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A PURITAN OUTPOST
HERBERT C. PARSONS
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GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK . BOSTON . CHICAGO . DALLAS ATLANTA . SAN FRANCISCO
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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA, LIMITED TORONTO
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THE PROGRESSIVE PURITAN Northfield's First Citizen in the Eighteenth Century (Pencil drawing by Ethel Machanic from ancient oil portrait )
A PURITAN OUTPOST
A HISTORY OF THE TOWN AND PEOPLE OF NORTHFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
by HERBERT COLLINS PARSONS
NEW YORK
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I937
Copyright, 1937, by HERBERT C. PARSONS.
All rights reserved-no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazine or newspaper.
Set up and printed. Published May, 1937.
SET UP BY BROWN BROTHERS LINOTYPERS PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY
. Incorp corporated
1723
1128726
COMMITTEES OF THE TOWN
On the History of the Town CHARLES CALVIN STEARNS, Chairman ARTHUR PERCY FITT MRS. CHRISTIANA C. STOCKBRIDGE MRS. MARY I. SMITH MRS. MARIA HURD KEET
On Publication of the History CHARLES CALVIN STEARNS, Chairman ARTHUR PERCY FITT WILLIAM ALEXANDER BARR FRANK WARBURTON PEARSALL AMBERT GORDON MOODY
INTRODUCTION
THIS IS THE STORY of a distinctive New England town, the far- thest venture of Puritan pioneering to the west and north in the seven- teenth century, which had to be claimed by venturesome settlers three times before its foothold was even relatively secure. Through nearly a century it was exposed to the recurrent assaults and the con- stant peril of French and Indian invasion, with intermissions when the settlers were dislodged, during one of which it was the thronging seat of the command of the arch-enemy of white occupation, the dubiously crowned King Philip.
Toughened through generations of hardihood, its people devel- oped the sturdy, self-reliant, pious, prudent and independent com- munity, thoroughly characteristic of their unmixed British blood and Puritan heritage. Consistently with such background and distinctly out of such breeding, one of the sons it sent out to varied careers in the world's affairs came to fame and widespread service as an evan- gelistic leader and by his hand the added feature was bestowed upon it of being a school and religious centre.
The town's respect for its historic past has led to the writing of the story. By no less authoritative commission than the spontaneous vote of its inhabitants and freeholders, in town meeting assembled, it has been written with so free appropriation of material from many and varied sources, that only a general credit can be given other than to the town itself and its citizens inclusively.
The attempt has been to give the town its setting in the times through which it had been an integral and not insignificant part. Deliberately, the product lacks the documentation and the detail of the usual antiquarian output, except as these contribute to the main purpose, a consistent narrative, of possible interest beyond the circle of the town's own people, one of whom, in full affection, is the writer of these pages.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
I.
DISCOVERY
I
The Bay Colony, Pressed for Room, Looks Inland
II. THE ABORIGINES 12
Making Ready the Land for Unwelcome Tenants
III. SETTLEMENT 22
Up the Valley Went the Prospectors
IV. ARRIVAL 34
A New Land Occupied As If Made Ready
V. INSECURITY 39
Peaceful Possession Disturbed by Threats of Attack
VI. SECOND SETTLEMENT 52
Pioneering Takes Little Note of Peril
VII. BUILDING 61
Confidence Broadens Spaces and Plans
VIII.
