USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > West Springfield > Account of the centennial celebration of the town of West Springfield, Mass. : Wednesday, March 25th, 1874 : with the historical address of Thomas E. Vermilye the poem of Mrs. Ellen P. Champion, and other facts and speeches > Part 5
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Mr. President, we shall not meet again ; none of us will be here when the next century shall have rolled round. But may they who then shall occupy these places have no reason to chide themselves for any defection from the principles and ex- ample of the Pilgrim fathers.
" Our Brave Soldiers," was responded to by Rev. E. N. POME- ROY, Pastor of the First Church :
MR. PRESIDENT :- Of the soldiers of this town who took part in the three great wars of our nation's history, I cannot now speak particularly. I cannot tell you of their individual ex- ploits, or of their individual sufferings. I cannot even point out the great engagements in which they severally took part ; indeed I can call very few of them by name. I can only speak of them as constituent parts of a mighty force of freemen, who, from farm, and mill, and shop, and bench, and study, and pulpit, and every other place where men support their families, and earn the rights of citizenship, assembled under arms with de- termination to resist oppression, to suppress rebellion, and to maintain their rights ; and who, after accomplishing their object, returned to their homes and quietly resumed their occupations. 8
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Perhaps the world never witnessed a grander spectacle than that of these earnest, intelligent, and many of them educated men, assembling at their country's call to fight her battles, and to die if need were in her defence ; except when it saw the vic- torious survivors, after these battles were fought, and when the cause was maintained, returning to their families and to the duties of civil life.
But sir, I am not here to pronounce an oration on the virtue and the valor of our soldiers ; the occasion does not call for it. The living do not desire our encomiums ; the dead do not need our eulogies. It is enough for the former that the integrity of this Union is preserved ; that the foundation of this government is established ; that the fetters of the slave are broken. It suf- fices for the latter that their deeds have passed into history ; that their names are written in substantial granite, and memo- rial marble ; that their memories are cherished by those who love them, and that, with every returning spring-time, their graves are decorated, and their epitaphs re-written with flowers.
It is, however, especially fitting that our soldiers should be remembered to-day ; and in every future centennial celebration ; even when this imposing structure shall have given place to one still loftier and grander, may our soldiers receive ever prouder and more honored mention. Without their aid this people could never have become a nation ; they had never resisted the aggressions of British tyranny ; they might often have declared, but could never have established their independence. It is owing to their valor, in great part, that this nation remains a first-class power; that the sun in the heavens does not look down on " states dissevered, discordant, belligerent ;" that the roll-call of slavery has never yet been heard under the shadow of our Bunker Hill Monument, and that it is now quite certain it never will be heard there.
It is commonly considered a great and glorious thing to have fought for one's country ; to have stood upon "the perilous edge of battle ; " to have flung one's self into "the imminent, deadly breach ;" and so it is. But sir, it is a noble and a glorious thing to have done one's duty anywhere. The grandest victo- ries are not those won in deadly strife ; the most valiant fight- ing is not that done on the sanguinary field ; the proudest, the supreme moment is not
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" When speaks the signal trumpet tone, And the long line comes gleaming on ; "
it follows not "the rush of adverse battalions, the sinking and rising of pennons, the flight, the pursuit, and the victory ;" it comes rather to a man when through a long course of years, having patiently, persistently, fearlessly done right, at last though only at the close of his mortal career, he sees his life's object accomplished. Not every hero has borne arms in battle ; not every soldier has been under fire ; not every valiant man has marched to the cannon's mouth ; not every conqueror has been crowned with laurel.
" Peace hath her victories, No less renowned than war."
They who incur odium in the discharge of duty ; they who re- fuse to sacrifice principle for pelf or position ; they who dare part with reputation if need be to preserve character ; they, the vanguard in the army of the Lord, who take and hold positions in advance of the age in which they live; they who are deter- mined and prepared to do their duty though the heavens fall; these, sir, I maintain are the bravest of the brave.
