USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 18
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During shad seasons multitudes of people came to the falls on both sides of the river from various quarters. Some came from Berk- shire, and all came on horses with bags to carry shad, except a very few, who had carts. Some, with intention to buy two loads of shad, led a horse. For some years the only licensed innkeepers at the falls were Daniel Lamb and Widow Mary Pomeroy. But in shad time every house on both sides of the river was full of men and some lodged in shelters and outhouses. Horses filled the stables and many other places. On one occasion it was estimated there were 1,500 horses that day on both sides of the river. Often the men brought food with them; many cooked shad and others bought food at the houses. There were numerous instances where persons were detained one day or longer. Another element consisted of those who indulged in plays and trials of skill.
Where men were so numerous and rum was plenty, there naturally was much noise, bustle and confusion. But the greater part of the men were industrious farmers, and after leaving the falls they went off over the hills and plains with their bags of shad in every direction. There was another class at these gatherings composed of the idle, the intemperate, and the dissipated. They came to drink and frolic, and some to buy shad if their money held out.
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Many thousands of shad were still taken annually at South Had- ley Falls after the Holyoke Dam was built in 1849, but none could ascend the river, and instead of a penny each, which was paid in early times, the price for shad at retail was from twenty-five to forty cents, and sometimes fifty cents. Gradually the waning of the shad indus- try at the falls continued until there was an end to it. Yet even now, in some seasons, a few stray shad find their way up the river to the spawn waters of their ancestors, and fishermen on the rocks may hook two or three.
Wolves were very common and destructive in the New England and other colonies, and they long tried the patience of the settlers. They were considered "the greatest inconveniency in the country." The nocturnal howlings of these ravenous animals have been heard by the inhabitants of almost every township. Wolves continued to annoy the people more than a hundred years after the settlement of Springfield.
The reward for destroying wolves in 1643 was thirty shillings. In 1693 the bounty for grown wolves was twenty shillings, and for whelps five shillings. The Colony paid for one hundred and forty- seven wolves killed from 1650 to 1655. Wolf killing was at its height in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In twenty-eight years, between 1700 and 1737, a bounty was paid for killing 2,852 old wolves and one hundred and ninety-one whelps, averaging a few more than a hundred a year. Wolves were killed in many of the Hampshire towns down to about 1775. Some wolves were caught in traps and some were shot. Many were taken in wolf-pits, which were fitted to entrap them. They were seldom killed by dogs. To get a bounty the heads were carried to the constable or selectmen, who were to cut off the ears. A famous wolf killer on one occasion sent a wolf's head by his daughter. Wolves killed sheep, goats, calves, swine and deer. When the county reward was twenty shillings, it required most of the Hampshire county tax some years to pay for wolves. In the winter of 1660 a man killed a wolf on the ice of the Connecticut, and the county court decided that each abutting town should pay half of the town bounty.
A reward for destroying wildcats was first offered in 1727. Twenty shillings were paid for those over a year old, and ten shill- ings for those younger. In the next seven years two hundred and
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eighteen old wildcats were killed and eighty-eight young ones. After this havoc they did not become so numerous. The common wildcats of New England were a species of lynx.
In 1742 a bounty was offered to persons who killed bears-ten shillings for old ones and five for cubs, from the first of April to the first of September. The small reward, and the delay in giving it, indicate that bears were much less harmful than wolves and wild- cats. Yet in some seasons, especially when acorns and and nuts were scarce, bears destroyed pigs and sheep, and devoured soft corn. About 1788, John Montague, of Hadley, shot a bear which his dog had treed in Hadley meadow, and carried it to the broad town street on the top of his load of corn. This was long after bears had disappeared from the valley. Bear meat was eaten in the river towns, and was accounted about as good as venison. The price of bear meat from 1721 to 1759 averaged about two pence a pound in lawful money.
There were a few catamounts formerly near the west border of New England. In 1742 the State offered a reward of forty shillings, which was gradually increased to four pounds. The killing of a cata- mount must have been a rare occurrence. There are stories of the creatures being killed in Hampshire, but some of the tales relating to the catamount are not credible. The creature has a terrific scream, yet rarely, if ever, attacks man, woman, or child. The stories about lions in early writings of New England came from the reports of Indians who had seen the catamount and heard its scream.
