USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Northampton > An address, delivered at Northampton, Mass. : on the evening of October 29, 1854, in commemoration of the close of the second century since the settlement of the town > Part 3
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Of Westhampton much might be said, though a small secluded and hilly town ;- of its settlement about 1767 ;- of its incorporation as a town in 1778 ;- of its first minister, Enoch Hale, ordained in 1779, when there were about three hundred inhabitants, and remaining till his death in 1837, aged eighty-four,-succeeded by Horace B. Cha- pin, his colleague from 1829 to 1837,-and by Amos Drury from 1837 to 1841,-by David Coggin from 1841 to 1852, and by A. Big- elow, the present minister ;- and of its being, in its deep solitude, the birth-place of a few men, who have exerted a wide and important in- fluence in our Commonwealth and through our country. I allude to Nathan Hale, son of the first minister, the aged editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser. I allude also to another man of still wider influ- ence, though not in the sphere of politics,-Dr. Justin Edwards, a minister in Boston and President of the Theological Seminary at An- dover, whose early and extensive labors in the cause of temperance are well known; and equally well known are his labors to promote the general observance of the Lord's Day ; and whose last toils were
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*John Woodbridge, D. D.
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brief comments on the Scriptures for the benefit of all the people. A native also of Westhampton was Sylvester Judd, Jun., a young man, recently deceased,-a Unitarian minister in Maine,-whose Memoirs are now attracting the attention of many readers.
PATRIOTISM OF THE TOWN.
In the arduous struggle for Independence Northampton acted well her part, both furnishing soldiers and liberally contributing for their subsistence. There are on record town votes to provide for losses in clothing by certain soldiers,-to encourage enlistments, at one time by paying 15 pounds, at another by offering 30 pounds to each soldier enlisting for three years or during the war,-to appoint a committee to collect from house to house donations to be sent to Albany to be distributed among the soldiers from this town,-and another commit- tee to provide for the families of men absent in the war.
When in the early part of the contest a committee of correspond- ence, inspection, and safety was appointed, the following fifteen men were selected in 1775, showing their prominence in the town,-Jo- seph Hawley, Robert Breck, Ezra Clark, Josiah Clark, Jacob Par- sons, Col. Seth Pomeroy, Elijah Hunt, Ephraim Wright, Elias Lyman, Elijah Clark, Capt. Joseph Lyman, Quartus Pomeroy, Wm. Phelps, Caleb Strong, Jun., and Dr. Levi Shepherd.
Brigadier General Seth Pomeroy was a distinguished officer in the Revolution ; he was also a soldier in the French war under Sir Wm. Johnson. At the defeat of Dieskau he was present: in the battle of Bunker Hill he was a volunteer. He was appointed a brigadier June 22, 1775 ; but died of the pleurisy at Peekskill in February, 1777. He was an ingenious mechanic and manufacturer of arms.
Major Jonathan Allen was another soldier in the Revolutionary war. He fought in the battle of Saratoga, of which he gives an ac- count in his journal in my possession. Being at home on a furlough, he went out with a neighbor to hunt deer and was shot and killed, Jan. 7, 1780, aged forty-two. For many years he had been an exem- plary professor of religion: his last moments were cheercd with the hope of a resurrection to a blessed immortality.
And here it may be proper, as illustrative of the spirit of the times, to speak of four brothers of Major Jonathan Allen, natives of this town, who like him were distinguished in the Revolution for their
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patriotism and courage, three of them ministers of the gospel, one of whom, settled at Midway in Georgia, was taken prisoner in Savan- nah and drowned in attempting to swim ashore from a prison ship as related by Dr. Ramsay ;- another was an officer, charged with the conduct of Maj. Andre from the place of his capture to West Point, but afterwards the first preacher at Brighton near Rochester, and the founder of churches in all that region ;- and the third, my own father, the first minister of the beautiful village of Pittsfield, who for the protection of his fireside rode up with his people one day to Ben- nington,-fought in the battle the next day,-and the third day rode back triumphing and grateful to his safe home and the care of his flock, forever to be honored as a Christian patriot.
Other citizens of Northampton fell in battle ;- and at an earlier pe- riod, at Lake George in September, 1755, fell Capt. Elisha Hawley, Lieut. Daniel Pomeroy, and Thomas Wait : the former was the broth- er of Joseph Hawley, whose heart was pierced by the death of one much beloved.