Our soldiers in the Revolution, and in the war of 1812, did their work well; but after peace was finally established, and an- other conflict with the mother country placed almost beyond a peradventure, it was a harder thing to forgive the past, and to recognize the virtues of the English people. The soldiers who put down the Great Rebellion, covered themselves with glory ; but it will be a grander victory than that achieved at Vicksburg, at Gettysburg, or at Richmond, when, remembering that our foes were our brothers, and that their valor was not inferior to our own, we can erase from our standards the records of the conflict and forgive and forget the past.
All honor, then, not to our soldiers only, but to all our heroes.
" Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great, But as he saves or serves the State. Not once or twice in our great nation's story, The path of duty was the way to glory. He that walks it, only thirsting For the right ; and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes, He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
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Into glossy purples that outredden
All voluptuous garden roses.
Not once or twice in our fair country's story,
The path of duty was the way to glory. He, that ever following her commands, On with toil of heart and knees and hands,
Through the long gorge to the far light has won
His path upward and prevailed,
Shall find the toppling crags of duty scaled
Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.
Such were they ; their work is done : But while the races of mankind endure,
Let their great example stand Colossal, seen of every land,
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure,
Till in all lands and through all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory.
And let the land whose hearths they saved from shame,
For many and many an age proclaim At civic revel and pomp and game,
And when the long illumined cities flame,
Their ever-loyal, noble soldier's fame, With honor, honor, honor to them, Eternal honor to their name."
" The Old School-House," was responded to by Rev. ASHBEL G. VERMILYE, D. D., of Schenectady, N. Y., son of the orator of the day :
My own recollections, Mr. Chairman, run back about forty years, when I was here as the "minister's son." In that old "school-house" next door, which you have made the subject of this toast, I, with other boys, received some old-fashioned floggings. Peace to the ashes of Mr. Dutch-they were well laid on. To-day, after forty years, I bear him witness, as one who knew how to touch up the boys, and inculcate sound learn- ing. But to-day, sir, the old school-house looks gloomy ; as if it were saying to itself-nevermore ! I suppose it must now come down-perhaps it would rather, since there will be none in it any more to give or take a taste of the birch.
Even in so quiet a town, I find few, as forty years have left their marks and changes. The elms and the river are, indeed, about the same; Nature only notches her centuries. And I suppose the katydid still makes music in the trees for boys put to bed in the dark, as the little creatures did for me. But I see
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you have since fenced in the old "Common " out here, where on Sunday evenings after sundown the youngsters used to kick foot-ball : usually selecting the part in front of the minister's house, how much to his edification I do not know; I can only speak for his son, whose eyes saw from a distance what he was not permitted to join in, and whose ears also (let me say) some- times caught the sound of the wash-tub, just under the hill. Also, they did their courting on Sunday evening ; though, for that matter, probably it is the same now. That is a business not subject to the mutations of time and tide. Empires may rise and fall, rivers may lapse and run dry, but never the course of courting.
In those antique days, as they will seem to some, we made our way to Springfield by a little steam-boat with the wheel be- hind. I remember that the old "Oliver Ellsworth " had to back off seven times, where the river joins the Sound ; and then, unable to get through, had to put back to New Haven short of wood ! From this you may realize the stride of time and change. Why, sir, two years ago I met the man, a Mr. Harrod, who probably introduced the tomato (then called " love apple ") as an edible into the country. And here I may tell you what I think is an unpublished anecdote of Dr. Lathrop (or Lotrop, as the people called him), but which I heard when a boy. Dr. Lathrop had obtained and planted, (the first here- about) some seeds of that new luxury, the water-melon. But to his sheer annoyance, just as they were ripe, some wicked depredator carried them all off, and moreover cut his vines to pieces. However, if he was in "meeting" the next Sabbath, as he most likely would be, and had any conscience left-which, it must be confessed, stealing from a minister would hardly indi- cate-he doubtless got the worst of it ; for the Doctor gave an excoriating sermon from the apt text : "When thou comest into thy neighbor's vineyard, then thou mayest eat thy fill at thine own pleasure; but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel."
You, Mr. Chairman, will easily recall some things that are fixed in my boyish remembrances-the old foot-stoves, the open Franklin stoves, and brass fenders, the warming-pans and such like ; but one old custom sticks to my memory, because it caused an awkward catastrophe to a relative of mine. It was the habit they had in " meeting" of chewing dill, not because the
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minister was sleepy, but because they were ; and then of throw- ing the stems into the carpetless aisle. Through that dill my relative, to his great mortification as a city young man, came to a fall; nor did he relish any better the next accident (for it was such) and the general titter which followed, when my father gave out a hymn, two verses of which had in them something about making his standing more secure than it was before he fell !