RETARDATION
69
Colonial Shift Dampens Frontier Spirits
IX. THIRD SETTLEMENT 78
A Quarter Century's Wilderness Reclaimed
X. PERMANENCE 85
Blood of First Pioneers Recruited by New
XI. BROAD PLANNING 93
Social Foundations Laid for All Time
XII. A COMMUNITY 97
Spiritual Fortifications Supplement the Physical
XIII. SEEKING TOWNSHIP 103
Political Entity Cautiously Bestowed
ix
X
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
XIV. A MILITARY OUTPOST IIO
Threats and Acts of Attack a Call to Arms
XV. HOLDING DIFFICULT GROUND 118
Only a Brave Captain Prevents Desertion
XVI. RELIGION A NEW BATTLEGROUND 124
Parson Doolittle Resists Jonathan Edwards' Leading
XVII. ANOTHER END TO PEACE 133
Far-away Louisburg Draws Inland Citizen-Soldiers
XVIII. BATTLEFIELD OF NATIONS 139
European Conflict Finds the Valley a Testing Ground
XIX. ABANDONMENT AGAIN PROPOSED 148
Foreign Peace Fails to Give Frontier Security
XX. PEACE A GESTURE, NOT A FACT 160
America, French or English? The Valley Drawn Deeply Into the Issue
XXI. PEACE, AND HOME DEVELOPMENT I71 New Elegancies in Dress and a New Church for Their Display
XXII.
ENGLISHMEN AGAINST ENGLISHMEN
I77
Quick Resentment of Oppression, and Revolution
XXIII. TIME OF DEEP DISTRESS 188
Vigorous Protests but No Share in Armed Revolt
XXIV. AT PEACE, WITHIN AND WITHOUT 197
Progress in Numbers and Common Interests
XXV. GROWING INTO IMPORTANCE 208
Advance into a New Century with Complete Self- reliance
XXVI. NEW, BROADENING FACTORS 219
Harvard Influence Supplants Yale Exclusiveness
XXVII. INTO A NEW CENTURY Spirited Development of Home Resources and National Interest 227
xi
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
XXVIII.
ENTERING ANOTHER WAR
237
Sea Fencibles March from Valley to the Coast
XXIX.
NEW ERA OF PIONEERING
243
A Mother Town to Vermont and New Hampshire
XXX.
GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT, BEAUTY
251
Trees on the Street, Bridges over the River, Ventures in
Invention Mark Progress
XXXI.
A GOLDEN PERIOD OF CULTURE
263
Accession of Hosmers, Curtises, a Jarvis and Academy
Teachers a Deep Influence
XXXII.
SOCIAL LIFE IN NEW FREEDOM
276
Old Meeting-House Demolished, Old Restraints Go
with It
XXXIII.
CHANGING STANDARDS AND MANNERS
289
The Railroad Period Brings Stouter State Regulations
of Towns
XXXIV.
NEW TOWN HALL, A SYMBOL
299
Higher Oratory, Livelier Politics, Greater Sociability
XXXV. CIVIL WAR AND AFTERMATH Patriot Spirit Shown at Home and on Battlefield
307
XXXVI.
TWO CENTURIES OLD, OF ONE BLOOD
317
House by House, a Common Origin and Individual Character
XXXVII.
CONFORMITY TO CHANGING FASHIONS
339
Political Ardor, Prohibition Reaction, Style in Dress and Religious Calm
XXXVIII.
SIGNIFICANT RETURN OF A NATIVE
347
Dwight L. Moody, Now Famous, Arrives in a Town of Relatives
XXXIX.
