USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Hampden county, 1636-1936, Volume II > Part 24
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
Meantime the eastern settlement was growing stronger and resented having to travel to "West Longmeadow" for transacting all town business, so about 1820 the annual town meetings alternated, one year in one center and the following year in the other. Some lively meetings they were, too, as rivalry increased with the growth of the eastern section.
After worshipping with the parent church at Longmeadow Village for almost ninety years, the Congregationalists of East Longmeadow formed a church organization of their own on the sixteenth of June, 1827, under the name of "Proprietors of the Meeting House of the Third Religious Society in Longmeadow." This lengthy and cumber- some title was gradually shortened and changed. The church was built on a hill overlooking the village in 1828, but about thirty years later it was moved down into the village and the former site used for a parsonage.
A Methodist Episcopal Church was organized in 1853 and the same year their place of worship was built and dedicated. A par- sonage soon followed and the society seemed very prosperous, no doubt stimulated by their nearness to the Wesleyan Academy in Wilbraham.
847
EAST LONGMEADOW AND QUARRIES
The Roman Catholics began holding meetings in the town hall about 1883 and soon built themselves a church. In 1895 they bought the house which had formerly been the Congregational parsonage and fitted it for a parish house. About this time, St. Michael's, which had formerly been a mission of the Mittineague Church, was formed into an independent parish in connection with the Catholic Church in Longmeadow.
The newest church organization is the Swedish Lutheran and all five denominations are still serving the thriving town of East Long- meadow.
The town owes its development principally to the valuable quar- ries of red sandstone which have made its name known all over the country. This stone underlies a considerable portion of the town and has been quarried from the time of the early settlements. At first the stone was considered common property and the one who dis- covered a ledge claimed the right to work it, even though located on the land of another. Grindstones were one of the first products of the quarries and then the surface stone was used for underpinnings and rough work. Gradually, as its quality became known, orders came in from all parts of the country. Much of it was used in the United States Armory buildings at Springfield and for the foundation of the formidable iron fence which encloses the armory grounds. In early times it was used for gravestones and can be recognized in many a cemetery up and down the valley. It is still employed to some extent for monumental work. Its widest use, however, was as a material for public buildings and fine private residences. Among such buildings were the Youths' Companion Building of Boston; Harvard Univer- sity Gymnasium, Law School Building and Sever Hall at Cambridge; and there are numerous others in many parts of the country.
The color of the stone varied in the different quarries, some of it being "Kibbe" red sandstone, so-called, and part of it a light brown- stone. Apparently the supply is inexhaustible, although it has been in the process of removal more or less systematically for over two centuries.
The years around 1880 were the great days of East Longmeadow. New citizens were coming into the town and business was booming. The Irish were the first national group to come in any numbers. Then the Canadians flocked in each spring to work in the quarries,
848
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
but most of them went back home in the fall and did not become per- manent residents. The big lads from Sweden were the next to arrive and they sent back for their wives and sweethearts and adopted East Longmeadow as a new home. The expert stone cutters and carvers were mainly English and Scotch, and many of their descendants are still carrying on in the town.
The increased use of cement and the change of fashion toward lighter colored stone spelled the doom of the sandstone quarries and now only a little is gotten out each year. The work is done mainly by Italians, who in their turn are becoming citizens.
An old atlas of 1894 shows fifteen different sandstone quarries in the town, which also gives an idea of the extensive work done. Now several of the quarries are used as swimming pools and some are even fitted up with electric lights for swimming at night.
The Shakers were familiar figures in the town years ago, when their settlement in Enfield, Connecticut, was flourishing. The men did their errands about the streets dressed in plain dark clothes and wide-brimmed hats. The women wore full skirts and plain bodices covered with little shoulder capes and on their heads the famous Shaker bonnets, of plaited straw in the summer and of quilted mate- rial in the winter. These bonnets were of sober colors as were their gowns and were unadorned with flower or ribbon. The big substan- tial wagons and well-kept horses of the Shakers were often seen driv- ing through the town to Springfield with the products of their farms and of home industries. The Enfield Shakers were known for miles around for their good cooking and many sleigh rides or summer driv- ing parties stopped there for a meal. Signs in the dining room directed the visitors to "Take all you want, but eat all you take." They were good providers and generous, but abhorred waste, and the person who left uneaten food on his plate was not welcome.
