USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 5
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The second immigration to Springfield in this period was the determining event of the plantation history. The first arrivals, aside from Mr. Pynchon's relatives and personal friends, were ignorant and adventurous. Typical ones were John Cable and John Burr, who soon gave up the struggle and drifted down the river. New blood was an imperative necessity. The period was full of the smaller compli- cations of pioneer life, and was, on the whole, anything but promising.
It is recorded, in 1640, that Goody Gregory, the wife of Henry Gregory, who had only been connected with the settlement about a year, was accused by John Woodcock of "swearing before God I could break thy head!" She did not attempt any defense, and was fined twelve pence, in default of which she was to sit three hours in the stocks. The fine was much below the amount prescribed in colonial laws for this offense.
Another new arrival, Samuel Hubbard, was licensed to keep an ordinary. This was sanctioned by a vote in town meeting. The ordi- nary was a tavern or eating house which, in the seventeenth century,
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was often used for gambling after meals. It was very fashionable among the youth of that time. Hubbard was also commissioned to lay out all lots in the plantation.
John Leonard was appointed surveyor to see the highways cleared and kept in repair, and free from all stubs, sawpits or timber. Henry Smith and Thomas Mirrick were given power to restrain the Indians from breaking up any new ground, or from planting any that was broken up last year. Also they were "to pitch up stakes so the Indians might be limited from enlarging themselves in the swamp."
The importance of the marsh was further magnified by the open- ing of a highway in the spring of 1640 across the "hassakey" meadow. This was State Street. It had been voted, in 1638, that land for a highway be reserved out of the marshy ground of Thomas Wood- ford's lot.
The provision about canoes was broadened in 1640 by an order that none be sold to parties outside the plantation. In December leave was granted to Mr. Holyoke, William Warriner, and Henry Burt to seek out for their use each of them a canoe tree. Warriner made bad use of his permit and was afterward fined for selling his canoe.
In 1641 orders were passed requiring fire ladders with "15 rungs or steps at least." Each house was to have a ladder. One thing for- bidden was the carrying of fire uncovered through the streets. Another progressive step was the ordering of a foot path and stiles to be built at every man's lot end next to the great river.
It was during this year that one of the town's irrepressibles, John Woodcock, scored a victory over Henry Gregory in two suits for slander about some hogs. The damages were forty shillings and costs. On hearing the award Gregory was very indignant and exclaimed: "I marvel with what conscience the jury can give such damages !"
Mr. Moxon interfered, charging Gregory to "Take heed! take heed !"
This case was tried before a jury with Mr. Pynchon as magistrate; and in a community where means of diversion were few, it probably called together a goodly number of absorbed spectators.
One of the first buildings put up after the pioneers had been housed was a sawmill on Mill River. At the same time a temporary
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bridge was made across the stream, and in the spring of 1643 a more substantial one was substituted. The order for it was passed at the March town meeting, and provision was made for both a bridge and highway to the mill for the passage of carts and cattle. Those men who failed to do their share of work on the former bridge were to make it up in the present bridge and the way over the meadow.
In January, 1642, a second division of planting-ground was decreed. The apportionment "provided that those who have broken up ground there, shall have allowance such as two indiferent men shall judge equal." Single persons were to have 8 rods in breadth, married persons 10 rods in breadth, "bigger families 12 rods, to begin upward at the edge of the hill," which is now Chestnut Street.
One year later, Elizur Holyoke, Samuel Chapin, and a few others were chosen "to lay out the lands, both of upland and meadow on the other side of the great river where the Indians lived over all the meadows on Agawam, so far as shall amount to a hundred and fifty acres." Present inhabitants were to be satisfied, including Mr. Pyn- chon. Mr. Moxon was to have first choice of the allotments by con- sent of the plantation.
This allotment was soon annulled. One cause of trouble may have been the taking into consideration the estates and importance of the inhabitants in apportioning these lands. The wonder is that the rule worked at all. There are certain expressions occurring later which lead to the belief that the planters resorted to something similar to drawing cuts, boy fashion. But in the first year the rule was "unto him that hath shall be given."
