USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > Springfield old and new. Tercentenary souvenir, 1636-1936 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 4535
"Springfield Old and New"
by
Ernest Newton Bagg
Springfield, Mass. The Historical Souvenir Pub.Co. 1936
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SPRINGFIELD Old and New
1636-1936
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1935
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HISTORY AND PHOTOS BY ERNEST NEWTON BAGG
AERIAL PHOTOS BY PHOENIX ENGRAVING CO.
A Chronicle of Springfield, Massachusetts in words and pictures, combined with a memorial to the business men of Springfield and of the cities and towns that were once a part of it.
Copyright, 1936 The Historical Souvenir Publishing Co., Springheld, Moss. . Printed and Engraved in Springfield
F 8449 .063
Dagg, Ernest Newtea. "Springfield old and new." Torrent-nagy 1996. History and photos in Front Newton Be .. . 1 photos by Phoenix engraving co. ... Springfield. Mars. T .... historical souvenir publishing co .. $1936. ;UN; p. Illex (incl. part .. farina.) ==
combined with a mondhat to the busines men of Spring .... . the cities and trans that were once a part of it." Includes advertising matter.
1. Springfield, Mass .- 1list. 1. Tidle.
Library of Congress -Copy 2. H 6814 Copyright AA2490FT :
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/springfieldoldne00bagg
F84149.063 SPRINGFIELD Old and New . . 1636-1936
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2. William
Pynchon
WILLIAM PYNCHON FOUNDER OF SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS A Patentee and Magistrate under the Colony Charter
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SPRINGFIELD Old and New . . 1636-1936
Ruling Spirit and Good Genius of William Pynchon An Unusual and Interesting History of the Founding of Springfield BY ERNEST NEWTON BAGG
The founder of Springfield, William Pynchon, like his father, John, a graduate of Oxford, was a man of learning, probably an Oxford man as well as being one of the patentees of the Colony, while in England, under Charles I, one of Governor Winthrop's magistrates and "assistants", the trusted treasurer of the Colony, and high commissioner for the "Government of the Connecticut River settlements." Pynchon matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford, (afterward Hertford College) when he was eleven years old, October 14, 1596. It was the custom to send boys to Oxford at a very early age. Here he acquired great familiarity with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and accumulated the theological stores of knowledge of which there is so much evidence in his later works. The historian, Henry M. Burt, says that "William Pynchon was undoubtedly the ablest reasoner and the best scholar residing in the colony during the first century." The one man whom Josiah Gilbert Holland called "the ruling spirit and good genius" of the first decade and a half of the settlements of Western Massachusetts, so thoroughly laid the foundations upon which the later structure of town, county, and city life has been reared, that he well deserves to be called "The Father of the Valley" indeed.
It was the business of trade in fur, particularly beaver, which induced him to go up into the heart of what was then considered the wilderness as well as the New World's fur country, and to create the first outlines of the four counties-Hampshire, Berkshire, Franklin and Hampden, named in their Chron- ological Order.
When the "Jewel", one of the four ships of Governor Winthrop's daring little fleet, sailed from Southampton, England, March 22, 1630, it carried William Pynchon, the acute, self assertive, resolute, man of large affairs; the "country gentleman" who was also the merchant, and pre-eminently the fur- trader. With him went his wife, Anna, daughter of William Andrews, of Twywell, Northamptonshire, and their three daughters. The oldest was Anna, later to become the wife of Springfield's first recorder, Henry Smith; Margaret, who married Captain William Davis, of Boston; and Mary, who was later Mrs. Elizur Holyoke, whom the ornate tombstone in the old Peabody cemetery at Springfield declares was "A very Glory of Womanhood."
The sea was reported to be infested by pirates, a fact which caused no little dread and apprehension. Once on the toilsome voyage the sight of "eight strange sail" caused an immediate clearing of the decks for action, and the throwing overboard of some things which were considered too combustible. There were anxious hours when the elders knelt in fervent and continuous prayer for deliverance. The fears of the company were turned to joy when the unexpected wayfarers proved to be "friends, not enemies."
An extraordinary storm, continuing ten days, caused much distress; and so tossed and bruised the cattle imprisoned below decks that "more than three-score died" or had to be butchered. When, on the 72d day outward bound, "land was sighted and there came a smell of the shore like the smell of gardens", their joy knew no bounds, Saturday, June 12, 1630, they "came to anchor in the harbor of Salem."
