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OLYOK
HOLYOKE
DAY
Penned AND
Pretur
HOLYOKE, MASSACHUSETTS
ITS STUPENDOUS WATER POWER AND THE MANNER IN WHICH IT IS UTILIZED
THE RAPIDITY OF ITS GROWTH AND THE MAGNITUDE OF ITS DIVERSIFIED INDUSTRIES
HOLYOKE, MASS. : J. EVELETH GRIFFITH, PUBLISHER, 1887.
PREFACE.
h OLYOKE TO DAY ! What would it be without its great water power and big dam ? Following this thought has resulted this interesting and graphic account of the conception and completion of this vast engineering feat. And, to illustrate and describe-all too briefly, however, the record which Holyoke has made, both at home and abroad, is one to be proudly recited, and to be read of admiringly and profitably.
This is not a history ; no pretensions are made in that direction, nor is it a hastily prepared summary of the past, but briefly told, a recital of the events which record the rapid and substantial growth of this wonderful young city of the East.
A large portion of the matter to be found in these pages has been heretofore published, in different shapes, and the publisher has not hesitated to make free and liberal use of such material as was within his reach. But little merit, therefore, is claimed on the score of originality, except it be in the arrangement and design, which has been to place the whole in the form of a book, in an attractive and popular style, and if those for whom it has been prepared are in any degree gratified with its unique appearance, the labor bestowed upon it will be amply rewarded.
CITY HALL.
.
HOLYOKE.
OLYOKE has no past that can really be called a history ; it can celebrate no centennial, nor even half a centennial. It has no pathetic memorials of Indian assaults and massacres, no ancient landmarks tumbling into picturesque ruin and decay, no descendants of first families that lived in the times which tried men's souls and bodies. True enough, it had an existence more than a century ago ; the city and what are now its suburbs were a portion of the town of West Springfield, known as "Ireland Parish." The site of it had been known to the Indians in the days when they held undisputed sway here and hereabouts, and the Falls of the "Quonektacut," as the rapids were called by them, were a favorite rendezvous and fishing ground.
The City of Holyoke has grown from nothing, in less than forty years, to be the most important paper making city in the world. Its growth has been healthy and in the most substantial way, and it has not only come to stay but gives promise of being one of the large cities of the country at no distant future. Such has been the rapidity of this transformation, that men now living
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ave witnessed every stage of its progress, and even lived thirty and forty years before it began. But few residents of the city, however, have anything but a vague knowledge of its past ; most of them are new-comers and have seen only the events of recent date, so that the story of the city's growth is interesting to its residents, as well as to the world at large. It is a story that is purely American. The narrative is not one that would describe a European city and trace its origin in the Middle Ages and its subsequent importance arising through slow accretion and development. The story crowds three centuries into three decades ; a wilderness in the Connecticut valley is suddenly moulded into a social center ; the agricultural stage of civilization all at once disappears and the industrial stage as quickly appears in its place ; it is the story of Rip Van Winkle outdone in the reality ; we have in the narrative an illustration of the rapidity of American social aggregation and much evidence of the quickness with which Americans adjust themselves to new conditions. In every essential regard it is the most remarkable municipal example of deliberate Yankee grit and enterprise on the continent.
About one hundred miles from Boston, forty-five more from New York, and midway between Springfield and Northampton it lies in the highway of northern travel, and two independent lines of rail bring it in close connection with tidewater, and the railway system of New England and New York ; the Connecticut River railroad is a north and south line, connecting with east and west lines
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thirty miles up the river at Greenfield, and eight miles down the river at Springfield ; the Holyoke and Westfield railroad runs to Westfield and there connects with the Boston and Albany and the New Haven and Northampton railroads.
