USA > Massachusetts > From the Hub to the Hudson : with sketches of nature, history and industry in north-western Massachusetts > Part 3
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People stopping in Greenfield over Sunday may therefore even if they are not, like Mrs. Partington, so Catholic in their sentiments as to be satisfied with " any paradox church where the gospel is dispensed with," find a place of worship where their preferences will be gratified.
Next door to the Orthodox Church, on the Public Square, stands the Court House,-Greenfield being the shire town of Franklin County. The contiguity of these two edifices is suggestive, and a short inter- mission will be given, at this point, to all those persons who want to go out and make puns about them.
On the eastern side of the Square is the Post Office, and just below the Square, on the south side of Main street, is the Town Hall, a fine brick structure. The Jail, standing on a side street south-east from the Square, is one of the best buildings in town. On Chapman street is the High School, and on Federal street the Greenfield Institute for Young Ladies, under the care of the Misses Stone,-an institution which for
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
many years has borne an excellent name. The educa- tion of the young probably costs more than it did in . 1753, when this town voted to pay teachers two shil- lings a day for the summer and one shilling and four- pence for the fall.
Some members of the illustrious Gradgrind family are always found in every company of tourists. They do not approve of mountains and waterfalls, but they would enjoy a visit to an establishment which has not only a national, but an European reputation,-
THE RUSSELL MANUFACTURING COMPANY.
Up to the year 1841, the table cutlery used in the United States was almost all of English manufacture. No competition with the great Sheffield manufactories had been attempted, and it was supposed that such an attempt would not be successful. But in that year, Mr. John Russell, who for seven years had been manu- facturing edge tools on the Green River, in this village, and who had during this time made some table cutlery with considerable success, resolved to turn his attention to the exclusive manufacture of the latter class of goods. From that beginning has grown this large establish- ment,-the largest of its class in the world, making cutlery which the Sheffield manufacturers confess to be superior to theirs, and affording it at prices so reasonable that it controls the American market. This result has been attained by the superior mechanical skill and inventive genius of Mr. Russell and those who have wrought with him. Many curious machines, by
39
HOW THEY MAKE KNIVES AND FORKS.
which the labor of production is greatly facilitated, were invented here, and are not found in operation elsewhere. Almost all the work of these shops is done by machinery; and low as are the wages of Sheffield mechanics, the Yankee machines will work cheaper and better than they. Moreover, the machines are never known to go off "on a tear," and though some of them strike pretty frequently, the work never stops on that account.
"Among these curious machines is an arrangement of screw-frames and heated dies for the purpose of giving form and hardness to the apple-wood handles which are put upon some styles of knives. The com- paratively soft apple-wood, by being thus subjected to an immense pressure, is made to take the place of ebony, rosewood, cocoa or granadilla wood; at the same time the brass rivets are headed, and a beautiful handle is the result. By an ingenious arrangement of circular saws and endless chains, a machine has been contrived for the purpose of sawing out bone and ivory handles as fast as a man can clap the pieces on the machine. Another instrument drills the holes in the handles; another one cuts the tines of the forks ; another bends the tines to their proper shape ; another straightens and levels the blade of the knife at one stroke ; still another cuts the blade from the piece of steel which has been formed ready for use."*
Nearly all the forging is done by steam. Twelve
* New York Evening Mail. This quotation, and many of the facts here presented, were taken from an article in that newspaper.
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
trip-hammers make titanic music all day long. In the grinding and polishing shops, whose flooring is about half an acre in extent, one hundred and forty grinders are at work upon seventy grindstones; and there are one hundred men employed on the emery wheels. These wheels are made of wood, covered with leather, dressed with wax, and rolled in emery dust. The emery is of various grades of fineness ; the coarsest, which is used for grinding the wooden handle, being in grains as large as coarse meal or hominy, the finest, which is used only for polishing, being fine as flour.
One building is devoted to the tempering of the knives. The blade is first heated red hot and dipped into oil; this makes it exceedingly brittle. It is then laid upon iron plates covered with sand over a coal fire, and the heat changes the color first to gray, then to straw color, then to pink, then to blue. The work- man judges of the temper by his eye. One man can temper about twenty-five hundred blades in a day.