Some of the 180 who had come over on the "Jewel" or her sister ships had died on the way over. Some had strength and courage enough to reach land, though not lasting much longer. Since the little company had formed itself into this historic group, nearly two hundred had been eliminated by death. All its leaders were "men of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." The "Arbella", the "Ambrose" and the "Talbot" were the sister ships of the "Jewel". The first of this trio was named for one of the "stock- holders", the Lady Arbella Johnson, widow of the late Sir Isaac, and the first titled woman to reach New England.
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SPRINGFIELD
Old and New
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1636-1936
COURT SQUARE SPRINGFIELD, MASS., IN TIH: FORTIES
The above is an castern view of the Old Court House, Congregational Church and other buildings around Court Square. A part of the Old Hampden Coffee-House is seen on the right.
SPRINGFIELD Old and New . . 1636-1936
Excitements of the enterprise and inevitable nostalgia caused the death of the widow Johnson and Anna Andrews Pynchon, almost immediately. Mrs. Pynchon had come from a paradise of plenty and pleasure, and into a wilderness of wants. Although celebrated for her many virtues, she was unable to cope successfully with the adversity with which she was surrounded. A month after her arrival she "ended her days in Salem."
Pynchon never lost sight of his main objective, that of merchandising and trading in furs. Up and down the coast, trading with both the English and the Indians, sailed the little ships in which he was financially concerned, exchanging the goods he had imported from England for native products, and particularly furs. It is recorded that one of his ships "coming from Sagadahock in October, 1631, was wrecked at Cape Ann, but the men and chief of the goods were saved." No one thing did more to effect the colonization of America than the pursuit of fur-bearing animals, and particularly the beaver. Com- petition and search for new sources of supply lured the hunter into remote regions, only to be followed by the settler. The beaver furnished food and clothing, and its skin was one of the "chiefest" articles of commerce. On the frontiers it became a unit of currency.
For years the natives knew and desired no other.
As early as November, 1630, the regulations controlling the price of beaverskins were cancelled, and it "was left free for every man to make the best improvement of it he could."
Mr. Pynchon early became alarmed at encroachments in the territory "leading to great northern lakes" of which he heard and read much; and heard with anxiety that the Dutch had built their fort with- out interference, as far up the river as Hartford. So, by the earliest opportunity, the Winthrop bark was dispatched up the Connecticut River, and past the Dutch forts, despite the protests of the latter, and built a trading post at Windsor. The commander of this expedition reported that the "Connecticut River runs so far northward that it is within a day's journey of a part of the Merrimac!"
Every scrap of information which Pynchon could obtain helped to fix his intention to develop the resources of the unexplored upper Connecticut. The fear of interference by hostile natives was much lessened by the report brought back, 1634, by one Hall, who, after untold hardships, had fought his way back from the Connecticut, to bring word of terrible ravages of the small-pox the previous Winter among most of the Indian tribes to the north and west.
Governor Bradford's journal relates the futile attempt of the Dutch, established in their fort at Hartford, to dissuade the Indians at Springfield from sending their furs to or dealing with the English in any way. A few of the Dutch, it seems, had gone up in the Winter of 1633-34 to the Springfield Indian fort to stay awhile and induce them to dispose of all their furs in Hartford. "The enterprise failed", says Bradford "for it pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness, and such was the mortality that over nine hundred fifty of the thousand (in one fort) died; and the Dutch almost starved before they could get away." Gradually they worked their way back to Windsor, and, by about March 1, 1634, to Hartford. For more than two hundred years this statement remained almost unverified. When the ancient fort on Long Hill, Springfield, was unearthed in excavations for new streets, there were found scores of clay tobacco-pipes, with tiny bowls, each bearing initials which have been identified with those of known Dutch pipemakers of the period. The Dutch emissaries brought these along as part of their equipment of gifts with which to purchase the exclusive trade of the up-river Indians. Most of the latter who made promises to the Dutch on this basis, died of the so-called "providential scourge" before those promises could be fulfilled !
