USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 20
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Charles Brewer, who lived on Maple Street not far from the dingle, had a huge pear tree on which he did the grafting and mulching and sundry boys the harvesting. One day, seeing the little thieves approach, he thought of a hogshead near by where he could hide. The idea seemed good and he agilely crawled in. The boys saw him disappear and had to stuff their elbows in their mouths to keep from laughing. They crept up to the hogshead and set it rolling down the hill. For weeks Mr. Brewer wore on his knees and elbows the biggest knobs he ever had.
The father of Daniel Lombard, while at work on his Long Hill farm, once noticed through the corn a skulking Indian with drawn bow. He at once cocked his rifle and both watched a chance to shoot, and neither dared uncover. After an excited passage at this deadly
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game of peek-a-boo, the Indian backed out until he found shelter in the forest. It was a common amusement of the friendly Indians to take little children off in the morning and return them at night to the frightened but non-resistant parents.
In Springfield it was an early custom to have one drinking mug on the table for water and to pass it around. It was a royal source of merriment among the young people of one of Springfield's first families, when the head of the family brought home a second wife and she insisted on having a mug by herself. She was a New York Dutch bred lady and could not come down to the one-mugged habits of the village.
The staple bread was made of rye flour. Sometimes a man would buy a bushel or two of wheat and have it ground. This was used for pastry and would generally last through the year. The story is told of how an innkeeper's wife economized in her pie crust, but she was shown up in a couplet recited by one of her guests :
"Upper crust wheat, under crust rye ;
Please, Mrs. Smith, may I have some more pie ?"
"Pop-robbin," a sort of milk porridge, was a great local dish and, at the time of the Boston tea excitement, people substituted it in a lighter form for tea. A lady used to tell that just after the war she was invited out to breakfast, where she, for the first time in years, enjoyed a cup of tea; but it didn't satisfy, and on going home, she filled up with hot porridge. In the early part of this century coffee was a luxury which few families enjoyed more than once a week. Burnt rye was used as a substitute and was a common article of sale as late as 1822.
The river was early filled with salmon, so that in seining for shad it was necessary also to take the salmon, strange as it may seem. At one time the shad became a drug. A man was "pretty hard run who would eat shad." Foolishly enough few people would admit that they ever lowered themselves to such depths. Indeed, they have even been known to snatch a shad from the frying pan, if a neighbor dropped in on them at odd times. A little later one of the conditions in hiring a man was that he should eat shad so many times a week. Salmon, at the time of the Revolution, was called "Agawam pork," and it was a condition in buying shad that a certain amount of this Agawam pork should be taken with it.
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Jonathan Dwight is authority for the statement that there was but one clock in the village in 1753, and that people used to call at Josiah Dwight's to see it and wait a long time to hear it strike. There were then but two chaises in town, horseback riding being the common mode of traveling. Springfield was a three days' journey from Boston.
The aristocratic snuff-box had penetrated numerously to the Con- necticut, and by the time this century began snuff taking was a very prevalent evil.
The only piano in the village, in 1810, was owned by David Ames, and James Dwight had one in 1822. At the church the leader of the choir would start the tune by a preliminary toot on the square music box, the size of a common hand Bible, with an aperture in one corner for a mouthpiece and a slide below to regulate the key. Colonel Solo- mon Warriner was leader for forty-two years, beginning in 1801, except for a break of five years. He sat in the gallery back of the congregation. The "second treble" was on his right and the tenor on his left; the "first treble" were scattered all along the north gallery, and the bass were opposite.
The first rocker skates were sold by Ely, of West Springfield, where the boys on this side of the river went with their spare change to buy them. Doctor Chauncey Brewer, when young, was a fine skater, and once when at Yale College, while darting over the ice, he came to a broad opening, and is said to have saved his life by making a thirty-foot jump.
Colonel Thomas Dwight once discovered a leak in his stock of butter. Suspecting a certain gardener, he invited him into the office and heated up the room. Soon sweat, then butter, came running down the fellow's face, and on lifting his hat, Mr. Dwight found the butter.
