USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Holyoke > Complete program of Holyoke's seventy-fifth anniversary and home coming days > Part 3
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Fishing companies were organized to gather in the haul in a systematic way. They hired men and had equipment and sales forces to dispose of their commodity. When two or more companies were working at once they sometimes took turns on the river. One company fished nights near Jed Day's landing.
On the Holyoke side was a shanty next to the shad house where the fishermen worked. Chester W. Chapin ran a refreshnnent business here, "selling flip and cigars to those who con- sidered themselves in need of refreshments, his
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THE OLD BALL HOMESTEAD
spring investment being a puncheon of rum dealt out in small quantities to his customers. In the winter he taught school, then drove a valley stage, later became one of the owners in the ronte, then interested himself in the river passenger business below Springfield and at last became one of the New England railroad mag- nates, and at his death was the richest man in Western Massachusetts."
In order to expedite fishing from the Holyoke side, the fishermen had built an island of small dimensions out in the stream. The netting of the shad was accomplished by encircling a size- able area of water and then pulling the net in- shore, being careful to hold the lower edge of the seine near the bottom so that the fish could not dart under. A crew of five or six fishermen worked together.
The shore seine man held fast to one end of the seine and walked slowly down the bank while the boat erew rowed out into the river, paving ont the net piled in the bow of the boat. At about one hundred feet the crew turned sharply down river, made a wide circle and came in. The climax of the operation came as the boat reached the shore. All hands scrambled into the water, grabbed onto the net to hold it in place and slowly brought it in. Two hundred fish were considered very good for a single haul- ing in, but stories were handed down of eatches running into the thousands. Some years the fishing was better than others.
LIFE IN THE VILLAGE
The house that is now the home of the Lau- rence J. Cavanaugh family was more or less t rendezvous for that group of the fishermen who had their headquarters in the "Cove." One story is that this house was in reality the old Abner Miller house, which was moved down to this spot. Hampden Street in those days was "North Street," the portage road. In the cellar of this house was the tavern where the fishermen enjoyed an occasional mug of flip. The rude hand-hewn beams and the hall and chimney plan of the house ear-mark it as of the early days of the century. A rumor unverifiable. has it that in the latter part of the century a man was hanged for stealing a watch in this tavern.
Chester Crafts bought the Abner Miller Inn property in 1832, and condneted it variously as a tavern, general store, stage coach stopping place, and postoffice for half a century. His brother, who afterwards became Mayor of Hol- voke, drove a four-horse stage coach from Springfield to Northampton, a distance of 20 miles, carrying mail and passengers. Early re- ports say that sometimes the horses were changed and the stage out of sight up the road five minutes after it came into the yard. The whole trip was often made in the fantastic time of three and one-half hours.
The Crafts Tavern was the center of bustle and activity in the village before the railroad came up along the river. Much teaming had
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to be done up and down the valley, especially in the winter-time when the river highway was frozen over. All the supplies for the mills and settlements and little country stores further up valley had to go through on wheels or runners. Hartford was even then the chief supply center and taverns on the way were kept full most. every night.
The cookery at Crafts had a good reputation far and near and the drivers would keep their horses plodding along well into the evening in order to make the place.
They were a jolly, well-intentioned set of fel- lows, taking their enjoyment ont of each fleeting moment. There were roisterons times in the barroom after supper as they played checkers or "Lon," downing their flip and thickening the air with the smoke wreaths from their pipes. The continual rumble of conversation, broken by intervals of laughter at some good sally, filled the room. Those were the days!
The gathering broke up by 10 o'clock. By 11 all were in bed. The lights were out and the honse closed for the night. They had to be astir long before dawn the next morning.
Breakfast was served by candle light. The drivers drifted in as the feeding and harnessing of their teams was completed, ate heartily, told a last joke or two, then as the first brightness began to appear in the east, cracked their whips and set off for another day's journey over the hard-packed snow.
Mail came in with the stage, twice a day at the tavern-from the south at 10 in the morn- ing and from the north at 2 in the afternoon.
THE OLD TALES
A good part of the social life of the village, for the men at least, centered around the tav- erns. Many a tall story was told as the log fire burned low on a long winter's evening and the spirits and cheer of the guests mounted higher.
