USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > The history of Springfield in Massachusetts for the young; being also in some part the history of other towns and cities in the county of Hampden > Part 1
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F 74 .$833
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The History
Springfield Kfor the Young. Barrows
1900
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Class
Book 58.33
Copyright N.º.
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.
THE History of Springfield in Massachusetts FOR THE YOUNG
BEING ALSO IN SOME PART THE HISTORY OF OTHER TOWNS AND CITIES IN THE COUNTY OF HAMPDEN
BY CHARLES H. BARROWS
HAIMIH
PUBLISHED BY The Connecticut Valley Historical Society Springfield, Massachusetts 1909
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Copyright 1909 By CONNECTICUT VALLEY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
LIBRARY of CONGRESS
Two Copies Hecerved APR 3 1809 Copyright Entry apr. 2, 1909 CLASS OL XXc. NO. 235506
TO THE CHILDREN AND YOUTH OF SPRINGFIELD AND THE NEIGHBORING TOWNS AND CITIES THIS BOOK
WRITTEN THAT THEY MAY KNOW WHAT IS INTERESTING GOOD AND TRUE IN THE LIVES OF THOSE WHO HAVE GONE BEFORE THEM IN THIS PART OF THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY
IS
DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I .- PAGES 1-20 GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. THE LAY OF THE LAND AND THE RUN OF THE WATER. Poem: TO THE CONNECTICUT RIVER CHAPTER II .- PAGES 21-40
THE SETTLEMENT. THE SMITHY. THE MEETING-HOUSE. Poem: THE WORKS OF GOD. CHAPTER III .- PAGES 41-58
THE EARLY GOVERNMENT. THE PYNCHON FAMILY. WITCHCRAFT. CHAPTER IV .- PAGES 59-70
KING PHILIP'S WAR AND ITS CAUSES. BATTLES AND BURNINGS IN THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY.
Poem: THE STATUE OF THE PURITAN IN MERRICK PARK. CHAPTER V .- PAGES 71-86
KING PHILIP'S WAR CONCLUDED. THE BURNING OF SPRINGFIELD. CAPTAIN HOLYOKE AND THE FALLS FIGHT. CLOSE OF THE WAR.
CHAPTER VI .- PAGES 87-102
SETTLEMENT OF CHICOPEE AND OTHER TOWNS. THE REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER VII .- PAGES 103-112
SHAYS' REBELLION. THE CONSTITUTION. 1783-1789.
CHAPTER VIII .- PAGES 113-130
OLD TIMES AND NEW. THE CHANGE TO MODERN WAYS. THE FIRST STEAMBOAT. THE ARMORY. DISTINGUISHED VISITORS. Poem: THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD. CHAPTER IX .- PAGES 131-144 THE NEW CITY. ANTI-SLAVERY. THE CIVIL WAR.
CHAPTER X .- PAGES 145-166
A LOOK BACKWARDS. THE SPANISH WAR. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. ANNIVERSARY HYMN.
AL-1257
THE FOUNDER OF SPRINGFIELD.
CHAPTER I.
GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD .- THE LAY OF THE LAND AND THE RUN OF THE WATER.
THE SITE OF SPRINGFIELD AS THE INDIANS KNEW IT.
S PRINGFIELD is located on the bank of a fine river. It is true that the river is not deep enough for any but the smaller craft, but in the summer many pleasure boats skim over its surface. The city itself, as seen on the approach from the west or south, with the broad river in the foreground,
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3
NATURAL FEATURES
and its buildings rising on gradually retreating terraces, all embowered in foliage, is, indeed, as was said of an ancient city, "beautiful for situation."
Before the days of railroads, or even of good wagon roads, the river was of great consequence to Springfield in the way of commerce. It was by the river that the early settlers got their beaver skins and other goods to market, floating them down the stream and thence by sea to Boston. In the summer the river helps to cool the heated air. From the city to its source, near the Canadian border it is about three hundred and seventy miles and from the railroad bridge in Springfield to the lighthouse at the river's mouth seventy- one and a half miles more. The Agawam, which beyond Mittineague is called the Westfield, is one of its principal tributaries. While its name divides into three English words, this is a mere accident, yet it does cut in two New Hampshire and Vermont and the eastern and western portions of Massa- chusetts and Connecticut. The Indians named the stream and in their language Connecticut means "the long river."
