USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 34
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The Tashnag, Hoc, and Hunchag are three organizations within the Armenian group concerned with religious or political policies. These organizations, which correspond faintly to the Chinese Tongs, have no relation to the American life of these people. A few years ago there was open bitterness between the Tashnag and Hoc groups, which finally culminated in a complete separation when a prominent Armenian bishop was assassinated in New York.
There are two classes of Chinese in the city of Springfield: The ordinary, uneducated people who live here more or less permanently, and who are in the main engaged in the laundry or restaurant busi- ness; and the students, who are here temporarily in quest of an education, and are conceded to be the flower of Chinese culture.
The history of the ordinary Chinese in Springfield is hazy. These people establish no citizenship, take part in no activities, and do not mix in any great degree with the Occidental races here. When the Chinese laundryman feels that he has accumulated enough money, he
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quietly closes his shop and moves out of the city as silently as he came, presumably to go back to China and there end his days. The Oriental here has no intention of becoming Americanized to any great degree. The customs of Mother China are observed by him just as faithfully here as they are in Shanghai or Peiping. Now and then there have been outbreaks here during the Tong wars between the On Leong and Hip Sing factions, and only a few years ago a violent affair of this sort was staged in a Chinese laundry on Liberty Street by hatchetmen pre- sumably imported for this purpose.
The second group, or the Chinese students, really have a his- tory behind them. They are picked youths sent here for the worthy purpose of acquiring a knowledge of western ideals, manners and customs to take back to China. It is pleasing to note that all of the Chinese students educated here later filled positions of distinction in their own country, and took their places as leaders in the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty.
The first Chinese student came to this city in 1847, thirteen years before Japan consented to open her gates to travelers from the West. His name was Tung Wing, and some years later he became Dr. Tung Wing. Originally, he had contemplated a career as a Christian mis- sionary, but finally decided to serve his people in another rôle, a deci- sion which cost him the support of some of his patrons. He persisted in his studies, however, despite his meagre financial resources, and was helped along by Dr. and Mrs. McLean, formerly of Bliss Street. Later he graduated from Monson Academy and Yale University, and in 1867 he persuaded the Chinese Government to appropriate $1,000,- ooo for the education of Chinese youths in this country. He was appointed Minister of Education for Chinese in America and estab- lished his headquarters at the home of Dr. McLean and later in Hart- ford. As commissioner he supervised the education of the first group of Chinese students sent to this country in 1867. He died in 1912, having lived to see his activities materialize in the form of the new Chinese republic.
Another eminent Chinese who received the ground work for his education in Springfield, and later in Northampton, was Tong Kwoh On, who came here in 1873 with the second batch of thirty picked students. After a short residence Tong became the pupil of Mrs. Sarah Matthews of Northampton, who later was the second wife
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of Dr. McLean. He graduated with honors from both Exeter and Yale, and on his return to his native land was appointed Commis- sioner of Education at Shanghai.
Perhaps the most brilliant representative of the Chinese students here was Chung Mun Teow, who came with the 1872 group, and also made his home with Dr. and Mrs. McLean. He later graduated from the Stebbins Classical Institute and the Hartford Latin School, where he distinguished himself as a student of exceptional merit. In 1879 he entered Yale, where he gained great popularity, being initiated into the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity and holding down a berth in the varsity crew as coxswain in 1880 and 1881. He returned to China in 1891, and five years later was called to this country as secretary- interpreter to the Chinese Legation at Washington, District of Colum- bia. A few years later he was chosen as Chinese representative at Madrid, and in 1904 he became consul-general in the Philippines, a highly important post. He named his son Daniel McLean Chung, after Dr. McLean.
Many of the French-Canadians crossed the southern border of Canada down into the Connecticut valley simply because of a rest- less, adventurous spirit. There was, too, the desire for gain and the hope of still better opportunity here than that afforded in the provinces. The French-Canadians in Springfield are second only to the Irish group in population among the various racial elements.