The Shakers rendered a real service to the communities about by bringing up orphan children or furnishing a temporary home for chil- dren in need. These homeless ones were given the best of care and taught habits of work and thrift.
One of these wrote as follows in 1934:
"It was over thirty years ago that I was living as a ward of Elder George Wilcox at Shaker Station, Enfield, Connecti- cut. We used to drive to Springfield with butter, strawberries,
849
EAST LONGMEADOW AND QUARRIES
and a few eggs. The 'colt' gave me a merry ride through the 'crowded' streets one day, when one of those new contraptions, an automobile, with gear wheels and noisy cog chain on the right side, parked itself in front of my steed. I can hear the crowd now, calling much to my embarrassment, 'Hold him, Shaker,' as I went scooting around the corners; and I can see Elder George wildly running down the street after me, his long snow-white hair and linen duster floating behind him like banners in the wind."
The Highland Division of the New York, New Haven and Hart- ford Railroad was put through in 1876. For some time it was in a flourishing condition, but later it became merely a freight line. How- ever, it again filled a great need during the flood of 1936. One train went through at that time with ninety-six cars.
East Longmeadow showed its appreciation of its famous home product in 1882 when its town hall was built of the local stone. Its newest public development is a fine athletic field, the equal of many in . much larger places. Four cemeteries serve the town. In one of them are some very unusual gravestones, which have inset on the front near the lettering a picture of the person buried beneath. Originally a little slab of stone hung on a pivot covered the picture and protected it from the weather, but in some cases this protection has now been destroyed.
Hampden-54
Granville, Home of the Drum Industry
CHAPTER IX
Granville, Home of the Drum Industry
The territory of Granville, at first called Bedford, was sold by Toto, an Indian chief, in 1686, to James Cornish for a gun and sixteen brass buttons. Toto was the friendly Indian servant of a white family in Springfield who informed his master that King Philip's warriors were concealed in the fort on Pecowsic Brook and waiting a chance to attack and burn the town.
James Cornish and his partner, William Fuller, sold the region in 1713 and five years later it was sold again to the Bedford company of proprietors. They, in turn, offered the land for sale and succeeded in interesting a group of men from Durham, Connecticut. Among these there were three of the name of Baldwin, five Bates men, four Robinsons and three Curtises. The proprietors of the Bedford plan- tation lived chiefly in or near Boston, and only one, Samuel Gillett, settled on the land he owned.
But the first settler was Samuel Bancroft, who in 1735 came over from West Springfield and built a rude log cabin for himself and his family. It was located near a small brook in the northeast part of the town, not far from where the first schoolhouse was later erected. Bancroft was a kind-hearted, industrious man and long wore small clothes, triangular cocked hat and bushy wig. He had but one son, Jonathan, who had three sons, but before a century had passed the descendants in Granville numbered nearly a hundred persons. As soon as possible Mr. Bancroft built a large house of thick, hewn plank as a refuge for himself and his neighbors in case of an Indian attack, but there is no record of their being molested, though they no doubt availed themselves of the protection of the fort when savages were known to be in the vicinity. The Indians used a cave at times for shelter. It is located near the powerhouse of the Turner's Falls company.
854
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
The early settlers were a hardy, upright people, well prepared to face life in a new region and overcome its hardships. Their longevity was remarkable. The ancestor of the Spelmans was from Wales and died at the age of ninety-three. The ancestor of the Cooley family came from Ireland and lived to be ninety. Jonathan Rose reached the remarkable age of one hundred and three, and then perished in his burning house. The Church family ancestor rounded out ninety-five years and a Gibbons reached ninety-two. The men were of great phy- sical strength, too, according to the story told of several teams that were sent to Westfield for cider. While the men there were cour- teously getting means ready for loading it, Timothy Robinson lifted the barrels and laid them in at the end of a cart, while Thomas Ham- ilton threw them in over the wheel.