Early in the Spring of 1635, Pynchon made elaborate plans for re-arranging his affairs at the Bay, and establishing fur-trading headquarters farther up the river than any of the other settlers. To that end he decided to personally select when the weather would open, the best possible site for a post. For the subsistence of the traders and their families, farmers would be required; and these, in turn would necessitate
SPRINGFIELD Old and New . . 1636-1936
OLD ENGRAVINGS OF EARLY SPRINGHIELD, MASS.
Top: Southern Entrance to Chicopee Village. Center: Old Armory Buildings. Bottom: Chicopee Falls in 1838.
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SPRINGFIELD Old and New . 1636-1936
the coming of carpenters and blacksmiths, as a matter of course. His preliminary survey-party was there- fore made up of carefully selected members; those particularly suited to the task as well as being helpful with good judgment and practical experience. Hence it was natural that he should take his carpenter- neighbor, Jehu Burr; his own fur-trading helper, Richard Everett; his trusted son-in-law, Henry Smith; young Holyoke, placed in Pynchon's care by the latter's "ancient friend Holyoke of Lynn; one Joseph Parsons, "fluent in Indian tongues"; John Cabel (Cable), able seaman and ship's carpenter, who was an assistant to the latter; a certain John Woodcock, experienced in trapping and trading, but who turned out quite a trouble-maker.
At the Massachusetts Court session of May, 1635, the Roxbury petitioners, and some others, were told they might depart "to any place not to prejudice of any other plantation provided they continued under the same government." Pynchon's first absence from Court for five years was in the fall of 1635, months before Springfield was planted. Pynchon's "shallop" used for this expedition, a light-draught, single- mast vessel, carried the house-material used in the erection of the first dwelling on the Agawam, already referred to. This expedition, like the Windsor and Saybrook ones of the previous year, had for its prime object the establishment of permanent settlement far enough up-river to be "nearest the 'Great Lake', all ready to intercept the Indians bringing down a wealth of furs." This boat was the same "greate shallop which was requisite for the first plantinge", referred to in "compact" adopted the following year.
These details of systematic pioneering and exploration are essential to this first really adequate picture of the progressive, ambitious, super-promoter, "not slothful in business, serving the Lord."
At that time the rapids at Windsor had a greater depth of water than in modern days of dams, and locks at that point. There is evidence to show that after successfully negotiating the rapids in the shallop, the navigators "with a fair wind" proceeded up stream until halted by the "great falls", where the Holyoke dam now is. Learning there that the country immediately above was largely rock, with no substantial out-spread of meadow-lands or swamps in which the beaver was supposed to thrive most, and the wind being again favorable, the shallop came down again. Attempts were vainly made to ascend the "Chick- uppe" ("raging or violent water" in the Algonquin tongue), and the boat descended to opposite the Agawam. This they finally decided compassed "a location most fitly suited for a beaver trade."
Pynchon lost no time in trying to reach an understanding with the Indians about the land he wanted. Leaving his men Cable and Woodcock to plant, build and keep possession until he should return, Pynchon valiantly hastened back to Roxbury alone and on foot, through the autumn woods toward the sea.
"The direct route but southerly taken by the Indians, following about the present course of the Boston and Albany Railroad, was not known to the English until the following year", says Mr. Wright.
Pynchon was glad to give a roseate report to the waiting Roxburyites who were growing anxious over his protracted absence. The natives seemed friendly enough. Fortune seemed to smile on the "man who dared." He put in a favorable light the advantages possessed by the permanent site he had chosen for extensive fur-trading operations; the virgin forests abounding in large and small game would furnish food and clothing; the rivers teeming with shad and salmon; the abundance of nuts, fruits and berries; the hemp for lines and nets growing at their very doors; and the rich lands suited for all kinds of gardening and farming. Some of the Roxbury listeners were duly impressed, but others shook their heads! Human nature, as always !
On Pynchon's return in the Spring, he received something of a shock. The growing greed of the Indians and the lack of tact and executive ability by those who had been left in charge, were disturbing factors confronting the promoter. Reluctantly he gave up his choice of the west side and set new bounds on the east side of "ye Greate River" and he so wrote this to Gov. Winthrop.
It was in part the inability of the settlers to properly restrain their domestic animals, which con-
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SPRINGFIELD
Old and New .. 1636-1936
SPRINGFIELD'S BUSINESS CENTER, MAIN STREET, IN FALL OF 1861
One of the oldest existing photographs, showing corners of Taylor, Bridge and Worthington Streets, looking south to Old Baptist Church that was located on the corner of Main and Harrison Avc.