In closing, sir, I would just recall, but with undiminished re- spect, a name or two of that day-among the Elys that of Jus- tin, so unfailingly kind, so good; and then, 'Squire Samuel Lathrop who in face and form and mien always reminded me of Washington, and if I could go back farther, I should well like to speak of Rev. Jonathan Parsons (Whitefield's friend) who was born here. But this was an admirable parish in both men and women. There were here women who shed a luster upon their bygone names-Charity, Mercy, Patience, Prudence and the like ; I think the town never produced but one Silence, and she was under ground before my day. She was a Champion while living, and I guess was buried with the " belt." My friend Parsons spoke of the past this morning, in contrast with the present, as the "mummy " state of the town. I think he was mistaken. When the tomb of James Otis, the patriot orator, was opened, they found the roots of the great Paddock elm en- folding his skull. So are the roots of your present prosperity to be found, inseparably entwined with the skulls, resting in the homes and the homely virtues, of those who went before you, and now lie entombed under the shadows of your spreading elms. If other causes you would seek, turn with gratitude, as for one I do, to the old church and the old school-house.
" Springfield, the Mother of Towns." Hon. J. M. STEBBINS, Mayor of Springfield, responded :
I am happy to announce to you that the mother of West Springfield is usually well, in fact, she is always pretty well. After two and a quarter centuries of active life, she is just en- tering upon the early stages of a noble womanhood. She has some promising daughters of whom she is proud, and some grand-daughters, Agawam and Holyoke, one of whom aspires to
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,
be larger than her mother. Still she is apparently young and more vigorous than ever. She grows in graces as she grows in years. We, who ought to be her friends, think we see in her daily new virtues and attractions by which she draws us more closely to her.
West Springfield is one of her oldest daughters, and was the most perverse and refractory of all the members of the family. She persisted in chosing her man to represent the old town in the General Court, when the whole family voted together, and more than once succeeded in doing it. The mother town wished to be represented by John Bliss and John Worthing- ton, and West Springfield wanted her man. The indignant mother called to her aid her sons from the Springfield mount- ains, who voted down the candidate of her disobedient daugh- ter. At the next session of the General Court, at the mother's request, West Springfield, against her protest, was turned out of doors, and became a town against her own will-a thing un- paralleled in town history. A punishment of a hundred years has satisfied the forgiving mother, who has almost forgotten her daughter's offences, and now, after a century, it is whispered, the daughter is penitent, and is looking wistfully back into the old household, and there are hints of a ninth ward. Let her put herself in order, protect her dike from muskrats and the south winds in flood-time, build her school-houses, water-works, side-walks, pave her streets, and behave, and there can be no doubt the kind mother will take her back.
West Springfield has been fortunate in many things. Her old men remembered her fruit-bearing orchards, her fat cattle, heavy fields of grass and rye, and her young men have seen and felt the influence of her gold-bearing fields of corn and to- bacco. But especially has she been fortunate in her preaching and the character of her preachers. In Springfield we were not quite so fortunate in our first preacher, but we have had a vast deal of law. One of the earliest trials by jury was that in which the Rev. Geo. Moxon, our first preacher recovered a ver- dict of £6 against John Woodcock, for slander. None of your preachers ever needed to have their good names polished up before a jury. But this was in 1640. Since then our ministers have been shining lights in the churches and faithful guides to the people.
W.S P 4 3
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I was requested to speak of the bridge across the Connecticut River, which was built in 1805, partly to reconcile the mother and daughter. For a century and a half the inhabitants of the old town were separated by the river, which in freshets swept over the meadows and some of the settled parts of West Springfield now protected by dikes. Crossing by the three fer- ries was often dangerous-sometimes impossible. In the latter part of the last century, some visionary young men were bold enough to agitate the question of a bridge. It was talked of and delayed for years. The old men had seen freshets and great masses of ice in the river. One said if a bridge was built it would not stand, others said it could never be done- they might as well think of bridging the Atlantic Ocean. The old men died and then the young men built the bridge.
