USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 14
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The judges had engaged to surrender rather than have the coun- try, or any particular person, suffer on their account, and on intima- tion of the minister's danger, they generously resolved to go to New Haven and deliver themselves to the authorities there. After letting the Deputy Governor know where they were, they waited for develop-
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ments, but he took no measures to secure them, and the next day per- sons came to advise them not to surrender.
So they contented themselves by appearing publicly at New Haven, thus clearing Mr. Davenport from the suspicion of still harboring them. Then they went into the woods again to their cave. There they continued, with little variation in routine, except an occasional venture to a house near the cave. Fortunately, there came a change in August. The search for them was about over, and they went to the home of a man named Tomkins, which was near Milford meeting- house, and there they remained two years, without so much as going into the orchard. Then they took a little more liberty, and made themselves known to several persons in whom it was safe to confide. Also they frequently prayed or preached at private meetings in their chamber.
Commissioners from King Charles arrived at Boston in 1664, and as soon as this news reached the regicides, they retired to their cave, where they tarried eight or ten days. Soon afterward some Indian hunters discovered the cave with the bed in it. The report was spread abroad, and then there was no safety for the regicides in that region.
On the thirteenth of October, they began a long night journey through the woods to Hadley, a little wilderness plantation only five years old and nearly a hundred miles distant. Some of their escapes on the way are said to have been quite exciting as, for instance, when hotly chased, they came to a small river and crawled under the wooden bridge, where they lurked, while their pursuers galloped overhead and away on a fruitless search. The Hadley minister had previously agreed to take them secretly into his home, and there he kept them concealed for more than fifteen years. Very few persons in the Colony knew of these regicides in hiding, but it seems likely that Major Pynchon must have known, as he was the most influential man in this section and used Hadley as his base in the Indian fighting.
During the period that the judges were harbored by Mr. Russell they did not burden him financially. He was no sufferer by reason of his boarders. They received more or less remittances every year from their wives in England, and those few persons who knew where they were hidden sent them frequent presents. Peter Tilton, at whose home the exiles sometimes resided, was often at Boston and donations could be safely made through him. Richard Saltonstall, who was in the secret,
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made them a present of fifty pounds when he was about to sail for England, and there were several other friends who made contribu- tions. However, they were in constant terror, though after some years they had reason to hope that the search for them was over. One grim pleasure was reading the news of their being killed along with other judges in Switzerland. Goffe's diary, for six or seven years contained every little occurrence in the town, church, and certain fami- lies in the neighborhood.
There came a time when Governor Hutchinson was in possession of Goffe's diary, and his papers and letters. Unfortunately, a mob that disapproved of him because he was a Tory, rifled the house, and the regicides' material was gone forever.
In 1674 Goffe wrote to his wife that her father, General Whalley, was fast nearing his end, and went on to say: "He is scarce capable of any rational discourse, his understanding, memory, and speech do so much fail him, and he seems not to take much notice of anything that is either said or done, but patiently bears all things, and never complains. The common question is to ask how he does, and his answer, for the most part is, 'Very well, I praise God.' He has not been able for a long time to dress, undress, or feed himself without help. It is a great mercy to him that he has a friend who takes pleasure in being helpful to him." As time went on something brought Goffe's hitherto unfailing correspondence with his wife to an end. The letters he wrote received no response and he never succeeded during the rest of his waning life in getting any clue to why her letters stopped. They were almost his only comfort, and they had failed him. But no one knows when the day of rest for Whalley came. Neither have we any definite knowledge of Goffe's death. However, in 1685, we find Mr. Russell visiting Boston, and it seems probable that his "special work" had come to an end with a second burial in his cellar.
Rev. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, published "A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I-Whalley, Goffe, and Dix- well," and dedicated it "to all the patrons of real, perfect, and unpol- luted liberty." He collected a great abundance of traditionary infor- mation from the towns about New Haven and from Hadley. He found that the Providence Hill of Whalley and Goffe was West Rock, about two and a half miles northwest of New Haven, and that their
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cave was not in the side of the hill, but in a great mass of lava rock on its top. The judges were not out of danger while secreted in Hadley because public inquiry was made after them by men sent from England, and there was need of their always being on their guard.