This is but one of many Indian names that belong to the locality of Springfield, some of which are in use today, like Pecowsic, Nayasset, Chicopee and Agawam. Mittineague was in Indian Menedgonuk, but has been worn by usage into the smoother form. The Indian place-names which are left to us in New England, like Wallamanumps, Massacksick, (Long- meadow) and Massachusetts are not so musical as those in the language of the western tribes, like Cayuga, Shiawassee and Minnehaha; but they all have a meaning which is worth finding out.
Besides her share in "the great river," as the English settlers called it, Springfield has also a river almost all her own, a little one, indeed, but just big enough to be called by that
4
HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
name. Its sources are at the foot of the Wilbraham moun- tains whence it flows by its north branch and south branch till these meet at the Watershops pond. After tumbling over two dams below the point of union the river loses itself in the Connecticut, near York street. It was so useful in the earliest times of the white settlers in grinding all the grain and sawing all the lumber that they thought "Mill River" a good and honorable name, and if those who come after us are sensible, by that name it will always be known. It still turns the great wheel at the Watershops and thus has a hand in making the rifles of the United States army.
Next to Mill river, the stream MILL RIVER AT THE WATERSHOPS. From "Marco Paul at the Springfield Armory," by Jacob Abbott, 1853. that has been most important in the town's history, except the Chicopee, or rivers that are no longer in the limits of Springfield, was the "Town brook." The Town brook, called in its upper part "Garden brook," rises to the east of St. James avenue bridge and flowing down the valley, formerly divided near the corner of Spring and Worthington streets, one branch going north and circling to the north of Round Hill on its way to the river,
5
NATURAL FEATURES
while the other branch reached Main street, near Worthing- ton, and flowed along the easterly side of the street, which it crossed near York street and thence entered the river. But the waters of the once famous "Town brook" are now diverted into sewers, where they do a very useful, if very dirty work. The brook as it flowed by Main street was once a clear, good stream in which to fish. Such has been also the doom of other pretty rural brooks that once flowed among grassy banks from the slopes of the higher lands in now thickly settled parts of the city. Some of them, before the days of steam, were ponded by dams in order to create power for small factories.
One of these ponds covered the region of Avon Place. There is a little brook which even today rises not far from the corner of State and Walnut streets and flows, for its whole course, unseen to the river, passing on its way just in front of the High School. It once formed the "Card Factory" pond and turned the wheels of a factory east of the Wesson Hospi- tal. But in dry times the little brook was not able to do all the work required of it; so it was helped by a huge mastiff, who was made to walk in a treadmill and thus by the brook and the mastiff together, was the machinery kept going, a singular example of manufacture by dog power. Springfield has even yet some share in the Chicopee river, which touches its northeastern border, and to it Indian Orchard owes its importance.
There are a number of natural ponds, mostly fed by unseen springs. They either have an outlet under ground, or else the water flowing in is so nicely balanced by the water passing into the air by evaporation that they need no outlet. Where this balance is destroyed by the lessening of the supply of water, as by the cutting of trees, the pond diminishes in size and incidentally peat is formed. An example may be seen
6
HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
on the Wilbraham road beyond the North Branch. Goose pond, at first called Swan pond, because of the swans that stopped there on their spring and autumn journeys, was the very largest pond, and stretched northward from Winchester square. It was built over not many years ago. Two Mile pond seems likely to meet the same fate. Five Mile pond, named from its distance from Main street, is divided by the rail- road. Island pond, so called from its single island, a floating bog, is nearer, but little known. Loon pond is a pretty sheet of water and Venturer's pond is a pleasing feature of Sixteen Acres. The Sixteen Acres mill pond is perhaps a natural pond caused by a rock dam. In all there are ten natural ponds. The map accompanying this chapter shows the natural features and localities as they were in the days of the original settlers of Springfield.
Before describing the lay of the land it is necessary to know something of its history; how in the story of the earth's making it came to be just what it is, its rocks and soil, its hills and valleys. To do this takes us back, perhaps, millions of years; for man's history is as nothing compared with that of the rocks. Deep down below the earth's surface lies the real floor on which all things above may be said to rest. It is composed of the strongest and oldest of the rocks, called erys- talline. It was by the action of earth's great fires, melting and fusing together the original raw materials of the world,
7
NATURAL FEATURES
that the crystalline rocks were made. Look at a block of granite and you will find it made up of several things that could only have been got together by fire.