Jonathan Dwight once sharply told a clerk not to say "no" bluntly, when a customer asked for something not in the store, but to suggest another article. Shortly afterward a lady inquired for some cheese, and the clerk replied, "No ma'm, we haven't any, but we have an excellent grindstone."
There were many queer looking things to be seen on the public roads in early days; for instance, on a Sunday morning, a man on horseback, with his wife sitting on a cushion or pillion behind him, having one arm about her Bible and the other about her master, cling-
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ing close to both. If a fellow happened to be riding in the opposite direction from the meetinghouse, he was very liable, especially if he had something handsome on the pillion, to find a tithingman's long pole across the road. One Sunday a Lombard was carrying a sick child in a shay to the doctor, and the infallible tithingman, deciding that religion was suffering more than the child, compelled him to turn back toward home.
Tippling was more common at the beginning of the nineteenth century than now. There was not a dealer in the village who did not keep distilled spirits, and every hired man took his "constitu- tional" both forenoon and afternoon. Sometimes eleven hogsheads of liquor were sold at the old Dwight store on the corner of State Street before breakfast. Not a social gathering, not a marriage feast of parson's or deacon's daughter, but there was a goodly show of wine or flip.
It was customary for the parishioner when the minister called to set out a bottle of rum, and nothing less than this, except among the poor. It is told of an up-river minister that he was once highly incensed because one brother on whom he called offered him a mug of cider instead of the rum bottle. It was accepted as an insult and was doubtless intended for one.
Flip drinking was not confined to a few. The children and all would warm their noses after church with it. It is made of much beer, a little rum and sugar, and some hot poker. Most families had a "brewin" each week, and flip irons were "amazin' plenty." In 1825 temperance societies were first formed and the elder and more moral names of Springfield were quoted against the movement, just as they were when the young folks wanted to warm the meetinghouse. But when they found it wasn't a sin to hear the word of God with warm ears, and that moral force is better for the drinking community than a police force, both religion and temperance went up.
Pretty much everything was kept at these early country stores- Turk's Island salt, steel knitting needles, Jamaica spirits, hum-hums, jeans and fustians, bake-pans, plane-irons, japanned waiters and mugs, pigtail tobacco, cherry rum and so on.
The Dwights ran a four-horse team to Boston the year round to do the smaller freighting. Teamster Bliss, who lived at Ten Mile Brook, presided over this four-in-hand, and when the Dwight boys
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went down to Harvard College, he took a turn by Cambridge, so as to leave their bedding for them.
Many fine cattle in the early part of the century were driven from Chicopee to the Boston market.
James Dwight was forever doing astonishing things, and always winning in the end. He once came back from New York with the enormous quantity for those days of "six mortal barrels" of wheat flour. Father Jonathan embraced his paste knee-buckles in horror, clerks thought he was mad, and the next Sunday people who had often sung "All my bones are made of Indian corn," with considerable rye porridge mixed in, talked the matter over after sermon. "Master Jim," however, took it coolly. He said: "I will take a barrel, father one, John and Colonel Dwight each one, and John Hooker another."
Honorable John Worthington inherited his father's estate and became one of the old "River Gods." Among his many distinctions is that of being the first Springfielder who carried an umbrella, for the sun, however, instead of for the rain.
A line of coasting boats brought goods from Boston around the cape to Hartford for all the up-river towns, the rest of the way flat- boats with sails being used. A line of boats which ran to White River took a fortnight to make the round trip. When the wind was con- trary the loaded scows either had to be poled or rowed all the way up from Hartford. Three trips a week were often made. At one time there were ten of these boats, carrying twelve to fifteen tons, and worked by four men each, with long oars and twelve to fifteen-foot poles and one sail. Liquor was a large item of freight and often a boat would have nothing else, the boatmen preferring this cargo as they could draw it freely for their own use. Sometimes as many as twenty-five flat-bottomed boats would start out from Hartford on a single morning. The captains usually let their freight bills go until winter, when they would take a turn among the valley towns "to settle up." The journey of the old sea and river captains up the valley was a royal sight. The Dwights were the largest importers in the region, and it was a common thing to see there a dozen or more of the buck- skin-faced captains with freight bills as good as gold in their pockets.
