USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 19
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Mr. Dickinson made twenty or thirty brooms in 1797, and between one hundred and two hundred the next year. Heber, a colored man, began to tie on brooms for him, but he, himself, contrived a better way. He sat in his chair, with the string round a roll under his feet and wound it round the brush in his lap. The seed at first was scraped from the brush by a knife, and afterward by the edge of a hoe with a short handle, fastened to a bench. Upright teeth were used later.
Mr. Dickinson peddled in a horse-cart in Williamsburg, Ashfield and Conway, in 1798. He used to say that the day when he first sold a few brooms was the happiest day in his life. He had made certain that some women liked his brooms and would buy them. In 1799 he went to Pittsfield with brooms, and about 1800 to as far as New Lon- don. From the beginning, most people in Hadley thought he was visionary and his projects fanciful, and sneers and sarcasms were frequent. These things were very unpleasant and he found obstacles and up-hill work, but he was not diverted from his course. He was a man of energy and persistence, though of small estate and infirm health, and he boldly predicted that the broom business would be the greatest in the county. At length his neighbors began to think he was prospering, and some of the most influential began to raise broom corn and make brooms. That was about 1800, and it was not far from that date when Cato, a negro, planted the first broom corn in
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the meadow. Three or four years later Dickinson carried brooms to Boston and Albany. He and others at first made their own handles and the twine was spun from their own flax. A real boom developed and other towns joined the broom corn ranks.
Levi Dickinson died at the age of eighty-eight, but long before his death the broom business had been widely extended.
The brooms of New England in early days resembled those of Old England and the best were made of hair or bristles and imported. Most of those prepared here were made of birch and hemlock and of various materials such as rushes and husks. Later, what was called Indian brooms became the common brooms of the country. They were made of sticks of birch, ash or other sturdy material, long enough for the broom and handle. The broom was formed of two lengths of thin, tough splints or filaments, the upper doubling over the lower, and both at one end adhering to the handle. They were called splinter brooms. People were supplied with Indian brooms until after 1800. In 1762 a merchant had seven hundred and sixty- one of these brooms, valued at six pence each, and retailed at eight or nine pence. Indian men and squaws peddled brooms and baskets and begged for cider. In many country families the fathers or boys made the brooms. Oven brooms were made of husks.
There were sixty-five distilleries of cider and grain in old Hamp- shire in 1810 and every distillery made drunkards.
The inhabitants of the valley always have had gardens and cul- tivated some common garden vegetables, the women often aiding. Among other things our foremothers had medicinal herbs in the gar- den, and many of the women had a small plat of flowers. Garden seeds from London were advertised in Boston in 1719, and in most years down to 1800.
Horses, oxen and cows were not plenty in the river towns until some years after settlement. When they became numerous prices were reduced. The horses, which obtained most of their living on the commons, were cheaply raised, and often much neglected, yet there always were some good horses in Hampden County. In the eighteenth century horses received more attention, and between 1750 and 1775 they were worth from seven to thirty-two dollars each, and a few, at least, forty dollars. They were chiefly saddled when in use.
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Down to 1750 there were very few sleighs, and no wheel vehicles for horses to draw. They were used in some farming operations before oxen, and a horse drew the plow and harrow, and kept the wheel of the cider mill going. The harness was very simple. Often the horses were tethered and could feed only to the extent of the rope, and many were restrained by fetters. Oxen were the principal animals used in farm operations for a long time, and they conveyed loads on the highways a few miles or many miles.
John Pynchon sent cattle in the fall from Springfield to Boston before 1655, and he sent winter-fattened cattle in the spring for many years after. There was some horse stealing in New England, though less than in other colonies. Horse thieves were hanged in several colonies, but not in New England. Grass-fed cattle were driven to Boston from Hampshire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and great numbers after the grazing towns were settled. Many were barreled for market. Colonel Moses Porter went to Boston with fat cattle every year for fifty-one years, beginning in 1791.