After providing shelter for their families and starting their crops, the little colony turned its attention to the establishment of a church. "The First Church of Christ" in Bedford plantation was formed in 1744, as the result of the preaching of Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. Edwards was minister at Northampton and followed Solomon Stoddard, under whom the religious revival started. North- ampton was famous as the center of what was known as "the great awakening," so that as the Reverend Edwards said, "people have been ready to look on Northampton as a heaven on earth." The great English preacher, Whitefield, came to Northampton on the evening of October 16, 1740, having preached at Hadley on the way. It is said that when he preached at Hadley his voice was heard in Hatfield, but the leading men in that town would not allow him to preach there.
Reverend Moses Tuttle, a graduate of Yale College, was the first settled pastor in Granville. His wife was one of the ten daughters of the Reverend Timothy Edwards, of East Windsor. She, alone, of all the family was strange and wayward. When Mr. Tuttle asked the consent of the father to marry his daughter, he replied : "I shall not forbid it, but you cannot live with her." "Why," inquired Mr. Tut- tle, "is she not a Christian ?" "I hope so," replied Mr. Edwards, "but grace may live where you cannot." When the wedding day arrived the Connecticut River was impassable and when he reached the bride's house a little after the day appointed, she refused to see him. At length she consented to an interview with a partition between them. Said she: "Why did you not come on the day agreed on?" "The
855
GRANVILLE, HOME OF DRUM INDUSTRY
high flood in the river rendered it absolutely impassable," he replied. "That's no excuse at all," responded the lady. The father's predic- tion was verified and Mr. Tuttle had a comfortless home.
It was largely due to his efforts that the first meetinghouse was built, but there is no record to tell when the corner stone was laid. There is a faint tradition that when it was raised every man, woman and child in the town could be comfortably seated on its sills. The building had neither bell nor stove nor cushions. The Reverend Mr. Tuttle himself gave eight hundred and sixty-three pounds old tenor toward the meetinghouse, the largest single gift it has ever received.
The first house in the Second Parish of Granville was built of stone by Deacon David Rose, with the capacity of a fort in case of an attack by the Indians. The people passed through fearful apprehen- sions, but none perished by the tomahawk. In one instance a child was born in the night without a candle being lighted in the house from fear of lurking savages. In the "Old French War" an enlistment was called for at Granville and it is stated that four men from here went and were tentmates. When they returned they settled in the same vicinity and died, respectively, at the ages of eighty-two, eighty- six, eighty-nine and ninety years.
Granville was incorporated as a district in 1754, having all the privileges and duties of a town except that of sending a representative to the General Court. It was at this time the name was changed from Bedford because there was already a town of that name in Massachu- setts. The name Granville was in honor of John Carteret, Earl of Granville. This State furnished one-third of all the soldiers in the Revolution and Granville citizens early caught the spark of patriotic fervor. On July II, 1774, a committee was appointed at a town meeting "to inspect the debate" subsisting between the Mother Coun- try and America. They reported a number of spirited and patriotic resolutions upholding their rights and privileges. In March, 1775, this little country town voted to raise fifty pounds to encourage fifty men to enlist as "minute men," and when Captain Lebbeus Ball marched from the town to Boston, after the battle of Lexington, he is said to have had sixty in his company. A second company of seventy-three went out the next year and one record says that fourteen Granville men lost their lives during the war. Luke Hitchcock, a
856
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
pillar of the town, died of camp fever at New Lebanon on his way home from Crown Point.
The distemper reached the East Parish, as many as thirty-seven dying in the space of two months. Three epidemics of smallpox later took toll of the town and the deadly spotted fever prevailed in 1812. Aside from these ravages Granville has always been a healthy town and records kept in East Granville for half a century show that one in thirty of the population reached the age of ninety years.
At the time of the colonial census, in 1776, Granville had a popu- lation of 1, 126 and was fifth in size among the towns in the county. During the next fifteen years the population increased rapidly and in 1790 Granville contained four hundred more inhabitants than Spring- field, although its territory was less in extent. After Tolland was set off in 1810 the town retained its comparative numbers until the tide of settlement turned about 1830.