The year 1640 closed with Springfield's first recorded marriage. The new arrival, Elizur Holyoke, led to the altar Mary Pynchon, daughter of William Pynchon. Holyoke was a man of no ordinary force of character, and the event must have made an impression on the swains of the valley. Within a few months after his arrival he had won the most lovely maiden of her day, if tradition is accepted, and the match carried with it certain considerations of a worldly character. Holyoke was about twenty-two years of age. His birth- place was near Tamworth Tower in Warwickshire, England, and he had come to New England with his father. Marriage was followed by the assignment of a very desirable lot between Worthington and Bridge streets. His father-in-law's large lot bounded his land on the
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north, and Henry Smith, who had married Ann Pynchon before the settlement of Springfield, was close by on the south. According to custom, Holyoke received allotments of meadow and upland opposite his lot on the east side of Main Street, also land on the west side of the Connecticut and planting-grounds elsewhere. The marriage was a happy event, and hundreds of descendants in America hold in rev- erence Elizur and Mary Holyoke. One thing for which they are remembered is that in a dark hour of Springfield's history they refused to return to England and give up the struggle for mastery in this val- ley. Now they rest in the beautiful Springfield Cemetery. It is well written on Mary Holyoke's tombstone :
"She that lies here was while she stood, A very glory of womanhood."
In September, 1644, the town meeting took the important step of intrusting the management of affairs to a committee. For eight years the town had been governed without selectmen. Now a board of five were elected and given power for one year to "prevent anything they shall judge to be to the damage of the town, or to order anything they shall judge good for the town." To these five or any three of them was given power to serve complaints, to arbitrate controversies, to lay out highways, make bridges and especially order the making of the way over the marshy meadow, and see "to scowering of the ditches, and to the killing of wolves, and to the training of the children in some good calling, or any other thing they shall judge to be for the profit of the town." The new selectmen were comparatively young and poor so far as having any estate independent of the lands voted them by the town was concerned.
Town rates in 1645 were based on house-lots only. The town met the last Thursday in each month, and notices of special meetings given on lecture day were considered legal warning. The penalty for absence, or for leaving town meetings during the session without a permit, was half a bushel of Indian corn.
Numberless instances of caution on the part of these primitive guardians of public policy abound in the record books. Every house- holder was required to carefully attend to the sweeping of his chimney once every month for the winter time, and once in two months in sum- mer. If a man neglected this, the town swept the chimney for him at his expense.
TROUBLES OF THE TRADERS
Mr. Moxon's ministry had proved a great success, for he seemed to have just the elements to keep in check the uneasy spirits that were inevitably drawn into adventurous enterprises of this sort. He was educated in England at Cambridge University, and was at Dorchester for a while before coming to Springfield.
One of Mr. Pynchon's letters that have been preserved is par- ticularly worth quoting because it reveals his religious attitude. Ordi- narily we think of him as so absorbed in affairs of business and trade that one might fancy his grand motive in coming to New England was simply to pluck plums of gold. The letter was written to Gov- ernor Winthrop in 1644, and begins with :
"I praise God we are all in good health and in peace in our plantation; and the Lord has added to us lately three or four young men that are Godly. The Lord has greatly blessed Mr. Moxon's ministry to the conversion of many souls and hitherto the Lord has preserved us in peace from enemies."
Mr. Pynchon waited for the grace of God to have its perfect work on such of his associates as were not members of the church. The people at the Bay had the habit of continually giving the divine agency an impetus by way of punishments visited on those not disposed to hasten into the fold. But in their attempt to stamp out heresy by closing the mouth of Error, they had only invited an ill-feeling that often came out at the public meetings, and sometimes found expres- sion in harsh words against the ministers themselves. For these offenses a fine was imposed, and if there was a repetition, the offender had to stand openly two hours on a block four feet high on a lecture day, with a paper fixed on his breast, labeling him: "A Wanton Gos- peler, written in capital letters, that others may fear and be ashamed of breaking out into like wickedness." This law applied to Springfield as it did to all Massachusetts towns, but advantage was not taken of the privilege.