EVANGELISM AND CHURCH DISSENSION
353
Moody as Man and Preacher, the Wonder of His Home
Town
xii
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PAGE
XL. RELIGIOUS AND SOCIAL LIFE MINGLE 360
Travel Newly Enjoyed, Temperance Newly Incited, Moody Opens New School
XLI. CHANGING TO A NEW ORDER 372
Town Schools in Contrast to Moody's, with One Now for Boys
XLII. NATIONAL ISSUES AND LOCAL, BOTH HEATED 386 Ancient State Boundary Dispute Revived, Street Rail- way Averted, Motor Cars Unfavored
XLIII. MODERNIZATION 396 Last Prospects of Industrial Features Fade-Gifts Well Directed
XLIV. NOW A SCHOOL TOWN 407
Physical Change with No Loss of Traditional Life
XLV. MOODY'S FINAL YEARS 420
The Schools Realized His Great Ambition-The Leader Falls
XLVI. HONORING THE PAST 430
Historical Interest Enlivened-Moody Schools a United Institution
XLVII. CHANGING WAYS, STABLE IDEALS 439
Houses Modernized, a Gift Bridge, Shifting Pastorates
XLVIII. TWO AND A HALF CENTURIES Serious and Spectacular Observance of a Colorful Past
448
XLIX. IN FULLNESS OF YEARS 456
The Past Honored-The Present Brings End of Another Moody's Life, and a Mount Hermon Tragedy
L. THE NEW-OLD TOWN 464
Changing Population, Permanent Standards, Lost Isolation
BIOGRAPHICAL 489
INDEX 521
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Progressive Puritan (Seth Field)
Frontispiece FACING PAGE
The Discoverers
4
Squakheag, the Outpost
5
Topographical Map of Northfield, Massachusetts
24
Before Bridges Spanned "Great River"
64
Northfield-on-the-Connecticut
65
Changing Church Architecture
98
Some Old Northfield Doorways
99
Along the Two-mile Shaded Street
I74
Eighteenth Century Houses
175
Thomas Power, Esq.
264
Six Men Whose Public Careers Began in Northfield in the Eighteen- thirties
265
Dwight Lyman Moody
334
D. L. Moody as a Boy, Mrs. Betsey Holton Moody, and Samuel H. Moody
335
Ira D. Sankey
3,56
P. P. Bliss and Rev. George F. Pentecost, D.D. 357
Maria A. Field 368
Physicians of Three Periods
369
Northfield Seminary Campus
392
Mount Hermon School Campus
393
Birthplace of Dwight L. Moody
422
Homestead of Dwight L. Moody
423
Principals of Northfield Seminary Since 1879
452
Principals of Mount Hermon School
453
Some Distinguished Relatives
490
Four Distinguished Sons of Northfield-1937
491
Herbert Collins Parsons 516
Elijah M. Dickinson 517
xiii
CHAPTER I
DISCOVERY
The Bay Colony, Pressed for Room, Looks Inland
OVER THE HILLS AND CRAGS, through the primeval forests of the range that continues the Monadnock group within the present borders of Massachusetts, there toiled in the summer of 1669 four stalwart men from the Eastern Colony. They were not casual roamers. They came with the credentials of civilization. They were indeed a com- mittee of the General Court ---- a recess committee, with full warrant to travel. The word junket had not found its place in the legislative vocabulary and would doubtfully have been applied to the journey through uncharted territory, guided only by a pioneer sense of fit locations for new homes. It impelled them to set an early example in exceeding official authority. Had not the General Court commissioned them to lay out a new plantation near Quinsigamond ?
Even a twentieth century map does not justify by nearness to Wor- cester a tramp through the border hills of the Connecticut. Their later report is confession that they "proceeded to the northwest to view the country." Seemingly the easy slopes of the Millers River valley, then unnamed, failed to yield the view of country their pioneer- ing impulse demanded. Leaving it, they struck out over the highest hills to the westward, over the one whose ruggedness won for it the name it still holds, "Old Crag," and having surmounted them, fol- lowed a narrow valley, through the unbroken dense woods until sud- denly they came out upon a projecting and denuded bit of land, one of those minor and accessible hilltops which served as Indian watch- towers, when watching was needed against enemy approach.
Before them opened the Connecticut valley, higher up the river than had yet rested the white man's eye. Across the nearer plain, some day to be scene of tragedy for one of the four, was the broad band of the great river. Away to their right were the greater heights of hills within the future states of Vermont and New Hampshire, and to the front the
I
2
A PURITAN OUTPOST
line of a range that, like the one they crossed, had held the river within its geologic bounds. Their eyes could follow the great, calm stream down its way to the settlement, could they have known it, the newest in the valley capture, Deerfield, a significant twenty miles away. They stood on the frontier facing a wilderness unbroken short of the Canadian outposts of another advancing race. Discoverers.