They merge quickly and easily into the rest of the population, instead of colonizing. Manners, customs and speech change in a few years, and often even names. Rousseau become Brooks, LaForce or Fortier becomes Strong, DuCharme becomes Beach, and Courte- manche becomes Shortsleeves. At present there are about 19,000 people of French descent in Springfield and Indian Orchard, some of whose ancestors fought at the side of Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham back in 1759. Only a few hundred people came directly from France; the vast majority crossed the border.
There were a few French-Canadians here before the middle of 1800. A Mr. LaPierre lived in the city and also a Mr. DuMontiers, who kept a blacksmith shop in the south end under the name of Das- sett. A leading figure of the time was Mr. Proulx, who enjoyed the trust and confidence of his people here as well as in Holyoke, where there were a score or more of his countrymen. There were a few
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other French-Canadians here besides these three, mainly employed as brickmakers and gardeners. These early settlers came from Sorel, between Montreal and Quebec, and they were objects of curiosity at first with their tasseled hats, half-moccasins, and their soft speech. When the novelty of these quaint strangers wore off Springfield peo- ple noticed how hard-working and industrious they were, and wel- comed them into their midst.
The great movement of French-Canadians into the Connecticut valley began in 1850. There was plenty of work and a prosperity far exceeding that of Sorel, and the few pioneers wished to share their prosperity with their countrymen. Mr. Proulx was an important fac- tor in starting the immigration. He traveled to Sorel and brought back across the border a large number of his people in big vans resem- bling prairie schooners. The men tramped the entire distance beside the horses, while the women and children of these migrating colonies rode. It was by far the most picturesque and spectacular cavalcade ever to come into the valley.
The majority of these early French-Canadians were "habitants" or small farmers. They came here at first purely as a speculative trip, in much the same spirit that our ancestors went West during the golden days of '49. Many of them intended to return to Sorel in a short time, but once here found this city much to their liking and resolved to stay. The ringing of the ax was superseded by the whir- ring of wheels, but they quickly adapted themselves to the change from farming to manufacture.
In those early days the French turned to cotton and textile mills. While a number settled in the city proper, many more found their way to Holyoke, Ludlow, Ware and Three Rivers, where there were fac- tories that were short-handed. A few went into brickmaking and a number into carpentry and cabinetmaking. Woodworking was a favorite vocation, a heritage handed down from the "coureurs du bois," who had traveled through hundreds of miles of dense wood- land, built huts with no more tools than an ax and a knife, and to whom the working of wood came almost as second nature.
Those in the mills later worked themselves up, some of them ulti- mately becoming managers or members of the firm. Practically all of them raised large families. With eight or ten children working in the mills and earning from $4 a week up, plus the additional income
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taken in from boarders, the head of the family could finally relax on money coming in weekly and reflect how good life was. In those days every child was a distinct asset.
From 1850 to 1860 the influx of French-Canadians into this city was gradual but steady. In the next ten years there was a decided increase and from 1870 to 1890 about three-quarters of the total num- ber of French-Canadians took up residence. They came usually in the spring, just after the big snows disappeared, and went to work in the mills or for building contractors. For a time there was a certain amount of resentment on the part of the local working men who saw in this great flood of immigrants a distinct future menace to their jobs, but work was so plentiful that this fear soon died down. No ques- tions were asked at the border of these people coming down from the provinces, and no papers nor red tape were necessary. The short- handed mill owners were glad to get extra help. A large number of the French-Canadians settled in Holyoke.
One of the most prominent of the early French here was Napoleon Byron. He came to New England in 1863, first settling in Chicopee and finally coming to Springfield in 1880. His people regarded him as their spokesman, and he handled many of their affairs in communal life. Byron went into the contracting business, as did many of his kind, and one of his outstanding buildings was the handsome resi- dence of Nathan D. Bill. He later became active in politics with the support of the French-Canadian group, and gained a position on the common council in 1900, and from there went to the board of alder- men in 1902. During the following two years he was president of the board, and in 1904 ran for mayor on the Republican ticket, but was defeated by F. W. Dickinson. Later he entered the undertaking business and devoted most of his attention to that until his death.