The sudden growth of Holyoke, and the extent, expansion and variety of its manufactures, have been often noticed in the public prints, but the short period of its existence has been well improved, and it is already a well-ordered, thrifty city, laid out on a large scale, and well filled in with permanent structures, and a stable population, churches, schools, hotels, water works, street railways, electric lights, and the other modern essentials of pleasant and healthful town life has kept pace with the rapid increase of population, and these together with the noticeable solidity and extent of the mill-buildings, the commodious tenement blocks, and the numerous, pleasant, private residences, enable the youngest city in the State to compare favorably with the older manufacturing places in New England in those things which make a location desirable for residence and business. This great change from fields and farms to mills and city sights and sounds has all been wrought in little more than a third of a century ; and the moving cause which in so short a time, has given to the State another flourishing city, to the beautiful Connecticut valley another object of interest, to manufacturers another center, and to the active industry of New England another market, is easily stated. It was not the chance junction of intersecting railways at this point, or the demands of
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of outlying towns for a trading center, or the sudden expansion of some manufacture already estab- lished here. It was simply that where the Connecticut river sweeps around the site of Holyoke, one of the greatest water-powers in America, which had been running to waste for centuries over the " Great Rapids," as they had long been called, had finally been made available for manufacturing purposes, by a series of magnificent canals, and a dam exceeding in dimensions and effect any like structure in the world. Among the natural resources of any section, unfailing water-power has always held high rank. Mines may cease to yield, and other sources of natural wealth may be exhausted, but the flow of the river to the sea is constant, and its daily contribution of power and resulting value to the world, may be exacted forever. And when a great water-power, like that of Holyoke, is made available, yielding its vast total of thirty thousand horse-powers, greater than the water-power of Lowell and Lawrence combined, and greater than the energy of man has ever utilized elsewhere, the possible addition to the industrial forces and capital of the country becomes an interesting study for the manufacturer and the man of business; and gives to the place where such a force is turned to use, unmistakable promise of growth, great in proportion to the vastness of the power employed, and permanent as the force that has brought it about.
The project of constructing a dam on the Great Rapids, which should withstand the powerful current of the Connecticut river and afford motive power for a new city of mills and shops, was so
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gigantic, and the capital to be invested was so large for those days, that the undertaking was famous from its inception, and still ranks among the foremost manufacturing enterprises of the world. The great volume of the water at this point, the rapid fall of sixty feet, the rocky ledge underlying the stream, and flanked by walls of solid stone, whereon to locate the dam, the convenient site for the canals and mills, encircled on three sides by the graceful sweep, and steady, unfailing flow of the "Long River," as the Indians called it, rising three hundred miles to the northward among the hills of northern New Hampshire and the mountains of the Canada border, and fed by a water-shed of great area and largely covered with forests, had long attracted the attention of capitalists; but the undertaking was so vast and costly, that if we except the building of a little mill, with its small wing dam, in 1831, nothing was done to develop the water-power we describe until 1847.
Baptist Village, (the section of the city now known as Elmwood) was the principal part of the "parish" in early years, and, located as it was, upon the only road on the west side of the river between Springfield and Northampton, it was a stopping place for stages and a resort for farmers living in the adjacent country when they wanted "to go to store." There was no railroad here in 1840, and all freighting was done by teams and river craft, with Hartford as the principal trading town in this part of the country. Farmers' produce and a few manufactured articles were carried down the river in sloops, scows and barges, and whatever was required in return was brought back
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and left at the river landings where wagons were loaded, and then landed to places along the river, or in the adjacent country. The boats, however, could not sail up South Hadley Falls, and it became necessary to make a canal for their passage. Such a canal, with the required locks, was made on the east side of the river for a distance of two and a half miles. At the the lower end a man kept a span of powerful horses and four yokes of oxen constantly in waiting to tow up the canal all boats whose owners paid the required toll.