The Federal Spy, published October 29, 1805, has the follow- ing :
"The elegant bridge erected over Connecticut River in this town, will be opened on Wednesday (to-morrow), one toll free. We understand there will be a sermon preached by Dr. La- throp, a procession formed, cannon fired, a ball in the evening, and that, in fact, it will be a day of glee."
The sermon was preached, and the procession was formed, and when it reached the bridge, a salute of seventeen guns was fired, which was three times repeated from both ends of the bridge. Three thousand people were present. It was a day of jubilee. The newspaper the week after says :
" The bridge is so constructed with frames upon piers, con- nected by long timbers with the arches that the traveler passes over nearly the whole extent of it, on an elevated plane, afford- ing a view of extensive landscapes, in which are blended well cultivated fields, plains and villages, river and meadows, lofty mountains, and indeed a variety in the beauties of nature which is highly gratifying to the eye."
We hardly see in the bridge that now spans the river, an " elevated plane " or "elegant structure." The old men were half right. The young men could not or did not build a bridge that would stand. The old red bridge "gave way and fell to the water," July 19, 1814. The fall is said to have been caused by the passage of heavy army wagons, many of which had crossed the year before. It was rebuilt and completed
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October 1, 1816. It was carried away in a flood in March 1818. Two piers at the west end were left standing,-five were swept away. It was just after the war. The times were hard, no money could be had to rebuild the bridge. The people might have been discouraged if the evil one had not come to their aid. What he was doing to help them appears from this advertisement :
" Springfield Bridge Lottery .- Who will complain of Hard Times when $1,500 may be had for $3. The Drawing is near at hand."
The two last bridges were built partly from the profits of lotteries.
The fight to make it free was fought almost as long and val- iantly as that to make the slave free. Worthy friends of free- dom often defeated, as often renewed the battle, till at last they conquered-but not till long after the slave had become free, did the bridge become " toll free " as it was advertised to be on the day of its opening. A petition to the City Council asks that a covered way be extended along both sides of the bridge on the outside. And so the bridge-the only thing but the river between us-is still the subject of discussion as it has been for the last century-and likely to be for the next. In the next, we may hope there will be better men and women, better laws and manners, new and higher wants, and greater means of gratifying them. Men are not running down,-the fountains of life are not drying up. Customs, manners, amusements, habits change ; but men are no worse.
In the next century, I have no doubt, there will be better men than there were in the last-than there are now. They will be more intelligent, and have better food, clothing, houses, and have more comforts than we. They will want nearly the same things, as human nature and wants may not change. They will use more and better water, and have better wine at the Sacrament, and we and our children will preserve, I hope, the old love that has existed so long between us, and the old bridge, too, which has been a faithful servant to us both, till we build a better one.
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" The Founders of Springfield," was responded to by Hon. HENRY MORRIS, of Springfield, Mass. :
MR. PRESIDENT :- It is perhaps proper, as my friend the Mayor has spoken for the mothers of towns, that I should say a few words for the fathers of towns. And in responding for those who were the fathers and founders of Springfield, I feel that I speak of men who were truly noble.
Foremost among them, of course, was William Pynchon. He came over from England with Governor Winthrop, and be- fore he settled here on the Connecticut River, he founded the town of Roxbury, once a historic name, but recently merged and lost in the poorer one of Boston Highlands.
. Mr. Pynchon held for several years the office of Assistant in the Colonial government, and was for a time its Treasurer, both offices of high honor and responsibility.
He removed from Roxbury to the Connecticut River, that he might carry on to advantage the fur trade with the Indians, in which he was largely engaged. Here he established the " Plan- tation of Agaam," as Springfield was at first called. So long as he remained here he was the only magistrate, and, with the assistance of a jury of six men, tried the causes and decided the controversies of the Plantation.
In all the public affairs of the settlement, municipal and ecclesiastical, he exercised a controlling influence, wisely and usefully.
With Mr. Pynchon came his son-in-law, Henry Smith, a man of education and ability, who, when Pynchon left, was appointed a magistrate in his place, but soon after abandoned Springfield and went to England.
