USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume I > Part 6
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"If the State were able to maintain them, which they are not able to do without utter undoing, yet there is no necessary use of a fort there to keep out malignant ships.
"We do not deny that the first intent of building the fort might be to secure the river against malignant ships and pinaces, but this must be remembered that it was made in haste, and therefore, it was only a palisade, which, when it was bought, was utterly ruined. Neither is there like to be any fort there of sufficient strength. Hence we judge such kind of fortification will rather be a dangerous snare to the
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river than a benefit, and it is a kind of fort that is an advan- tage to an enemy. Therefore, if ever we be forced to have any right or interest in the purchase of said fort we shall, in likeli- hood, give our votes to have it demolished, with all speed.
"There is no need of any fort here to secure the river against malignant ships or pinaces, for the river's mouth is naturally barred with a sand bank all over, which is sufficient to terrify all malignant ships from coming into the river, which is more than any fort there can do. Secondly, a fort there is needless against malignant pinnaces, for such as are of small burden and may easily pass in and out, either by day or night, without any great damage of a fort, the passage there is so broad.
"If malignant pinaces shall at any time attempt mischief against the river, we are fearless of danger, for no pinace can come nigh us by 15 or 16 miles. Therefore, the fort is not of a kind to secure us, as it is to secure you. So the combined jurisdiction should not expect us to pay an equal share with them of all that passes out at the River's mouth."
There was a meeting of the United Colony commissioners at Plymouth in 1648, and Massachusetts made another effort to win over the commissioners, but without avail. Consequently, when the General Court met at Boston in May, 1649, it was in no temper to rely longer on moral force alone. Solemn indignation characterized the speeches of the members, and a vote was passed rehearsing the facts of the situation-how Springfield was taxed to maintain a Con- necticut fort, and how the Boston fortifications had never been a charge on the other colonies. Then, with equally solemn indignation they imposed tariff duties, both import and export, on all goods carried past "the castle" in Boston Bay by any inhabitant of Plym- outh, Connecticut, or New Haven. A turbulent meeting of the com- missioners at Boston two months later, and formal remonstrance against retaliatory duties on all the New England colony goods, had not the slightest effect on the Bay people.
The tariff war, thus begun, threatened to ruin Connecticut, and all New England would have been set back in its struggle for existence. There was a quick response to the retaliatory duties. Plymouth and
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New Haven were grieved and Hartford irritated; but, they all gave way, nevertheless, and Mr. Pynchon's goods passed down the river unchallenged. Massachusetts, with equal promptness, gladly sus- pended the customs duties on the petition of the inhabitants of Bos- ton, after being "credibly informed" that Connecticut had done likewise.
Springfield Around 1650
CHAPTER VI Springfield Around 1650
In spite of local excitements, the minds of these remote pioneers continually turned to England, and even in the wilderness, they felt a kind of security to which England at that time was a stranger. Mr. Pynchon wrote, in 1646, after hearing of the struggle in the British Parliament over religion and the form of discipline to be adopted :
"The Scotts say that their form of presbyterian govern- ment is the only way of Christ, and the Independents say that their form of government is the only way of Christ. But the Parliament say that neither of them is the only way of Christ, and therefore they have ordained commissioners to supervise the conclusions of the presbyterian courts. But truly where the zeal of God's glory and godly wisdom are joined together ; a world of good hath been done by godly ministers that have held no certain form of discipline. On the contrary, where a cold spirit doth rule in ministers, though they may have a good form of government, they may yet be dead Christians."
This is a fair example of the spirit at the bottom of Mr. Pynchon's religious controversies. The attempts both in this country and Eng- land to secure an iron-bound form of religion as handmaid to the State had set him to philosophizing. On the other hand, the attempt to secure liberty of conscience had the effect of driving him into more conservative lines of thought, and even led him to say :
"I perceive by some godly ministers that this is not a time of reformation, but of liberty of conscience, and I believe that when they have seen a little more of the lawlessness of liberty of conscience, they will change their judgment and say that it will give liberty to Satan to broach such horrid blasphemous opinions as were not the like in any age."
