USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Tyringham > Hinterland settlement Tyringham, Massachusetts and bordering lands > Part 10
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Each in turn, made his boast of what he had done and of what he could do as regarded butchering. Dart made some statement which seemed so extravagant that Uncle Ike, as everyone called him, doubted the truth of it and said so in no uncertain terms. Dart was angry and after some high words, challenged Uncle Ike to fight a duel. It was promptly accepted but Garfield claimed the right to choose the weapons and selected shot guns. Slater and Ayres were the seconds. They loaded one gun with clotted blood and gave it to Dart. The other was loaded with an article easily obtained and given to Garfield. The principals, unaware of how the guns were loaded, stood a short dis- tance apart and were instructed to fire at the word-not before. It appeared that Dart, in his anger, meant to kill Garfield, for he fired before the word, then turned to run. His shot hit Uncle Ike in the breast, covering him with blood. Garfield, seeing the blood, laughed fit to split his sides and shouted, "I am dead man but I'll fire just the same", and hit Dart on the side of his face. The reports were that Dart got the worst of the battle and soon left town, unable to take the joke at his expense.
Later on this farm was added to the Shaker property which ex- tended from here to the South Lee line. Cargill said there were many stalwart men in town and a few odd ones. One of the oddest of odds was Isaac Garfield. When he sold his farm some of the neighbors asked what he was going to do. He replied by starting a story, "Out west the bees are as big as turkeys and they have the same size hives as we have and the holes they go out and in through are the same size as in our hives". Then he stopped abruptly which prompted someone to ask for an explanation of how the bees could go out and in the hive. Ike an- swered, "That's their lookout".
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One time Cargill handed him a printed invitation to a Church Donation. A few days after that, he met Uncle Ike in the road. He stopped Cargill and said, "I have an invitation to a Donation and the reason why I tarry, I have not the where-with-all to carry and charity begins at home and I want to buy a jug of rum". Those were the days when everyone composed poetry-for social gatherings, for epitaphs, for school mates-even for every day conversation!
CHAPTER XIV-THE SHAKERS
Before the Revolution there were men by the name of Allen mentioned in town records. In 1762 Asa Allen helped build the town pound on the Smith farm. The next year he was appointed a Hog Reeve and in '68 the Proprietors sent him to the Inferior Court. By 1773 Joseph Allen appeared and at the town meeting the question arose, "What to do about the circumstances of Joseph Allen?" Rufus and Asa, both served in the war and received pay for military service as well as for help in clearing a way for the Royal Hemlock Road which indicates that he lived on this side of the mountain. After the war, Asa presented a certificate to the church of "being of the Baptist Persuation". It was the Baptists in this country who became most often susceptible to the Shaker influence. So, quite likely, the three brothers, Joshua, Abel and William Allen from Coventry, Conn., had relatives here when they arrived and settled on the western hillside of Hop Brook.
In a town record of 1779 the voters asked what to do with un- desirables entering town and the constable reported of his return to Great Barrington certain named women from there who had been roaming through our town. Recently, the Massachusetts Attorney General, Brooke, made the statement that if he read the Constitution right, he promised that prostitutes would be walking up and down Massachusetts Avenue no more. Evidently Tyringham was trying to enforce this law one hundred and eighty-five years ago and did some- thing about it.
Three years later religious zealots too, were classed as undesir- ables, for a committee was appointed to "keep out of town all persons called Shaking Quakers". The following June this same committee reported they "had proceeded so far as to whip one strolling Shaker who refused to leave the town". This belies what one historian has said, "that western Massachusetts people were more liberal and tolerant to other sects than in the east". But intolerance had swept across the state like a contagious disease.
Already the Allen brothers, William Clark, Henry Herrick and Elijah Fay were holding Shaker meetings at one another's houses. Gradually men from other towns became interested in this movement and joined with their families until in 1792, they united their farms and all other properties to form a Church Society. What was William Clark's farm became the center where now the few Shaker buildings
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stand. Meanwhile, general sentiment, (or perhaps the new laws insti- tuted by the first Articles of the Constitution was the cause) must have mellowed considerable, for in a town record of 1796, $18.94 was appropriated for the salary of Mr. Clark, the Shaker minister. In suc- ceeding years this sum was raised.
The persuasive leaders carried Shakerism forward like a tidal wave, to engulf those who came under its wake. In the Shaker "Rock and Roll Book from the Lord God of Heaven to the Inhabitants of Earth", Calvin J. Parker from Lenox and Eliza L. Chapin from New Marlboro signed as Inspired Witnesses from the Tyringham society. Later on, a man named Day, with his wife and five children joined, as did Abisha Stanley, James Pratt and Thomas Patten from Bel- chertown. Hannah Canon and George Rouse from Tyringham joined. Their membership grew to over one hundred; more than that number joined, but some did not remain.
For thirty-five years the Shakers enlarged their holdings to 1500 acres, reaching from Beartown to the main Road, from Jerusalem to the Lee line-even to West Stockbridge where they acquired the old Forge Mill of E. W. Thayer. Until 1858 the society continued to prosper. There were two settlements, three-fourths of a mile apart; each consisting of two families. The First or Church Family had the largest group of buildings-the office, the building with the basement kitchen and long dining room with dormitories above, a meeting house, a school house, dwelling houses, the great red ox barn, various shops and out houses, a pocket furnace and a saw mill. The largest building was the seed house used for drying and packaging the flower and garden seeds grown on the place. This seed business was their chief source of income. A freight elevator ran from the basement to the cupola, a printing press turned out thousands of seed labels. The Shakers were the first to use color on their labels. The fame of their seeds spread throughout the east until every farmer's ambition and joy was to plant those Shaker seeds that came in those new-fangled, labeled packages. Some trusted brother went every year to the cities and large towns to sell their garden seeds.