When the town was new it produced splendid fields of wheat and the finest pasturage and abounded in game. Valley Brook, running from north to south, divides the town. The mountains are named Sodom on the east; Bald Mountain; Bad-luck, named by a party of unsuccessful hunters; Sweatman's Mountain, from which could be seen at one time nearly forty church steeples; and Liberty Hill, which received its name because a liberty pole was erected there during the Revolution.
The maxim of the Pilgrims, "a school for every district, a Bible for every family, a minister for every town," was very fully carried out in Granville. As early as 1762 the town voted to raise twenty pounds for the support of schools and each succeeding year, except 1775 and 1776, when so much was needed for the soldiers, appropria- tions have been made for education. In 1837 an academy was erected in Middle Granville.
Granville men were on the side of law and order in Shays' Rebel- lion. Colonel Timothy Robinson and a company of the "court party," when on their way to Springfield in defense of the government, were met by a party of the mob double their number and, after a skirmish near the great rock, were taken prisoners. The colonel, as being the most obnoxious, was placed under a strong guard. The next day was the Sabbath and he so zealously read and prayed with them and discoursed on the folly of resisting law by arms that they all
857
GRANVILLE, HOME OF DRUM INDUSTRY
became politically converted and the day after proceeded to Spring- field in the cause of law and order.
Oliver Phelps was a servant boy in Granville and afterward a peddler. Then he was commissary in the town for supplying the army with provisions during the Revolution. In 1788 he and Nathaniel Gorham, another Granville man, bought from the State of Massa- chusetts for £300,000 (about $175,000) the preemptive rights to 6,000,000 acres of land in western New York, but of which they actually obtained little over one-third. The next spring Phelps left Granville with men and means to explore his new territory. He opened a land office at Canandaigua and drew up such a fine system for survey of his holding by townships and ranges that it served as a model for the United States Government when it opened new lands. On his tombstone in Canandaigua are two hundred and sixty-six words, ending with "Enterprise, Industry and Temperance cannot always ensure success, but the fruit of these virtues will be felt by society."
A foundling colored boy, Lemuel Haynes, was brought up by Deacon David Rose. He got his education in the chimney corner by the light of pine knots. The deacon required him to read a sermon aloud on Saturday evening at family worship. One evening he slipped in one of his own sermons and the deacon was greatly pleased. He inquired : "Lemuel, is that Davis' sermon, or Watts' or White- field's ?" Haynes had to confess that it was his own and at the age of twenty-seven he was a licensed preacher of the gospel and no man could better hold an audience. President Dwight listened to him at New Haven with great interest. Many wished him to be the settled minister in Granville, but on account of his color the majority were opposed. After a long life of great usefulness he died at Granville, New York, aged eighty years.
A church was organized in Middle Granville in 1781 and one in West Granville in 1797 with twenty-eight members. The Baptist Church in East Granville, started in 1791, came to be formed because of differences of opinion over the admission to communion. Some of the stricter believers withdrew and called themselves "separates" and an act of excommunication against five of the number widened the breach.
The old first meetinghouse in Granville served its time and was replaced by another on a different site in 1802. The people worked
858
HAMPDEN COUNTY-1636-1936
hard and raised a fund to insure its support and all seemed well until the westward fever drew a large band away to found a colony in Ohio. Honorable Timothy Rose was the leader of the one hundred and seventy-six who went away in the fall of 1805. Fifty-two of them were heads of families and it took them forty-six days to reach their destination-an unbroken wilderness. A church of twenty-four members had been organized the May before the pilgrimage began and the first business on their arrival, as soon as the cattle were released from the wagons, was to hear a sermon. The first tree cut on the plot was that by which public worship was held on the Sabbath, and the first Sabbath, though the sixteenth of cold November, was honored by both forenoon and afternoon services. Granville, Ohio, outgrew the mother town and was the seat of a college and two flour- ishing academies.