Towns often gave premiums to encourage the destroying of crows and blackbirds. At first it was the blackbirds that were the more mischievous, and most towns offered rewards for them before they made war on the crows. A premium of one penny each for blackbirds was first offered and the heads were to be cut off in the presence of one of the selectmen. For woodchucks eight pence apiece was paid, and their ears were to be cut off in the presence of a selectman. A one shilling premium for crows was paid in 1727. The shrewd and cautious crow has maintained himself against all the arts and efforts of men and still abounds. He does much harm by pulling up the corn that is planted, but is useful as a scavenger, devouring reptiles, worms, insects and all sorts of dead carcasses.
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Woodchucks and skunks were very rare in New England when first settled by the English. These and some other quadrupeds, and many species of birds greatly increased in the neighborhood of civil- ized men, whose farms yielded much more food for them than the forests and Indian towns.
Long ago woodchucks were caught and their skins tanned for whip- lashes. Many boys in the Hampshire towns trapped them at the mouths of their holes, and afterward, with the aid of lime or ashes, the skins were freed from hair and then tanned-many of them in the common soap barrels. The whiplashes were a means for the boys to get spending money.
Beavers, which were once numerous in the region, were nearly all caught by the Indians before King Philip's War in 1675. For some years the beaver trade with the Indians was in the hands of John Pynchon and those appointed by him. He packed for England in six years forty-seven hogsheads containing nearly a thousand beaver skins, and sent many more in bundles. He packed six hundred and ninety- nine otter skins, about nine hundred skins of muskrats, and many of the gray and red fox, raccoon, marten, mink and wildcat; also four hundred and twenty-six moose skins weighing from twelve to twenty- five pounds each. Many of the beaver and other skins were brought from the north and west, and most were bought of Indians.
For a long time the mild and nimble deer were very numerous. The early planters of Hampshire, though they occasionally hunted deer, turkeys and other game, were too industrious to spend much time in such pursuits. The Indians were the principal hunters in this region while they remained. Many persons of the succeeding genera- tions sometimes diverted themselves by hunting, but few let this recreation interfere with their regular business. Harmful animals were hunted from necessity. Deer were more useful to men than all else that was hunted, and as they were lean in winter, and the females produced their young in the spring, the Colony enacted in 1698 that deer should not be killed between January I and August I. Other colonies had similar laws. In 1739 each town of the province was required to choose men annually to prosecute or inform against any persons who killed deer out of season. Two men called "Deer Reeves" or "Informers of Deer," were chosen yearly from 1758 to 1780. Only a few deer were killed in the river towns after 1780.
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The county records note the prosecution of many persons in Hamp- shire for killing deer unlawfully. The fine was ten pounds, half going to the informer.
Long ago a number of men in the valley towns were known as the "old hunters." They had chased deer and other wild game before the Revolution, and sometimes a social party and a venison feast came after a hunt. Many of their hunting stories were in circulation, and some of these were so wild as to be scarcely credible. Occasionally such men were trappers as well as hunters. Those who spent a large portion of their time in hunting were poor. The habits of such were not consistent with regular industry. "Hunting does not increase property nor improve morals."
Levi Moody, of Granby, born in 1784, used to say that deer con- tinued on the extensive pine plains in the eastern part of Springfield, and were killed by hunters from South Hadley and Granby until after 1800. When pursued by hounds they often crossed Chicopee River. Mr. Moody shot deer on these plains-the last one in 1820. Heath hens, similar to prairie hens, were formerly on the Springfield plains.
William Pynchon and John Pynchon bought much venison from the Indians and sold it to the inhabitants of the town. Many quarters of the venison weighed from fourteen to thirty pounds each. Venison was sometimes salted in a cask, and deer tallow was sometimes made into candles.