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During the summer of 1646, there was a plague of caterpillars which came in such numbers as to greatly damage the wheat. Then an open winter was followed by terrible floods, and in the autumn there was an epidemic of sickness. The settlers had many natural enemies. Pigeons in overwhelming flocks assaulted the crops and the wolves made free with the sheep. A bounty of ten pence was paid for every wolf killed within five miles of the town.
The building of the meetinghouse added to the solemnity of the Lord's Day observances. John Matthews was ordered to beat "the drum for the meetings at 10 of the clock on the lecture days and at 9 o'clock on the Lord's days in the forenoon only, and he to beat it from Mr. Moxon's house to Mr. Stebbins' house, and the meetings were to begin within half an hour after, for which he is to have 6 pence in wampum of every family in the town or a peck of Indian corn, if they have not wampum." A bell was supplied a few years later, and Richard Sikes rang it and swept the house for one shilling a week. In March, 1646, the town voted money to complete the meetinghouse, but withholding ten pounds until an opportunity appeared for procuring glass, or until the house was finished.
The town meeting usually specified the kind of property to be taxed. Thus the wolf bounty was raised from a tax on "all sorts of cattle," which included horses. The tax for Mr. Moxon's mainte- nance, in 1647, had been raised "on all lands and goods." Cooper's meetinghouse debt was met by a tax on "uplands and live stock." Wheat was accepted for taxes, and so were Indian corn and peas.
Just when Miles Morgan came to Springfield is uncertain, but he probably had been a resident several years before he and George Colton were commissioned to get a smith for the town in 1646. Com- paratively little is known of his early life. He was born in England, lived for a while at Bristol and, in 1636, came to this country when a young man, accompanied by two brothers. His house-lot was on the south side of Ferry Lane, now Cypress Street.
During the voyage to America, young Morgan made the acquaint- ance of a Miss Gilbert, and apparently won her heart. She settled with her family at Beverly, and he, after building a house in Spring- field, pressed his courtship of the Beverly maid-but not by letter, for the simple reason that he could not write. Negotiations were carried on by mutual friends, and Morgan, after being accepted, made the
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eastern journey to his lady love about 1643, taking with him two neighbors and an Indian, duly armed. On the return journey, Miles and his three attendants walked all the way from Beverly to Spring- field, while the bride and "some household stuff" were carried by the only horse at the disposal of this odd bridal party. For many years Morgan was a butcher when his farm work permitted.
In 1646, the first Tuesday in November was settled on for a regu- lar annual town meeting. This was quite a change from the former habit of holding the meetings monthly. The fine for absence from town meeting, or for leaving the meeting before the blessing, was raised, in 1646, to one bushel of Indian corn. Centralization invited suspicions. Two months after the election of the second board of townsmen, it was voted that they should publish their orders "After Lecture, or at any training day or other public meeting." The towns- men began keeping a record in 1647. Some of the townsmen were chosen to act as surveyors. Their special instructions, besides keep- ing the highways in condition, were to "open a Horse-way over the meadow to the Bay path," and build a bridge over the Three Corner Brook into the plain. John Pynchon was made a townsman and elected town treasurer, in 1650, and began to be prominent in local affairs.
Much trouble was occasioned in those days by not obeying the town order as to swine, and it was specially decreed in 1646, that if a man let his hogs run abroad unyoked, and the swine broke in and trespassed, "the master of the swine should be liable to pay all dam- ages as two indiferent men shall judge the damage to be."
The following year this matter was again taken up, and it was decreed that swine kept about a house or near any corn ground belong- ing to the plantation, and not under the custody of a keeper, "shall be sufficiently yoked according to the age and bigness of the swine. In case any swine that are above the age of six months shall be found in the street or about any of the common fences of the cornfields without wearing a yoke or having a ring in its nose-It shall be lawful for any person so finding them to drive the hogs to the pound, which may be any man's yard or outhouse in the present defect of no common pound." It was also provided that he give the owner of swine notice of his impounding them within twenty-four hours after it was so done.