Another leading French-Canadian settler was Octave LaRiviere. He was prominent in the business and political life of Indian Orchard, and in that ward fulfilled much the same public functions as Byron. He was in the contracting and insurance business and also served three terms on the board of aldermen. Other French-Canadian notables then and later were Christopher I. Gagnier, builder and real estate agent; J. G. Roy, another builder; and E. R. Normandin, a painter. Prominent, too, in the building line was Napoleon E. Russell, who came here in 1879. He practiced his vocation as a carpenter, and
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after work went to evening school. Later he worked for the Wason Manufacturing Company, and finally entered the building and con- tracting business. He built many houses in the Brightwood section, and almost entire streets there may be traced to him. In 1901 he established the Brightwood Woodworks, and later devoted much of his time to public life when Mayor William P. Hayes appointed him fire commissioner.
One of the oldest French-Canadians in Springfield today is Pierre Angers, who is now retired and lives at 116 Ingersoll Grove. In 1886, at the age of seventeen, Mr. Angers ran a combination sawmill, planing mill and machine shop in his native Langegardien, twenty miles from Montreal. During that year his mill burned down, and while Mr. Angers was considering rebuilding, a Springfield man named Ciouci made his appearance in Langegardien and began to lend money left and right on various enterprises. The youth was greatly impressed by this show of opulence and prosperity, and resolved to migrate to this section in search of real wealth. On his arrival he lived first on Franklin Street and went to work for John Provost, one of his countrymen and a well-known contractor. Mr. Angers rose from cabinetmaker to foreman, and finally started his own building business in partnership with C. I. Gagnier. The firm of Gagnier and Angers, until its termination in 1926, put up eight hundred and thirty- seven buildings in Springfield alone and 1,017 throughout the State.
Mr. Angers relates that when he came to Springfield in 1887 he found Main Street a succession of small wooden buildings, punctuated by a church here and there. The French-Canadians then in town lived mostly in the south end. He remembers several of the better known French-Canadians here. There was a Mr. Fredette, a printer on Dwight Street, whose establishment is still maintained there by his descendants. A Mr. Parenteau ran a cabinetmaking shop on Taylor Street, and a man named LeFevre, who lived on Linden Street, made a specialty of building churches. The Potvin brothers on Taylor Street were well known as manufacturers of tools for stonecutters. There were also a few professional men among the French-Canadians here: Dr. Fagnent had an office on the corner of Howard Street and what is now Columbus Avenue, and a man named LePierre was an attorney on Main Street. It was not until later years that the French- Canadians produced a large number of professional men, because the
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rank and file of the earlier settlers felt the need to earn at once and went into the mills or contracting with as little delay as possible.
The French-Canadians of the 'seventies and 'eighties were strong churchmen, just as their ancestors were and their descendants are now. The majority are Roman Catholics, although there are a few Protes- tants. The French-Canadian participates in the religious holidays with great enthusiasm, making them occasions to be remembered. From January I to January 6 the "Day of Kings" is celebrated, a ceremony commemorating the story of the Three Wise Men. Then comes Lent or "Careme" and finally Easter, during which a great church festival takes place. Another great occasion comes on July 26, when the "Festival of St. Anne de Beaupre" is celebrated. On these holidays the festive board fairly groans with quantities of delicious food, includ- ing pea soup, which may be called the traditional French-Canadian dish.
The church building in the provinces of Canada was the center of communal life, and the same condition held true here. Once the early French-Canadian settlers gained a foothold in this city, they immediately went about to fulfill the need of a church in which to worship and hold meetings, and many were the discussions at their popular gathering place on the corner of Bliss and Main streets on how to go about gaining this end. Previously the French-Canadians had been attending the church in Chicopee every Sunday, but from October, 1869, to July, 1870, services were held at a hall on Main Street, where the old Gilmore Hotel used to be. The first pastor was Rev. Magloire Turcotte, and after him came Rev. Augustine LeVer- diere, who stayed here until April, 1872. Services in this year were held in a small church at the corner of Willow and Main streets, known as "the little white church."