Leather garments were common in England and a vast number of deer skins were prepared in New England for use as apparel. Dress- ing deer skins, moose skins and beaver skins was a regular trade. Breeches were the most common garment made of deer leather, but jackets and waistcoats were numerous, and there were leather doub- lets and coats, and some had a leather suit. A few had wash-leather stockings and many had deerskin gloves. Moccasins were made of deer leather and moose leather. Many of the men in this region wore leather breeches, and some had other leather garments. Even the clergy had their leather breeches and waistcoats to some degree, and there were military men who did not disdain leather breeches. When sheepskins were scarce, leather aprons were, on occasion, made of dressed beaver skins. The only fur made into hats was that of bea- vers, raccoons, and muskrats. Beaver hats, after 1750, were sold for from twenty to forty-two shillings each, and raccoon and muskrat hats
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brought from twelve to twenty shillings. Raccoons have been hunted for hundreds of years, for both pleasure and profit. They have com- monly been hunted in the night with the aid of a good dog which trees them. A raccoon on a climbable tree would be shaken off by a man and caught by the dog. Sometimes one was shot by moonlight. The hunters often kindled a fire and waited until morning. Then they perhaps shot one or two more; if a raccoon was in a hollow tree, the tree was cut down and the dog seized the 'coon. Sometimes a boy was allowed the privilege of going along and carrying a lantern for the hunters. The raccoons still devour green corn and are still hunted in many of our towns. The meat used to be esteemed by some nearly as good as venison.
Muskrats are still plenty in some regions of Hampshire, and they continue to be hunted, though perhaps more for sport than for the pelt. When a flood covers most of the meadows and lowlands, and the muskrats are driven from their habitations, boats may be seen carrying men with guns and a dog, and now and then is heard the pecu- liar clicking noise made by the discharge of a gun near the water; then the dog leaps out and brings to the boat a muskrat, if one has been killed.
That big, formidable animal, the moose, sometimes strayed into Hampshire. One was killed at Brookfield in 1765, and another, six feet high, was killed there two years later. Wild turkeys were abun- dant in the Colony. They naturally frequented the oak, chestnut and beech forests, rather than the pine lands. Wild turkeys sold about 1720 at one shilling four pence each. They weighed from five to fifteen pounds. Turkeys were hunted on Mount Tom and other places in the region. Deer hunters were also turkey hunters. Many years ago the initials of several turkey hunters might be seen in the bark of a white birch tree, near the path over the mountain called by the hunters "Turkey Pass." Turkeys were killed in this vicinity after 1800, but they were not so plenty on the east side of the river. Sylvester Judd said that when he was a boy in Westhampton, about 1800, he often saw small flocks of wild turkeys in the woods near his father's home. He observed their tracks in the winter snows, and heard their gobbling in the spring. Wild turkeys continued on Mount Tom longer than elsewhere. There was a flock on Mount Tom in 1842, a few in 1845, and a single turkey in 1851. The old writers tell
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large stories about the weight of wild turkeys, even reporting it to be from forty to fifty pounds each, and in two instances sixty pounds. A more moderate authority said fat ones weighed from twenty to thirty pounds. In Northampton a man who weighed many of them found only two or three that went as high as twenty-four pounds. These weights were before the turkeys were dressed. Pigeons passed over the east- ern part of the Colony in countless multitudes in early days. Onlook- ers could see neither beginning nor ending of these millions of millions. In 1741 they had a breeding place near the line between Hampshire and Vermont, and their nests on the beech and hemlock trees extended for miles. Pigeons were taken in nets around Boston as early as 1700, and in Hampshire many were shot before 1740. They were sometimes decoyed by a flutterer or stool pigeon, but more often were taken without such a lure. In former days they were caught so abundantly that at Granby they could neither be sold nor eaten, and the bodies of many were given to the hogs after the feathers were plucked from them. Pigeon feathers were much used for beds. In August, 1736, pigeons were only two pence a dozen and many could not be sold at that. In 1850 they sold from seventy-five cents to fifty cents a dozen. Since then their interminable multitudes have rapidly melted away. Why, remains a mystery.
Partridges are greatly lessened in numbers, and their spring drum- ming is much less frequent. Quails, which were sometimes caught in box traps, are rare and their prediction of "more wet" is seldom heard. Wild ducks were formerly abundant, but now seldom are seen and wild geese are still more uncommon. The old hunters did not shoot singing birds, nor did the Indians. That barbarous practice belongs to later times. Squirrel hunts with two sides and shooting at tame turkeys about the time of Thanksgiving are sports introduced into this part of the country since the Revolution.