MEN EMINENT IN PUBLIC LIFE.
After the passing away of the first generation one of the most re- markable of the men of the town was Colonel John Stoddard, son of the second minister, a graduate of Harvard in 1701, and who died June 19, 1748, aged sixty-six. His various services cannot be enu- merated. Mr. Edwards' sermon on his death was published. His venerable grandson, in the eighty-fourth year of his age, still lives amongst us, the founder of a much respected family, the father of sons, treading in the steps of an honored ancestry.
Of Joseph Hawley, the grandson of Mr. Stoddard, Dr. Dwight says -that " he was one of the ablest and most influential men in Massa. chusetts Bay for a considerable period before the Revolution : an event, in which few men had more efficiency. He was a very able advocate. Many men have spoken with more eloquence and grace : I never heard one speak with more force. His mind, like his elo- quence, was grave, austere, and powerful." The value of his liberal bequest for schools was at one town meeting estimated at about 900 pounds for the lands, not including, I think, the house. Another de- ceased liberal benefactor of our schools was the late Judge Joseph Lyman. 4
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Major Hawley's patriotic pride was stronger than the hypocondria, to which he was subject,-for when Mr. Strong, his fellow represent- ative, returned from the General Court, and heard his desponding language as to success in the Revolutionary struggle, " we shall both be hung," and replied to him-" No, Maj. Hawley ; probably not more than forty will be hung-we shall escape!"-he was aroused, and replied, "I will have you to know, that I am one of the first three !" and the next day he made a flaming whig speech before the town.
Governor Caleb Strong, who studied law with Mr. Hawley, died suddenly Nov. 7, 1819, aged seventy-four. A patriot of 1776, he as- sisted in forming the constitution of his native State in 1779 and in 1787 that of the United States, under which he was a Senator for eight years to 1797. He was Governor of Massachusetts from 1800 to 1807 and from 1812 to 1815,-in all for ten years. He and Mr. Williams married daughters of Mr. Hooker.
President Dwight, whose father lived in the house occupied by Dr. Walker in King street, was grandson of President Edwards, his moth- er being Mary, Mr. E.'s third daughter. He died Jan. 11, 1817, aged sixty-four, having been President of Yale College twenty-one years.
If I should undertake to call your attention to the characters of all the eminent and memorable men of Northampton since the days of the first fathers, and known in more recent times, I should far trans- cend the limits of a single discourse. It would be necessary to speak of distinguished statesmen, known both in the halls of Congress and in our own State House,-of learned and eloquent lawyers,-and of respected Judges of our courts ;- also of a succession of skilful phy- sicians and of upright and successful merchants ;- and of a long list of honored magistrates, of ingenious mechanics, and substantial, in- telligent farmers. But concerning a host of worthies I am compelled to be silent.
PURITAN ORIGIN OF THE SETTLERS.
The first settlers of Massachusetts were of two classes; first, the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, who fled from the north of England to Holland, and thence came to America,-and the emigrants about 1630 to Salem and the neighborhood of Boston, who came from near
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London and the south and west of England. Both were Puritans; and, having tasted the bitterness of despotic power, they were hostile to it in church and State; and they landed on Plymouth rock and pitched their tents on Trimount in Massachusetts Bay as the found- ers of a State without a king and of a Church without a bishop. They had a strong conception, that ancient tyrannical institutions, a resistless despotism, and childish pageantry and ceremonies did not constitute a State ;- but they had imbibed the ideas and theory, ex- pressed by a Greek poet, that a State was constituted by men,-by free, high-minded men,-who knew their rights, and, knowing, dared maintain them ; and that the foundations of a State were to be laid in equal, impartial, sacred law .- In respect to the constitution of a church the two classes of settlers were much agreed, except, that at Plymouth there was a little more of the democratic element, and less of authority in the minister. Most of the first settlers of Northampton were from the neighborhood of Boston; whence they emigrated ulti- mately to this wilderness, that they might have the benefit of many acres of land and plenty of room for growth and expansion. We may imagine how delightful it was for them to settle down in the fields and meadows on the borders of a glorious, dark, untouched forest, fur- nishing materials for houses and resinous pine-knots as lights for their dwellings,-and game for their food,-the small and large rivers con- tributing to the same object. The land they cultivated yielded an abundant product. Here they could breathe freely. They had cour- age, manliness, independence; they tasted the joys, they cherished the hopes of the settlers in the wilderness. They could see their children coming easily into the possession of estates like their own. Thus in following the dictates of reason and conscience they found themselves-as all such mnen will find themselves ultimately, if they do not immediately,-in the pathway of prosperity, happiness, and honor.