Although crystalline rocks lie at the bottom, they have sometimes got pushed up by the mighty forces of nature and so have made mountains. If you climb mountains even no higher than those surrounding Springfield, and find an exposed surface, you will come upon the hard rocks out of which they are built. In the valley they are not seen because of the over- lay of later rock and soil. Underneath Hampden county lies a bed of gneiss, a rock resembling granite. It is quarried in Monson and out of its blocks the Court House and Hall of Records have been constructed.
After this solid old floor of gneiss was laid down, some very interesting things happened in this part of the Connecticut Valley, the story of which only the student of geology can fully appreciate; but something of it may be told here. There was, first, the rising of the mountains; the easterly range running between Wilbraham and Monson and the westerly, through Blandford and other towns. This rising made the present Connecticut Valley. Then the whole valley between these mountains, extending as far north as Greenfield, sank below the level of the ocean and of course the salt water flowed in. On the heights of the present Wilbraham, Bland- ford and other towns where the highlands penned the waters in, the tide rose and fell and the sea fishes, perhaps whales and sharks, could swim from East Longmeadow to Holyoke and beyond. In those times sand and mud were being carried down by the Connecticut river from the northern mountains in a way which will be described further on, and dropped in the bottom and on the shores of this inland sea. Reptiles and great birds walked on the shore. In the end this sand hardened
8
· HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
and became a rock called sandstone, having sometimes im- printed in it the footsteps of these living beings. Sometimes too, raindrops left their marks in the sand and the raindrops and tracks have remained to tell a very old story in after ages. Specimens like that on this page may be seen in the Science Museum; but the best collection is in the museum of Amherst College. It is this ancient sandstone, called by geologists, triassic, which is taken from the quarries of East Longmeadow.
AILC
FOOTPRINT AND RAINPRINTS IN THE TRIASSIC SANDSTONE OF THE CONNECTICUT RIVER.
It was while the water extended from the Wilbraham mountains to the Blandford range that a great event happened a few miles from Springfield, caused by the action of sub- terranean fires. A great crack opened in the earth and up rushed a mass of melted matter which finally cooled into the hardest kind of rock, a roek called trap. This rock formed Mount Tom and Mount Holyoke and all the range southerly which makes the line between West Springfield and Westfield. Again the earth opened and the molten volcanic matter thrown up at this time, a smaller mass than the other, formed a low-
9
NATURAL FEATURES
and short range of hills extending through the western part of West Springfield and Agawam. The volcanic rock can be seen exposed to view in the trap rock quarries; also in the railroad cut between Tatham and Paucatuck in West Spring- field. Out of it is made the macadam for the streets. At the northern part of these NORTHAMPTON breakings forth of earth's sub- terranean fires, there was a OLD CRATER small volcano which probably EASTHAMPTON # continued fuming after the range of hills, whose making was connected with it, had been formed. The remains HOLYOKE of the crater of this long ex- tinct volcano can still be seen, not far from Titan's pier at CHICOPEE the foot of Mount Holyoke.
WESTFIELD #
CANE HOLE
#F It was after this that, in an era not so very far from TA THAM our own, perhaps, another SPRINGFIELD one of Nature's great forces, not directly fire or water, but + connected with both in its origin, set itself in operation to make changes in the sur- VOLCANO WORK: MAP BY WILLIAM ORR. face of the earth in this neighborhood, and indeed, over a large part of North America. This was the Great Glacier, a sheet of ice that, starting in the Arctic regions, probably Labrador, ex- tended, in some places, half a mile thick all down the continent to a line drawn a good deal south of Springfield. Half a mile measures the distance from Court Square to the lower Armory
10
HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
gate on State street. The glacier was, as all glaciers are, really a great ice river; for it flowed slowly southward, bend- ing itself to go between the mountains in its course and bear- ing the fragments along with it. These fragments, when the glacier finally melt- ed, were dropped in places far away from their starting point and are now called boulders. In some places they are thickly strewn, but are not so common in the immediate valley, for reasons that we shall see. One of them, how- BOULDERS DROPPED BY A GLACIER AND WATER-WORN COBBLESTONES. ever, now making a memorial stone on Benton Park, was found on the highlands near Brush Hill in West Springfield.