"A favoring region, seemeth to me," from the calm, keen-visaged captain of the group. "Shall we not so note it in our report?"
"Well spoken, Cap'n Gookin, an you can regard it as near Quin- sigamond pond," responded the next in order of the committee, Daniel Henchman, who had a certain fashion of humor as well as, it may be suspected, a slighting respect for the literalness of his fellow members of the General Court.
Standing a little apart from his companions, with his gaze turned upon the expanse of unknown country stood Captain Prentice, he, too, a man of rank in the colony's militia and in its public affairs. Turning to them, he gave the sum of his observation, "Can it be that such a country may be taken by mere vote of the General Court? Have we not to fear that this is the land of the Pacomtacks? Will they give upon our request the possession of such land and near to this great river? Let us not forget that what shall be taken for our sites shall be by fair purchase. Even the heathen are God's children. Moreover land boughten is land safeguarded."
"Truth, and again truth!" The last to join is the one we should mark as the most resolute of the four, an upstanding soldier, clear of vision, shrewd and calm and kindly. He is a junior here, a leftenant in rank, but with the right to speak and have his words respected that belongs to the one whose youth reaches back to another land, an original settler in the substantial proprietage of Watertown, where he is already a selectman and the chosen representative in the General Court-Richard Beers by name. And then, as he casts his eye over the plains near and the meadow beyond, a cloud of apprehension darkens his brow :
"I can see these peaceful places the scene of combat. Look ye at the ravines that cross the plains! Are they not favored places for ambuscade? Do not the broad meadows and these upper plains show us that they are prized by the natives? See how they are kept clear for tillage. Consider how the river yields salmon for their
3
DISCOVERY
spears. And all of ye have seen what these forests shelter in the fashion of game. It is not a land to be cheaply bought nor when bought easily held against the treachery of these heathen."
"Well spoken, leftenant, but is yours a faint heart? Have we people of God come to this land from our secure homes across the seas, to doubt His providence? My thought turns back to Carrigaline, my boyhood home, on the fair shores of the peaceful bay of Cork, and I could wish to finish the life there which was begun in its security. But a Divine hand directs us. The same, nay greater, perils were faced by our brothers at Plymouth and in the Bay colony. Not less were the uncertainties of Virginia, where now I should be but for that other foe, the wicked of our own blood who deny to us the wor- ship of God in our own true way. We are not here to quail at dangers that are as yet but in fancy. Shall we not go further? I shall talk to these natives in their tongue if it prove not to be unlike that of the Massachusetts and the Narragansetts which God has given to Brother John Eliot and me to comprehend."
Down from the hilltop where they had tarried for such a con- ferring of their minds, the four Puritans commissioned to discover new regions for their kind trod across the plain to a rushing stream, there to meet the native villagers in a region which was known to them as Squenatock. Here the parley revealed that the region was held by a tribe known as Squakheags, or as Captain Gookin understood the name Wissaquakheag, such was the uncertainty of the names coming through their slightly opened mouths.
Gifts from the invading white men, slight in value as they were, won from the natives a cautious hospitality and Captain Gookin's command of Indian words gained their confidence. Guides from their village went with them up the slopes to the broader plain from which they surveyed the great stretches of meadow which lay on both sides the broad river, the Quinnetuckut, already known through the settlements at Springfield, Northampton, Hadley and Deerfield.
Captain Gookin learned from these new acquaintances of the discoverers that they were distinct from the Pacomptacks, with whom they allied themselves only in the face of invasion from the Mohawk country. Their words bore resemblance to those of the Merrimacs, and he gave his companions the conclusion that their alliance in any need would be with the tribes of the far-away valley that lay to the
4
A PURITAN OUTPOST
north of the Bay settlements. It did not escape his notice that their numbers were so small as to show that they were but a remnant of a larger tribe. He gathered that they had suffered at the hands of the invading Mohawks and he shrewdly concluded that they were not unready to form friendships with the English in the hope of pro- tection against the foe who had so lately and so nearly completely destroyed their villages.