Soon after 1840 the survey of the Connecticut River railroad was made and, without long delay, the railroad was built, thus making possible nearly all subsequent developments at the Falls. At that time all the houses east of Northampton street numbered only fourteen, being located on territory now covered by almost the entire city. The Western railroad (now the Boston & Albany) had not been built many years before several capitalists from Boston visited the South Hadley Falls for the purpose of determining the feasibility of using the river at this point as a water power. The matter progressed no further than discussion until 1845, when they tried to purchase some of the land hereabouts, which they most needed in their contemplated operation. The owner of this land, Mr. Samuel Ely, would not sell on account of a prejudice that he had against corporations. He was a democrat of the old style who believed that all manufacturing enterprises made the rich richer, and the poor poorer,. and he ardently detested the "cotton lords," as he termed cotton
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manufacturers. Several of the Boston gentlemen who had on several occasions tried to purchase his land, were approaching his house one day to have another talk with him, when, seeing them coming across his meadow, he took up a shot gun and pointed it at them, remarking, "How I could shoot those rascally cotton lords." Little thinking that the gun was loaded, he raised the hammer and pulled the trigger, when to his astonishment, the weapon was discharged and the shot were sent uncomfortably near the "cotton lords." Thinking they might scare Mr. Ely into a sale of his land, they had him arrested for a felonious assault, and upon that charge he was taken to Springfield, but finding him too self-willed a man to frighten, they had to adopt new tactics.
Those Bostonians had a grand idea that could not live without having its counterpart in reality. There was a river draining an area of 8,144 square miles above a place where it had a natural fall of 60 feet, and the utilization of this water power was their plan. They gauged the flow of the river at low water and found it to be 6,000 cubic feet per second, the equivalent of 30,000 horse powers. Knowing that if they revealed to the public their startling and gigantic scheme of appropriating this power, they would not be able to purchase land from Samuel Ely, nor from other men who owned the land that they needed, at anything less than fabulous prices, they negotiated with Mr. George C. Ewing, of the firm of Fairbanks & Co. of New York, scale manu- facturers, to buy the land in the name of Fairbanks & Co., and at the same time to keep dark
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the real purpose of the enterprise. Mr. Ewing had bought a farm on the hill west of the "flat" a year or so before, and was personally acquainted with the men he had to deal with. He was a young man of the best business qualifications, shrewd at a bargain and skillful in negotiation.
The first necessity was the purchase of thirty-seven acres of land near where the dam now is. Mr. Ewing repeatedly talked with Mr. Ely and finally persuaded him to set a price upon that parcel of land. The price, though high, was accepted, and a bond for a deed was at once given. In 1846 Mr. Ewing obtained from the Hadley Falls Company an agreement to sell their property at a certain price, but when they learned that he had been successful in his negotiations with Mr. Ely, and suspecting that the name of Fairbanks & Co., was a blind, they quibbled about their bargain and all but refused to sell, unless the contract price should be greatly increased. But they finally sold at the agreed price upon promise of permission to take stock to the amount of $100,000 in the water power company soon to be formed. Some land owned by a cousin of Samuel Ely was also wanted, but the cousin also detested the "cotton lords" and for a long time flatly refused to sell at any price ; but Mr. Ewing's unremitting persistency led Mr. Ely so far as to offer to sell for $10,000. Giving him no time to change his mind, Mr. Ewing drew him into 'Squire Ely's office, where a memorandum in writing was made and $10 paid to bind the bargain. The price was most exorbitant, but the originators of the enterprise had now determined to go ahead at
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any cost and paid out money freely. A farmer living where the southern part of Holyoke now is, came to Mr. Ewing one day and wanted to sell his land for $7,000. The "first refusal" of the land was taken at that price until Mr. Ewing could go to New York and return. Upon his return he told the farmer that the money was ready for the deed; but the farmer in the meantime had received some intimation that capital to the extent of several millions of dollars was somehow or other concerned in the purchase, and he cried like a child as he pleaded for a higher offer. However, he accepted the $7,000, which was much more than his farm was worth. A farmer named Ashley had died a few years previously and had left a farm to each of two daughters. One of them had a dissolute husband and her friends objected to her selling her farm, fearing that her husband would appropriate the money and drink it up, unless Mr. Ewing would be her trustee and obtain guar- dianship over him as a spendthrift. Mr. Ewing consented, was successful in doing all this, and secured the land. In such ways, Mr. Ewing bought in the name of Fairbanks & Co. about 1, 100 acres of land for $119,000. Bonds for deeds had been taken in the first instances, and deeds were obtained in the spring of 1847. A survey of the premises was begun on July 29 of that year and soon completed, so that the location of the dam was made on August 17. The legislature of 1848, in the following winter, incorporated Thomas H. Perkins, George W. Lyman and Edmund Dwight "The Hadley Falls Co." for the purpose of constructing and maintaining a dam across the Con- as
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necticut river, and one or more locks and canals in connection therewith, and for the purpose of creating a water power to be used for manufacturing articles from cotton, wood, iron, wool and other materials ; to be sold or leased to other corporations or persons, to be used for manufacturing or mechanical purposes and also for the purposes of navigation. The capital stock was $4,000,000. Fairbanks & Co. sold all the land they had purchased to the Hadley Falls Co. and took stock to the amount of $119,000, and Mr. Ewing's stock was $20,000, but both Mr. Ewing and Fairbanks & Co. withdrew several years later when it was apparent to them that the company was extravagant, was spending money in a reckless manner and must inevitably fail.