The mountains, composed of the hard crystalline rocks, like the White mountains, and of trap, like Mount Tom, stood firm against the grinding power of the glacier, but many of the hardened deposits of sandstone were worn down. We cannot always tell just what damage was done to the sand- stone by the glacier and just what by the wearing of it away by the waters; but if you notice how high Mount Sugarloaf stands above the meadows of South Deerfield and Sunderland, and even how the sandstone hill at the south end of Main street is higher than the land around it, you will see how much bed-rock has been carried off to Connecticut which was once
11
NATURAL FEATURES
alongside. This bed-rock, broken up fine, as it would be by gradual water wear, makes the red earth so common in Suffield, Hartford and other Connecticut towns. It is some of Massa- chusetts that went down stream. At Locust street the sand- stone is close to the surface and the sewer is cut in the solid rock which extends southerly from a corner of the South Main street school.
When the great glacier melted away it left a big pond bottom stretching from Middletown in Connecticut on the south to Holyoke on the north, easterly to the Wilbraham and west as far as the range of hills that separates West Springfield from Westfield. This big bottom became filled with water and is known to geologists as the Springfield lake. For a long time this lake remained. When you leave Court Square for Holyoke in the street cars your course is along the old lake bottom, the banks on either side being in plain view, until you reach the top of the bank itself at the Holyoke City Hall. The powerful current of the Connecticut, entering the lake at the gap between Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom, as also Chicopee river coming down from the northeast, made important changes in the lake bottom. What were they?
Away to the north were the mountains of crystalline rocks, the White mountains and the Green mountains. Heat. cold and frost were slowly wearing them away. Pebbles and sand came from them and fell into the little streams that ran among the hills. These pebbles and sand were carried down- ward by the streams into the great river. The river carried them into the great Springfield lake and gradually they were dropped on the bottom. If the current was powerful it carried the pebbles further; if it lacked, then not so far: the sand being lighter, would always go further than the pebbles. We
12
HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
have called the large pieces of rock, pebbles; but when they started on the southern journey they were rough edged. By tumbling over each other in their downward course they became rounded into pebbles. It was because this process. was kept up for ages that the crystalline rocks underneath Springfield are covered deep with something quite different. Where the pebbles fell in masses they made gravel beds, the like of which can be seen on the line of the railroad, not far from Oak Grove cemetery.
But the history of the sand dropping is the more interest- ing. Remember that, when the flow of water was swift and strong, the lighter grains went on and only the heavier ones. were dropped. When the current slackened, the heavier grains stopped further up stream and the lighter ones in the spot where the larger ones were at first. So we expect to find layers of sand of varying thicknesses, one or the other, according as the current was swift or slow.
Sometimes the sand varies in color, as underneath Maple avenue in the Peabody cemetery. The children who dis- covered this by digging holes to China called one layer of it. "fireman's sand," for its red color. In fact Armory Hill, extending for miles east, is covered with sand of varying sized grains. On the brow of the hill at Union street the grains. exposed in building are coarse and good for mortar; a little distance east, on Walnut street, they are finer and not so good for this purpose. After you have noticed these different kinds. of sand, look at one of the great stone posts at the gates of the Armory and you will find that it is composed of just such sand, only the mass of grains is compacted into stone, the color of which is a brown red. This post was taken out of the quarries of Longmeadow, where the sand droppings of a time long before the period of the great glacier had been pressed
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NATURAL FEATURES
into stone by the great weight above them, making a stone or rock called sandstone. Some sandstone is red and some is brown, and it is called sedimentary, because made out of the sediment, or settlings, of water.
Sometimes the mixture of sand and mud (the mud was only a wet mass of grains so fine as to be almost unnoticeable) did not harden enough to make sandstone but only got pressed into a shelly state that was almost and yet not quite stone. This substance is called shale and may be seen in a bank at the foot of Walnut street. When the masses of grains are so fine as to be nothing more, when in the water, than mud mixed with a certain sticky substance, the deposit, or A PIECE OF SHALE. droppings, is called clay, such as can be seen at any brickyard. Clay banks mean, of course, that the water out of which the fine particles were laid down, was moving very slowly, perhaps scarcely at all. Remembering, then, that deep down are the crystalline or fire-created rocks, we can read in the sandstone, the shale, the gravel and the sand that lies above them the various movings of the waters in this part of the sea, or, later, the Spring- field lake. Nay, more; C 6 for at the Science Mu- seum may be seen a specimen of stone all C rippled over with the 6 wave marks of the water that flowed back
STRATIFIED ROCKS.