One heard the oft-quoted tale of Moses Pom- eroy who claimed that rattle snakes were so thick on his farm that it was impossible to hay. One day he went out into his lower field with a dinpeart, pitched in a writhing load of them and brought them home to feed the pigs.
Then there was the realistic fish story of the Ireland man who had gone over to Canal Vil- lage to spend Sunday and coming back to the river's bank at night found that someone had preempted his boat. Unable to bear the thought of spending the night on a foreign shore he summoned all his resources. The shad rum was at its height and the fish were thick in the
river. Dropping in at a cottager's house he borrowed a pair of snowshoes. By the aid of these he walked across the river on the backs of the fishes.
There was also the story of the well-dressed gentleman who rode up to an inn on a hand. some bay horse, dismounted, and asked to be put up for the night. An hour later the con- stable came riding up and arrested him for horse stealing. As it was too late to ride to the county gaol the constable too decided to stay. In the small hours of the morning the horse- thef took poison and died. There were those who avowed they had seen, on dark nights, on the lower stretch of the river road, a phantom horseman, riding at breakneck speed and easting furtive glances behind to see if anyone were following.
The ghost story of Timothy Felt became classic though it belongs to a somewhat later day. On Back Street hved a Mr. Felt whose son Timothy was somewhat slow. The failing so exasperated the father that upon occasion he would strike the boy with whatever happened to be within reach of his hand. This brutality sometimes drove the boy from home for a time until his necessities brought him back. About a year before the family moved West, Timothy disappeared and was seen no more.
Some years later when the New Haven and Northampton Canal was being built a limestone quarry was opened up on the Felt farm. There was trouble over the treatment of the workmen and most of the men left. Work was brought to a standstill.
By a strange coincidence soon after when the overseer was going home one night he saw a figure silhouetted against the sky. Gathering his courage he demanded who it was and what it wanted. The spectre answered in a dismal tone, "I am Timothy Felt, whose bones are under where I stand. My father killed me four years ago. When you blast this rock you will find my bones."
The reported happening spread widely through the country. By day people came long distances to see the "ghost place." By night the neighbors avoided it. Money was obtained to blast the rock so that the body could be found. Workmen were persuaded to come back and the limestone was quarried.
A subject to talk about in early days was the episode of the counterfeiters on "Moneyhole Hill." A gang of these counterfeiters came over from Chicopee and engaged in the moulding of "silver" coin in which much of the metal was alloy. Silver itself in bullion was cheap at the time. The scene of operation was just west of
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RIVER FROM BAPTIST VILLAGE - (Elmwood Bluff)
the old sawmill of the Connecticut River Lumber Company. A steep ravine was here and in this the men hid their moulds and their melting pot. They buried their newly coined "money" in the sand. Finally the law caught up with them and the leader is said to have been punished by having his ears cropped, a "cruel and unusual punishment," if the story is true.
The super-colossal of all the tall stories ever told in the region, reached as high as the moun- tain top and dealt with no less a subject than the origin of Mount Tom itself. "One Spring the floods were tremendous and spread far and wide. On looking out the window a well-known inhabitant saw Mount Tom come floating ma- jestically down. Several gigantic Indians, with paddles made out of half-grown tree trunks, were keeping it in the course of the current. Just as it reached a point opposite Ireland the current swing it off toward the Hadley side and it almost grounded. But a gigantic savage, quick as a panther, dng his tree paddle into the shallows, and, with fearful strength, fended off so hard that a cross current impelled it to the west side, where it grounded hard and fast, shutting off our view of Easthampton." The story was the property of one man who always told it in the same way.
The everyday life of the village farmer was varied ; driving the eows to the pasture, milking at morning and night, planting and reaping the grain, clearing the land, cutting firewood for the winter and drawing it home along the forest
road, shingling a barn, plonghing with a two- hand single bottom plough, repairing fences. digging out ditches, working to make the old house more comfortable. Sometimes on a rainy day one could go fishing and in the fall of the year there were squirrel, rabbit, pheasant and partridge.