In the winter of 1848 work on the first dam was begun by a large number of men. Mr. Ewing, who had been appointed the land agent of the company, had the duty of hiring the men for work on the dam and employed several hundred at eighty cents per day. Work on one of the canals was begun at the same time and the men who had the contract for doing that work soon wanted to reduce the wages to seventy cents. It was necessary that the wages for work on the dam and on the canal should be the same, or it would be impossible to get men to work for the lower wages; so the contractors requested Mr. Ewing to cut down the pay, but he refused to do so on the ground that he had agreed to pay his men eighty cents a day. The directors, however, overruled him and the wages were cut down, but Mr. Ewing paid the deficiency to some
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of the men out of his own pocket, that his agreement with them might be fulfilled. It was much desired that the works should be completed in that year, and the directors requested Mr. Ewing to that purpose, to work the men on Sundays. He, believing it to be contrary to the laws of God and man, refused to do this and the directors were so persistent that he resigned, and 'Squire Rising of Northampton was appointed to take his place. The people in the vicinity sympathized with Mr. Ewing in this matter and, not long after, sent him to the legislature. He was subse- quently a member of the school committee, superintendent of schools, and did much to lay out the city and improve its appearance. He now owns thirty or forty acres in the suburbs of the city The first two houses built since the and lives on West Dwight street in a very sightly location. purchase of the land for the Hadley Falls Co. were erected by him near the dam. On January I, 1848, there was a general strike among the men employed in the preliminary work pertaining to the dam. The strike lasted until the 10th when twenty of the strikers went to work. This occasioned a riot among the strikers who refused to work, and they gathered in hundreds around the twenty who were working and mobbed them. The engineering corps and several residents of the place, who tried to prevent a riot, were severely maltreated. Philander Anderson, chief engineer, and Constable Farnham were painfully, though not seriously, wounded and had to be carried off the field. The authorities called on the militia and 25 artillerymen from Northampton responded, but
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they came too late to be of service. The principle rioters were arrested and punished. Cholera also broke out among the laborers and many of them died in consequence.
The construction of the dam went on rapidly during the summer. At one time, August 5,
there were 1,277 men employed on all the works. The first sill of the dam was laid on June 5, and on November 4 the whole structure was completed. The event was celebrated by a ball in the company's office on the evening of the 4th. The building of this huge dam had been the talk of all New England and many were the conjectures of its failure and success. It was startling to think that a mighty river could be turned from its course and be made to drive perhaps a million of the wheels of industry. The then estimated water power was sufficient to run 1,200,000 spindles and to furnish employment for 100,000 persons. The dam had cost from $50,000 to $100,- 000. It was over 1,000 feet long, was 30 feet high, and was made of timbers bolted together and also bolted to the bed-rock of the river bottom. The test of the dam's strength, when the openings in the structure, through which the water was flowing, should be closed, was a sight thousands longed to see. The openings in the dam were closed by gates on November 16, 1848, at 10 a. m. At least 2,000 people lined the banks to witness the event, and before the day closed 3,000 people had visited the place. The dam began to leak badly at the very start, and brush and gravel were thrown on the places that were leaking the worst, but as the water slowly came up higher and
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THE DAM, FROM EAST SIDE OF RIVER.