Few persons in the town knew of their presence until long after their death and it was the surmise of some that the bodies were removed from Hadley to New Haven. Such removal seems incredible. The necessity of secrecy would have prevented, for they could only have been transported by oxen and carts.
The best known and most disputed tradition in connection with the Hadley regicides was published in 1764 by Governor Hutchinson in his history of Massachusetts. Here we have for the first time the full- fledged story of the "Hadley Angel" :
"September Ist, 1675, was a day of alarms and tragedies in that vicinity. For the Indians were making raids, and bloody warfare prevailed in the valley of the Connecticut. No doubt there was the utmost confusion, not only in Hadley, but in Northampton and Deerfield. The usual method of Indians in warfare is to watch chances for a surprise; then follows a swift attack and hasty retreat. In this instance the first shock was not a success, and the Indians lingered, and to some degree beseiged the garrisons, expecting to lay the whole town of Deerfield in ashes. Some were busy plundering and burn- ing out of musket range from the stockades. Meanwhile this condition was discovered and reported by Indian scouts from farther down the river. Then followed the first attack ever made on any town in the valley. The main thought of the people was, 'What will be our fate after Deerfield is destroyed?'"
There is no doubt about the Hadley pioneers being in consterna- tion by a most sudden and violent alarm. That can be taken for granted, and without doubt, a sleepless night followed.
In accord with habit in frontier towns, and even at Springfield in those Indian wars, a number of men of the various congregations were selected to go armed to worship. It was so in Hadley at this time, and when the Indians appeared on a fast day, September I, while the whole village was gathered in the meetinghouse, the men who had
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guns immediately prepared to use them. Hitherto, there had been little or no need of firearms in connection with the Indians, and now, in time of stress, conditions became so panicky there was the utmost confusion among the people, and then there suddenly appeared in their midst a grave, elderly man who differed from the rest of them in manners and clothing. He encouraged them to defend themselves, and he put himself at their head, rallied them, and led them to encounter the enemy. By such means the Indians were repulsed, and as suddenly as the deliverer of Hadley came, so suddenly did he go, and the people were left in consternation, utterly unable to account for this strange phenomenon, except by considering that person an angel sent of God on this special occasion for their deliverance. Nor did they get any inkling otherwise until fifteen or twenty years later, when it became known that the two judges had been hidden in this region. The mystery was then unriddled, and as there had been a revolution in England, with a change of rulers, it was not very dan- gerous to have it known that the judges had been given an asylum here.
According to Governor Hutchinson the anecdote of Goffe in his history was handed down through Governor Leverett's family, who were at Hadley while the judges were there. Governor Hutchinson's father must have been well acquainted with the Leverett family.
It was the supposition of President Stiles that the people in the meetinghouse on that day in September were "suddenly surrounded and surprised by a body of Indians." This statement must be unfounded. The Indians, with a defenseless village a mile in length before them would not have surrounded a building which contained thirty or forty armed men. The attack was undoubtedly on the out- skirts of the town, probably at the north end, and the approach of the Indians may have been observed by Goffe from his chamber, which had a window toward the east.
A time came when secrecy was no longer needed, but by then facts had grown hazy, and tradition had taken their place. Some effort began to be made in 1793 to gather from the oldest inhabitants their fading hearsays, with results such as follows :
One tradition they all had at Hadley was that Whalley and Goffe were secreted in the town, but that none knew it at the time except those in whose houses they found a haven. The general belief was that Whalley died in the town and that Goffe, after the death of
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Whalley, went away. Tradition has it that Whalley was buried in Mr. Tilton's cellar. Most of those questioned said that while the regicides were here the Indians made an assault on the town, and that then a person unknown appeared, animating and leading on the inhabitants against the enemy, and successfully exciting them by his activity, to repel the Indians. "But when the Indians left, the stranger had disappeared-was gone! and no one knew where he went or who he was." If Hadley had been captured, discovery would have been inevitable. According to the tradition given by some, Whalley and Goffe were not concealed the whole time at Mr. Russell's and Peter Tilton's, but part of the time were at Lieutenant Samuel Smith's. "An old man among us says he remembers hearing the old people tell of a fruitless search by order of the government of all the houses in Hadley, but that they who searched did so as if they searched not."
