USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume II > Part 19
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"When a boy," wrote Sewall White, late historian of West Spring- field, in his journal, "I was accustomed, with those of my sunny years to go and dig out of the bank (Agawam River) the old Indian skulls and look for their tools such as arrowheads, stone hoes, etc.
"We found some few of their stone hoes about six to eight inches in length, flat upon one side and round upon the other. The bodies of the Indians appeared to have been buried as deep as we are accus- tomed to do at this day, and a black, rich mould, from one to two
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inches thick was to be found, being the flesh, which had returned to the earth as it was. Acorns, pumpkin seeds and some other kinds were found."
All old cemeteries are apt to have interesting inscriptions on the weathered tombstones, and a "graveyard" in Agawam has the fol- lowing one :
"Come all you weary travelers Pray stop and drop a tear, As I traveled I made a full stop here."
The old saying that "murder will out" seems to be proved by another : "In memory of Harriet, who was murdered by her husband, Samuel Leonard, Dec. 14, 1825."
During the World War about two hundred men from Agawam served their country. The town now has the Wilson-Thompson Post of the American Legion, named after two of the local men who died in service.
In 1934, John C. Robinson, of Longmeadow, gave seven hundred acres of land along the Agawam River above Mittineague to the Commonwealth for a park. While it is still in the development stage, Conservation Commissioner York and the Federal Government have been cooperating in opening the grounds for varied kinds of recrea- tional and scenic use.
It is a beautiful tract but little known to the public, even though it is only a few miles from a big city and close to an important trunk highway. Mr. Robinson spent several years in acquiring the land, a piece at a time, until he was able to give about five miles of river bank area to the public.
The French Catholic Church in the Agawam portion of Mitti- neague was built in 1874 at a cost of $4,000. This was called St. William's and its first pastor was Rev. L. G. Garnier. Other churches built in more recent years are St. Anthony, by the Italian Catholics, St. David's Episcopal Church and Flower Memorial Methodist Epis- copal. The two last named are in West Agawam.
In 1935 the Agawam Breeders' Association was organized and a track for horse racing built with an outlay of over a million dollars. Thousands of people visit the race track during the season when pari- mutual betting is carried on. This track is located in the south sec- tion on the site of the former Bowles Agawam Airport. This was
AGAWAM, MOTHER OF SPRINGFIELD PLANTATION 783
developed by the late Congressman Henry L. Bowles and was con- sidered one of the finest and best equipped ports in New England. Part of the two hundred-acre tract on which the race course is located is still used for aviation purposes and has a large hangar and aviation office with scientific equipment.
Agawam, up to a few years ago, was an agricultural community, but recently it has become more of a residential district. The farms that remain are devoted to market gardening, dairying, poultry and tobacco. Some of the earliest crops of shade grown tobacco were grown in this town and the large fields covered with their white cloth "tents" were a strange sight. Up to ten years ago hundreds of acres of fine tobacco were raised and gave employment not only to residents of the town, but to others of nearby communities.
That the town has made a steady growth can be seen by a com- parison of figures from the year 1877 with those of the present. Real and personal estate in the earlier year was $1, 141,422 and in 1935 they came to over nine million. The number of polls at present is 2,205 in contrast with five hundred and seventy-four in 1877, but the tax rate was $12.70 per thousand that year and the recent figure is $34.60.
Three manufacturing plants remain in Agawam, all of them old established firms. They are the Agawam Woolen Company, manu- facturers of high grade woolen and cotton goods; the Porter Com- pany, distillers of rye gin, both in Agawam Center, and the Worthy Paper Company, manufacturers of bond paper. In normal times these three concerns employ a total of more than two hundred hands.
Provin Mountain, the highest elevation in Agawam, rises on the border of Southwick. It is a trap-rock range and hundreds of miles of highways in this State and Connecticut have been constructed of stone taken from its quarries. Other heights are Mt. Pisgah, Liswell Hill and Buck Hill, but most of the town is meadowland.
