USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume II > Part 21
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for warmth was by dint of vigorous stamping between the parts of the service, or by the use of foot stoves, which was mainly confined to the women and children. These foot stoves were small, pierced metal boxes which stood on wooden legs and held hot coals. In some of the early log meetinghouses fur bags made of wolf skins were nailed to the seats and in the winter church attendants thrust their feet into them. The family dog was sometimes permitted to attend church and lie on his master's feet. In 1819 the town refused to install a stove, but ordered two doors hung on the stairs to keep the cold from the galleries. Liberty was given to individuals to put up a stove, but when one man was asked for a contribution he declined on the ground that the preaching made it hot enough for anybody. This meeting- house had a bell which was cracked in about a year's time and another bought. A lightning rod was put up before the stove was put in, the fire from heaven evidently being feared more than the man-made fire was coveted. A third bell was hung in 1819 and remained in use until the church was burned in 1847. The bell-ringer struck the noonday hour and nine o'clock bed time, as well as striking the age of a person who died and tolling when the funeral procession was on its way to the burial place. Town meetings were still held in the place of wor- ship and one vote taken was against allowing anyone to sit on top of the pews or to enter the pulpit during town meeting. They were evidently getting quite particular about the care of the meetinghouse at this time for it was also recommended that the owners of pews pro- cure sand-boxes for them. The church was remodeled in 1838 and lower rooms added, but in less than ten years it caught fire from an overheated stovepipe and burned to the ground. A new church was immediately built and dedicated and later twice remodeled. The stovepipes that once ran the whole length of the audience room, rusty and dusty and dripping soot, were removed and furnaces installed. The lower floor of the church was used as a town hall, though a parish separate from the town was organized in 1832.
There was no choir in the church until 1786 and the fine hymn tunes used were "lined" or "deaconed" out. The cabinet organ pur- chased in 1854 was preceded by the violin, bass viol, flute, clarionet and bassoon. Intentions of marriage were read by the town clerk just before the close of services. He always caused some commo- tion when he rose in his seat and said: "Please to take notice" and
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gave the names. Afternoon service was given up in 1873 on account of the minister's health and was never resumed. The Sunday school was introduced about 1819. A two-story building, containing a con- ference hall above and shops below, was built in 1820 and was the scene of many social and religious gatherings. On one occasion when the deacons knowing there would be no preacher had kept away, Uncle Benjamin Sherman was induced to take charge of the meeting. He entered the desk and made the announcement: "No minister, no dea- con, no nothing, no preparation for nothing. Let's pray."
The horse sheds, or "horse houses," did not appear on the records until 1752, when three men were given permission to build some, and from then on the horses seem to have been well protected.
The Adventists began holding meetings in the conference hall in 1844 and sometimes held camp meeting on some farm. Finally, a small chapel was built. The Church of Christ started its meetings in a schoolhouse in East Brimfield and in 1872 dedicated a church. The Moravians, or United Brethren, made their start in West Brimfield, about 1855, and eventually became strong enough to build a church, which was rebuilt after being burned.
The early log houses soon gave way to frame ones of varying styles in succeeding years. The salt-box, with its long rear roof, was followed by those of one or two full stories with a huge central chim- ney and tiny front hall. Sometimes a house had a kitchen bed room, very handy for the mother of small children, or for the old folks, who could get some warmth from the kitchen fireplace. This was often of mammoth size and took logs that could only be handled with a bar or hand-spike. Above the brick oven, which imparted such a flavor to the slow cooking foods, was a cupboard which held herbs and books and crockery and sometimes a little hard liquor. Hooks in ceilings held long poles from which were hung strings of apples or pumpkins to dry. Red paint was the first color used as it was the cheapest and most durable.
About 1800 the square house with the roof running up to a point in the center began to be built, and then came the more pretentious ones with pillars and portico and later still the comfortable piazza.