Elizur Holyoke was another prominent settler, and took a leading part in all the affairs of the town. He married a daughter of Mr. Pynchon. It was upon her monument that the lines were inscribed-
" She that lies here was, while she stood,
The very glory of womanhood."
He was the father of Capt. Samuel Holyoke, a young man, who in the celebrated Falls fight, when our men were attacked by an overwhelming force of Indians, and Capt. Turner, the commander, was killed, took command of our men and success-
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fully conducted the retreat. He is said to have killed six of the Indians with his own hand.
Then there was Deacon Samuel Chapin, the ancestor of all the Chapins, including my friend of the Massasoit House, pres- ent here to-day. He held many offices of trust and responsi- bility in the town.
Samuel Wright, also a deacon, was a leading man in the church. He removed to Northampton, and died there.
Jehu Burr, who came with Mr. Pynchon from Roxbury, was a carpenter, and probably made the identical wheelbarrow for which the tailor sold him three miles square of land in West Springfield, as we were told by the Reverend orator to-day.
Another influential man was Rev. George Moxon, the first minister of the place. He was an old friend of Mr. Pynchon, with whom he returned to England in 1652. My friend, the Mayor, has held him up to censure, because he sued John Woodcock, one of his parishioners, for slander. I do not think the minister quite deserved the censure. It was his misfortune to be called as a witness in a trial in Connecticut, in which Woodcock, who was a mischievous fellow, was a party, and Woodcock charged him among his people with having been guilty of perjury on that occasion. Mr. Moxon sought to vin- dicate his character from this aspersion, and he did so by the verdict of a jury, which rebuked the slanderer.
Near the latter part of Mr. Moxon's ministry, suspicions of witchcraft began to be entertained in Springfield. A poor woman, living at the lower end of our Main street, who had killed her own child, and was probably insane, was accused of bewitching Martha and Rebecca Moxon, the minister's daugh- ters, and was taken to Boston for trial upon the double charge of witchcraft and murder. She was acquitted of the witchcraft, but convicted of the child murder. This trouble, and his friend- ship for Mr. Pynchon, probably induced Mr. Moxon to accom- pany him to England, and he never returned to America.
I must not omit to name as one of the most influential of the founders of Springfield, John Pynchon, the son of William. When the father went back to England the son remained here, and soon succeeded to all, and more than all, his father's influ- ence and honors. He was a man of very superior character, and, during nearly the whole of his long life, performed the
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duties of a magistrate, military commander, and civil leader in the town. To no man of those early days does this part of the State owe more than to John Pynchon.
" Our Contributions to Missions," was responded to by EDWIN BLISS, D. D., of Constantinople, Turkey :
In claiming me here to-day, Mr. Chairman, as one of your " Contributions to Missions," you help me to answer a question which has sometimes puzzled me; namely, where I belong. Born in Vermont, bred in old Springfield, the other side of the river, I had a home also for some years in your town. Here I was ordained, and from here went to Turkey. My home in that country was first in old Pontus, near the locality where once it was supposed golden fleeces could be found ; so far as my information goes, there are none there now. From Pontus I went to Capadocia, and from there to Constantinople in An- cient Thrace. Changing my home so often, when called upon to register my name, for instance at a hotel, I sometimes doubt how to fill out the blank for locality. Perhaps I may as well hereafter write West Springfield. Were this the time and place, I should be glad to give you some account of our mission work in Turkey. We are trying to establish there, these same insti- tutions : schools, churches, which so bless West Springfield, and all New England, and the United States. And I should be glad if some of you could come out and see what measure of success we are having. It may be that some day, his majesty, the Sultan Abdulaziz, will call upon the people of his capital, Constantinople, to celebrate a centennial (I don't know whether it would be the twenty-second or the twenty-third centennial,) anniversary of the founding of the city ; and I hereby avail my- self of my privilege as a citizen for some years of that city, to invite any of you who will, to be present on that occasion when it occurs. Should any of you come there at any time, please follow the directions I will now give for finding there your West Springfield friends. Friends, I say, for my brother, Rev. I. G. Bliss, is also there, and he and his family are more of a West Springfield contribution to missions than I am, for although it did not occur to him any more than it did to me to be born here, he did what I did not, took his wife from one of your fami-
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