He said, too, that after Whalley's death, Goffe went to Hartford, and later to New Haven, where he was suspected, because of his extraordinary dexterity with the sword shown on a particular occa- sion, and in fear of danger he left New Haven.
A still older man told of hearing his father and grandfather say that Whalley and Goffe were both secreted in Mr. Russell's house, and for their security in case of search, a hiding place was made for them between his chambers, and behind his chimney, and they said that one of them died at Mr. Tilton's, and was buried behind his barn. The tradition among some was that both men died in Hadley. One old man said it was a tradition that the one who died in the town was buried in Mr. Tilton's garden.
Stiles, in his "History of the Judges," tells of visiting Mr. Rus- sell's house in 1792. It was a double house with two stories and a kitchen, and some repairing had been done, but the chamber of the judges remained in the same state as when these exiled worthies dwelt there.
One person who furnished the Yale president with information was Mrs. Porter, a sensible, judicious woman, who had reached the age of seventy-seven. She was born in Hadley in 1715, next door to Mr. Tilton's. In reply to his questions, she told him that before she left Hadley, "there were many flying stories, but so uncertain that nothing could be depended on." She knew of the tradition that one of the judges was buried in Mr. Russell's cellar, and another in Mr.
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Tilton's lot. In the course of the conversation, she said that when she was a girl it was a common belief among the neighbors, that for some reason or other, an old man had been buried in the fence, between Deacon Eastman's and her father's. She also said the women and girls from their house and Deacon Eastman's used to meet at the dividing fence, and while chatting and talking together for amuse- ment, one and another at times would say with a sort of skittish fear and laughing, "Who knows but what we are standing on the old man's grave ?" She and other girls used to be fearful, even in walking the street, when they came to the place of the supposed grave, though it was never known whereabouts in that line of fence it lay. She thought all the excitement was only young folks' foolish notions. Some were much concerned lest the old man's ghost should appear in their vicinity. Stiles, in his history, tells us that he repeatedly visited Hadley for many years, and had often noticed in conversing with persons born and brought up in the town, but settled elsewhere, an impression that both the judges died in Hadley and were somewhere buried there in graves never known, except to a few, and now all definite knowl- edge was lost. Yet at the time of Stiles' visits there was general agreement that one of the judges was buried at Russell's.
A portion of the house was erected as early as 1660, and the town aided Mr. Russell to build an addition in 1662. The inventory of his estate thirty-one years later indicates that the house had a kitchen, lodging room, buttery and closet, with chambers over them, and a study. Below was a small cellar divided by a partition. The south side was the front, and had two large rooms underneath with an old- fashioned chimney, a front entry and stairs leading up between the rooms. Above were two spacious chambers, and overhead appeared the whitewashed joists and garret floor. The walls were boarded and not plastered. Chester Gaylord, the owner of the house in 1858, was then in his seventy-sixth year. In describing this house, which was torn down when he was thirteen years old, he said that north of the chimney was an inclosed place with two doors, used as a passage between the chambers. The floor boards of this passage were laid from the chimney to the north side, and the ends went under the boards that inclosed the apartment. One board, at least, was not fastened down, and it could be slipped two or three inches north or south, and then one end could be raised. When Mr. Gaylord was a
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boy he had many times raised this board and let himself down into the space below, and restored the board to its place above him. He was then in a dark hole, which had no opening into any of the lower rooms. There is a tradition that the judges were once concealed in this dark place behind the chimney when searchers went through the passage above. They could easily lift the board and hide themselves in that under closet. When the south side of the Russell house was pulled down in 1795 there was need of the stones in the old wall for use in the new cellar. The building was supported by props, while the wall was being shifted. During the shift the workmen discovered a place where the earth was loose about four feet below the top of the ground, and a little search revealed flat stones, a man's bones, and bits of wood. Nearly all the bones were in pieces, but one thigh bone was whole, and there were two sound teeth. The bones were laid on a shelf, where in a short time they all crumbled into small pieces. These bones may have been those of General Whalley, who was buried nearly one hundred and twenty years before.