For years the ground in front of the meetinghouse was a tavern site, plentifully shedded and barnyarded, and back of the tavern some- what marshy, though dry enough in spots to allow room for trials of
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muscle. Many a well-oated filly or pillion horse has stood over his time in the stable while a wrestling match was in progress on 'lection day, or as an accessory to an out-of-town gander party. The spirit born of the War of 1812 led to the opening of a common. Church and business sentiment grew into a strong opposition to the monopoly of so fine a site for a tavern. The new meetinghouse was finished in 1819, and as the tavern sheds which extended back to the church, and right in front of it, were a growing nuisance, it was proposed to buy that property and lay out a common. Prominent citizens clubbed together, the land was bought, and the common given to the county.
In connection with the old tavern is remembered the time when a couple of Springfield boys slept together in the attic, on a bed made on the floor, as their twelve dollars a month wages would not allow better accommodations. They drove ox-carts from the Middle Landing, where the flatboats delivered merchandise to the various stores, and their names were Willis Phelps and Chester W. Chapin.
There was a time when the aged as they walked our Springfield streets, meeting a crowd of school children, would be honored by a short curtsy from all the girls, while the boys would take off their hats. Even a person passing in a shay was curtsied and bowed to. Children "did their manners" as it was termed, as soon as they arrived home, and also on entering and leaving the schoolroom. No child was allowed to answer back when spoken to, and in some cases babies were instructed, like Susanna Wesley's nineteen children, not to cry after they arrived at the age of one year. It was an early custom, too, in the prominent families of such country places as Springfield, for all the family, wife, children and guests to rise and stand when the man of the house entered the room. This was the habit in the Reverend Jonathan Edwards' household at Northampton, and it may have originated because of the great respect paid to the profession. On a Sabbath morning, after the families were assembled in their high- backed pews, the minister in his black gown would lead his family up the aisle, and at the first notice of his appearing the whole congrega- tion would rise. When he had seated his family and mounted his pulpit throne, the people would sit amid the creaking of boots and thumping of foot-stoves when the weather was cold, with perhaps a rap of the tithingman's pole for the boys who sat together and apart from their families.
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Obedience of children was pushed to a doubtful extreme and child life was not particularly enviable. School kept every week day but Saturday afternoon and the only school holiday was the day of the April elections. The common English branches and the Westminster catechism were taught, and one of the qualifications of the "master" was the ability of mending quill pens. The minister sometimes visited the schools on Saturday mornings and heard the children recite on "sanctification, justification and election," and gave them, in turn, a few words on insubordination.
The illustrations in their textbooks were aimed more at religion than æsthetics. One edition of catechism had a woodcut of the martyr Rogers with the flames well advanced. Among the religious rhymes are :
In Adam's fall We sinned all.
Thy life to mend This book attend.
Young Obadias, David and Josias All were pious.
Xerxes the Great did die, And so must you and I.
The zealous teacher often prayed and exhorted when he should have been hearing lessons. He would talk to the pupils about the devil, who went around from house to house with a red hot pitchfork to carry off naughty children, and that hell was a place where the wicked were burned in "fire and brimstone." The first thing in school every morning was Bible reading, each one old enough reading a verse. It occasionally happened that some disturbance would interrupt the reading, but it would be calmly resumed after the birch rod was put away.
The ordinary housewife, living in Springfield in the early days, had a low-raftered kitchen, with perhaps no floor but the hard clay. There her husband might bring her a shad on a deerskin string, which would furnish the dinner in place of the ham which had lasted over from the previous winter and was still swinging from the rafters. A pot of beans hanging on the crane and simmering in the fireplace would make another meal with the brown bread and pies taken from the big brick oven with the long-handled "slice" or "peel." A "fire broom"
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MEMORIES OF SPRINGFIELD
of coarse husks bound to a handle was used to sweep out the oven before baking, and a "birch broom" of twigs from that tree kept the hearth tidy. A handy man might furnish his wife with a more durable "splinter broom," which he had carefully whittled out in the long winter evenings. The shad would be cooked on the turn-spit or in the skillet, and served on a pewter platter scoured like the silver moon. The housewife stepped about her work in calfskin shoes of her hus- band's raising, butchering, tanning, and making, and her caps and aprons were large and abundant. She could never sit down in idleness as there was always homegrown wool to be spun into yarn, a width of blanket or checkered flannel on the loom to be woven, or an unfin- ished stocking on the needles to keep her hands busy. Two pieces of woolen cloth sewed into a narrow strip were pinned to the side of her dress to keep her knitting needles in place.