The leading figure in the movement for a French-Canadian reli- gious center was Rev. Louis G. Gagnier. On March 9, 1873, he said his first mass in the old city hall, and began at once the task of raising funds for a church. The French-Canadians organized a bazaar in May of that year under his direction, raising $2,500, and bought the land at the corner of Howard Street and Columbus Avenue, which was valued at $20,000. The basement was completed in June and the first mass in the edifice was said by local French-Canadians in Novem- ber. Four years later St. Joseph's Church was completed, Father
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Gagnier being its pastor for thirty-five years, until his death in 1908. A mission was maintained for a time on Bliss Street, for the French Protestants, the services of which were conducted by various local Protestant ministers, but it later disappeared and the French- Canadians of this denomination attended other Protestant churches. A few years after the turn of the century another French Roman Catholic church was built in Brightwood, the Church of St. Thomas Aquinas.
The French-Canadians, while merging with their neighbors with ease, still kept some national unity within their own group through the medium of organizations. There were the Ligue des Patriots, Coun- cils of the Union St. Jean Baptiste, Société des Artisans Canadiens Française, Court Levis of Indian Orchard, Courts Frontenac, Marie Antoinette and Iberville, French Foresters, and others.
In the first half of the 1800's a number of liberal Germans, finding little fertile ground for new policies in their native land, came to the United States. Some of them settled in Massachusetts, and their intellectual effect on the educational life of this State has been profound.
Among these cultured Germans were Carl Beck and Carl Follen. These two men, exiled from the Fatherland because of their political activities, came to this country on Christmas Day, 1834. Shortly after- ward, both Beck and Follen went to teach at the Round Hill School, in Northampton, where, under the supervision of Beck, the Round Hill Gymnasium was started, probably the first of its kind in the United States. This gymnasium may be considered the forerunner of the present-day Turn Verein, and it soon became a well-known institution throughout the valley.
Although records fail to show any Germans actually taking up residence in this city at that time, there were several well-known immigrants from the Fatherland in Springfield as early as 1849. Peter Platt conducted a blacksmith shop and he was known as "a good blacksmith with a good shop." A year later, in 1850, Francis Traps opened a furniture shop here. The Gemeunders, however, was the best known local German family at this time. All the male members of this extraordinary immigrant family achieved world-wide reputa- tions as manufacturers of musical instruments. George, the youngest of the brothers, was an expert violinmaker and was awarded first
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prizes for several of his instruments at the Crystal Palace World's Fair at London in 1851. The first organ in Springfield was made by Albrecht Gemeunders for the Universalist Church, and August, another brother, was noted in this country as a premier bass viol- maker.
Up to the Civil War there were few Germans in Springfield. They came in small groups and their colony was located down on Cross Street, for in those days Springfield had its share of old Yankee intol- erance. This state of affairs did not continue very long, however, and the local Germans began to spread. The immigrants of this nation- ality were in the main educated men, but the primary reason for their coming here was the opportunity for better wages, rather than the desire for intellectual freedom that prompted their predecessors to leave the Fatherland twenty or thirty years before.
At the outbreak of the Civil War, the work in the armory shops attracted many German mechanics. The hostility of local landlords which was at first evident to these strangers from a far land soon van- ished when it was found that the Germans were honest and indus- trious and paid their bills promptly. The old gathering place and center of entertainment for local Germans was the United States Hotel, later torn down when the city widened Cross Street. The cen- ter of activity for the new immigrants was Gilmore's Hall on Main Street, and following that the old Turn Verein rooms on West State Street. These people attended the German Evangelical Lutheran Trinity Church.