EMIGRANTS FROM NORTHAMPTON.
This little spot in the wilderness has not only been changed into beauty and elegance by the unslacked hand of industry ; but it has been the nursery of men, whom it has sent out widely in our country and even to distant countries ; it has reared up men eminent in peace and in war, in the Senate and the Church, acting well their part in all the professions, avocations, and conditions of life.
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If we go into our great cities, there we may find active, prosperous citizens and even merchant princes, who have been cmigrants from Nonotuck. As to the Empire city, its growth in all, that makes it a truly great city, has not been wholly a domestic Dutch growth : it has sprung much from the country towns of New England ; and the love of freedom, which was nourished on the banks of a broad, free river, and in the neighborhood of mountain heights,-ever the abode of lib- erty,-has found strong utterance amidst the pressing calls of busi- ness in the stone pathway of mammon, and has sent out a voice start- ling, alarming, and terrifying to the men of the south, who forge chains for their fellow men, aiming always to enlarge the domains and in- crease the power of slavery, and who thrive on the life-blood and the souls of the victims of their cupidity.
It is not the great object of human existence to grow rich; but wealth gives a certain degree of earthly distinction ; and wealth well employed and liberally distributed is worth gaining and bestows im- perishable honor. Perhaps half a dozen or more Northampton boys, who were brought up in the simplest habits of a country life, by their enterprise and the divine blessing acquired large fortunes, being worth from a hundred thousand to half a million or more of dollars each,- though some of them lost all in the general wreck of property in 1837. I knew two of these, who had prosperous banking houses in four large cities,-and who were not strangers to charitable deeds. Another, a merchant prince, failed for a million of dollars ;- yet justly and hon- orably paid up every cent. But what he had given away in charity he did not, he cannot lose. As a benefactor of the Western Reserve College, and as one of the founders of Oberlin College, Ohio,-a seminary of some peculiarities and oddities, yet extending the benefits of a literary and Christian education to both sexes and all colors, and having this year the astonishing number of eight hundred pupils, and wielding an immense influence for good ; as one of its founders he must feel a high satisfaction.
Another emigrant to another city has been abundant in charities and liberal communications, some of which from time to time have come to the place of his birth for the aid of learning and religion; and his time and good judgment have for years been bestowed in aid- ing the direction of various benevolent societies. Two of the sons of Nonotuck are of the Prudential Committee for the management of our largest and most important charity, the American Board of Com- missioners for Foreign Missions. But all these grew up under the
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teaching of Christian parents, remembered with deep gratitude and profound reverence.
It has been said, that there have been or are emigrants from North- ampton in every State of the Union, including California. Citizens of this town were large owners of land in the Western Reserve; and this led to a considerable emigration to Ohio, where a town is named after this; and other towns bear the names of citizens of this place. One young man from here went as a farmer to Ohio soon after its settlement began: he became a lawyer, and was many years a Senator of the United States, and is still living at a very advanced age. Another emigrant from this town is now a Judge in Ohio. Another more than fifty years ago established a newspaper which he still conducts,-a political " Sun," shedding its light, if not more widely, at least on the hills and vallies of Berkshire.
Colonel Ethan Allen of Vermont, of Revolutionary memory, was descended from an early planter of this town; and so was the late Silas Wright, a statesman of New York. But in vain shall I attempt to enumerate the absent and distant sons of Northampton.
MISSIONARIES FROM THIS TOWN.