Of all events in the history of the plantation, probably none caused deeper satisfaction than the definite prospect of owning a house of worship-not thatched like many houses on the street, but a veritable framed and windowed temple in the wilderness. It was in February, 1645, that the contract was made in open town meeting for
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the building of the first Springfield meetinghouse. Each inhabitant was to furnish twenty-eight days' work, "when required by him who undertakes the building of it." No inhabitant could be forced to work more than six consecutive days. Thomas Cooper contracted for the work, and it was satisfactorily performed.
The building was forty by twenty-five feet in size, "9 feet betwixt joints," double studded, and had two large windows on either side, and a smaller window at each end. There was a large door on the south side, and two smaller doors elsewhere. Joists were laid for a gallery when it could be afforded. The roof was shingled, and there were two towers, one for a bell, and the other for a watch-house. The underpinning was stone "dawbed" in the old style. Cooper received four score pounds paid in quarterly instalments of wheat, peas, pork, wampum and labor above the twenty-eight days required of each mature male inhabitant.
Mr. Cooper had until September, 1645, to fulfill this contract, but the last stroke was done by the previous March. A place for the meetinghouse to stand on was bought by an exchange of several lots, some of them on the other side of the great river, and with no pay- ments except in land. Evidently it was lots next to the river that were acquired for the meetinghouse, which faced south on a one-rod road leading to the training field and to the burial ground. This road has since been made wider and called Elm Street. Use of ground at the foot of Elm Street as a training field soon gave way to its use as a burial ground, and the lots thus occupied were on either side of Elm Street, extending from what is now Water Street to within a few feet of the margin of the river bank. The general control and care of these lots was in the hands of the old meetinghouse parish. Nearly all graves in this part of the town continued there undisturbed until the opening of a new cemetery in 1841. By an arrangement between the parish and the proprietors of the old cemetery, to which the consent of friends was obtained when possible, all the remains in the old burial grounds were removed to a new resting place, more remote from the rumble of the cars and the shriek of the locomotive.
The local scene when the pioneers assembled in their new meeting- house must have been very interesting with Mr. Pynchon sitting under the pulpit and Mr. Moxon offering thanks, while the voice of praise rose from a full-hearted, though small congregation. In that gather-
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ing were at least sixteen men, founders of families. Their descend- ants have been noteworthy to a remarkable degree, and through each line has run the distinctive traits of mind and heart that were the making of Springfield.
It had been said at Boston and Hartford that the Agawam set- tlement would not survive, and indeed it did take nearly a decade of lonely but persistent toil to secure a footing.
Mr. Moxon's connection with the witch excitement in Springfield has led to the conclusion he was a weak and superstitious person. But those who have deciphered his sermons, and examined the meager traces of his teachings, come to a far different conclusion. He was what might be called an exhaustive preacher, for he always followed out an elaborate scheme of sermonizing covering about all that could be said on his subject, dividing and subdividing his topic with reckless prodigality of time; and if the sermon hour closed before the sermon did, he simply announced that the discourse would be continued on the Sabbath following.
It happened back in 1640, when William Pynchon was at logger- heads with the Windsor church, and the heavens hung low with clouds, spiritual and temporal, that he felt called on to fortify the position of his little congregation by the text: "Comfort your hearts, and 'stablish you in every good word and work." Here was a vast subject. It touched both the doctrine and deeds of men. Loyalty to the gospel, the fate of individual souls, and the future of the planta- tion itself seemed to hang on the voice from the pulpit. He began the sermon February 16 and finished it March 15, when the church probably felt refreshed in more senses than one. His exhortation to be "settled in well doing and to be stable in sound doctrine" was hammered into the metal of every soul present.
In 1645 we find that the settlement of disputes by the "arbi- trament of two Indifferent Men" relieved the magistrate of much labor, but the town meeting continued to feel the burdens of its fence and land supervision. The appearance of a vote to force landholders in the southern part of the town to build fences was a reminder that the settlement was growing to the south, and this section finally developed into the town of Longmeadow. Several persons who had planting grounds there complained of others who refused to fence these grounds. They succeeded in getting an order
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through the town meeting forcing these to bear a share in a common fence against all cattle according to the several quantities of their allotments. Each man was also required to cut his fencing stuff on his own grounds except he first have the consent of his neighbor to cut on his.