The new silver-plated knife, with both handle and blade of steel, is made at these works.
The Green River supplies three water-wheels with one hundred and twenty-five horse power; two steam engines, with a total of three hundred and fifty horse power, do the rest of the work. Five hundred men and twenty women earn a little more than twenty thousand dollars a month.
England and America supply this company an- nually with six hundred tons of steel; the West Indies contribute three hundred thousand pounds of cocoa
41
WHERE THEY GET THE MATERIALS.
and granadilla wood; California sends sixty thousand pounds of rose-wood ; Madagascar a hundred thousand pounds of ebony; Africa forty thousand pounds of elephants' tusks ; Smyrna fifty thousand pounds of emery; Nova Scotia four hundred thousand pounds of grindstones ; Connecticut thirty thousand pounds of brass wire; Pennsylvania two thousand tons of anthra- cite coal; Massachusetts and Vermont twenty-five thousand bushels of charcoal ; and the Yankee bees, who are not less busy than other bees, have a yearly contract for supplying twenty-five hundred pounds of wax.
With this material, the Green River Works turn out every day one thousand dozen of table cutlery, one hundred dozen ivory-handled ware, and two hundred and fifty dozen of miscellaneous goods.
Of the other manufacturing establishments of Green- field we cannot speak at length. We have tarried long enough among the things that man has made. Let us go and look at the house of a better Builder. Being a little weary with car-riding, we propose to rest ourselves with a walk, this fine evening, to look upon the landscape and enjoy the sunset from
THE POET'S SEAT.
Up Main street under a canopy of elms and maples, to the end of the street where a guide-board points us into a road leading to Montague, bearing to the right, and passing round the elegant residence of Judge Grinnell. The highway winding up the hill gives us
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
some glimpses of scenery, but prudently keeps from us the glories to be revealed when we reach the top. There, at the summit, we turn to the left, into a bushy pasture, and suddenly the landscape is unveiled. We are standing now on Rocky Mountain, looking east- ward ; the Deerfield Valley, out of which we have as- cended, is behind us, and is hidden from view by the hill, over the crest of which we have passed; the Connecticut River and its valley are before us. A little way to the south the Deerfield River breaks through the ridge on which we are standing and flows down through the meadow to mingle its waters with those of the Connecticut. To the northward we catch a glimpse of Turner's Falls, and the racing rapids below them ; across the valley to the north-eastward in the distant horizon rises Mount Grace in the town of Warwick ;- southward is Mount Toby in Sunder- land; other lesser eminences complete the horizon, and encircle a scene most fair. Directly across the river is Montague City, reached by the bridge which spans the Connecticut at this point and greatly adds to the beauty of the picture. On the little island at our feet a musket was dug up not long ago, which may very likely have belonged to one of those Indians who went down the rapids in the Falls fight, about which we shall know more by and by. In the meadow just below us is a sulphur spring the water of which tastes bad enough to be very medicinal. Good Mr. Philo Temple, who owns the meadow says that the spring has had its ups and downs for a hundred and
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THE POET'S VISION.
fifty years ; sometimes being highly extolled for its healing virtues and sometimes entirely neglected. Just now it is out of fashion, and therefore we will give it none of our patronage.
When you have rested and feasted your eyes upon : this landscape long enough, we will turn into this well- trodden path running northward along the Ridge, keep- ing the same prospect in view for a third of a mile, when the path passes over the crest and opens to us another scene scarcely less beautiful, on the west- ern side of the Ridge. On the brink of this steep, rocky wall, where we are standing, is the niche in the rock long known as the Poet's Seat. It is not gener- ally supposed, in the neighborhood of Greenfield, that all the people who have sat in this seat are poets, or that sitting here is sure to make a poet out of a com- mon man ; however, if any one chooses to try it, there is no .impediment. No one but a poet ought to at- tempt to describe the vision which is here brought before us. At our feet Greenfield and the valley of the Green River, flanked by the hills of Leyden and Shelburne; to the south Old Deerfield, hidden among its elms; over against it, in the boundary between Deerfield and Conway, Arthur's Seat, a noble moun- tain ; in the middle of the picture the enchanting mead- ows of the Deerfield, with their many-figured, many- tinted carpeting. Upon this sloping bank let us sit down, while the shadows creep stealthily, as. once the red man crept, eastward across the valley at our feet ; while the clouds above the Shelburne hills change to
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
gold and amber and crimson and purple; while the robin in the branches overhead sings his vesper song, and the evening star shines out in the west; then si- lently, as the twilight fades, we will rise and seek the path that will lead us quickly down from this mount of beautiful vision.