The Hampden County Training School is located about a mile and a half south of Feeding Hills Center. It is for the purpose of edu- cating youths convicted of slight offenses in the county's juvenile courts. Broad lawns encircle the building, which is of brick construc- tion, and equipped similar to other modern boarding schools, with liv- ing quarters for the staff, dormitories for the inmates, and kitchen, laundry, dining rooms, auditorium and gymnasium. The farm con-
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nected with the school comprises more than fifty acres and has one of the best dairies in western Massachusetts. The school gives training in agriculture and manual arts as well as in elementary grade subjects. At present the institution houses about thirty-five boys, besides the superintendent, matron and staff of teachers.
Henry J. Perkins was the man most responsible for changing modest and lovely Riverside Grove into the popular Riverside Park. From about 1912 until the depression following the war it was the Mecca of many a Sunday school picnic, family party or loving couple. It usually opened for the season around Memorial Day and drew crowds all through the summer. As Riverside Grove it was open to people without charge and was also without improvements or con- veniences. When it became Riverside Park it had the largest merry- go-round in New England; a roller coaster with a half mile ride full of dips and curves; a dance hall, where for a moderate sum you might enjoy the whole evening; and a restaurant capable of serving many customers at once. Besides, there were games of skill and chance to catch the extra pennies, and occasionally a glass blower or other more or less educational exhibit. A baseball diamond attracted the more athletic and there were regular evenings for fireworks. At first the patrons came mainly on the "Sylvia," a small steamboat capa- ble of holding three hundred and sixty-five people, which made regular trips from the landing at the foot of Elm Street, or on the trolley cars which were often full to the running boards. Later, when the hub- deep dusty roads were changed into hard surfaced ones, transporta- tion was mainly by automobile and a big parking place was provided. Riverside Park was for many years an especially popular place for clambakes.
In the 1936 flood more than fifty families had to leave their homes on River Street. The water covered this and adjacent streets and settled over Main Street for a mile south of the junction of River and Main streets. Land damage was not severe and catastrophes were confined to the drowning of a large number of chickens.
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Blandford, Settled by the Scotch-Irish
Hampden-50
CHAPTER V
Blandford, Settled by the Scotch-Irish
Blandford differs from all the other towns of the county in its manner of settlement. Before there was any village or even any house there, people passed through the region on the way from Boston and the Bay to Albany, so it is safe to call roads or trails the start of Blandford. The region belonged in what was called "Suffield Equivalent Lands," because of a swap made between Massa- chusetts and Connecticut. Christopher Jacob Lawton, lawyer and land speculator, became the owner of this tract and other lands to the west known as Housatunnock. He was naturally interested in having people come into the region and thought a tavern out beyond West- field would be a help, there being, as he said, "no house for the space of forty miles." The Legislature granted him three hundred acres somewhere not less than fifteen miles from an established town, pro- vided that within a reasonable time he erected on it "a Dwelling House forty-four feet long, Eighteen feet wide & eight feet Post at least, and also a Suitable Stable for horses," and fulfilled a number of other regulations.
By fall of 1733 Lawton had his tavern built and running with Joseph Pixley, Jr., approved by the court as innkeeper, but it was far from being the structure the legislators had visualized. Tradition says that for several years it had neither floor nor chimney, but a fire fed by logs eight or ten feet long, drawn in by horse, was kept burning on the ground in the center, the smoke passing out through a hole in the roof. Crude though the tavern was it must have been a solace to the travelers on the road to the westward and one which they would be loath to leave, knowing there was no other for such a distance beyond.