The rattlesnake excited the curiosity of many Europeans who came to this country. It was correctly reported to be "a most sleepy and unnimble creature, never offering to bite unless trodden on."
Rattlesnakes inhabited Mount Tom when the region was settled, and they continue to be there. Now the section in the county most thickly populated with rattlesnakes is Mount Tekoa, just north of the Westfield River from Woronoco. After a while several men were bitten, and it is alleged they were cured by snake weed. It is believed
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that for more than two hundred years no person in the valley towns has lost a life by them. Two young men named Smith, south of Hol- yoke, were bitten by a rattlesnake in the eighteenth century, but were cured. A few cases were fatal elsewhere. Several of the snakes are killed almost every summer on the sides and near the foot of the mountains.
Physicians formerly supposed there was much medicinal virtue in the flesh and gall of the poisonous viper of Europe, and of the rattle- snake of America. Rattlesnake flesh was eaten by some infirm per- sons in this vicinity a century or more ago and the gall was mixed with chalk and made into balls. Even physicians bought these precious balls and gave eight shillings a dozen for them. Traders bought them also, and country stores.
About 1775 a Southampton man killed five rattlesnakes at the same time near the foot of Pomeroy Mountain. Then he cut off their heads, fastened the bodies to the saddle and carried them home, dan- gling from his saddle. It has long been believed by some that rattle- snakes have the power of fascination. The stories told of black- snakes, or any others winding themselves around the bodies of per- sons in New England are fabulous.
Hampden-16
How The People Lived
CHAPTER XVI How The People Lived
Massachusetts settlers for want of oxen at first tilled their land mainly with the spade and hoe for some years. But when the valley of the Connecticut was settled, men had cattle and plows. No part of New England was more productive of wheat and other grain than this valley. In the three towns above the falls every farmer raised wheat, and wheaten bread was common, though much Indian corn was also prepared for food. But the alluvial lands became less pro- ductive as early as 1680, and the crops of wheat had seriously dimin- ished by 1700. In the next sixty years the crop became so uncer- tain and so often failed, that most men ceased to sow wheat on the lowlands, and during the next sixty or seventy years the greater part of the wheat consumed in Hampshire was raised on uplands newly cleared. Wheat was sparingly used. Many families had only enough for the entertainment of friends and the annual Thanksgiving. The blasting of wheat began in eastern Massachusetts and Plymouth in 1664, and it was deemed a judgment. Pies were sometimes made with rye paste for the bottom and top, and some had rye below and a wheaten upper crust. Most of the people in the Hampshire towns, though they consumed much corn, commonly had bread made of bolted rye flour for nearly a century. Rye bread was long used in considerable quantities. In the counties east of Hampshire the com- mon bread of the inhabitants was made of sifted rye flour mixed with corn meal, and it was dark, glutinous and heavy.
A few years after 1800 barrels of flour began to be brought up the river into Hampshire. For some years the quantity was not large, but no sooner were the Erie Canal and railroads ready to furnish transportation, than the quantity of wheat flour consumed in New England was greatly increased.
The people of New England could hardly have been sustained without the American grain, Indian corn. It has furnished them with
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much of their food for generations. The average length of an ear in 1676 was nine inches, and the colors of the corn were yellow, white, red, blue, olive, greenish, black, speckled, striped and some other tints, but yellow and white were the most common. The stalks grew to the height of six or eight feet. The planting was in rows several
E
Guil. Pynchon, Aimg Effigies Delin. Anno Dom. 1657 Ætat 67
WILLIAM PYNCHON
feet apart each way, and four or five grains in a hill. The corn was hoed three times, and at the third hoeing a hill was made. Some Eng- lish, following the example of the Indians, planted beans in corn hills, and pumpkins and squashes in vacant places between the hills.
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Farmers who had a cornhouse husked their corn in it. Others husked in the barn, or in the great kitchen. The evening husking party was generally composed of the family, but sometimes a few neighbors were present. They were lively and cheerful, but not very noisy. At the close there was a simple serving of food. The boister- ous husking frolics and the kissings connected with red ears, which took place in some parts of New England, were not known in this vicinity.