" Black shadows fall From the lindens tall That lift aloft their massive wall Against the southern sky;
" And from the realms Of the shadowy elms, A tide-like darkness overwhelms The fields that round us lie.
" But the night is fair,
And everywhere A warm soft vapor fills the air, And distant sounds seem near ;
" And above, in the light
Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere."
We went, as was meet, to the Poet's Seat last even- tide ; this morning a place with a name something less romantic will be the destination of our walk :
THE BEAR'S DEN.
We follow Main street again to the end, turn again into the Montague road, and a few rods beyond the residence of Judge Grinnell we take a well-trodden path, which leads through a beautiful pasture on the
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THE SAME OLD CLAM-SHELL.
right of the highway. Following this path for about a mile, with a bright panorama nearly all the while in view, we come to the southern end of Rocky Moun- tain, where the Deerfield River pierces the barrier and descends into the Connecticut Valley. Tradition says that this Deerfield Valley was once a lake brimful of water to the top of this hill, and that a squaw, with a clam-shell, scraped away the earth at this point for the water to flow over into the Connecticut Valley, thus opening a channel which the water has worn till it has cut the mountain in two and emptied the lake. Un- doubtedly the valley was once a lake, and the water has worn this channel; but the squaw and her clam- shell are mildly apocryphal. This is not the only
place where they have done duty. The same story is told, unless we forget, of the parting between Tom and Holyoke through which the Connecticut River runs; and upon the banks of every old water basin in the land that has been drained, tradition has perched the same old squaw with her clam-shell. Standing at this point, both valleys are seen, and the view is beautiful in both directions. The wagon-bridge, which crosses the Deerfield River just above us, was built as a toll- bridge in 1798, and its charter ran seventy years; in November, 1868, it became free, and passed into the possession of the town of Deerfield.
The railroad bridge, which stands above it, by which the Connecticut River Railroad crosses the Deerfield River, is seven hundred and fifty feet in length, and ninety feet above the water. On the morning of July
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
17, 1864, during the draft riots, the bridge which stood where this one stands was burnt,-with what purpose is not quite clear. It was supposed at the time that the object was to call the people and the fire depart- ment away from Greenfield, when the town was to have been set on fire. If this was the intent of the incendi- ary, he failed in his purpose, for the citizens stood by their own stuff, and let the bridge burn.
The Bear's Den is a rough and steep ravine with a sort of cavern at the southern extremity of this hill, up which ardent and adventurous youth sometimes clamber. Sitting in the Poet's Seat will not make a man a poet, but climbing up the Bear's Den is very likely to make a man as hungry as a bear. If any one lacks appetite, therefore, let him make the experiment ; while those of us who do not need this kind of sharp- ening will at once descend to dinner.
Those who are not vigorous enough to make these longer tramps of which we have been talking will find it a pleasant walk to the end of Congress street, lead- ing directly south from the head of Main street. The western view from this point is very beautiful.
The drives about Greenfield are no less inviting than the walks, and first among them for interest is the drive to
OLD DEERFIELD.
In order that we may fully appreciate the scenes upon which we shall look, we will study for a little while, before we start, the early history of this famous old town. Originally Deerfield embraced within its
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THE SPIES AND THE PROMISED LAND.