Pixley's Tavern stood in the southwest part of the town and, though it was the first house to be built there, it had almost no part in the settlement of the town itself. Nor did this one house draw others
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to neighbor it as in most new towns, but the settlement came about in an entirely different way. A great migration of Scotch people from the North of Ireland to this country started in 1718, following a request to Governor Shute, of Massachusetts Bay, for "suitable encouragement" to "transport" themselves. The parchment had three hundred and eighteen signers, only thirteen of whom had to make their "marks," an unusually small proportion for those days. Five ships are supposed to have come over not long apart, bringing seven or eight hundred of these independent, courageous pioneers. The sturdy Scotch women brought their flax wheels with them and industriously turned out a new product of great interest. They gave an exhibition on Boston Common in the spring of 1719 and the most skillful were awarded prizes. Long years of persecution by the Catho- lics in the North of Ireland had made these Scotch descendants clan- nish and intolerant, but it had also developed and hardened their inherited vein of iron. They sought a place where they might have homes and a church of their own with "an opportunity of worshipping God according to the dictates of conscience and the rules of his inspired Word." Groups of families went out over a period of years and settled Pelham, Colrain and other towns. The group which finally settled Blandford did not go directly there from Boston. Some fifty families tried a settlement in Worcester, but religious differences made that unsatisfactory and their stay was stormy and brief. Hopkinton was their next choice, and there they bought and built, but again the old New England orthodox faith was against them and they came to realize that only on new unsettled lands could they hope to worship and regulate town affairs as they chose.
It seems natural that Jacob Lawton in his endeavors to dispose of his "Suffield Equivalent Lands" should get in touch with the unhappy Ulsterites in Hopkinton and an agreement was signed on July 8, 1735, for the settlement of sixty families in the region beyond Westfield. Now began a busy and anxious time for these Scotch fami- lies as they must first sell the holdings on which they were living-no easy matter in a place where idle land abounded. As a preliminary to the migration two young men were sent ahead to mark the course and erect a few log huts for temporary shelter. They arrived at the future center of the town the last day of April, just along with a three- day snow storm which piled up nearly four feet deep. They were
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ten miles from Westfield, seven miles from the nearest house and dependent on a spark from a stone for a fire. .
The town had already been plotted and apportioned by lot and now it was divided into "settling lots" and "farm lots," the "first divi- sion" being laid out along the "Great and General road." Ten acres were set aside for the church and whether by chance or intentionally a beautiful location was chosen. This has remained intact for public use in the way of schools and road and burial ground and none has dared make it otherwise. Moreover, the inhabitants have been required to keep the common in order; as early as 1742 a fine of six shillings was imposed on every man who did not appear at eight o'clock to work on the common. Hugh Black was the first man who came with his family and the next was James Baird, an Englishman, who built nearly four miles away. The following spring the rest of the families arrived, probably making the journey in fairly large groups, and com- ing through Brookfield, Warren, Palmer and Springfield. From "Sackett's Tavern" beyond Westfield they ascended the mountain by way of the "Devil's Stairs," so-called because of the steepness and rockiness of the way. One historian notes that a certain group accom- plished but two miles on the first day up this steep ascent, which was perhaps all that could be expected in view of the fact they were encumbered with goods and furniture of every description and had with them some small children. The place which is now called the Causeway was then a thick hemlock swamp which took them one whole day to cut a path through. Then began the business of build- ing homes from logs newly chopped on their own land, of clearing the fields for planting and mowing, and of opening trails between various dwellings and connecting them with the main avenue of travel. The frame of the meetinghouse was set up in this town of Glasgow, as the people fondly called it, in 1740, but it stood for a whole year exposed to the breezes before boards were brought from Southampton and Westfield to close it in. The people had been given seven years before they would be required to reach this point and they did not furnish window glass for five years more. Thirteen long, cold, windy winters passed in which the people sat on backless benches, wrapped in their warmest clothes, while the preacher waved his mittened hands and stamped his numbing feet as he warmed their congealing blood with foreordination, predestination, infant damnation and the fires of hell.
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As was customary, and even necessary, a tavern was opened close by the church, where people gathered between services on the Sabbath and to which town meetings were adjourned when in need of warmth and inspiration. In fact, the first tavern kept by the Hustons ante- dated the meetinghouse and filled a great need, not only as a gather- ing place for the new town, but for the increasing number of travelers on the "great road." Almost a score of taverns have followed this first one and sometimes they were filled to overflowing with companies of soldiers or groups of passing traders.