VIEW AT LUDLOW
The next move was for the inhabitants to join together in a gen- eral fence, each man bearing a share in proportion to his quantity of acres. This general fence was to be finished by the first of April, and the end next to the river was to be railed, leaving out a sufficient high- way next to the river.
A few months before this the people had accepted the allotment made by seven men who were to divide the town in equal parts for estates and persons. Third and fourth allotments were provided in the long meadow, and on the other side of the river. The upper part of the town were to have their third and fourth allotments in the plain above the Three Corner Brook, and on the other side of the great river at the end of the five-acre lots.
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In September of the same year it was voted that "whereas the planting of Indian corn in the meadow swamp on the other side of Agawam river has occasioned a long stay after mowing time before men can put over their cattle there, it is ordered that no more Indian corn shall be planted, either in the meadow or in the swamps, that the cattle of all that have allotments may be put over by the 15th of September, provided they keep their cattle from going over by having a keeper in the day time, and by having them in some fenced place in the night time. Only calves can be put over there by the 14th of August."
Complaint being made that various persons who kept teams on the other side of the river in the springtime to plough, "have much damaged other men by their cattle, in eating the green corn and the first sprouts of men's meadows : It is ordered therefore teams of cat- tle shall be kept in some house or yard until the first of May, and if anyone keep them longer there, they are to pasture them on their own ground, or on the common, or the three lots not improved for tillage."
Late in October, 1645, the Springfield community witnessed two marriages within three days. There had come to Springfield some time before, Mary Lewis, a married woman. Her husband was a Catholic, but she had not lived with him for seven years. It can be imagined that if Mrs. Lewis had lived in Boston, where a governor had taken his sword and cut out the cross from the British flag because it was a hated papal emblem, she must have had a very dismal time there, and may have sought Springfield as a place of refuge. Evi- dently she was a very sensitive person and was compelled either to work or marry. So she chose the latter.
There was a bricklayer in Springfield at that time, a man of rather voluble disposition, by the name of Hugh Parsons. One might say he was a queer stick, and unworthy to be matched with a woman of Mrs. Lewis' sensitive type. It was known in Springfield that Mr. Lewis was a Catholic, but she claimed there had been a seven years' abandonment by her husband, which gave her the privilege of marry- ing again under the laws of England.
Mr. Pynchon was in great doubt what to do, and he wrote to Boston for advice, explaining that Mrs. Lewis had fallen into "a league of amity with a brickmaker," and she was in great haste for
Hampden-5
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an answer. The response was favorable, and on October 27 Hugh Parsons, the brickmaker, and Mary Lewis were married.
Three days later there was a wedding in Connecticut which delighted the heart of the founder of Springfield. His son, John Pynchon, destined to be an even more prominent leader than the father, had won the hand of Amy, daughter of Governor Wyllys, of Connecticut, and another Governor of the Colony performed the cere- mony. John Pynchon was about twenty-three years of age, a quiet, thoughtful young man, who never had a boyhood, for the Puritan convulsions in Europe and the migration to the wilderness turned the spirit of youth into the prematurely serious disposition of the pioneer. The father was delighted with the alliance, and he wrote to the Gov- ernor of the Colony expressing his satisfaction that the young man had concluded to live at "my house where he may continue as long as he finds it for his comfort and benefit."
John Pynchon was well educated, and seems to have been under the influence of a lawyer. Possibly he formed his legal habits from his father, who trained him in the ways of the law; but John Pynchon was an entirely different kind of a man from the founder of Springfield.
During the five years beginning with 1645, Springfield and Hart- ford kept up a running sword-play over the custom duties on the Con- necticut River. This was the first tariff war in New England, and finally involved all the colonies. Connecticut was nursing a commer- cial ambition and was bound to further its interests by all legitimate means. But it was evident in the temper of some of the charges formulated at Hartford that the bitterness was not lessened by a neighborly feeling toward Springfield.