A big event in Granville was the "Jubilee" celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the installation of Reverend Timothy M. Cooley in that place. It was a two-day celebration held in August, 1845, and a large crowd of citizens and friends attended. The New York "Observer's" notice began: "Never since the creation, probably, have the hills of Granville witnessed so lively a scene." Speakers were present from New York and other places and messages came from as far away as Louisiana and Alabama. Tents had been erected on a lawn near the church and the "Jubilee" volume reports that a feast was spread on the tables and by the united efforts of the Gran- ville ladies, with excellent taste, a joyous company of friends was served. More than 2,000 persons shared in the repast. This famous old minister was a Granville boy, who fitted for college under Rev. Noah Atwater, of Westfield, and graduated at Yale. He preached his first sermon in Granville and was ordained there after receiving theological training under the care of a minister in Somers, Connecti- cut. After being installed in his home town he married Content Chapman and they had ten children.
Dr. Cooley served on the school committee for fifty years and for a time had a private school of his own, instructing over eight hundred pupils. He also assisted sixty young men in their studies for the ministry. His pastorate did not end with the jubilee, as he remained with the church until his death at eighty-seven, a term of over sixty- three years. A jubilee monument was erected in memory of this event
859
GRANVILLE, HOME OF DRUM INDUSTRY
and fifty years later a second successful celebration was held at the same place.
Granville Corners is the manufacturing center of the town since a drum shop was established there in 1854 by Silas Noble and James P. Cooley. The latter's son, Ralph, died in 1935, but the business continues in the family and is now conducted by two nephews named Hiers. These young men have grown up in the town and are inter- ested in carrying on according to the established standards of the firm. The first drums were made in the Cooley kitchen, but soon larger quarters were necessary and now there are several fine, sub- stantial buildings which constitute the plant.
The firm's most famous drum was made in 1860 from rails split by Abraham Lincoln. It had hooks of solid silver and cords of red, white and blue silk. Over a thousand styles and sizes are made, which retail between ten cents and $35. The wood used is largely birch, beech and maple and the Hiers brothers have extensive woodlands to draw from, though not all the lumber is produced locally. Years ago the firm operated its own tannery to which the farmers brought their spare hides, but that branch of the industry has passed away.
In this largest and oldest of toy drum manufactories in the coun- try, situated so pleasantly by its own trout pond in a peaceful valley, the same men continue to work year after year for this old firm. A look at the pay roll shows that many have been on the list from thirty to fifty years, while the longest term is sixty-eight years !
A comparatively new firm in Granville is the Wackenback Box Company, which employ several men making wooden boxes.
Liberty Hill, located in the south central part of the town, has on its summit a liberty pole, first erected during the Revolutionary War. The liberty pole is still maintained by the town of Granville.
In the northeastern part of Granville are three beautiful reser- voirs which supply Westfield with water. The well kept pine and spruce watershed on the steep gorge-like slopes makes a delightful park of the section.
The agricultural society holds an exhibition each fall at the com- munity house and on the grounds surrounding. At this time the church people of the whole town serve the famous Granville chicken pie dinner.
Hampden and the Scantic River
CHAPTER X
Hampden and the Scantic River
The town of Springfield once included all the territory from Had- ley on the north to Connecticut on the south and from Russell on the west to Monson on the east. Part of this was known as the "Outward Commons" and was eventually allotted to individuals. A certain amount was reserved for the ministry and the schools, and the rest was divided into five sections. Each of the legal citizens received some part of all five sections. The surveyors, either through caution, carelessness or ignorance, allowed only sixteen feet to the rod, so that on the south side of the third division there remained unappropriated a strip of land sixty-two rods wide and four miles long. This received the name of "overplus land" and is within the limits of the town of Hampden, which was originally known as the South Par- ish of Wilbraham.
The Fourth Parish of Springfield, afterward called Wilbraham, was incorporated in 1741, eleven years after the coming of its first settler, Nathaniel Hitchcock. In that year Stephen Stebbins came from Longmeadow and made the first settlement in the south part of the town. He built his house on the north bank of the Scantic and soon Aaron Stebbins, his brother, built north of him. Paul Langdon, who brought the first four-wheeled wagon into the parish, settled south of Stephen Stebbins on the "overplus land." This wagon had brought Langdon's household goods from Salem to Hopkinton, from there to Union, Connecticut, and from Union to South Wilbraham. Other settlers gradually followed and Lewis Langdon, son of Paul, built the first sawmill in town in 1750. It stood on the south side of the present road, a little east of Ravine Mill.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.