John Caldwell was the first person who is known to have preached in Glasgow and he was invited in 1741 to accept the parish, but while the matter was under consideration his character was questioned and he was never settled. The people tried several preachers and finally asked the presbytery for permission to send to Ireland and make choice there. Rev. John Harvey, to whose recommendation was signed the name of Jonathan Edwards, was a university graduate and preached four times, but drunkenness and inmmoralities were charged against him and he left. The man who was sent abroad for a pastor brought back Mr. McNeil, but he did not suit the people either. They asked that a man should be tried out for a longer period than the customary six weeks before being settled, and finally, in 1744, agreed on Rev. William McClenathan, who was to have $93 salary and $93 settlement fee as well as a sixty-acre lot for his own. The town tended to moving him and his goods from Boston and the fol- lowing year every man in town above twenty-one years was required to work one day for the minister getting his wood and repairing his house.
Mr. McClenathan seems to have been an able man and was twice sent abroad on town business, but he was suddenly dismissed because, having become interested in the war with the French while he was acting as representative in Boston and receiving both chaplain's and a captain's commission, he "sold" his men to another officer. As he was the minister and had promised to defend and protect those who enlisted under him, this was considered traitorous and he was put on trial and dismissed. Four of the Blandford enlisted young men died, which probably clinched the feeling against the minister.
When church affairs seemed fairly settled the inhabitants of the Suffield Equivalent Lands petitioned the Legislature, in 1741, to be
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BLANDFORD, SETTLED BY SCOTCH-IRISH
erected into a township. The petition was granted and they were given the name of "Blandford," thus losing the gift of a bell for the church which they had been promised by the inhabitants of Glas- gow in Scotland if they continued to use that name. "Blandford" was the name of the ship in which Governor Belcher had come over in the year 1730 and the commander of the vessel had received a gift of two hundred pounds by vote of the General Court for his respectful treatment of His Excellency. The name of Glasgow, how- ever, clung and was used off and on for many years by the devoted Scots.
Through all this time the "Great Road" increasingly played an important part in the new town and taverns were natural accom- paniments. The innkeepers were licensed and supposed to be men of good standing. Their hospitality was more like that of the old- fashioned home than of the modern hotel. Many travelers carried their own food with them and sometimes that for their horses also, but the inns furnished drink and shelter. Often accommodations for the night were no more than a chance to lie in a semi-circle with other tired travelers, feet to the open fire and head on the rolled-up baggage. It was a place of meeting, too, where bargains were made, horses traded, deeds made out, and a great deal of business carried on. It was the newspaper of the neighborhood, where information was given out by word of mouth and posted notice, and where local happenings were discussed. It was a natural gathering place for political meet- ings and a sort of social club. But for men only! There was a house- wife and often a bar-maid to wait on the men who frequented the tavern, but women were adjuncts, though necessary ones, and the early history of New England towns lists few women's names except as one gets them from the tombstones and marriage records.
The tavern supplemented the church and innkeepers were assigned prominent seats in the sanctuary. Often they were deacons as well as innkeepers and they received titles befitting their standing. If an innkeeper did his part well he would be advanced from yeoman to gentlemen, as were Samuel Sloper, Justus Ashmun, several of the Boies family and many others.
The annual sales of liquor were enormous and on training days hardly a male citizen of the town went to bed sober. One keeper of the corner tavern said he took in over three hundred dollars on one
.
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such day. Flip, made of strong beer, sweetened with molasses or dried pumpkin and with a dash of rum added, was very popular. Sling, grog and black-strap were other old-time drinks of increasing potency, while plain hard cider was to be found in every cellar. One man is said to have put two hundred barrels a year in his own cellar, thirty of which were for family use.