For reereation for the younger folk there was skating on "Silver Lake" and sleigh rides in the winter-time. Little evidence can be found of hnsking bees or quilting parties or of the functional social occasions which characterized other pioneer settlements in other times and places. Much of the social as well as the re- ligious life of the younger people and the women centered around the church and the parsonage.
THE LITTLE RED SCHOOLHOUSE
Among these people who wrested a living from the soil, husbandry came first and schooling afterwards. The early history of the schools of Ireland Parish was mostly in the nature of the short and simple annals of the poor. The early records are brief and practical, pertaining to the ways and means of keeping the sehoolhonse warm and the payments for boarding the teach- er. The school term was short if not sweet for the youngsters, three months in all. In 1802. Caleb Humeston was voted 3s 6d a week for boarding Miss Sally Clapp for a period of three months. Caleb was also voted 2s a week for boarding bovina Humeston for three months.
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The question of keeping the schoolhouse warm was somewhat of a vexing one. 11 was voted at a school meeting "that we bring 14 cord of wood for each scholar that we send to school in on turns, or pay eight shillings for each cord of wood that the Committee shall provide, ready ent, fit for fire."
All children were to be taught "to read and learn catechism." All children were to be sent to school; also servants. There is an implica- tion that many of the boys of the area kept com- ing to school year after year until they were mite grown. Such was their thirst for knowl- edge. It is probable that arithmetic of the na- ture required for keeping accounts and doing business was also offered.
The Massachusetts school law of 1780, ro- quired that towns having 50 or more families should maintain elementary schools, and those having 150 or more should have grammar schools. Ireland had as many as seven element- ary schools by 1850. These were spread on! through the parish. One was across from the Crafts Tavern. Another was on Homestead Avenne and was later moved to what is now
the Sheehan farm. Later, one was erected in Rock Valley. Two were of briek, one near the
Whiting Hill and another near the Whiting Street Brook on the road to Northampton. A Mr. Aaron Rand, son of the Elder Rand, taught there for at least one term. Many of the pupil : of this school went ont and made their mark in the life of the community. Among them were Fred and Whiting Street and Rodney Thorpe. Another school was south of Dwight Street. This was the school in which Chester W. Chapin taught. In 1818, Ireland had its own grammar school.
By far the most noteworthy and constructive educational effort in the parish centered in Min- ister Rand's Academy. Here for a very modest fee boys were instructed in the classies and mathematics and prepared for college. A size- able group of clergymen of the valley learned their Latin and Greek under the tutelage of Parson Rand. In a rudimentary way here was Ireland's brief exemplification of the New Eng- land Academy, an effort which lost mneh of its vigor with the passing of its founder.
A SLEEPY VILLAGE
So the life of Baptist Village and Ireland Parish drifted along. It had its interesting hap- penings and its nine-day wonders, its elmirehly precepts and its cracker barrel philosophy. The men tended their farms and the women kept their homes and brought up their children. It
was an agrarian civilization, premised largely upon independent subsistence for each farm- stead. As late as 1845, Benjamin Willard kept fonr cows, four yearlings, thirty sheep, and a horse. Hay, corn, oats, rye, potatoes, and the- nips were the concern of livelihood. Enjoy- ments were of the simple, homely kind. Family life was strong.
It was a slow-going kind of existence. Wealth acemulated only in arithmetic ratio, a dollar added to ten makes eleven, and a dollar added to cleven makes twelve. All production was on
PARSON RAND
a piece-work basis, and what couldn't be done today could always be done tomorrow. It was a contented kind of life in the drowsy little vil- lage on the County Road, a life in which the in- dividual was always more important than the project.
The industries of the parish had been elose- knit into the village economy. Power used was that obtained from the brooks of the region. Machinery was of a simple, primitive kind, lim- ited in extent and easily understood. Here were only the tottering first steps of what was to become the wonder of the American Industrial Age, their purpose only to contribute toward the self-sufficiency of the community.
Unnoticed by the villagers, or at least inde- pendent of them, a significant train of events began to occur down by the rapids. The first of these was the construction of the sawmill by the Morgans in 1783. The last was the success- ful completion of the construction of the Hol-
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SAM ELY'S PLACE - (Site of Rosary Church)
yoke dam. Here by trial and error and by slow degrees, men were seeking to understand and encompass the most magnificent potential of the region and the valley, the wonder of water power.