Captain John Sherman was the last in town to wear the colonial costume of small clothes, knee buckles and cocked hat. At first all clothing was of home manufacture. The wool was cut from sheep
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raised on the farm, and there carried through all the various processes of washing, carding, spinning and weaving. About 1800 wool began to be carded by machine, of which there were several run by water- power in various parts of the town. Flax was raised, rotted, hetcheled and spun, "tow cloth" being used for ordinary summer wear and the fine thread being woven into sheetings and shirtings. The dye tub stood in the chimney corner and out of it might come indigo blue, or butternut brown, or some other homemade coloring. Boys and men went barefoot in the summer time, and even until quite cold weather. Many a boy sent to the barn to milk shot a few squirts over his chilly toes. Hats, too, were not common until a boy was ten or twelve years old.
Hospitality was the prominent characteristic of social life. Every raising of a frame was attended by neighbors in crowds. The minis- ter offered prayer. The workmen and assistants paraded on the ridge-pole. A bottle of liquor was passed from hand to mouth along the line and some rhymes said by those at each end. The people turned work into play by holding apple-bees, husking-bees, spinning- bees, and quilting-bees, with their accompanying suppers. Dancing parties were common and several houses had rooms with high arched ceilings, which were rented for such affairs.
Floors were scrubbed and sanded when wet. Old people objected to painted floors because they were slippery, but the housewives were quite proud when they had one done in "spatter work," or with swirls of the brush. "Pumpkin yellow" was a common floor color. Rag car- pets began to be woven about 1814 and there were braided and hooked rugs. Some carpets were made of square pieces of heavy cloth sewed together and ornamented with various sewed on patterns of differently colored cloth.
The cast iron kitchen stove was introduced about 1820 and came from Stafford, Connecticut, and ushered in the era of saleratus bis- cuit and fried beefsteak. Potatoes began to appear about 1733, but were scarce for sixty years. The common dinner for the farmer con- sisted of boiled beef or pork, with cabbage or turnips. The Sunday dinner of rye and Indian bread and baked beans was done to perfec- tion on Saturday in the big oven and left there to keep warm while the people went to church.
After the saddle and the pillion the ox cart or the two-horse farm wagon furnished transportation, with common high-backed chairs or
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a "double chair" put in for the passengers. Nathaniel Charles had the first four-wheeled one-horse wagon in town. The seat was mounted on a long wooden spring bolted at the back end of the wagon. Squire Pynchon was so much pleased with it that instead of going to Boston on horseback, as he usually did, he hired the owner to take him in the new wagon. Later followed the chaise and the top-buggy, the buckboard and the carryall.
At the first town meeting in Brimfield it was voted to build a pound and several were constructed in subsequent years. Mr. Noah Hitch- cock built one of stone, forty feet square, in 1762, but the town refused to pay for "what Mr. Hitchcock calls a pound." Twelve years later he still had the matter on his mind for he presented his bill with interest added.
Blazed trees marked the early bridle paths, which usually fol- lowed the line of least resistance. Highways, when they were laid out, were often indefinite in location, as follows: "across the land of Joshua Shaw where there is the best going," "leading from a big rock in the line of said Joshua's plain lot to a black oak staddle over a squeachy place." Alterations were frequent and troublesome. A petition for changing the road at the foot of Danielson Hill, "because of the untollerableness of Travailing there," was granted, reconsid- ered, allowed, neglected, discontinued, renewed, set aside and granted again. Working out the highway tax became, like doing military duty, an occasion for jollity rather than for fatiguing toil. A pail of cider was expected from every house when the oxen with sled and plough attached "broke out" the road in winter.
The mail was at first brought to Brimfield once a week from Brookfield. Charges varied up to thirty-seven and one-half cents for letters. When weekly newspapers came to be thought necessary, a special messenger was hired to bring them from Warren, where the stagecoach left them on its way to Springfield. Stages from Providence to Springfield and Worcester to Hartford ran through the village by 1832, sometimes as many as eleven in a day.