Near the close of 1644 Connecticut had bargained for the fort at Saybrook, and Mr. Fenwick, the owner, agreed to accept certain duties, including two pence a bushel on exported grain passing the fort, and six pence a hundred on biscuits. Also, there was an annual tax put on hogs and cattle, to be paid to Fenwick, and all of these tributes were to continue ten years. Then the fort was to become the absolute property of Connecticut. Officers were to be stationed at Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield, to give clearance papers to mas- ters of outgoing vessels, and these papers were presented to Fenwick's agent at Saybrook. Springfield was doing a good business with Bos- ton, and Connecticut at once concluded to bring its neighbor under the
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tariff. But the Hartford government had not secured the jurisdiction of the mouth of the river with the prospective ownership of the fort. The duty on exports was the purchase money for the fort, and thus Springfield was being forced to help secure for Connecticut a title for the very fort that might prove a menace to its own commerce.
When the Massachusetts General Court was informed of the Con- necticut tariff, it voted that "none of ours" shall pay the tribute. Mr. Pynchon was threatened with utter ruin in a business way, and he promptly gave direction to his sailors to pay no attention to the orders, and to refuse to file invoices, or ask for clearance papers. His order was disobeyed by one of the crews for some unknown reason, and the cargo of corn was entered under the tariff provision, much to Mr. Pynchon's annoyance. His next ship passed the Saybrook fort in defiance of the Connecticut officer and the little cannon which was supposed to sweep the river under such circumstances. Fortunately the cannon did not open fire.
Pynchon wrote to Govenor Winthrop at Boston that "If we should be forced to do such a thing as pay duty, this plantation will be deserted. I think no man will dwell here to be brought under such payments. I desire your advice, whether we had better enter our goods or no."
The commissioners of the United Colonies, which had been in existence three years as a sort of itinerary congress, met at Hartford two months later to adjust this matter. They heard many argu- ments, and the most important one insisted that the maintenance of a fort at Saybrook was as valuable to Springfield as to Hartford. However, no definite action was taken until November, 1646, when the Massachusetts General Court held that Hartford had no legal right to force an outsider to buy a fort for the Connecticut Colony, and that the Saybrook fort was no protection to Springfield.
The next year there was a special session of the commission of the United Colonies in July at Boston, with Deputy Governor Hopkins and Captain Mason, who were the commissioners from Connecticut. Mason was thus confronted by his old antagonist of Springfield. A short time before, Mason had been given the military command at Saybrook-an act of no consequence, for owing to a recent fire the fort was little short of useless. The Massachusetts commissioners were Thomas Dudley and John Endicott. Much argument followed,
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and after considerable time Mr. Pynchon was called in, but he simply referred to the action of the Massachusetts General Court as reflect- ing fully his views. The commissioners, in spite of the fact that no duties were imposed on the Dutch trading vessels, passed a vote approving the river tariff. But as this decision failed to receive the signatures of all the commissioners, it only added to the difficulties of the situation.
Mr. Pynchon bluntly refused to pay two pence a bushel on grain, and about this time he wrote a long letter on the subject, addressed to "Goodman Johnson, my ancient and much esteemed friend." From it some of the most interesting parts are quoted. Mr. Pynchon wanted Johnson to get the General Court to take into serious consideration the jurisdiction of the river's mouth, and went on to say :
"Gov. Hopkins' letter to me, which I sent to you by my son, doth hold forth that we must pay certain rates for grain and corn transported, which will be our due share toward buying the fort down the river. I gather that Mr. Hopkins expects the rates as a custom, for when asked whether like rates would be expected of any other plantations that might be above us, he said, 'to the head of the river.' It seems they expect like rates of all other plantations that may in a few years be planted above us. Mr. Hopkins doth plead that we ought, in justice, to pay our share to buy the fort because we share in the benefit. I answer, no; except we had his con- senting as purchasers, never like to be of any benefit, namely, to keep open the river against malignant ships or pinaces. For how can we have benefit by a fort which is a fort in name only, being no fort indeed.
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