Of one, however, I may not neglect to speak-a descendant of the venerable minister, Stoddard,-a skilful astronomer as well as missionary, who has been for years an able and successful teacher of the way of salvation to his brethren in distant Persia, carrying back to the east that blessed light, which centuries ago came out from the east to the west and lighted up the dark wilderness of Nonotuck. Nor ought I to omit saying that a daughter of Nonotuck was the compan- ion of an early missionary to the Sandwich Islands; that another with her husband is now a missionary instructor and guide of dark-minded, deluded men on the southeastern coast of Africa ;- and another is the companion on the mountains of Lebanon of the very learned Christian teacher of unequalled skill in the languages of the east, the translator of the scriptures into Arabic. But, while I speak of the living mis- sionary, surely I ought not to neglect to recall to your thoughts the dead, who were animated with the like noble Christian spirit, as Henry Lyman, who in his youth was a victim in the cause of benevo- lence, being murdered by the Battahs in Sumatra, in 1834. To his memory we have in our cemetery a cenotaph ; and it stands by the
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side of the monument over the body of Brainerd, by the history of whose life Lyman doubtless was animated in his toils and sacrifices for the salvation of the heathen.
MODERN IMPROVEMENTS.
You will perceive, that it is impossible for me to speak of the changes, improvements, and advances wise or unwise of modern times -of high school, and law school-of the excitement of the mulberry tree cultivation-of the introduction of broom corn-of the water cure by a colored professor-and of new water cures, where men go to the water carried for them to the top of a hill, instead of descending for it to the river-of the community of goods scheme and its evanish- ment-and of the waking up of the people by the railroad whistle- of the new method of mowing forty acres of meadow grass in one day by a team of horses ;- and further, that I cannot attempt to give a his- tory of the many new churches, which have sprung up where, within my memory, there was only one, nor speak of the eminent living min- isters, once teachers here, as Drs. Tucker, Penny, Spencer, Todd, Wiley, Rogers, and others, which Northampton has sent out as lights to other parts of our country.
LOVE OF EARLY HOME.
Do not all wanderers from their native village retain in sweet mem- ory the home of their childhood and youth as the dearest spot on the face of the earth ? For this imperishable attachment two reasons may perhaps be assigned ; first, because in that place their eyes first opened to the beautiful or sublime scenery of nature,-first saw the green field, the smooth meadow, or the broad prairie ;- the full-leaved tree and dark forest ;- the stream, as it dashes over the rocks, or winds along the level surface, or swells into a mighty river ;- the expanded,. calm lake, or the trackless, illimitable ocean, dashing in fearful surges on the shore ; and the arch of the blue sky over all, and in that sky the glorious sun, and the moon and the stars of the evening ;- and, next, because in that place the young eye first saw the beaming affection. of a mother's face, and the young heart first felt the emotions of re- gard and trust towards a father and of love and delight towards sisters
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and brothers. Thus with all, that in our early life made glad our soul, is associated our early home.
The natives of this fair region are bound to their home not indeed, like the natives of Switzerland, by the sublimity of ever snow-capped, unascendable mountains and of swift-rushing and roaring torrents, bursting from the foot of ever-enduring glaciers,-but by mountains of milder majesty, at the foot of which flows the broad, equable, quiet river, through meadows of unequalled beauty, with upland varied scenery most delightful to the eye. Happy are they, who as they gaze upon the forms of beauty and grandeur, which were among the earliest objects of their vision, have their thoughts and affections raised to Him, whose hand fashioned them, and who is himself "first fair, first good," and of infinite majesty and glory.
FAITH AND INSTITUTIONS OF THE FATHERS.
But a higher consideration, than that of outward nature, as marking the place of our birth, is the character of our ancestors, including the system of religion and morals, which they embraced and practised, and the institutions of education and learning, which they founded for the benefit of their descendants in future ages.
What if the noble-minded, enlightened men, from whom we sprung, had been of the class of idolators, still composing the greater part of the human family ? Then we might have been the poor, besotted worshippers of a block of wood or of uncouth images in stone and metal,-the miserable slaves of terrifying superstitions. What if they had been of the same class with the Spanish conquerors and planters of Central America, the subjects of the Romish Hierarchy ? With such ancestors we might have been, under the name of Christians, the adherents of that new idolatry, which had its origin at Rome, and which shows its debasement and absurdity in the worship of a cross of wood, and a piece of bread,-of the dead virgin Mary and number- less other dead saints,-to the dishonor of the God of heaven, who will not give his glory to another. Then we might have been among that class of religionists, all whose great bishops from all parts of Eu- rope and America are in a few weeks to assemble at Rome, in obedi- ence to the summons of the Pope, to settle the strange question,- which, it seems, that pretended true church has left unsettled for eighteen hundred years,-whether the doctrine of the immaculate
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conception is true,-that is whether we are to ascribe to the virgin Mary an existence among the sinful family of man without the taint of sin, common to all others ? , We may well be astonished at the folly of such a convocation, on such a question, which has no bearing whatever on the character, dignity, and glory of the Son of God. But as Mary is the chief object of worship in the Catholic idolatrous church, we know how the decision will be made by the Pope. But we did not spring from men, thus blinded, bewildered, and debased,-held in bondage through ignorance and superstition to the most revolting ty- ranny,-the tyranny of priestcraft and greedy covetousness over the reason, and conscience, the fears, and the purses of men.