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Here are a number of items that give us interesting glimpses of the pioneers' daily life :
"Ordered by the town in September, 1647, that John Clarke or those that shall join him in the burning of tar shall have liberty to gather candlewood on the plain in the Bay path, provided they come not to gather any this side of the great pond and the swamps that point out from it to Chicopee river, and Mill river, which is judged to be about five miles from the town."
The candlewood which the men went to gather was knots of the fat pitch-pine. These were split fine for burning on a hearth in place of candles, and they were found everywhere in the pine woods. Gov- ernor Winthrop, the younger, records in 1662 that this candlewood was much used for domestic illumination in Virginia, New York, and New England. It was found in abundance in new settlements, and pine knots are still burned in the Southern States in humble households for lighting purposes. The light is bright compared to a candle, but a New England historian, writing in 1642, has said that "Candlewood may serve as a shift among poor folks, but I cannot commend it, because it drops a pitchy sort of substance where it stands."
That pitchy sort of substance was tar, one of the most valuable trade products of the colonists. So much tar was made by burning the pines on the banks of the Connecticut, that as early as 1650 the towns had to prohibit the using of candlewood for tar-making if gathered within six miles of the Connecticut River, though it could be gathered by families for illumination and fuel.
"The pine knots were such candles as the Indians commonly use, having no other," writes a colonial minister, "and they are nothing else but the wood of the pine tree which is so full of the moisture of turpentine and pitch that they burn as clear as a torch."
To avoid having smoke in the room, and on account of the pitchy droppings, candlewood was usually burned in a corner of the fireplace, on a flat stone.
At Springfield, in September, 1647, the town ordered that "no person shall gather any hops that grow in the swamps, or in the com- mon until this present day yearly on pain of forfeiting what they shall so disorderly gather, and 2 shillings six pence for breach of order."
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The forfeiture went to the informer and the penalty to the town treasury.
By order of the town, in January, 1646, if any trees were felled, "and had no other work bestowed on them for more than 6 months, from that day forward in the commons, it shall be lawfull for any man to take them, but any timber that is cross cut, or firewood that is cut out and set on heaps, or rails or clefts for poles, no man may take any of these until it has lain twelve months after it is cross-cut or cloven."
The townsmen then declared it unlawful to transport outside of the town limits any "building timbers, board logs or sawn boards or planks or shingle timber or pipe staves." Furthermore, the townsmen decreed that "Whereas it is judged offensive and noisome for flax and hemp to be watered or washed in the brook before men's doors, that is of ordinary use for dressing meat, therefore it is ordered that no person shall henceforth water any flax or hempe in the said brook on pain of a six shilling 8 pence fine."
William Pynchon held court four times a year, and all breaches of the peace were presented by a grand jury of two men. Mr. Moxon usually opened the court with prayer and the town meetings were now held in the meetinghouse. In later years taverns were sometimes used for that purpose.
Among the persons to whom Mr. Moxon ministered and whose confidence he enjoyed, there were some eminent. not only for their piety, but for their intelligence. Such were William and John Pyn- chon, Henry Smith, Elizur Holyoke, and Deacon Samuel Chapin.
Ministers who came as candidates after Mr. Moxon left were apt not to satisfy. Thus Mr. Hosford "was a disappointment," and Mr. Thompson "deserted this plantation." In 1657 services were conducted by Pynchon, Holyoke, Chapin and Burt, and Mr. Pynchon was authorized to read his "own meditations."
Several years passed, and then a young minister named Pelatiah Glover was settled over the Springfield church. He was something of a student and was well calculated to take up the line of theology approved in the valley. The people were not able to give Mr. Glover a liberal support in money, but they made free to supply him with valuable landed property.
Year after year the selectmen and deacons, or some committee chosen in town meeting, assigned the pews or "dignified" the meeting-
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house, and their arbitrary duties often caused heartburnings quite as intent as those resulting from assignments of land, for the rule fol- lowed was worldly condition and social importance. The seating dis- turbance became so serious in 1666 that the selectmen were compelled to interfere. Many, indeed, refused to sit where assigned, and acted with a high hand.
THE OLD TAVERN AT NORTH WILBRAHAM
Some years later Miles Morgan and Jonathan Burt were sta- tioned "up in the gallery to give a check to disorders in youth and young men in time of God's worship." Besides, Anthony Dorchester was to sit in the guard seat for the like purpose.