What is now the park was originally land laid out for the Spring- field Road, six rods wide, and was the parade ground of the militia. When the first meetinghouse was torn down the trees on the common were sold for $10, and it remained an unsightly place for many years until a park association was formed to fence and improve it.
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Brimfield has always manifested an interest in the burying ground which was laid out in 1720. It was cleared and fenced by subscrip- tion and later a suitable stone wall was built around it. At first the caretaker had for pay what grazing it afforded, but in 1806 it was voted that no cattle should be allowed to graze in the cemetery. A hearse was first purchased in 1804.
An epitaph on a stone in the burying yard at Brimfield reads : "This is erected as a faint expression of filial respect and to mark the spot where repose the remains of Gen. Wm Eaton, who died June 1, 1811, ÆE. 47." He seems to be so little known at the present time that it is a surprise to learn of the gift of 10,000 acres of land which he received from the State of Massachusetts in token of the respect in which his talents and services were held by that State.
William Eaton was born in Woodstock, Connecticut, and at a very early period he showed strong indications of intellectual vigor. At the age of sixteen, without the knowledge or consent of his par- ents, he went from home and enlisted in the army. This was in 1780, near the close of the Revolutionary War. He attained the rank of sergeant and after peace was declared commenced the study of Latin. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1790, having been obliged to delay his studies and earn money by teaching school.
While teaching in Windsor, Vermont, in 1791, he was chosen clerk of the House of Delegates and the next year was appointed a captain in the United States Army. After serving in various places on the southern and western frontiers for five years, he was appointed consul to Tunis, where he discharged his duties with great firmness and ability. His most famous enterprise was the restoration to his province of the ex-bashaw of Tripoli, a bold and hazardous under- taking. After that General Eaton returned to his native country and was everywhere received with the most distinguished applause. The King of Denmark presented him with an elegant acknowledgment in a gold box for services he rendered several captured Danes at Tunis.
A law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony read: "Every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty household- ers, shall appoint one to teach all children to write and read; and when any town shall increase to the number of a hundred families, they shall set up a grammar school." In Brimfield, at first, the school was kept in private houses and only one teacher was employed. He
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went from one part of the town to another and spent a specified num- ber of weeks in each of the three sections. In 1766 there were ten numbered school districts. John Sherman got the first schoolhouse built near the meetinghouse, sixteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with tables and benches and "glassed as much as necessary." All parts of the town were pleased because two other schoolhouses were voted at the same meeting in 1742, but it was many years before they were built. Each district was allowed to administer its own school, a system sup- posed to be productive of a greater interest in education, but which proved to be a source of wrangling and petty jealousies. The first schoolmaster's name on the records is David Hitchcock. Geography was unknown as a study until about 1800 and grammar was taught only in connection with Latin. Women were considered competent to teach summer schools, but winter schools were attended by the larger boys and for these it was necessary to have a teacher of the stronger sex. In 1766 the town paid a fine of thirty pounds for not maintain- ing a grammar school, but the fine was remitted the next year, when the selectmen sent a letter saying they thought they had complied with the law by engaging Timothy Danielson to teach at his house all scholars that might apply for grammar school instruction.
The minister had charge of the examination of the teachers until after 1819, when a committee of ten was appointed to assist him in that and the care of the schools. The visits of some of the committee caused much merriment to the children when they saw the books held upside down in the visitors' trepidation. At first the annual school reports were presented in manuscript and read at town meeting by the chairman of the committee, but in 1859 they were printed for the first time.
A hundred years ago six or ten Hitchcocks or Lumbards or Janeses would go to school from a single family. The tap of the ferule on the window was the signal for school to begin. Caps, bonnets and shawls were hung in the entry and dinner pails stowed safely away. When entering or leaving the room, or "toeing the mark" for recita- tion, the children "made their manners." When recess came there was a rush for the door. Boys did then very much as boys do now.
"Like sportive deer they coursed about and shouted as they ran,
Turning to mirth all things of earth as only boyhood can."