No. Such was not our descent. But our ancestors knew the pure truth of God ; they received it into their hearts, and obeyed it in their lives ; and knowing its value, in respect to the present life and the future, both to themselves and their children, they fied from the bigotry and oppression of the English Hierarchy, and abandoning their pleasant homes they sought a refuge in the wilderness of America, where they might breathe a free air, and worship God in the manner, which they found taught in scripture, and which their reason ap- proved. And thus following the path of duty they built up a new home, still fairer in itself, than the dear native home, which with many a pang of heart they had forsaken, not without casting many " a longing, lingering look behind."
It was only seven years after the first log houses were constructed in this village of the wilderness, when our fathers organized an insti- tution, memorable in the history of this world, of unspeakable impor- tance for the maintenance and spread of the truth and for the welfare of mankind : they established here a Christian church, after the models presented in the New Testament. That is, a few servants of God and disciples of Jesus Christ formed an agreement, entered into a covenant one with another, declaring their belief of certain Scrip- tural doctrines, and pledging themselves to the observance of the Christian ordinances and the practice of the Christian virtues, that they might aid each other in the way to heaven and might transmit their own privileges and untrammelled worship and dearest rights to their posterity. This covenant made them a church : their pastor was not a Jordly bishop to rule over them : he was one of their num- ber, entering into covenant with them, as their teacher and guide, their friend and brother. After a couple of years an elder was chosen
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as an assistant to the minister and a deacon was also elected ; but the first office of elder fell into disuse after a little more than half a cen- tury, and there remained only the minister and deacons as the es- sential or useful officers of the church.
Our Fathers did not irreverently and disobediently ask, ' What need is there of this church combination and covenant ? Why should not the believers in divine truth be left to promote the interests of re- ligion in their own way, by their uncombined efforts ?' They knew, it was the command of the King of Zion, that there should be a Christ- ian society, agreement, and covenant,-the adoption of certain rules, -the pursuit of a certain plan : and this to them was sufficient : it was their business to obey. Infinite Wisdom knew what was wisest and best. But it requires only a little reflection to discover in the structure of the church its wise adaptation to preserve the truth, which has been revealed from heaven,-to impress it more and more deeply upon the hearts of those, who embrace it,-to spread abroad its in- fluence upon others, especially upon the children of believers,-and to secure its transmission in its purity to subsequent generations of men. The Bible may indeed teach, if men will read and understand it, con- sulted in their closets : but the living preacher addresses the eye and the ear; he explains and illustrates ; and, speaking to a multitude, in one assembly, he arouses their attention, enlightens them and con- strains them to understand ;- he transmits to them his own strong emotions, and by all the topics of persuasion urges them to flee from sin and from misery, and to practice " the godliness which hath the promise of the life, which now is, and of that, which is to come."- And then again the two ordinances of Christianity teach most impres- sively and affectingly the two great principles of sanctification by the Spirit and of redemption by the blood of Jesus Christ : and the church covenant binds the members to acts of Christian brotherhood and friendship.
Next in importance to the church was the early establishment of schools for the education of the children of the planters, that they might not be left to grow up in ignorance and rudeness, undisciplined, untrained to obedience, self-willed,-the future unhappy heads of families,-the pests of society,-and the hopeless travellers towards another and eternal world. Our fathers thought of schools very dif- ferently from Berkley, an early Governor of Virginia, who wrote as follows,-" I thank God, there are no free schools or printing ; and I hope, we shall not have them these hundred years ; for learning has
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