In addition to the family Mr. Moxon brought with him across the Atlantic, he had three children born here-all boys, and there were some of his children who never came over from England. Two daughters here in Springfield were Martha and Rebeckah, who won a strange notoriety in connection with witchcraft. They became early
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victims, if not the very first, of that delusion which for a time swept New England.
Super men and women of broad vision are uncommon in any age or race, and the Puritan settlers of New England were no exception. They varied as individuals through all the gamut of fit and unfit, and the path was inevitably thorny for the saints. It was an age of superstition. Nearly everyone was at least tinged with it. We can applaud the stalwart devotion of our forefathers, but their supersti- tions continually intrude, making it impossible to forget that they were the descendants of what in general was an ignorant and unre- flecting age. They were self-assertive, brave, and Biblical rather than inspired. Until Jonathan Edwards' time one looks in vain for any serious attempt in New England to verify the teachings of the gospel in reason.
They were content to stop with close interpretations of texts. The grim terrors of witchcraft came within this interpretation, and formed a part of the belief on both sides of the ocean. However, it was not the Puritans who invented witches. The belief in a veritable devil was general in the seventeenth century, and the Bible accounts of devils dwelling in earthly habitations were its justification. Men and women accepted the idea that persons made a league with familiar spirits, entering into secret compacts with them, and for the price of their souls secured for a time a diabolical control over the laws of nature. These persons were called witches. Personal ugliness was a characteristic of the witch in the popular mind, and witchcraft was a statute crime in England, where no less than thirty thousand lives were sacrificed on the gibbet and at the stake to crush it out.
Nearly all the absurdities, superstitions and cruelties connected with the belief in witchcraft in America originated in Europe. Our courts in witchcraft trials had as guides the decisions of distinguished English judges, and the rules of eminent English lawyers. The vicar of Frome, chaplain of Charles II and a member of the Royal Society, was a distinguished writer in favor of the existence of witches, witch- craft and apparitions, and his books were read in New England.
Among the absurd protections against witchcraft was the horse- shoe nailed against the threshold of the door, and yet there were New Englanders who had faith in its efficacy. The houses of two or three
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men in Northampton had a horseshoe fast ;ned to the threshold about one hundred and fifty years ago.
In 1648, the lower part of Springfield's main street must have somewhat resembled a forest road, with clearings on the river side to make room for houses, barns and young orchards. Here lived Rice Bedortha and his wife Blanche. Their neighbors were Hugh Par- sons, John Lombard, George Langton, and various others. In this remote part of the town the witch fever started. The houses were on the border of the wet meadows, and it is not unlikely that at times marsh lights were seen after dark. At any rate that was the asser- tion of Mrs. Bedortha. Besides, there were mysterious things hap- pening in that part of the town which were enough to make the cold moisture stand on the brow of the bravest. Skulking lights at dead of night out on the marshes were not the worst. Blanche Bedortha told all along the street how Hugh Parsons, her neighbor, three doors below, had called at the house one day to see her husband about some bricks. While the men talked she joined in the conversation, whereat Parsons exclaimed sharply, "You needn't have said anything. I spoke not to you." At that Mr. Bedortha was offended and made a harsh comment.
However, the situation was not unusual. A woman says an unnecessary thing, a man retorts with feeling, and affairs get involved. The men probably soon forgot the incident, but Mrs. Bedortha treas- ured it and talked of it among her neighbors. One night, as she was retiring, three flashes of light startled her. They seemed to come from inside of her red cotton waistcoat, which she had just taken off and was about to hang on a peg. Quickly she held up the garment between her hands a second time, but there was no flash. The room had a fireplace, and in that a fire was burning, yet there was no possi- bility of seeing a flash from that because it had the protection of a double Indian mat through which no flash could be seen.
A month later a child was born to Mrs. Bedortha, and she was unwell for some time afterward in a strange, mysterious sort of way. She felt on her left side pains as if pierced with knives in three dif- ferent places. "Suddenly after that," she said, "my thoughts were that this evil might come on me from what Hugh Parsons said. I do not think I was sick in any other part of my body except the three places, and by the extremity of these prickings only."