Captain Gookin had to mention but one word to bring out ex- clamations of wrath from the natives he and his fellow explorers found lingering in the well-nigh deserted villages of Squenatock and to the north. It was the name of the great tribe beyond the hills to- wards the setting sun. Had they not, six summers before, poured over those hills, fallen upon the Pacomptacks, fought the bloody battle at the fortified hill in the meadows, near where the river Pacomptack flows into the Quinnetuckut, then rushed up the valley and with fire and slaughter laid waste the Squakheag villages? Sweeping on, had they not invaded the country of the Nashaways and the Merrimacs? And what were these hissing words and violent gestures but the vengeful announcement that the chiefs of all these tribes were even now in council for return invasion of the land of the Mohawks?
The summer was at hand in which the massed warriors of all the eastern tribes would follow over the trails well marked by the Mohawks and wreak revenge upon them. Under Chickatawbut, great sachem of the Massachusetts tribe, they would repay out of their store of wrath for the raid which was to this day marked in the ruins of the home of the Squakheags.
As these explorers traced their way back over the hills towards the Bay towns, to make their report on the possible three sites for settlements, quite the most attractive of which was the alluring valley region where in time would rest the town that at first would bear the native name of Squakheag and later that of Northfield, there is time to make note of the sort of men these discoverers were.
Chief among them, and least remembered in this region, which was the farthest point of their tour, but preserved in memory at Quinsigamond as the "Father of Worcester" and again immortalized in his "Historical Sketches of the Indians" was Daniel Gookin. In him was to be seen the perfect type of the English gentleman trans- ported to the lands and the fortunes and the strifes of the New World.
Daniel Henchman Daniel Gookin
Thomas Prentice
Richard Beers THE DISCOVERERS
(Drawing for this work by Ethel Machanic)
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A MAP OP NEW- ENGLAND,
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May Say Brook
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Northfield
Springfield:
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Nanuk:l
SQUAKHEAG, THE OUTPOST
The "Wine Hills Map," so called because of the name first given the White Mountains, dated 1677, shows Squakheag (or Squahcag) (later Northfield) the farthest point of New England settlement.
Haw
Morning hop 1
TISLAND
Poraffet.6
Engan
Wafer Mowy
Concord
I side of Jong Miles.
Being the first that ever was bers cut, and done by the bejt Persern that could be bad, which being in fome placer defelfive, w mode she erber lofs exal : yet doth it fuficionily flum sbe Seitus- ton of the Comirry, and conveniently well
Squaheag
4.0
5
DISCOVERY
His boyhood and early youth had been spent in the region of Castle Carrigaline, "about seven miles southeast of the City of Cork, down the harbor at the head of the sea called Oonbuoy river." His leading to the new land was through his father, the senior Daniel Gookin, voyager to Virginia, who was the first to export English cattle across the seas and who so established this enterprise that he sold his castle in Cork "to free his capital for the transatlantic ventures upon which he shortly after embarked." Quality came to him in the larger measure through Mary Byrd, his mother, daughter of the canon of Canter- bury Cathedral and granddaughter of John Meye, bishop of Carlisle, through Lady Elizabeth Meye.
It was in 1620, the exact year of the Plymouth landing, that the senior Daniel had projected an enterprise that was destined to have far-reaching influence upon the history of his descendants-that of transporting cattle to the colony of Virginia and of founding a plan- tation in that distant land. His arrival in Virginia, precisely a month before certain other venturers set foot on Plymouth Rock, with about fifty men, was such an event that the colonists there made record of their great hope that the Irish plantation would so prosper "yt from Ireland greate multitudes of People wilbe like to come hither."