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
and forth over the muddy shore. Such deposits of sand, mud, clay, etc., as have been described, give to the earth, when a section of it is laid open, a kind of layer-cake effect, called stratification.
There is another thing about the geological history of Springfield that ought to be noted. The lay of the land is very far from level; what is the cause of it? The reason is in the fact that the great body of water which once flowed through the valley, being some of the time more of a lake than a river, had, at different periods, different levels and made for itself more than one set of banks.
If you will go down to the river, at the foot of State street, you will find the bank somewhat high and rather steep. The stream is well shut in and may rise and fall in spring and summer without much effect except in the lower sewers. Look across and you will see that the western bank is not so high; in a freshet the water will be covering the Agawam meadows. If it were not for the artificial bank or dyke, Merrick would then be overflowed. Nevertheless, by con- tinual deposits of mud the river is building for itself a higher western bank. How long this process of filling the river bottom and building the river banks has gone on is unknown; but certain it is that twenty feet down in the side of a well, near the western end of the Chicopee bridge in West Spring- field there lies on its side a great tree two feet in diameter.
It is the action of water, building up land in some places and wearing it away in others, that makes Springfield, in its most populous part, so uneven, yet picturesque. Imagine yourself standing at the foot of State street: turn about and go up the street to Dwight and you will then begin to ascend an incline, until, when you reach the statue of the Puritan, or better, stand in front of Christ church, you are on another
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NATURAL FEATURES
bank of the river, as it once was. Pursue your walk up State street, and entering the Armory gate, go to the brow of the hill and you can see, in imagination, a still larger river or rather, lake, stretching at your feet. Then you have passed over two levels and are on the third. It would be well if these levels were called terraces, as they are in geology. The lower one extends through the whole length of the city; the next appears near Brightwood and with Chestnut and Maple streets
A BANK OF THE ANCIENT LAKE.
at its western border, loses itself under Crescent Hill; the highest is continuous throughout the city and extends to the eastern limits. We may call the three the lower, the middle and the upper terrace. They are indicated on the map on a preceding page.
The lay of the land in Springfield is not only affected by the motion of the great body of water from north to south, but in a lesser degree by smaller currents flowing westward. If one should start at Cornell street for a walk, along the very
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
brow of the hill, keeping as close to it as he could, except for the houses and private grounds that would prevent it being exactly close, and end his walk at Long Hill, he would find it a long walk indeed, much longer because of the windings and turnings of the different small valleys and ravines that cut into the general line of the bank. These are the work of water, either surface water or water bursting from springs in the higher lands and cutting channels in the earth by carrying the earth itself away. In Springfield this process is pretty much stopped now, but it can still be seen going with striking effect, at a place on the old Smith farm (now Fitch farm) in Tatham in West Springfield, a place that has for years been known as the "Cave Hole." The great ravines in Forest Park were produced in this way.
Just how all the separate hills and hillocks of Springfield were made would be an interesting study and a few of them may be mentioned. Round Hill, for example, provokes a natural inquiry as to how it was made. There it is, all of sand, standing right up between its three enclosing streets. How
FLAGG'S HILLOCK AND SUMMERHOUSE.
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NATURAL FEATURES
did it come there? One explanation is that while the sand lay that much deep in the valley, strong currents flowing in the old lake washed out the sand all around and for some reason left this mass of sand standing alone. It would be interesting to guess, likewise, on the geological history of Flagg's hillock, at the bend of the Bay road beyond Oak Grove cemetery. This is the highest hill entirely within the limits of the city, being 260 feet above sea level; but the slope of Necessity Hill, at the point where the Hampden road crosses the boundary line into East Longmeadow is about sixty feet higher.
Such then were the forces,-fire, water, ice, gravitation, and heat and cold,-that make the lay of the land and the run of the water what it is in Springfield today. They were power- ful forces that did a deal of rough building work, sometimes in a very rough way. But when plant life began and the sand and clay were covered with a life-giving soil, all over the plain of the upper terrace came the evergreen pine, and down on the middle terrace were chestnuts and maples and on the lower terrace, there took root those grand elms, which have not yet .ceased to be the pride of the Valley. In the Science Museum may be seen a section of one that stood on Elm street, near the Hall of Records, and rose to the height of one hundred and fifteen feet. Thus a scene of geological interest became at last a scene of sylvan beauty.
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