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Any person familiar with Cotton Mather's elaborate accounts of how the little "gentleman in black" was in the habit of pinching and pricking people, will at once see the drift of such evidence. Mrs. Bedortha's nurse was a widow, Mrs. Marshfield, who had formerly lived at Windsor, where she herself had a character not entirely free from rumored connection with witchcraft. Possibly the widow went all over the neighborhood with her witchcraft chatter, and while the good matrons were carding or spinning, described the prickings, and told what Hugh Parsons had said.
It is still more likely that Mrs. Parsons heard the reflections on her husband's character with keen resentment. At any rate there was a falling-out between Widow Marshfield and Mrs. Parsons. By way of a home-thrust Mrs. Parsons went along the street and elaborated her case against the widow Marshfield. She said it was publicly known that the devil followed her at her house in Windsor, and added, "For aught I know follows her here."
This talking match culminated in a suit for slander, brought by Mrs. Bedortha's widowed nurse against Mrs. Parsons.
William Pynchon, after due deliberation, condemned Mrs. Par- sons to twenty lashes, which were to be administered by the constable after lecture, or to pay Mrs. Marshfield "3 pounds damages toward the reparation of her good name."
The payment of this fine to the widow was in Indian corn, twenty- four bushels, and when it was offered, Hugh asked her to abate one- third; but she refused, because Hugh had said after the trial that her witnesses had given false testimony. Thereupon Parsons exclaimed in his usual reckless, mysterious way, "Take it!" and he added, "It will be as wildfire to this house and as a moth to your garment I'll war- rant you, and make account it is but lent you !"
Mrs. Marshfield was continually on the watch. Presently her daughter was taken with fits. The threats and the fits ran hand in hand all over the excited plantation. They visited every household, and frightened the godly folk half out of their wits, but no one seemed called on to secure the arrest of Hugh Parsons. Martha Moxon and her sister, who were daughters of the minister, had been taken down with fits previous to this, and the reverend father at once recalled the fact that Parsons had grumbled because compelled to build his chim-
Hampden-6
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ney according to contract, and had even made a mysterious remark that the bricks would do Moxon no good.
Public opinion now ran strong against the Parsons household. No deviation from the dull prose of life could take place without its being connected in some mysterious aspect with the quarrelsome fam- ily in the lower part of the street. Whenever the red coat of Hugh Parsons appeared, women trembled and clung to their children. The terrible fact was whispered in every kitchen-"Springfield has a witch !"
Five months after the Marshfield-Parsons slander case, a child was born to Mary Parsons that lived only a year. This made the home and village conditions worse than ever. Hugh was just the kind of person to annoy his wife, and when he was about the house disagreements were frequent. Besides, there were long unexplained absences of his that she considered heartless neglect of his family. The eye of suspicion and the finger of gossip were turned on them by the community, and finally, these and the death of the child, worked Mrs. Parsons' highly-strung nerves into a flighty hysterical condition, and she went down another step from vivacious maidenhood to the level of a social outcast.
ยท Sarah, the wife of Alexander Edwards, added to the community fear of Hugh Parsons by telling how he called at their house for milk, and after she had refused to give him more than a pennyworth, the cow "almost dried up," and the next day the milk was as "yellow as saffron," and each day it turned to some other "strange odd color."
Neighbor Griffith Jones, not to be outdone in relating wonders that concerned the doings of the Parsons household, told the Bedorthas, who lived next door, that on the Lord's Day he had left his wife at a neighbor's after the first sermon, and gone home, where he proceeded to take up his dinner and to put it on a little table made on a cradle head. He then looked for a knife, of which he had two, but both of them were missing. So at dinner he was obliged to use an old rusty knife from a basket where he had things to mend shoes.
After clearing away his dinner dishes he laid the rusty knife on a corner of the table, intending to cut a pipe of tobacco with it when he had fed his pig, which had come up close to the door. After serv- ing the pig, Jones returned to the house, where he was amazed to find three knives on his table. He was greatly disconcerted, but had pres-
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