limits the present towns of Conway, Shelburne, Green- field and Gill ; and its settlement was on this wise. Eliot, the celebrated Indian apostle, after some years of labor among the red men, reached a conclusion not unlike that which has lately found expression in the President's Message,-that civilization and citizenship were indispensable to the Christianization of the In- dians. He therefore in 1651 asked the General Court for two thousand acres of land at Natick, then a part of Dedham, upon which he might found an Indian community. This reasonable request was granted. As a recompense for the lands thus taken away the General Court in 1663 voted that the town of Dedham might select for itself eight thousand acres of unoc- cupied land anywhere within the province. In the same year messengers were sent out to locate the land. They traveled as far west as Lancaster, to the Chestnut Hills ; and very likely climbed to the top of Wachusett, from which the country was visible for many miles on either side. They returned and re- ported that the land was rough and uneven, offering few inducements to pioneers. The next spring an old hunter told the people of Dedham that there was land worth possessing on the Connecticut River, north of Hadley. Immediately they appointed one of their number to go with him and spy out the land. The report they brought back was so favorable that four men were commissioned to proceed to the spot and locate the land. They journeyed westward through the unbroken forest, till they reached the Connecticut
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
Valley which they crossed not far below the mouth of the Deerfield, and climbed to the top of the rocky ridge separating the two valleys, when a scene was presented to their eyes fairer than any they had be- held on this Continent. The wide valley then as now was green with verdure ; no forests had grown since the ancient lake was drained ; the course of the Deer- field was marked by thickets that grew upon its banks ; thousands of acres of smooth and fruitful land rudely planted by the red man were waiting for a better cul- tivation. No wonder that these good Puritans gave vent to their joy in fervent and Scriptural thanksgiving. They at once proceeded to locate their eight thousand acres with excellent judgment, selecting what proved to be the best land in the region. Shortly thereafter, Major Pynchon of Springfield purchased this land of the Indians for the people of Dedham, paying there- for £94, Ios. The deeds by which the property was originally conveyed are now in the archives of the town of Deerfield. The date of the first settlement is not quite certain. It has commonly been fixed at 1671 or 1672 ; but some of the later students of the old history are inclined to place it as far back as 1669 ;- just two hundred years ago. At this time the only settlements of white men in this region were those of Hadley, Hatfield, Northampton and Spring- field. Until the year 1675 these settlers dwelt in peace and security ; then began the long train of con- flicts and calamities which has no parallel in the- pioneer history of any community in our country.
-
49
KING PHILIP'S WAR.
Massasoit, the Indian sachem who welcomed the Pilgrims to Plymouth, and proved himself, during his whole life, a trusty friend of the white man, was suc- ceeded by his son Philip, a chief of a very different temper. Perceiving that the English were gaining rapidly in numbers and influence, and that the empire of the red man was in danger, he formed the various Indian tribes of New England into an alliance for the purpose of exterminating the whites. Hostilities began in the year 1675 ; and the first serious contest in West- ern Massachusetts was in Brookfield, in July of that year, where an ambuscade, a siege and a conflagration signalized the ferocity of the savages. The Pocumtuck Indians, whose hunting grounds were in this valley, at first professed hostility to Philip; but shortly after the siege of Brookfield, the wily sachem found his way into this region, and won their allegiance. At this time Hadley was the head-quarters of the English forces, and about one hundred and eighty men were then in garrison, under Captains Beers and Lathrop. The treachery of the Indians in this vicinity being sus- pected, they were ordered to deliver up their arms. This they promised to do; but on the night of the 25th of August, before their arms had been given up, they secretly left their quarters and fled up the river. Beers and Lathrop pursued them the next day, over- took and attacked them in South Deerfield, near the base of Sugar Loaf Mountain, and killed twenty-six of them, the remainder making good their escape to the camp of Philip, which was somewhere in the vicinity.
1
3
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
Ten of the English soldiers fell in this battle. One week afterward the Indians attacked the settlers in Deerfield, killed one of them, and burnt nearly all the houses in the little settlement. This was the Ist of September, 1675. But the settlement was not aban- doned. A garrison was established here, and Captain Mosely was made Commandant. In the fields around Deerfield a large amount of wheat had been harvested and stacked. The winter was approaching, and this wheat must be secured before the Indians destroyed it. Accordingly, Captain Lathrop, with eighty soldiers and a large number of teams and drivers, were sent to thrash the grain and bring it to Hadley. They pro- ceeded to Deerfield, thrashed and loaded the grain without molestation, and the 18th of September began their return march to Hadley. The rest of the story shall be told by General Hoyt, whose valuable His- tory of the Indian Wars, now out of print, is the stand- ard authority upon the early history of this region :-
" For the distance of about three miles after leaving Deerfield Meadow, Lathrop's march lay through a very level country, closely wooded, where he was every mo- ment exposed to an attack on either flank. At the termination of this distance, near the south point of Sugar Loaf Hill, the road approximated Connecticut River, and the left was in some measure protected. At the village now called Muddy Brook, in the southerly part of Deerfield, the road crossed a small stream, bordered by a narrow morass, from which the village has its name; though, more appropriately, it should
5I
THE MASSACRE AT BLOODY BROOK.