SPRINGFIELD Old and New . . 1636-1936
tributed to their change of base to the east side. No provisions having been made for fencing, the cattle trampled down the cornfields of the Indians, and the hogs also created much damage, which threatened friendly relations.
The Agawam-side "first house" was undisturbed by floods during that first winter; for it is recorded that certain settlers lived in it "all somer"; and for some time after the more enterprising John Cable had set to work improving his own special allotment of land on both east and west sides.
William Pynchon early built the trading storehouse on the Connecticut above Windsor to this day called "Warehouse Point." Here freight was transferred to shallower-draught boats for up-river points. Later the account books of William's son John, abounded in credits in the name of fellow-towns- men for canoe-freight trips between the town and "the Warehouse."
For the attitude which William Pynchon took on the Indian ownership of the lands throughout what is now Western Massachusetts, he was severely criticized by church and state. He always contended that until such time as the natives voluntarily subjected themselves to the government and sold all of their lands without restrictions, they must be considered a free and independent people. The crop con- ditions at first became a serious problem which called for all the ingenuity the leaders possessed. The hurried preparations for Spring planting after the Colonists arrived resulted in light harvests that year, and the following Winter was one of extraordinary severity. The Spring of 1638 was cold and back- ward. It was necessary to plant the corn two and three times because much seed rotted in the ground.
On July 15, 1636, Pynchon completed negotiations with the Indians for the desired Agawam lands, with the "ancient natives, Commucke ("he who takes it"), and Matanchan ("old and decrepit one"). When he came to dealing with Menis, Naponpenam, and Wrutherna, for the now thickly-settled ter- ritory from Chicopee River to Mill River with a depth (east to west) equal to its length, he was par- ticular to pay the latter in pacification an extra pair of coats-or two more than the others had! Yet this was the same Wrutherna who, forty years after, was the embittered ring-leader of the Indians in the burning of Springfield! Wright states that the name "coates" were not coats in the modern sense of the word. It was merely a strip of cloth made from a mixture of English wool and flax, called "Essex shag",-sixty inches in width. Pynchon imported quantities of this "trucking cloth", for his own trade in furs and other commodities. It was carried in various colors, such as "tawney", "liver culler", violet, and russet. An Indian "large coate" was merely a piece of cloth approximately five feet square, perhaps the progenitor of the Indian blanket of later years. What the deeds term a "small coate", was a shawl- like wrapping about one and one-half yards long; and "coates" still smaller than these were called "childe's coates." The large coats were rated at the value of sixteen shillings each. This fixes the price which Pynchon paid for approximately thirty square miles of territory in one deal, as the equivalent of about six hundred dollars of present money values!
Pynchon and his associate-promoters took pains to find out whatever was of greatest value to the Indian; and these things immediately became units of currency value. Clothing which made him feel more comfortable or better adorned than he was before; ornaments which were of ceremonial value alone; tools and implements the like of which his nearest ancestor never suspected and the use of which materially decreased his labor, left him more time to hunt and fish. The now friendly-appearing neigh- bors who might in emergency act as a bulwark against invading enemies ;- all these desirable things were theirs in exchange for comparatively small tracts of land, much of which was unproductive and of little comparative Indian value. Pynchon found them eager to dispose of lands, and for a price which, in their condition at that time, was wholly satisfactory to them. The white men secured the land they wanted in the only equitable way it could then be obtained.
Almost without exception the Indians of the Valley were well satisfied with the land-dealings of
SPRINGFIELD Old and New
1636- 1936
SPRINGFIELD OF THE PAST Top: Old Town House, State Street corner of Market Street, opened March, 1824. Bottom: Old High School on right wit': Old Hampden County Jail at left.
SPRINGFIELD Old and New . . 1636-1936
the whites, certainly with the Pynchon settlers. And for the following forty years peace reigned between the Western Massachusetts Indians and the Whites at Springfield.
The Colonial laws had been framed to prevent the Indian from possessing guns, ammunition, and other things which would make him harmful to himself and others. Later greedy fur-traders, less scru- pulous than Pynchon, supplied arms and weapons to the covetous natives. Once in their hands, the Indians began to feel invincible; and used this new power to revenge themselves, Indian fashion, for real and fancied wrongs. Men of the caliber of Pynchon and Winthrop little feared the hickory bow and stone- tipped arrow; but it was quite another matter to cope with craftsmen who quickly became excellent marksmen with the gun, and clever in woodcraft also.