Children, and many adults, commonly had milk with bread or hasty pudding for breakfast and supper. However, care was not taken by some to have a supply of milk one or two months in the winter. That short allowance of boiled winter skim milk was long remembered. Other things that helped out the milk supply were com- binations of pumpkin and milk, berries and milk, and roasted and baked apples and milk, often with bread. Many children were fond of bread and cider. The cider was not very sour, and it was diluted with water that was sweetened with molasses and warmed in a basin, and the bread was toasted. People often made use of cider with bread for want of porridge, milk and tea. Much pork was smoked in the great kitchen chimney, and these big smoked sides were the "flitches of bacon" about which we read in the old records. Long ago hogs were driven from the Connecticut River to Boston. The ancient laws of the Colony ordered that hogs going at large should wear a yoke as long up and down as two and a half times the depth of his neck, with a bottom piece three times as long as the thickness of the neck. Salt pork kept in brine was the principal meat of New Eng- land farmers during most of the year for a long time.
John Pynchon and others bought sheep at Rhode Island and else- where about 1656, and there were sheep above the falls soon after-
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ward that gradually increased. For three-fourths of a century, begin- ning about 1700, some families in these Norwottuck towns occasion- ally sent to the "Island," as Newport, Rhode Island was called, for wool and other things. The diligent housewives made woolen cloth for garments and bed coverings, and they knit stockings. They "sought wool, and flax, and cotton and worked willingly with their hands." They and their daughters were manufacturers, and a part of almost every house in our country towns was a factory at times.
1
Accommodation Stage.
Daily to Albany, leaves at 4 o'clock, A. M. MAIL STAGE .. Leaves at 12 o'clock, M. daily (Sundays ex- cepted). For Pittsfield & Lebanon Springs, DAILY AT7 A. M. D. P KINGSLEY. Springfield, June 8, 1840. tf 24
STAGE ADVERTISEMENT
Those who went to the Island did business for all who wished-often for twenty or thirty. They carried for themselves and neighbors much tow cloth, some whitened cloth, many bags and a little cash. They returned with wool, molasses, sugar, indigo, tea and other things. The heavy articles were sent home by way of a Hartford boat, and when these arrived the buyer went from house to house and distributed the wool, molasses and other miscellany.
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Hogs often ran in the streets until 1790, and meanwhile they shared their pasture with a small army of noisy geese and, as if that were not enough, there was added many sheep fattening during the winter.
A few years after 1802 carding machines were built in many towns, and this relieved women who carded wool. In those days before there were one-horse wagons, girls sometimes carried behind them on a horse a bundle of wool almost as high as their heads. Some of the best wool was combed and not carded, and worsted was spun from it. The household manufacture of wool in this vicinity ceased before 1822.
Apparently the early settlers brought the common domestic fowls across the sea about as soon as they came themselves. At any rate they were in .Springfield before 1645, and it is safe to conclude that the crowing cocks at daybreak, and the cra-ing and cackling of hens were heard in the towns above Springfield soon after settlement. In early years these fowls were sold for from four pence to six pence each, and eggs were three pence a dozen. Their feathers were used for beds. Geese began to be plentiful in the towns by 1740, and most families had a flock. The loud noise they made was called "squawk- ing" in this part of the country. In the olden time bees were kept, and many of the keepers were ministers. Hives were made of straw and the bees were suffocated with fire and brimstone, as in England. Swarms of bees sometimes flew to the woods, and the racket made by beating pans and kettles did not check them. Bees have inhabited hollow trees in the woods from time immemorial. Many persons have hunted for bee trees which, when found, were marked, and after- ward cut down and the honey taken out.
Tobacco is described by one old-time writer as: "This nauseous and noxious weed first used by the American Indians." It was culti- vated in Europe before 1570 and smoked by men and women, and in after years was assailed in vain by European sovereigns and the general courts of New England. Smoking was so common in New England in 1676 that Mrs. Rowlandson, celebrated as a captive of the Indians, said "an invitation to smoke is a usual compliment nowadays among saints and sinners." She smoked before she was captured and found the use of tobacco "bewitching." Soldiers in England and America loved liquor and tobacco, and in King Philip's War it was necessary
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many times to send tobacco to soldiers, who were to pay for it from their wages. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries merchants sold pipes in abundance, as well as tobacco boxes and tobacco tongs for lighting the pipes with a coal from the fireplace.