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To lock out a teacher and force a fight with him was a chief delight. Fuel was at first furnished by the families that sent children, in proportion to the number sent, and boys took their turns at the chopping block. Money was made to go farther by the common custom of hiring a teacher who would "board round."
The support of the poor was, under the legislation of the early colonial times, made a charge on the town. Thriftlessness was dis- couraged, but the poor were treated with consideration. The rela- tives of old Doctor Green were paid a sum of money yearly to help take care of him and that was not an unusual proceeding. Just after the close of the Revolution, when the burden of pauper support was increasing fast, a stranger coming into town was liable to be warned off by the constable.
In early times all the male citizens from sixteen to sixty years were enrolled in the militia. They were required to drill four days each year besides the annual muster. But training day, with its increasing prevalence of drunkenness, came to be obnoxious and disgraceful. The ununiformed militia were called "floodwood" and "barnyard cadets." They appeared fantastic when they gathered for a May training at Ephraim Fenton's. One man had a codfish bone trimmed with onions for a plume and another wore the clothes of the biggest man in town stuffed with hay. Brimfield parade ground was a favorite field for regimental musters. The men appeared in "pepper and salt," "but- ternut brown" or spruce blue coats with brass buttons, side by side with well worn garments of uncertain color. Hats varied in size, shape and material. The corporal had a brass eagle with a red feather tied on his stovepipe hat. The captains had glittering swords, red sashes and waving plumes. When the command was given, "Shoulder arms!" some laid hold of one part of the gun, some another. Usually only the fife and drum furnished the martial music, but occasionally someone could play the bugle and then the captain's knees almost touched his chin as he stepped proudly along. If on the march to some other town a toll gate keeper demurred at giving free passage the captain had but to say, "Men, do your duty," and four would step forward to lift the gate bodily from its hinges.
No more marked change in social habits can be mentioned than the change in drinking usages. Charges of bushels of malt are found in old account books and seven to ten bushels constituted the ordinary
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supply of a family for a year. An old malthouse stood near the brook opposite the Hitchcock School. Previous to the Revolution cider and beer were the common beverages, but army life induced habits of dissipation and the erection of distilleries made cider brandy an article abundantly supplied. The notion prevailed that alcoholic beverages were needed to retain full physical strength, and mowers in the hay field, ministers in their association meetings and attendants at funerals were all well provided. Men drank up their farms, spending for liquor more than they could earn. Westward of the store on the cor- ner might be seen every spring a double row of barrels, showing how large a quantity of liquor was sold every winter. Public attention was at length aroused to the alarming prevalence of drunkenness and the American Temperance Society was organized in 1826.
Great changes have taken place in the industrial and agricultural life of the community. Iron ploughs were frowned on at first for fear they would poison the soil and then because they would not be durable. Cyril Brown, who had his first one in 1818, was fearful he had really made a mistake when he found a crack in his, but Eaton Hitchcock, the blacksmith who had made it, assured him it was only an imperfection in the rough bog iron. Calves were formerly weaned, onion seed sown and pork killed during the increase of the moon, but flaxseed must be sowed when it was waning. For five years the General Court offered special bounties for raising flax. The silk worm mania swept the region about 1840. Every woman expected to wear silk, for the farmers bought the cuttings and set out mulberry trees in great num- bers. Silk worms were raised and large prizes offered for their product at local fairs, but the whole enterprise came to grief. The Brimfield Cheese Factory took over one of the tasks of the housewife in 1870 and for a while was quite successful.
Pottery was once made in Brimfield from clay dug out of Sher- man's Pond. Bricks were made in various places and one man made earthen milk pans. The hatter and the tailor were busy in Brimfield as in other country towns, one shop employing a number of girls to sew. "Clothing works" were built along the small brooks and fur- nished the dressed cloth for the tailor. Machine-cut nails were made in town by Thomas Morgan, who perfected the machine which both . cut and headed them. When it took three years to make a hide into a piece of good leather, tanneries were established in several places in
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the town. The first ready-made boots offered for sale in Hartford were made by P. Warren and Son in Brimfield, who finally came to have a large business and employed two hundred and fifty people in neighboring towns.