Pynchon saved the Connecticut Valley from being a battleground in 1648, when the relations be- tween the whites and the natives were strained in surrounding sections almost to the breaking point by insistence on a policy of justice; and this in the face of opposition from his superiors in office. His shrewd- ness and diplomacy in dealing with certain chieftains over the murder of two groups of peacable Indian settlers near Brookfield, averted what promised to be sharp conflict. He made the Indian authorities feel that the English were just as keen about the chastisement of native murderers of natives as they would have been had the victims been of their own people. In the words of the junior Pynchon, "They saw our care of them and readiness to protect and revenge them." Pynchon's bold and adroit handling of the affair was such that everybody was satisfied and the threatened danger vanished. It speaks volumes for the wisdom of his dealings with the Indians that as long as he lived he retained their confidence and respect.
MAP MAKING AND MONOPOLY-The old Dutch map by Jasper Danker, published about 1650 and a few years later used by Van Der Donck in his "New Netherlands" has faithfully, even if crudely set down many easily recognized points. Its central motif is the "Versche (Fresh) Rievier" (Connecticut), starting at the south with "Zeebroeck" (Saybrook) and involving "Herfort" and "Voyn- scr" (Hartford and Windsor.) Just above the latter are two allusions to the pioneer who for so many years dominated in affairs of the upper Connecticut. One is the legend "Mr. Pinser's Cleyne Val" (Little" Falls) now Enfield Falls, and farther northward still, "Pinser's handel-huys" (trading house), shown as being some distance from the Agawam River. This has been confusing to many; but the explanation is simple. When Thomas Cooper, builder of the first meetinghouse, exploring the Agawam in a birch- bark canoe, was able to portage around the rocky pass at Mittineague, and so follow up the Agawam, (as William Pynchon had been unable to do in his early attempt with the shallop), he found at "Woro- noake", most attractive conditions for the Indian trade in furs. So he established himself there in the second "trading house" indicated on the Dutch map, as Pynchon's agent. The third of the Pynchon trading houses was established later in similar manner by Joseph Parsons. His canoe-trip up the Con- necticut several miles farther than the Pynchon shallop could go, enabled him to find a good site for a branch post just above the gap between Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke. There, at "Nonotuck" (the "far-away lands"), he established himself as another of Mr. Pynchon's agents to collect furs from the Indians.
To Mr. Pynchon was given the monopoly for fur-trading in the Agawam district by the General Court at Hartford, held April 5, 1638, while it was being contended that the settlers at Springfield were in the jurisdiction of Connecticut. The lower Court distinctly "ordered that none should trade there for beaver but those hereafter named, and if any others trade for beaver they shall forfeit five shillings per pound (about seven one-half shillings per skin), "for every pound so traded!"
Although we have no record of the actual results of the fifteen seasons during which Mr. William Pynchon actively operated, yet when he returned to England at the end of that time, his son John, con- tinuing the business, was in the habit of sending two thousand beaver skins annually to England. It is
SPRINGFIELD Old and New .
1636-1936
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VIEW OF MAIN STREET IN THE EIGHTIES, SHOWING THE OLD FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH
SPRINGFIELD Old and New 1636-1936
reasonably certain that in the prime of the business, before the number of traders had grown large, the father's shipments were considerably heavier. Pynchon's other chief trading-representatives, besides Cooper and Parsons, were David Wilton of Northampton, and John Westcarr of Hadley. His usual allowance for the beaver-skins secured by these agents was fifteen shillings apiece. At one time he paid ten shillings a pound for 3,572 pounds of beaver fur, which involved a sizeable sum of money for those days.
Chroniclers seldom mention the smaller, day-by-day troubles confronting the Pynchon coterie- comparatively insignificant, but very real in their historical effect, and supplying true coloring to the picture.
The elder Pynchon was not reimbursed for the thirty pounds of purchase money he advanced in 1636 for the Agawam land until after 1647, when it was "voted that ye 30 pounds which is due Mr. Pynchon shall be raysed on all ye alotments . . . from each inhabitant for his purchase of ye land from ye Indians."
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