Skilled labor was highly prized during those stirring days of the Civil War and the Germans had no equals when it came to mechanical ability. Scores of them came to work here, producing the firearms used by the Union soldiers, and the United States Armory ran day and night. In the thirty years following the war, the local German population reached the thousand mark, and in the next two decades nine hundred and seventy more settled here. Fewer Germans came to America than any other significant race, yet Springfield attracted numbers of them like a magnet.
In the days of the little German colony on Cross Street, a well- known figure was Mrs. Elizabeth Gruendler. She ran the United States Hotel, and on Saturday night when the German tobacco work- ers came in from the Hook farm in Feeding Hills and other locations,
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the upper floors of the hostelry used to bend under the weight of the dancers as they clumped about the hall in the familiar steps of the old German dances.
The German is by nature a genial and jovial host, and it is not at all surprising that local Germans took kindly to hotelkeeping. Old Maurice Conrad, familiarly known as "Dutchy," was a well-known host of his time, and in 1875 his little basement restaurant at Main and Sanford streets was the rendezvous of Springfield's gay young men. His real reputation as a host and dispenser of good food and drink was gained, however, in his restaurant at Sanford and Market streets, to which place he moved in 1882 and which for years was one of the city's most favored eating places. Dietrich Sievers was a later manager of the United States Hotel, but in 1901 started his life career as manager of the Highland Hotel. With the assistance of his wife he gained an enviable reputation as a provider of the best in food. The Langes, Lubolds and Henckings were all Germans in the business of selling food and drink, and the name of Schroeder is a familiar one to old-time Springfield diners.
The Germans also branched out in other forms of business. The old Kalmbach and Geisel brewery, which was established in 1869, was probably the forerunner of all the local German business enterprises. It was located on Boston Road at the end of the old horse-car line, and it was thoroughly German in its efficiency and the quality of its product. Then Jacob Lutz, the German lithographer, who had started out in the Goodrich block with a little hand-press as a nucleus, just two years before, began to make tremendous forward strides and built a good business which was housed in the Taylor and Ray block on West Worthington Street. Jacob Lutz turned out the finest work in this section of New England for many years. With the decline of lithography as an illustrating process there, of course, came a cor- responding decline in business, but not in the quality of work turned out.
The Dickinson Manufacturing Company, producers of rubber articles, and once an enterprising firm, was directed by Kurt R. Stern- berg. Mr. Sternberg took a public-spirited interest in civic affairs and exerted his best efforts in the political field to bring about reforms for the well-being of local citizens. He was a member of the munici- pal planning commission, and did splendid work for that board. He
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had also a thorough knowledge of chemistry, and is credited with being one of the co-inventors of bakelite and condensite.
Other German business men came into prominence as the years went on. Otto Baab was well known as a piano dealer. The firm of Guenther and Handel became one of the leading delicatessen estab- lishments. Herman Buchholz was Springfield's main costumer and decorator. Every time there was an amateur theatrical performance his services were likely to be in active demand, and he could supply everything from a monk's cowl to a Satan's costume. Another well- known local German of the same family was Phillip H. Buchholz, before whose big camera hundreds of Springfield people have taken their turn.
In the field of hotel management, a number of other Germans attained prominence. Gus Hencking was manager of the Hencking Hotel on Lyman Street, where the Crown Hotel is now located. Her- man Lange, who lived in Springfield, owned and operated the Park Square Hotel in Westfield. Robert Jahrling succeeded D. H. Sievers at the Highland Hotel, and is still there to maintain the excellent reputation of that famous hostelry. One of the first German bar- bers in Springfield and a man active in singing and dramatic circles of the Turn Verein is Paul Hofman, who still plies his trade in the barber shop of the Highland. Hofman was a barber for a number of years on the North German Lloyd before coming here.
Probably one of the finest examples of German thoroughness, efficiency and perfection of system was the Bosch magneto factory. This was a stronghold of skilled German workmen, and most of the superintendents were Germans also. There were German machine workers, tool and diemakers, and assemblers in most of the other Springfield plants, but it was at the Bosch that the same system which might have been employed at the Krupp factories in the Fatherland was used.
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