WATER POWER
One cubic foot of water weighs sixty-two and four tenths pounds. A cubic foot of water pressing downward through a distance of thirty l'eet performs almost two thousand foot pounds of mechanical work. One horsepower is me- chanical work done at the rate of five hundred and fifty foot pounds per second. Two thousand foot pounds of work accomplished in two see- onds is roughly about two horsepower.
In the year 1827, JJohn Chapin Stephen Chapin, Warren Chapin and Alfred Smith were anthorized by the Massachusetts Legislature to constrnet a wing dam extending diagonally up the river somewhat above the present Holyoke dam. The expressed purpose of the corporation was to manufacture cotton and woolen goods and to process grain and iron and other metals. Here was the significant beginning of Holyoke's industrial power. The name was the "Hadley Falls Company."
The corporation constructed the wing dam and, in accordance with the permissions of its charter, erected a sawmill, a gristmill, a cotton mill, and also a furnace for the manufacture of iron. The wing dam was a device for channel-
ing a portion of the river's water upstream and bringing it down at the higher level to turn a wheel at the mill.
Seventy people were employed here in 1837. Most of the women in the mill were of the farm people of the small New England towns. Here was a true manifestation of the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. The value of the cloth manufactured was in excess of thirty thou- sand dollars in this year and six years later was double that amount. Four thousand spindles were twirled by the force of the water swinging down over the old overshot wheel. All of the owners were ont of town men.
Boarding houses were built to provide lodg- ing for the workers, seventy in all, most of whom were women. The Hadley Falls Company had found keepers who not only served good food and kept a clean honse, but who were ever on the alert to see that all the mid-century pro- prieties were observed.
The manager of the mill wrote as follows: "In eighteen thirty-six, I left a farm and an aged father at thirty years of age, with abont $8,000, to take charge of a small cotton mill at Hadley Falls. In eighteen forty-seven when sold to the new company my $8,000 had grown to about $40,000, every dollar of which was put into the new concern." The first Hadley Falls Company had done very well.
A RAILROAD
In 1842, the Connecticut River Railroad Com-
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pany was chartered to build a road from Spring- field to Northampton. The original plan had been to go up the east side of the Connecticut, passing through Cabotville (Chicopee), the prosperous ('anal Village and crossing the river near Mount Holyoke. At the last moment, be- cause of a better grade and a shorter distance. the engineers advised the route through Ireland, and down past the Hadley Village it came.
This railroad made a junetion at Springfield with other roads from Boston and New Haven. A man could now eat his breakfast in Ireland. board the train at Ireland Depot, change trains at Springfield, and if everything went according to schedule, arrive in Boston for a late supper. About mid-century the road was extended Farther north to the Vermont line where it. joined another road to Bellows Falls.
Most of the river traffic went over to the rail- road. The canal, which had been the feature activity of "Canal Village." now ceased to have a raison d'etre and soon the company operating it was dissolved. In the meantime plans were being made and events were moving to fruition of a scheme which was to alter completely the whole course of history of the Massachusetts Reach of the Connectieut Valley. Baptist Vil- lage and Ireland Parish were to be submerged under one of the most ambitions dreams of free enterprise ever conceived in New England, noth- ing less than the overnight fabrication of a great manufacturing city.
A FABRICATED CITY
To George C. Ewing, history gives credit For the vision that created Holyoke. He was a sales- man, a travelling representative of the Fair- banks Scales Company of St. Johnsbury, Vt. lle had occasion to visit many places and see many sights in the course of his business. He knew what Lowell had done with the Merrimac River. He was familiar with the Slater Mills on the Blackstone River and the endless series of smaller mills and dams of the Providence and Pawtucket areas. The owners of the little back- vontry New England grist and corn mills were bis best enstomers.
Here was power on such a stupendons seale as the world had never seen harnessed before. It was said that the river coming to the edge of a strata of shale dropped downward in the val- ley for a distance of sixty-five feet in less than two miles. The greater part of the rapids was included within an interval of five or six hun- dred vards.