The "Boston Courant" complained, in 1724, of the enormous use of tobacco in smoking, chewing, and snuff-taking. The accounts of traders in Hampshire show that they sold many pipes as well as spices, a few days before Thanksgiving, and that innkeepers sometimes bought a gross or more of pipes at once. Many of the clergy were smokers. Numerous elderly men and women smoked, and some chewed. When the women came together they seemed to have a pleasant time with their pipes. The plastering of some rooms was tarnished with tobacco smoke. Young people, however, did not smoke. Men were apt to have little yards or patches of tobacco, and part of this was sold. Some smokers had a little wooden box hanging against the wall with pipes in the upper open part and tobacco in a drawer at the bottom.
Snuff was first advertised at Boston in 1712, and there were silver snuff-boxes. To take snuff was considered genteel. Farmers' fami- lies seldom took snuff and it was not kept for sale in Hampden County until nearly 1760. It was first sold here in bottles. After yellow snuff was supplied in bladders, about 1786, snuff taking was much extended. Taverns, especially those frequented by soldiers in the French and Revolutionary wars, were, as Macaulay said of the old London cof- fee houses, full of the eternal "fog and stench of tobacco." Two brands of high grade leaf tobacco that won favor were Twist and Pigtail. Fields of tobacco were cultivated some years before 1800, and the culture presently became extensive.
For a long time the river towns made their own butter and cheese. In other words, they made all they ate, and no more. There was not much demand for oil in those days. A man who passed through the valley, in 1762, said that most of the buildings were old and dark colored, and few dwellinghouses were painted on the outside.
The open woods of New England were full of strawberries. Huckleberries were formerly plenty and were used in milk, pies and puddings. Small parties went huckleberrying more than a century ago. The berries grew on the mountains and plains, and in some highways. For a long time many of the town streets were covered with these
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bushes. Children picked the scarlet checkerberries, and all the spicy leaves of wintergreen when tender. Chestnuts and shagbark "wal- nuts" were sold in Springfield at two coppers a quart in 1760. The chestnut blight of recent years has all but destroyed the lordly chest- nut forests.
Hampshire families made soap from their own ashes and grease. Some did not have a supply of grease, and John Pynchon bought in Connecticut and sold mostly to Springfield people more than one hun- dred firkins of soft soap between 1658 and 1676. Soap was usually made in the spring. Madam Porter records in 1752-"made soap three days, the first week in April." Soapmaking was tedious and sometimes vexatious, and a woman who had good luck was congratu- lated by her neighbors. Most families still made their soap in 1860.
Memories of Springfield
Hampden-17
CHAPTER XVII
Memories of Springfield
A visitor to Springfield village in 1776, standing at the corner of Main Street and Ferry Lane, which at that time was the business cen- ter, would have in sight, down the west side of the street, most of its one hundred and seventy-five houses and the solitary church spire, with pasture land running back to the river. On the east side were a mountain brook and a narrow strip of wet grassland known as the "hasseky marsh," though often a pond or a meadow. Close at hand, too, was a forest of pine fringed with elm and oak and rising into a broad plateau. To the right on a narrow vista of river could be seen the ferryman's flat scow that was pushed across the stream with poles, either bringing grain and hay from West Springfield or taking back groceries. Up and down the street walked the old-time mer- chants in knee-breeches, and the younger and gayer in scarlet coats, with perchance a passing slave or wigged magistrate or plain house- wife carrying water from the brook across the way. There was a chance, too, that you might hear the sound of a rifle on the plain where a venturesome deer had browsed, or perhaps a stage-horn from the Bay Path, before the coach entered from Boston over the marsh by a narrow corduroy causeway, known later as State Street.
The early appearance of the houses of Springfield was unprepos- sessing, though soon after the Revolution travelers described it as a neat and orderly place. There were but two brick houses and the others were shabby and unpainted. As the armory grew, red, yellow and brown-colored buildings multiplied, and in the village red was a favorite color, as it was at Longmeadow, where nearly the whole street was lined with bright red homesteads. There were no porticos, piazzas or columns. Timothy Dwight says that it was customary in early times for people to turn in and rebuild men's houses when they were burned, and at Springfield, as elsewhere in New England, most of the people slept with unbolted doors.