be denominated Bloody Brook, by which it was for some time known .* Before arriving at the point of intersection with the brook, the road for about half a mile ran parallel to the morass, then crossing it con- tinued to the south point of Sugar Loaf Hill, traversing what is now the home-lots on the east side of the vil- . lage. As the morass was thickly covered with brush, this place of crossing afforded a favorable point for surprise.
"On discovering Lathrop's march, a body of up- wards of seven hundred Indians t planted themselves in ambuscade at this point, and lay eagerly waiting to pounce upon him while passing the morass. Without scouring the woods in his front and flanks, or suspect- ing the snare laid for him, Lathrop arrived at the fatal spot ; crossed the morass with the principal part of his force, and probably halted to allow time for his teams to drag through their loads. The critical moment had arrived. The Indians instantly poured a heavy and destructive fire upon the column and rushed furiously to close attack. Confusion and dismay succeeded. The troops broke and scattered, fiercely pursued by the Indians whose great superiority [in numbers ] enabled them to attack at all points. Hopeless was the situation of the scattered troops, and they resolved to sell their lives in a vigorous struggle. Covering themselves with trees the bloody conflict now became
* This suggestion of General Hoyt was adopted, and the stream is now known as Bloody Brook.
t Probably commanded by Philip himself.
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FROM THE HUB TO THE HUDSON.
a severe trial of skill in sharp shooting, in which life was the stake. Difficult would it be to describe the havoc, barbarity and misery that ensued ; 'Fury raged, and shuddering pity quit the sanguine field,' while des- peration stood pitted, 'at fearful odds ' to unrelenting ferocity. The dead, the dying, the wounded strewed the ground in all directions, and Lathrop's devoted force was soon reduced to a small number, and resist- ance became faint. At length the unequal struggle terminated in the annihilation of nearly the whole of the English ; only seven or eight escaped from the bloody scene to relate the dismal tale, and the wounded were indiscriminately butchered. Captain Lathrop fell in the early part of the action ; the whole loss, includ- ing teamsters, amounted to ninety. The company was a choice corps of young men from the county of Essex in Massachusetts ; many from the most respectable families. Hubbard says 'they were the flower of the county ; none of whom were ashamed to speak with the enemy in the gate.' Captain Lathrop was from Salem, Massachusetts.
" Captain Mosely, at Deerfield, between four and five miles distant, hearing the musketry, made a rapid · march for the relief of Lathrop, and arriving at the close of the struggle found the Indians stripping and mangling the dead. Promptly rushing on, in compact order, he broke through the enemy, and charging back and forth, cut down all within the range of his shot ; and at length drove the remainder through the adjacent swamp, and another farther west, and after several
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DELENDA EST DEERFIELD.
hours of gallant fighting compelled them to seek safety in the more distant forests.
"Just at the close of the action, Major Treat (then commanding the garrison at Hadley,) who, on the morning of the day, had marched toward Northfield, arrived on the ground with one hundred men, and shared in the final pursuit of the enemy. The gallant Mosely lost but two men in the various attacks, and seven or eight only were wounded. Probably the Indians had expended most of their ammunition in the action with Lathrop, and occasionally fought with their bows and spears."
That night Mosely and Treat, with their men, slept in the garrison at Deerfield, and the next morning they returned to bury their dead. The number of Indians killed in the two engagements was ninety-six.
Shortly after this, it became evident that the post of Deerfield could only be held with the greatest difficulty. The garrison was therefore withdrawn to Hadley, and what was left of the little town was entirely destroyed by the savages.
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