A doctor, who examined the thigh bone, said it was that of a man of large size. Modern expert opinion contends that the bones were too far gone in decay to be those of one of the judges. It is more likely that this was the grave of an Indian buried long before Whalley came to Hadley.
George Sheldon, the historian of Deerfield, was one of the per- sons who did much research work connected with Hadley's angel story. His interest was aroused one day when he was delving in Judd's "History of Hadley." Some things caught his attention that made him start an investigation, and he arrived at the conclusion there had been no Indians, settlers, nor any regicides who took part in fighting at Hadley that September day in 1675. Nothing of the kind had occurred then or later. It was granted, however, that the regi- cides were real and that in Minister Russell's house there had been a secret passage to use in case of need.
For many long years Hadley's version had been the only one, and the challenge caused great consternation. The people, from youth up to old age, had an affection for their deliverer. Besides, an angel was something few towns can boast of. It gave distinction. To be with- out it would make the old town lonesome !
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Mr. Sheldon luckily lived on the other side of the Connecticut at some distance, and so escaped most of the indignation. "What! Stealing Hadley's angel ! It was a crime !" and mention was made of tar and feathers by a man whose father had been a general in the old- time militia. Things calmed down eventually and the consensus of opinion seemed to be that the angel should have the town backing, no matter what Sheldon said.
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Really, both Judd and Sheldon have argued effectively, and their views merit careful consideration.
The angel legend was a treasured heirloom in the Hadley annals, and it gave the natives a shock to have its genuineness not only doubted, but declared to be without any foundation. This was the more strange because it was stated that Judd, who wrote the history in the first place, was a person, always looked up to as a sound histori-
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cal authority of the highest rank, and that the mistake he had made was simply a time when he was "found tripping." However, Sheldon accorded Hadley the consolation that as material for romantic fiction that myth would last for ages.
The attempted debunking of the alleged "angel" myth would have had the approval of Judd to a certain extent. He took for granted there was some sort of a fight with the Indians, but says, "we have no reason to believe there was any very large body of them, but because the people were entirely unaccustomed to war they needed Goffe to arrange and order them. The Indians appear to have fled after a short skirmish." No evidence exists, except in an artist's pictures, that anyone among Indians or settlers was killed or wounded, or that any buildings were burned.
Still another account of the Indian attack on Hadley is given by the famous Boston minister, Increase Mather: "On the first of Sep- tember, 1675, one of the Boston churches was seeking the face of God by prayer before Him. Also, that very day, the church in Hadley was before the Lord in the same way, but were driven from the holy service they were attending by a most sudden and violent alarm, which routed them the whole day after." In a footnote we are told that Mather probably knew all the particulars, and it is conjectured in the text that "this was all Mather dared to publish in 1676." He does not mention either Indians or angel.
It is interesting to know that the Hadley angel roused more than local interest, and that among others it caught the attention of Sir Walter Scott, who made incidental use of it in his novel "Peveril of the Peak." Various artists of importance have found inspiration in it, and used its theme in their paintings and engravings.
The best history of early days in the Connecticut Valley was written by Sylvester Judd, whose fame grows brighter with the pass- ing years. He was born at Westhampton in 1789, when Springfield was still in old Hampshire County. His grandfather, Jonathan Judd, was the first minister of Southampton, and after serving that rural community in the same meetinghouse for sixty years, he died in 1860.