Fashions, as ever, continued to change. The courtly styles of the colonial period are familiar to us. Then a lady's coiffure was elaborate and striking, involving curls and pompadours. The Empire period brought in very narrow satin slips with diamond-shaped necks and the waist coming close up under the bust. There were also satin shoes with tiny high heels, rich trains of great length and sleeves of great brevity. Voluminous "pumpkin-hoods" covered the elaborate head-dress in winter and a calash could be worn in summer. Calashes were made of rattan and silk. By pulling a cord or ribbon called the "bridle," it could be brought clear over the face in case of storm or modesty.
Once a little boy was lost in the cemetery dingle, where he had gone to get chestnuts. At night the church bell was rung and nearly every man in the village turned out with a lantern to search. Parties were organized to go in different directions, and one of these took the Chicopee Road along which were seen little footprints which soon led to the bank of the Chicopee River and there stopped. The searchers, however, worked up the river some distance and finally under some boards they found the sleeping wanderer. He had become tired and pulling the boards over him for a shelter had fallen asleep from exhaustion. It had been arranged that if the child were found notice of it should be given by firing a cannon. So the men hastened back with the good news, and at four o'clock on that weary Sunday morn- ing the booming of a cannon on Armory Hill announced that the search had been successful and there was great rejoicing.
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George Colton, an honest and devoted churchgoer, always made the same long prayer whether at meeting or at home. His last sen- tence was : "And to thee we give never-ending praises. Amen." One Fourth of July morning his little son was very impatient during the lengthy devotions. Outside, crackers were popping, boys were shout- ing and cannon being fired. As the paternal prayer drew its long length to a close, the excited boy, not being able to wait, sang out "and to thee we give never-ending praises. Amen. Heard it a thou- sand times," and ran out of the door before he could be caught.
Among the early customs that hung on was that of posting public notices of intention of marriage for three weeks. In Springfield the public place was the church vestibule. The notices were deposited for three Sundays in a mahogany box, covered with a wire screen, from which it was dubbed the "squirrel-box." After sermon time people often said: "Let's see who is in the squirrel-box this morning."
The Early Eighteen Hundreds
Hampden-18
CHAPTER XVIII
The Early Eighteen Hundreds
It was said about 1820 that the Dwights ruled Springfield. The firm adopted the policy of setting up its clerks in business in surround- ing towns, but retaining an interest in the various stores. They had a store at Chester Village, one at Northampton, and one in Enfield, Connecticut, that included a gin distillery, in which Longmeadow citi- zens and others were interested. At South Hadley Canal the Dwights had a store, a gristmill and sawmills. There was also a Boston branch, the manager of which lost his life in the wreck of the "Albion," in May, 1822, on his way to England. The Dwights owned several coasting vessels between Hartford and Boston and New York, and were interested in a line of boats between Hartford and Spring- field. They were also interested in banking as far west as Detroit.
The last appearance of pounds, shillings and pence in the town records is November, 1795.
In 1800 the town brook, also known as Garden Brook, had become filled with rubbish. This overflowed the eastern meadows, and caused sickness. As a remedy the stream was deepened.
The first proposals for a bridge over the great river were received with ridicule. "Parson Howard talks like a fool," Colonel Worth- ington said in 1786, when that gentleman predicted such an engineer- ing event. But late in October of 1805 the bridge was opened. The fact that financially it was the child of a lottery did not prevent the famous preacher, Joseph Lathrop, of West Springfield, from deliver- ing a dedication sermon and offering prayer in the presence of about three thousand people gathered on the bridge; the church bells were rung, cannon fired, and the public made themselves hoarse with shout- ing. The bridge was a creditable piece of engineering for the times, and was considered equal to anything in America. However, a succes- sion of floods weakened it, and it gave way under a heavy load of army
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supplies nine years later. The bridge was an open one, painted red, was 1,234 feet long, 30 feet wide and stretched 40 feet above low water mark. The six spans were supported by two abutments and five piers, each pier and abutment containing about 2,000 tons of stone. Two guard-piers to check the force of the ice were built 80 rods above the bridge. It was a clumsy structure, so arranged that the traveler was compelled to go up and down with the curves of each span. It was pulled down soon after the freshets of 1814.