In early times the well-to-do families prepared for winter not only by having a seamstress in to get the clothing ready, but the shoemaker also came to the house for a week or more. This traveling about from house to house was called "whipping the cat." The length of the boy's or girl's bare foot was measured on the floor and that was the only measurement taken. The bottoming and finishing of pegged boots and shoes was carried on by many a resident of the town a little later. Saddlers and harnessmakers were kindred workers and wheel- wrights and carriagemakers followed as roads improved.
When the Brimfield stage line-east and west-had for almost threescore years carried the United States mails, and furnished accom- modation for passengers to and from the town, it was discontinued. This was in September, 1907, and it marked the close of an age which this line had prolonged far into the modern era.
The great post route from Boston to Albany lay north of Brim- field and at first the mail was carried to the town by messengers from that route. In 1797 the mail left Boston three times a week, arriving at Worcester in the morning at 3 A. M. and at Brookfield the second day at 10 A. M. and Springfield at 2 P. M. Besides, it is likely there was connection at times with this post route and Stafford, for the mineral waters there attracted travelers from Boston.
During several years the Citizens' Line of coaches plied between Hartford and Worcester. As many as eleven coaches were counted daily at one period of its existence, but the Springfield and Providence Line opened in 1823, was maintained a much longer time, and was far more important in stagecoach history. Fine coaches drawn by four and sometimes by six horses passed over the roads. From Spring- field the course was to North Wilbraham and Monson and then by a roundabout route to Brimfield and to Abner Nicholls' mill in the val- ley. Next it pursued a rugged incline to the old wooden schoolhouse and from there went up "Long Hill." On either side of the school- house the stage route was through a wild region of hills and ravines flanking a broken mountainside.
Without doubt a number of stage routes lay through Brimfield in early times of which all knowledge has vanished, leaving behind only
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a vague hint. In some places they have become sections of present highways; elsewhere they may be found as discarded and overgrown roads or as useful cart paths. Out of the dimness of supposition con- cerning Brimfield's earliest stage routes there is the well-established tradition of a remarkable location over the ridge of the mountain west of the "Hollow." In the ledge on the crest of the mountain, 1,000 feet above sea level, are grooves in the solid rock which people have had pointed out to them in childhood by their parents as having been made many years before by the wheels of stagecoaches going from Boston to Hartford. Measurements have shown these grooves to correspond in distance apart with the width of the road which can be traced beyond and the wearing into the rock was caused by the custom of chaining the wheels together in the absence of brakes, with the result that a chiseling process was produced by the sliding wheels.
The passing on the country highways of the loaded coaches was a great source of entertainment to the wayside dwellers. A bugle would be blown by the driver as the coach approached a village to announce that it was nearing a hotel, so that a relay of horses would be made ready and the onward passage delayed as little as possible. The bugle was played with great skill by some of the drivers and its notes were especially effective on a still morning, at first faintly heard in the distance and growing louder and clearer as the stage rolled grandly in. A large number of horses were kept at the Brimfield Hotel for relays. If a coach arrived about noon the driver and passengers would dine at the hotel, while the horses were fed. Drivers took pride in the appearance of their horses as well as in feats of rein-handling and the turning of curves. A driver between Springfield and Providence, who prided himself on his skill as a reinsman, would come in with every horse on the jump and cut a marvelous circle in the hotel square. An- other distinguished driver spent an hour daily in grooming each horse so its coat would not soil a white silk handkerchief.
The great development of stagecoach travel in the second quarter of the last century was caused by the evolution of machinery and the establishing of manufactories. Also, near the middle of the century by the building of railroads, which called for connecting routes across country. Most of the passengers who filled the coaches and who wore the tall beaver hats, making the load on top so imposing, were
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