higher the strain upon the dam was so great that the water came through in great quantities, and it was evident that the structure must give way. The dam was covered with people, and hundreds were in the river bed below the dam. All these people were warned to go to the banks of the river, and fortunate it was that all obeyed. In the meantime the stones composing the bulkhead - were beginning to upheave from their places, such was the pressure against them, and had the dam remained much longer the bulkhead would have been demolished and the imprisoned waters would have rushed down the canal and laid waste the whole village lying below it. At 3.20 p. m. the dam could no longer endure the strain and, breaking from its foundation, it turned over and the river was again master of itself. The late Dr. J. G. Holland, then on the editorial staff of the Springfield Republican, and who witnessed the scene, gave the following graphic description of the circumstance in the Republican of the next morning: "When the water broke through, the pond had filled to within several feet of the top, and the pent-up waters rushed forth with a mighty power and dashed and tumbled over the rocky bed below, sweeping away with them the now broken and scattered, but still huge portions of the wreck. The scene was both magnificent and frightful. To describe it were impossible-no pen limner could convey a tithe of the impressson that is vividly marked upon the minds of all who witnessed it. Strong hearts trembled within them and every face was pale at the sight. The labor of many minds and hundreds of hands for a long summer-
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the pride and the confidence of the contractors, just in the hour of triumph, were swept off in an instant, and nought but the huge wreck that remains is left to tell of the mightiest structure of the character, that was ever built in this country." Those who saw it say that the front of the rushing waters was a wall, high at the start, but becoming less as the released water went down stream. At Chicopee it was still two feet high. There was a ferry some distance below the dam and when the ferry-boat was struck by the water it was like an egg-shell upon its bosom. The boat was
carried three or four miles and stranded on the shore. A farmer who had invested some money in the stock of the company was heard to remark, as he saw some of the timbers float down stream, after the main part of the dam had gone out of sight : "Well, some of that property was
mine, but it was worth all the money I put into it, to see it go." While the pond was filling a gentleman interested in the company was telegraphing at intervals to some of the owners of the property in Boston concerning the prospects of success. His telegrams read about as follows, the last one being verbatim : "IO a. m., the gates were just closed and the water is filling behind the dam;" "12 m., the dam is leaking badly;" "I p. m., we cannot stop the leaking; " "2 p. m., the stones of the bulkhead are giving way to the pressure ;" "3.20 p. m., your old dam has gone to hell by the way of Willimansett." Mr. Ewing, in conversation with Mr. James K. Mills, the treasurer of the company, a short time after this event, remarked that the dam had shared the
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fate of all things done in violation of God's law, referring to the work on Sunday. Mr. Mills replied : "I guess if the engineers had understood the laws of the river, the laws of God wouldn't have made the dam give way." Men who had bought land on speculation were feeling badly about that time, but their spirits were soon lightened, upon learning that another dam would be built next year.
There was no discouragement at the loss of this dam. Something had been learned about the construction of such an immense dam and the chief engineer, Philander Anderson, who received his first training at West Point, was confident that he could build a dam that would stand the pressure of the mighty river. The wreck of the old dam was cleared from the banks and preparations began in the spring of 1849 for the building of the second dam. In April of that year two coffer dams were built, one on each side of the river, and each extending 200 feet from the bank into the The water was pumped out of these coffer dams and the stream. They were completed in May. rock was excavated to a depth of six feet.
The construction of the main dam was then begun by laying down three fifteen-inch square sticks lengthwise across the river with their upper surface in a plane inclined at an angle of 21 degrees.
The rock below was cut to give them a proper bearing and then the sticks were bolted to the rocks with one and a quater inch iron bolts, 3,000 of these bolts being used in the whole dam for this purpose. In this way the dam was started in sections, six feet from center to center, and, as the river is 1,017 feet wide at that place, there were
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