The tolls were: Foot passengers, 3 cents; horse and rider, 7 cents; horse and chaise, chair or sulky, 10 cents; chariot, phæton,
or other four-wheeled carriage for passen- gers, 33 cents; cur- ricle, 25 cents ; horse and sleigh, 10 cents ; neat cattle, 3 cents ; sheep or swine, I cent. The tolls were abolished in 1872.
The second toll bridge was opened to the public October I, 1816, and the news- ENTRANCE TO THE OLD TOLL BRIDGE paper advertising an- nounced: "Springfield bridge lottery is a fine tide of riches. Improve it, set every sail. Soon it will be too late." The tickets were six dol- lars each. There were several drawings in the town, and at least one local tavern scene where little girls in white frocks drew the numbers. The Harvard College lottery, which was running at that time, was well patronized in Springfield.
For a considerable period Springfield was outranked by West Springfield in the number of inhabitants, but in 1820 it took the lead. In 1814, the Springfield bank was organized. It kept a deposit in a Boston bank, and often a cashier would bring back by stage $50,000 or $ 100,000 in bills in his valise. 1820 was memorable in Springfield as the year when Thomas Blanchard invented at the armory a machine for turning irregular forms that revolutionized manufacture and is ranked among the greatest of the world's inventions.
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Slavery in this region gradually faded away, yet ended with a dramatic climax. The Springfield citizens in 1808 bought and freed a fugitive slave. This was in February, and later a bill of sale was given by a Schenectady man of Dutch descent to the selectmen of Springfield whereby a negro woman "Jenny" was given her freedom She had become favorably known in Springfield, and the subscription of $100 was easily raised. She and her husband, "Jack," lived for many years near Goose Pond, and they added to their fame by selling a fine quality of spruce beer.
Easterly of the stores on Main Street was a dilapidated two-story brick schoolhouse that stood near the north line of the school ground, with the play ground about eighty feet wide between the schoolhouse and the causeway. On the front of this ground and near the causeway stood an old engine-house and the gunhouse for the two artillery cannon. At an early date the old brick schoolhouse was taken down and a one-story wooden building with two rooms erected. This was later burned and a two-story brick house built in its stead. About 1826 these schools were discontinued and the front part of the lot was sold to the town for a town hall and the rest to private parties.
The Baptists wanted to hold meetings in the town house in 1809, but were refused. However, the time for broader religious toleration was fast coming, and this was true also of medicine. "Inoculation of the kinepock," for example, was regularly practiced under the super- vision of a town committee.
The appearance of the village had improved since the shabby Revo- lutionary days. There was a raised sidewalk in 1810 on the west side of Main Street, from the gate that led to Zebina Stebbins' place to the Bridge Lane, then to Meetinghouse Lane, and from there to the home-lot of Samuel Burt. Also, there was a sidewalk on the south side of Meetinghouse Lane.
This was a period rich in philanthropic and public spirit. The Hampden County Colonization Society issued a circular in November, 1826, closing with these words : "Our country has been verily guilty of despoiling Africa of her children. Who can say that this will not be overruled by a righteous Providence as the principal means of dif- fusing the knowledge of salvation by a crucified Saviour to millions of our fellow-beings who are now buried in the thick darkness of the grossest superstition and idolatry ?"
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The Fourth of July celebration of the first half century of the Republic was planned at a meeting of "all parties, religious or politi- cal," and Hampden Guards marched from the Hampden Coffee-house to Dr. Osgood's church, where William B. Calhoun delivered an oration. From the meetinghouse the mounted guards and others marched with a great crowd and band music, firing cannon and ring- ings bells, to the new armory storehouse on State Street, opposite the Olivet Church, where a banquet for four hundred was spread. Sam- uel Lathrop and Colonel Lee offered the toasts, and the speaking continued until dusk.
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