Our Daniel had filial reasons for questioning the security of settle- ment in a region held by Indians. It was four months to a day after his father had placed his foot upon the soil of Virginia that the great massacre by the savages took place, when out of a total of about 4,000 settlers 347 were slain. When, after that disaster, plantations were numerously abandoned and combined at four or five places, the cattle being abandoned to the savages-so runs the record-it was only "Master Gookin at Newport News [who] would not obey- though he had only five and thirty of all sorts with him, yet thought himself sufficient against what should happen, and so did, to his great credit and the content of his adventurers." It was he who took the first news of this calamity to England, where in 1622, he was granted a patent at Newport News and was so flushed with his success there that he decided to take a share in the New England company.
Conceivably upon the march of the four discoverers to the Con- necticut valley, quite beyond the errand upon which the General Court had sent them, and their return to make report of the desir- ability of a settlement that far away from Quinsigamond, their com-
6
A PURITAN OUTPOST
mander related so much of the baptism of his father in the strife of the new land of Virginia. He went on to tell them that shortly after his eighteenth birthday he had left the secure and happy land of his youth, just out of the schools of Old England, had arrived in America, only to remain for a little before he returned across seas to London, there to marry, and a few years later with wife and child to set sail for a permanent home at the granted estate in Newport News. Within a year he had been made a burgess, and he might have told what was left to his biographer to tell, that he was immediately recognized as a man of ability and worth.
"Refresh us on the Nansemond Petition, and what ensued there- from," petitioned Captain Prentice, as the four sat about a fire built on the shore of the stream, the Millers River of a later day, to remove the chill of the May evening. "It is not unknown to us but to the youngest of us, Goodman Beers, it has not been heard from your lips ; and it is well held up as showing to what straits we are subject, under divine Providence, because of our will to worship Him in accord with His Word."
"An you would have an old tale again told, it came about in this wise." In the firelight, his companions saw the noble features of their chief take on a deeper gravity, as he began the narration of an event which had indeed changed the paths of his life but had more than personally exemplified the spirit of New England's beginnings. "Certain of us in the colony of Virginia, not having the spiritual min- istration that accorded with our faith, sent unto the elders of the church in the colony of Massachusetts Bay a request that there be sent to us true ministers of the gospel as it is to us. Granting our prayer, there were three sent to us, the one of whom you, Leftenant Beers, should know was from the town whence you join us, Water- town, the goodly and reverend John Knowles. Great joy did they bring us but"-the Captain here hesitated as if to curb his resentment at the bigotry of the governor of Virginia-"but," he repeated, "Gov- ernor Berkeley, fit representative of the oppression from which you people of Plymouth and the Bay took refuge here, sent his messenger to us to convey his wish that we should not display our heresies, as he was moved to name them, within his dominion, and again to tell us we were not longer wanted there. Pursuant of his narrow devo- tion to the order he served, he secured, against our faithful protesta-
7
DISCOVERY
tion, an act of the burgesses against preaching save in conformity with the church of England. How truly do the mercies and blessings of God underlie what seem to us in their season the adversities of life ! So was I led into the blessed joy of companionship and fellowship in truth with such as ye !"
Asked to name the three ministers who made the memorable journey to Virginia with the blessing of the New England churches, Captain Gookin recalled that they were Rev. William Thompson of Braintree, an Oxford graduate and a minister of distinction; Rev. John Knowles, ripe scholar of Emanuel college, the pastor in Lef- tenant Beers' home; and finally, joining them at Taunton, Rev. Thomas James of New Haven, contemporary there with Elder Janes, whom he could not have foretold was to preach the first sermon in the town of which they had but just seen the future site. These three encountered first a storm that wrecked the pinnace that carried them, off Hell Gate, nearly costing them their lives, and next the cold recep- tion of the Dutch governor at Manhattan, who had rankling knowl- edge of the conflict in the Connecticut valley for the possession of the sites of Hartford and New Haven. Their perilous journey to Vir- ginia took in all eleven weeks.
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