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In 1759 inspectors from Northampton visited Springfield and found that over thirty of the best families had encroached on the road. In some cases the fence had been advanced, in others the pig pen or shop. Among those fined were Rev. Mr. Breck, Colonel Worthing- ton and Edward Pynchon.
Down toward the big elm the most important and uninviting building was the courthouse, built fifty-five years before. It stood out into the road at the head of Sanford Street and near the brook was a whipping-post. Executions used to be in public and on high gallows that could be seen at a distance. The whipping-post was likewise prominently situated. A little to the south was an elm used also for a whipping-post. To some persons, at least, it was a pitiful sight to see the unfortunates stripped and publicly flogged.
Across the way, eighteen feet north of the large elm on the corner, rose the famous tavern of Zenas Parsons, which had a fearfully high wing on Main Street, and when detached later this wing was called the "lighthouse."
Beyond the barns and sheds along Meetinghouse Lane, standing partly on Elm Street and partly on the southwest corner of the present Court Square, stood the church holding on the finger of its steeple the same golden rooster that today wags his tail in all weathers. The ground back to the river was open pasture and meadowland. There was a pair of bars across Meetinghouse Lane by the church, and at a later day passers leaving the bars down were fined. This lane led through the burying ground and adjoining training field to the Middle Landing.
It was not an accident that the other field was so near the grave- stones. Training was a sacred duty, always opened with prayer and continued to the beat of the same drum that called all to Sabbath service. Along the river bank was a fenced path protected by a town law. Each fence had a gate with a post set in the middle to check the cattle. The church at this time was about twenty-five years old with the main entrance toward the east. The pews were square and the pulpit high, extending over the "deacon seats" which faced the congregation. Above was a ponderous sounding board and nervous people used to fear during sermon time that it might fall on the deacons below. The old box pews and high pulpits have their origin in the English churches. The broad galleries held as many as did the
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floor of the church, and in a back and high corner nearest the shingles the colored people took their religion. The meetinghouse was not warmed in those days and the preacher often pointed to the ceiling with his big, worsted mitten while the women used footstones and everybody else knocked heel against heel.
The familiar picture of a solemn Sabbath begun at sundown on Saturday night, continued on Sunday morning when "the rooster crowed psalm tunes," and ending at the next sundown, when the chil- dren played blind-man's-buff in the streets and the young men drank flip at the taverns, was a true one.
Judge Bliss, one of the deacons, was not less distinguished for his sterling parts and godliness than for his eccentricities. He wore a powdered wig, knee breeches, low shoes and shining buckles. They say that he first heard of the Declaration of Independence as he touched the wharf from West Springfield with a load of hay, and not being able to elevate his continental heels and cocked hat high enough, he at once set fire to the hay amid the unlimited enthusiasm of every- body. This sort of originality ran in the family, and probably came from his father, Jedediah. They were called "Jedites" and to be odd was to be "jeddy."
Jonathan Dwight came to Springfield in 1753 and was an old-time gentleman. He was a great smoker, lighting his pipe in summer with a burning glass and often crossing the street in such a cloud of smoke as to be nearly invisible. He was almost the last representative of the silk stocking, short breeches, and silver shoe-buckle gentry -- rather scant clothing the boys thought who knew of his practice of going out to fodder the cows before daylight or breakfast on cold win- ter mornings with stockings down about his heels and rubbing his legs when he came in to get up a circulation. As the fashion changed to pantaloons there was much discussion as to whether they were as durable as knee breeches. The stockings were thick and wore for a long time, especially the silk ones. Mr. Dwight was a slaveholder to the extent of one African, and lived in one of the very few painted houses of the village.
On Maple Street was a house occupied by Lizzie and Martha Ferre. When the road by the house was straightened the outbuild- ings were complimented with a position in the front yard. These two white-haired women were the terror of the third and fourth genera-
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tion, thereabouts, for sweet flag and mint grew in abundance near by. The children would watch until the old maids were away before start- ing to gather the wild edibles, but often, to their grief, the owners would suddenly put in an appearance.
