but with this exception the first ten books in the Registry of Deeds disclose only purchasers in New Providence, Gageborough, Lanesborough and East Hoosuck by residents of Rhode
14
HISTORY OF CHESHIRE.
Island, save only that the Rev. Samuel Hopkins, who removed from Great Barrington to Newport in 1770, on the 27th of March, 1722. conveys lands in Great Barrington to his son David, who is also described as of Newport. Rhode Island. Of the two original proprietors of the New Providence purchase Nicholas Cook, the more prominent, seems to have been engaged in it merely as a speculation. He remained in Rhode Island. He was a member of the Court of Assistants of that Colony from 1752 to 1761, and Deputy Governor in 1768 and 1769. Joseph Bennet seems to have been admitted a freeman of the Rhode Island Colony from Coventry, in May,. 1758. A Mr. Joseph Bennett of Newport, possibly an ancestor, was made High Sheriff on the 1st of May. 1700. The only other mention of Joseph. of Coventry, is under date of 23d of February, 1761, when he was made one of a committee, consisting of Nicholas Cook, Esq .. Messrs. John Brown. Knight Dexter. Joseph Bennet, Joseph Bucklin and George Jack- son, to apply to paving the streets of Providence, a lottery of three classes for raising the sum of $6,000 granted by the General Assembly upon the petition of the citizens of Providence. We might speculate whether Nich- olas Cook. Esq .. the chairman of this committee, found Mr. Joseph Ben- net. his colleague, so efficient in the management of the lottery, or the work of paving that he selected him as his partner in the subsequent oper- ation in wild lands, and. also, whether both of them realized. out of the lottery or the contracts for paving, the money which they paid for their Berkshire purchase. But in whatever way they became acquainted they were able to induce their neighbors to share in their enterprise and to re- move with Bennett to the new country or to follow him. Captain, after- ward Colonel Joab Stafford was employed by them to lay out and map their purchase, and the map which was filed in the Registry of Deeds, shows that the grillant captain was a master of the pen and rule as well as of the sword. This map was found by the process of examination above referred to, look- ing through the book page by page, after all hope of seeing it had been lost. Captain Stafford, a townsman in Coventry, of Joseph Bennet himself, made the first purchase of lands from Cook and Bennet, on the 5th of November. 1966, 396 acres m 3 lots, and on the next day Cook and Bennet, by a deed acknowledged in Providence and witnessed by Joab Stafford and Silas Downer, made partition between themselves of their remaining lands. It is surmised that Nicholas Cook, Esq., was a lawyer and drafted his own deeds, and if so he was a good one, for this indenture of partition is a model, delighting a lawyer's heart.
This partition having been made, sales were made to others, and the set- tlement advanced. The earliest to remove from Rhode Island seem to have settled on the New Providence Hill as it was called, and to have belonged
15
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
to the Baptist denomination. Following them came other inhabitants of Rhode Island, many of them settling farther to the north in what was then East Hoosuck, or No. 1, now Adams, and of these very many were Quakers. To this difference in religion is probably due the fact that the New Providence settlement was not incorporated with East Hoosuck into the town of Adams in 1778, in which contingency probably there would have been no Cheshire; for, according to the Rev. John W. Yeomans in Field's History of Berkshire, it was the wish of the New Providence settlers to be incorporated with Adams, and during 1778 the inhabitants of East Hoosuck were twice called on to vote on the question of extending the char- ter so as to embrace New Providence, but each time rejected the proposi- tion. New Providence Purchase must, however, have been subsequently annexed (by an Act of which we fail to find mention,) to the town of Adams. For, for some years prior to 1793, we find the people residing upon it, dating their letters from Adams, and the church established on the hill calling itself the Baptist Church in Adams. The present south line of Adams is evidently the old south line of East Hoosuck, so that it seems reasonably certain that the part of Adams which at the incorporation of Cheshire in 1793 went into the new town, was just the New Providence Purchase, and that it had been annexed to Adams after the incorporation of that town. The list given in appendix shows the conveyance recorded in the first ten books of the Pittsfield Registry of Deeds running to persons named as residents of Rhode Island. It included all the surnames given by Dr. Field in his history of early and prominent settlers of Cheshire and many more, and there is reason to suppose that most of the persons named in it became residents on the land conveyed to them.
To return to the first settlers-we find that Capt. Joab Stafford attended the general assembly at Newport in May, 1762, as a deputy from Coventry. In 1778 we find him empowered as Colonel Joab Stafford, to issue his warrant to some principal inhabitant to the newly incorporated town of Adams, requiring him to warn the inhabitants thereof to assemble for their first Town Meeting, and on the 21st of August 1801, we find him describ- ing himself as Joab Stafford of Cheshire, Gentleman, quit-claming to Allen Briggs of Adams, Gentleman, Daniel Reid, Yeoman, and Timothy Mason, Gentleman, both of Cheshire, for $400 all the remnant of his land in the New Providence Purchase, including 14 acres, "on which an execution was sometime since extended in favor of Ruloff White against me." Doubt- less the court records would disclose the cause of action ; but it is better not to peer too curiously into the gallant Colonel's embarrassments.
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