Sylvester, at the age of thirteen, with only such education as the common school of those times afforded, was placed as a clerk in a store partly owned by his father. After two years of that, he tried being a merchant's clerk in Boston. The clerking was not much of a
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success, but he fell in with persons of intelligence, who stimulated him to cultivate his own mind. Presently he returned home to help his father, where he had been before in the village store, and any money he could get he spent for books. It was to their perusal he went between the intervening calls of customers. This by no means satis- fied his thirst for knowledge, and during many succeeding years he was in the habit of sitting up until twelve, one and two o'clock engaged with his books. Here, in this little country town with no stimulus from libraries, reading rooms, or literary companionship, Judd mas- tered Latin enough to read "Virgil," learned enough Greek to under- stand the New Testament in the original; acquired a practical knowl- edge of French and gained some familiarity with Spanish. His activi- ties were many, but as a matter of dollars and cents, not very gainful. Always his mind was more bent on the pursuit of enlightenment than the accumulation of property. One of his ventures was the acquiring of the "Hampshire Gazette," and he moved to Northampton to con- centrate his energy in making the newspaper not only interesting, but instructive. To fill the paper with stories, anecdotes and other matter fitted only to amuse for the passing moment, was just the opposite of his ideal. He regarded a newspaper as an educator of the people, and he occupied his columns with matter calculated to enlarge the boun- daries of knowledge, and promote aspirations for information con- cerning men and things. To enable him to do this he expended money freely in proportion to his means, buying books, including a ponderous encyclopedia, together with numerous volumes of travel and agricul- ture. He early enlisted his paper in behalf of temperance, and there is reason to think it was the first to exclude liquor advertising.
The "Gazette" in his hands won high esteem and doubled its subscribers. Nevertheless, he relinquished it. In regard to this he wrote, "The truth is that I have become too skeptical in politics to be the conductor of a public press, I have little confidence in politics and politicians." His resources were very limited, but he made up his mind to live on, in a humble way, on such means as he had, leaving himself free for whatever mental occupations appealed to him. At the age of seventeen he had begun filling manuscript volumes with summaries of biography, history and other things, including a private journal, which he kept up more or less continuously the rest of his life. As time went on he gave himself largely to antiquarian researches.
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particularly with reference to the towns of Hampshire County, but extending to the whole state of Massachusetts. As the fruit of these labors he left about twenty manuscript volumes, entitled "Miscel- lanies," and filled with an immense variety of little known but curious matters gleaned from a wide range of varied reading. In his diary of eight or ten volumes, which was continued with regularity from 1833 to within a week of his death, are recorded his principles and opinions; the changes of wind and weather; the different stages of vegetation ; the appearance and disappearance of birds and frogs, and of numerous kinds of insects and their habits. This native region of his had a great fascination for him, and he always kept account of its various aspects.
He was keenly interested, too, in his fellowmen and their ways, past and present, and he never hesitated to point out their failings and suggest reform. As an idealist he was perhaps too sensitive, for he often felt disheartened, there was so much that was sordid in the life round about. What seemed to disturb him most in local humanity was the propensity for alcoholic boozing.
Judd was not a successful business man. His mind was always more bent on the acquisition of knowledge than the accumulation of. property. Dealing in dollars and cents was irksome to him. From the early period of his residence in Northampton Judd considered writing a history of the region, but deferred from year to year until 1857. Then, at the earnest request of persons interested, he began his history with a list of five hundred subscribers. Meanwhile his health had become impaired so that he was subject to many interrup- tions. Added to this, his extreme caution in trying to verify all his statements caused the work to progress very slowly. Yet he labored on with a diligence that was more than his strength could bear. Paraly- sis was the result, and his enfeebled system could not withstand it. In a few days the fatal disease had done its work. He died on April 18, 1860, leaving a wife and five children. His age was only slightly under seventy-one years, but though his body was weak his mind had retained its vigor. Fortunately, the history, in most essentials, had been completed. It was Hadley men who gave him most encourage- ment in his undertaking, and the book bears Hadley's name. In reality it covers territory for a score of miles up and down the valley
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