Zenas Parsons was born in 1740, and in manhood became the pro- prietor of a great, widespreading tavern which stood on Court Square. He kept the inn before and after the Revolutionary War and it was known as "Parsons' Tavern." It stood near the southeast corner of the Square, by "Meetinghouse Lane," that later was known as Elm Street.
OLD VIEW OF COURT SQUARE, SPRINGFIELD
General Washington arrived in Springfield on a visit to New England and lodged in this five-story house in October, 1789. John Adams, on his return to Massachusetts from the sittings of Congress at Philadelphia, in 1775, passed through Springfield in November and dined at this tavern, where Captain Pynchon and others came to see him.
It is related that on Sundays in the winter the folks who went to the old First Church brought their foot stoves with them, and before entering used to go to the bar room of the old tavern and replenish them with live hickory coals from the blazing fire always kept ready for their use. Mr. Parsons died in a fit at the age of seventy-eight.
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Springfield village had its crop of strong, noble men, who could legislate or hold the plow with equal excellence. One of these was Colonel John Worthington. He was born at Springfield in 1719, entered Yale College and graduated in 1740. He received his mili- tary title by commanding a regiment of Massachusetts Militia in Hampshire County, and he was one of a company chartered in 1792 to build locks and canals on the Connecticut River. For his loyalty to the cause of the British Crown in the Revolutionary War, the Whigs forced him to kneel and ask forgiveness for his "Toryism." President Dwight, of Yale College, said of Colonel Worthington, "He was a lawyer of the first eminence and a man who would have done honor to any town and any country."
Boston authorities were very anxious to have him for Attorney- General. In a letter sanctioned by the Governor the salary was dis- cussed, but without much hope. Among other things the letter says :
"It is necessary that you should live at or near Boston and I know your attachment to that foggy, unhealthy air from the Connecticut River which, if you do not remove, will shorten your days."
Colonel Worthington had an attending halo of touch-me-not. Children held their breath when he talked and the irreverent called him "don." He made heroic efforts to impress his name and char- acter on a male heir, but he merely contributed three little tombstones to three infant "John Worthingtons." It was the other side of the house that was to hand down the high breeding of his family. This breeding took a peculiar form sometimes. He once snatched a "But- ler's Analogy" from the hands of a daughter whom he caught reading and sweeping the room at the same time, and said: "This is not a book for a girl to read." To be sure, she was only twenty-four !
He allowed no bed in the house to be made until after dark on Sundays. Abler men than he have lost the hair on their heads for interfering in such matters. There was a secret closet in his house, not an uncommon thing in those days, but he put it to the uncommon use of concealing tories, and it became a noted retreat for refugees. While the afterward distinguished Fisher Ames was paying attention to the colonel's daughter, Frances, it was his misfortune once to be asked to carve a turkey. He squeezed, and sliced, and twisted the
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bird into such forbidding ligaments, right before the girl's family, that he vowed to himself the "don" would never give him a chance to carve for a family of his own. In deep chagrin he posted to Boston, took carving lessons, and on his return found a goose on the platter which he served most beautifully. "Mr. Ames," observed the "don," "you find a tough goose easier to carve than a tender turkey."
Once Worthington's barn was struck by lightning and Phillis, a negro slave woman of his, proceeded immediately to put on her best, including a bright red petticoat. She said: "De barn am struck. I think de day ob judgement am about to cum, and I want to 'pear's well's I can before de Lord."
Rev. Mr. Howard was as prominent in a progressive way as the colonel in his conservatism, and his home rule was as rigid. At five in the afternoon, at all seasons, every door in the house was "opened and swung," which let in lots of pure air and hard colds. When coal was first introduced, he gave it a trial before the assembled family. It was placed on the embers, and as it did not burn, it was solemnly and once for all pronounced stone.
One of the out-of-the-way stories told of Moses Bliss is that one day he heard that a deer was browsing in "hasseky marsh." Taking a flintlock, he insinuated his knee-breeches among the bushes, a little back of the present Market Street, where, sure enough, there was a veritable stag. As cool as a cucumber, he took aim, and yelled "bang" at the top of his voice. There was no bullet in his voice and he forgot to shoot, so the game escaped.
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