Hasty pudding was made in Great Britain of flour and milk, and of oatmeal and water, before New England was settled. This name was improperly given to our puddings of Indian meal and water, for everything made of Indian meal requires thorough boiling or baking. It was formerly the custom in the local towns to make hasty pudding once a week, That usually meant making it on Saturday and eating it with milk at night and the next morning. The New England hard pudding, boiled many hours in a linen bag, was long a part of the dinner in most families in farming towns. It was reported that some Hampshire families had three hundred and sixty-five such puddings in a year.
The culture of potatoes was introduced in New England by the Scotch-Irish who came over in 1718. Few were raised in Hampshire until these people settled in Palmer, Pelham and Blandford. The inhabitants were indebted to the new settlers for their knowledge of potatoes, and of the manner of cultivation. Most were satisfied with raising a few bushels. A Spanish potato, fit only for the hogs, was raised, and a red potato used for the table. A good white potato followed.
Pumpkins ripened under the suns of New England were much more dry and sweet than those grown in England. One authority praised stewed pumpkin with a little butter, spice and vinegar. Another called it a "fruit which the Lord fed his people until corn and cattle increased." Pumpkin bread-made of half Indian meal, was one way of serving it. The Indians dried pumpkins and strung them for winter use, and the colonists followed the Indian custom.
Some boiled beans, peas, corn and pumpkins together and liked the combination. Pumpkins have been raised to feed animals in the river towns from very early times. Stewed pumpkins and pumpkin bread were common ways of using the fruit for food.
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Pumpkin pies were early made in New England, and the delicious pumpkin pie at the annual Thanksgiving may well remind us of the hardships of our forefathers. A hundred years ago most of the kitchens of Hampden County farmers, late in autumn, had poles sus- pended from the joists loaded with pumpkins cut into circular slices, and these slices were dried for pies and sauce. A pumpkin-paring sometimes made a merry evening, as well as an apple-paring.
Flax was an absolute necessity to past generations. Nearly all the linen and tow cloth used for garments, sheets and other bed furnish- ing, tablecloths, napkins, towels and bags, was made in families. The industrious females also made linsey-woolsey of flax and wool, and other cloth of flax and cotton. Tow cloth made of tow and flax was an article of traffic more than half a century. Traders bought it, and it was sent to Hartford, New Haven and other places. The wives and daughters of farmers exchanged tow cloth, checked linen, woolen, and other cloths with the traders, receiving instead stuff for gowns and other articles.
Some of the farmers sowed small fields to hemp, and both hemp and flax were used for ropes and cords. There were men who made cart-ropes, bed-cords, leading lines, and halters. The wild hemp from which the Indians made lines and nets still grows in the region.
Flax was cultivated by the early settlers, and by succeeding genera- tions, until the establishment of cotton factories. It used to be an important crop in old Hampshire, and was made into cloth in most families, but so complete has been the change that few persons have ever seen a woman hatchel flax, or card tow, or heard the buzzing of the foot wheel, or seen bunches of flaxen yarn hanging in the kitchen, or linen cloth whitening on the grass. The flax dresser, with the shives, fibers and dirt of flax covering his garments, and his face begrimed with dust, has disappeared; the noise of his brake and swingling-knife has ended, and the boys no longer make bonfires of his swingling-tow. The sound of the spinning wheel, the song of the spinster and the snapping of the clock-reel have all ceased; the warping-bars and quill-wheel are gone, and the thwack of the loom is heard only in the factory. This revolution, and a similar later one in the household manufacture of wool, have made a great change in domestic life.
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Broom corn, a native of India, has long been cultivated in South- ern Europe, chiefly for the seed, but brooms and brushes were made of it in Italy for some centuries since. Various minor experiments were made with it here in America by Benjamin Franklin and others, but to Levi Dickinson, of Hadley, belongs the credit of finding a way to raise broom corn abundantly, and of supplying the country with brooms. He introduced an important industry, and women have been furnished with better sweeping tools than they ever had before. He succeeded in getting a little broom seed and planted some hills in his garden at the upper part of the old back street of Hadley. That was in 1797. When harvest came he had enough seed for a half acre, and the next spring he planted the first half acre ever cultivated for brooms in America. He continued to plant more in the following years. Strangers who were passing, after it had put forth its tufted panicles, were puzzled to know what that strange thing was and often they stopped to make inquiries.
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