The Indian trail through the town to the west became a bridle path widened by foot of horse and man and finally was laid out as a road in 1759. But it comes into county road records as early as 1754, though not legally surveyed at that time. It was, in a sense, a mili- tary road almost from the first, though the county assisted in keeping it in order. Still the town was fined in 1756 for the bad condition the road was in. Over it General Knox made his famous trip from Ticon- deroga to Boston and what a sight it must have been to see the "42 exceeding strong sleds" and "80 yoke of oxen" going through the town. The small boys had their fill of cannon and mortars while preparation was being made to go down "the tremendous Glasgow mountain." It has been said of Blandford that "there is no spot where a wagon would stand without having its wheels blocked" and even the stolid oxen must have been weary of the ups and downs before that trip was over. The inhabitants of Berkshire County once petitioned the Legislature that a lottery be held for the benefit of the road and urged it as a patriotic measure. This encouraged those interested in two rival routes to put forth their claims for attention and the sum authorized was not to exceed $200,000. It seems an impossible sum to be raised in those frugal days, but climbing a height of 1,460 feet could not be done for nothing.
The Beech Hill section of Blandford was the home of Squire Jede- diah Smith, farmer, lumberman, cidermaker, distiller, gentleman and judge, typical of the leading men of the times. For many years Dis- trict Court was held at his house and he represented the town at the General Court. Blandford citizens evidently appreciated his services for they numbered large among his clients. Drunkenness furnished him many cases, but "boiling maple Shugar" on the Lord's Day and "Swearing one Profane Oath" and being on the highway on the Sab- bath without "necessity or charity" add variety.
A "mansion house" sounds like a very fine structure and is men- tioned more than once in Blandford records, but it seems simply to
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mean a frame building a little more roomy than the average. The cellar stairs of "solid quartered oak," spoken of in connection with the old Taggart Tavern, sound palatial, but were really very primi- tive in appearance. The "salt-box" type of house with two stories in front and one at the back under the long, sloping roof was familiar to the region, but the little one-story cottage set close to the ground and with an unfinished loft above the first floor was common.
Work was the common lot, whether a man was yeoman or squire, and laziness and shiftlessness carried with them the natural penalty of going without. Strangers were watched when they came to town and the able-bodied and willing were welcome, while the others were legally warned to depart. To work "like a beaver" was a term easily understood for they dammed more than one stream and "beaver meadows" can still be seen. Man followed the beaver in building dams, and it was not many years that the settlers had to take the long journey to a neighboring town for boards or ground grain. The first gristmill was established in the town by 1748 and probably three years earlier, and there was usually one in each district running at the same time. Small hand mortars were in use in many homes for pound- ing and cracking the corn, but the product was coarse and the labor hard and slow. David Campbell was an early miller, who by 1760 had set up a "Corn-mill, saw-mill and Bolting Mill." His buildings were on an island in Little River, first approached by a ford, but later the town made an appropriation for building a bridge to reach them. The first sawmill was probably on Potash Brook; another was on the "Gore Lane" and "Blair's mill" on the "Branch" was well known.
Potash Brook received its name from the industry carried on there and which was necessary to any new town. The abundance of wood meant plenty of ashes and its leached product was needed in making soap. Robert Huston, one of the original settlers, was a tanner, another necessary workman in a new town. There were cows' and sheep's hides as well as those of bear and deer and other wild animals to be prepared for shoes, harness, and clothing, and hem- lock bark was plenty. This was crushed between stone and wooden wheels turned by horses.
The village blacksmith was another important person and his forge a gathering place second to the inn. He brought in the bar iron in its rough state and from it fashioned tools, hinges or whatever
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was needed for house or farm. Sometimes the farmer bought from him the long slender rods and in the kitchen in the cold winter evenings cut and hammered his precious nails. Not an ounce was wasted, but when a tool gave out it was shaped over into a smaller tool, and in its last stages was hammered flat and used to face the share of the wooden plough. Bricks were occasionally made in various places and used especially to top off a chimney whose lower part was often built of stone. A strewing of limestone boulders across the town led to the establishment of various kilns to provide the mortar for laying up the coarse homemade bricks. Charcoal pits were constructed here and there also. Everybody, more or less, worked in wood and some very fine household and farm implements were produced by some men and andirons by others. No minerals abound in Blandford, but tradition tells of the discovery by John Baird of a mass of lead and silver ore in the northern part of the town. When he attempted to show the property to a likely purchaser, a heavy fog arose and Baird, who was superstitious, would never try again to locate it.
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