What man had done on a lesser seale, man
could do in a bigger way. Ewing lived in the transcendental age ; onward and upward, bigger and better. His vision encompassed the con- struetion of a dam to harness the river com- pletely and compel it to give up its awesome power to the service of man.
The terrain of the Ireland region was ideally laid out for the purposes of manufacture. The great bend in the river enelosed a clear, flat, level area on which industrial plants could be built ; in marked contrast to other natural water- power sites, such as Turners Falls, which were blocked in by steep hills on both sides.
Ewing brought his own Fairbanks Company at Bellows Falls into the plan and set abont in New York and Boston to interest enough cap- ital to form a corporation which would make his dream become a reality. lle visited many of the industrialists of the Boston area and finally gained their support.
THE BOSTON FINANCIERS
In 1845, eotton was King in Massachusetts as it never was to be in the South. Here was a time of climax of growth of textiles after a twenty-year period of steady expansion, the re- wards of which had acerned to a comparatively small group of Boston merchants and financiers. Surveys of the textile ventures of the period show that they were all largely conceived and carried on by this same small group. Together these men furnished one of the finest of examples of the practice of the interlocking directorate. Outstanding among them were George W. Ly- man. Edmund Dwight, William Appleton. Sam- pel Cabot and Ignatius Sargent. Most of them were on the Board of Directors of twenty-two cotton manufacturing corporations sitnated all over New England from Dover, N. H. to Taun- ton, Mass. Together they controlled four mills in Chicopee, eight in Lowell, and three in Taunton.
It was this group that Ewing sought to in- terest. and it was this groun which in conjune- tion with the Fairbanks Company formed a corporation to undertake the construction of a dam and a eity. The Directors were : Lyman, Dwight, Appleton, Cabot and Sargent. Lymau became President and an able gentleman by the name of James K. Mills was elected Treasurer.
Shortly a disagreement arose between Mr. Ewing and the financiers. and the Fairbanks Company withdrew from the picture. Mr. Ew- ing remained in the administration of the com- pany and made arrangements for the purchase of more than eleven hundred acres of land ad- jaeent to the falls and requisite to the projeet.
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用理
قدبه
VLL Nº2
DWIGHT HIGH & PLLASAN"
WHITING MILL, No. 2
The stockholders at the first meeting voted to take the name of the Hadley Falls Company and to authorize a subscribed capitalization of two and one-half million dollars.
Alternate east-west streets of the community, newly laid out in the "Field," were named after these directors of the Hadley Falls Com- pany. The other streets were named after coun- ties of Massachusetts.
For a time Mr. Ewing was retained in the capacity of land agent. The Fairbanks people already owned some land on the hillside above the "Flats." The Chicopee Telegraph of that time finally reported, "We are happy to annonnce that negotiations so long pending for the purchase of the water power at the Hadley Falls by Fairbanks & Company have terminated by the consummation of that object. George C. Ewing, Esq., of that firm, has at length sneceed- ed in purchasing not only the property of the Hadley Falls Company (the wing dam con- pany), but all the real estate in the vicinity re- quisite for the full development of the stupen- dons plans contemplated by that company. . . . We may safely say that no enterprise has yet been undertaken in the United States combining so many of the advantages and so many elements of future greatess."
Buying up the land was diffienlt. Somehow or other word of the great project got around. Asking prices mounted to the skies. Old Sam Ely liked his farm; and his farm happened to include much of the land that the new corpora-
tion wanted. Sam didn't like corporations; and "he was damned if he wanted to see the cor- porations control everything." When John Chase approached his place one too many times in his efforts to purchase, Sam poked the muzzle of his shotgun out of his chamber window and pulled the trigger.
Chase went no more to the Ely farm. Before Mr. Ewing's resignation as land agent he per- suaded the old man to sell.
Mr. Ewing was a person of principle and com- passion. The men he hired were promised eighty-five cents a day. When the Boston finan- ciers ordered their wages paid at seventy-five cents, the gentleman made up the difference out of his own pocket. When the management in- sisted upon Sunday work, however, he would not go along. Declaring this contrary to the laws of God and man he resigned. A violent labor disturbance occurred shortly thereafter.
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