Not only were horses and oxen shod in the tool and blacksmith shop, below Shaker Pond, but stoves, nails made and all kinds of iron work done, needed in their community. On the stream that feeds Shaker Pond were several shops; below the outlet, were a saw- mill, grist mill and furnace. Their skill and ingenuity can be judged by the rugged, well-built dwellings remaining and the network of tumbling stone walls. In Shaker days there were no piazzas, no gal- leries or verandas-only stiff stone porches with canopies jutting forth from the buildings without pillars for support. Rows of pickets lined the walls of stone, gates and many another token of the faithful were there when they left. Attached to the ox barn were cattle sheds with a yard in the rear walled with stone. Half way out to the Cobble stood a seed house and at the foot of the Cobble, almost down to Hop Brook was the lime kiln.
John Scott tells, how on his first visit to Fernside in the fall of 1886, he hiked up the mountain back of South House, and discovered
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farther up the stream, another pond and ruins of the grist mill. He found the "Type Lot" and picked out the old road, long before aban- doned, on which stood dwellings before the farms were consolidated to form the Shaker Community. Lying between the Holy Land and Woodchuck ledge was the old sap-house in that furthermost Shaker orchard. He veered and crossed over the Back Bone to the south of Holy Hill and found other cellar holes.
Northward, through the great maple orchard was the North Family settlement. This was originally the William Allen Farm. Only the front portion of Nakomis Lodge remains of the many buildings. A walk up the hillside, fringing what was once the apple or Ben Orchard, following the stream, will disclose the Shakers' ingenious method, by a series of dams, of conserving water for power to operate their mills along the stream, and the four-story red shop below the highway. In this recently demolished shop were made wooden tubs, butter bowls, sap buckets, measures, pails for their apple sauce and turnings of various descriptions.
In the heydays of this North Family there were four dwellings closely grouped, many barns and sheep-folds, besides the shops just mentioned. The community land ultimately increased to between two and three thousand acres, practically every foot was made to yield a return. Every man, woman and child worked but could not meet the need. Many "World's People" were employed to help out, especially at harvest time.
The children of the outside help often made friends with the Shakers. Mary Briggs was brought up at the North Family, but like most of the girls, when in their teens, left. She married a man by the name of Coons and lived her last days in Williamstown. She told the story of the Spooner Twins. These boys from the village became real friendly with a kind old Shaker Sister who made especially nice mittens and gloves from lamb's wool, produced on the place. Day after day, they watched her work on those mittens. They had never seen such soft, fleecy mittens and loved to stroke and handle them. One day the sister was in an extra good humor and offered the twins each a pair at a very nominal price. They ran home, elated at the prospect of owning the Shaker lamb's-wool mittens, and returned next day with the money. They proved the envy of all the boys at school. In a few days they visited the Sister again to tell her their brothers needed mittens too, and they had the money for two more pairs. For a week after that she didn't see them. Then, late one afternoon the boys appeared with a terrible tale of woe. They had both lost their mittens; their little hands looked so red and cold, thought the old Sister; she sold them two more pairs. When this happened, even again, the Shaker Sister consulted with the Elder who inquired in the village as to what hap- pened to so many mittens. The twins had no brothers but had a real profitable business in mittens started at school. Their venture in salesmanship abruptly ended with the Elder's call.
When Mary Briggs Coons was asked why she left the Shakers, she replied, "I detested those Shaker bonnets we had to wear". "But",
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she added, "they were always kind and very fair in equally dividing their produce". She recalled that two of the Day girls left about the time she did. Sophia married a Wilcox and Lucinda married a Hall.
Mrs. Tichnor, part Indian, was left with a little boy, George, age three, and had no means for their support. So, like many others in a similar situation, they joined the Shakers. Not much is known about their life at the Shaker settlement, only that George was trained as a brick mason-and a good training it was, too. He also learned to play the cymbal, a musical instrument something the shape of a violin with a crank turned by one hand, while the other manipulated the keys or strings. In later life he became an expert on it.
Although the Shakers taught and adhered to the celibate life, many youths, reaching maturity, felt the sting of Cupid's Arrow. They felt the need of a little romance in their sombre way of life and George Tichnor was no exception-there was a girl in his life, so the story goes. He fell in love with a village girl and wanted to marry her but, woman like, she couldn't make up her mind, promising that if he would wait a while, she might consider him. Tichnor enlisted in the Civil War, served valiantly for three years and returned, less one eye, to find his girl had run off with another man. From this time on, George Tichnor became disillusioned with humanity in general and turned into a recluse. He built himself a cabin well up on Long Moun- tain, supplying his few wants by hunting, fishing and chopping wood. Occasionally he visited the village. He was fastidious about his shirts, only Mrs. Sarah Canon could make them to suit him-after a cer- tain pattern, of a special heavy cotton material. He always paid promptly when he picked up the shirts, but one day he most forgot. Outside, he turned back to her and said, "I thought of it, then I forgot it, I forgot it, then I thought of it."
The boys from the village sometimes persuaded Tichnor to go fishing with them on Hayes Pond for he knew where the best trolling was located. As an extra inducement, they brought along a bottle of whiskey. Some good luck and a few drinks elevated Tichnor to the point of great courage and inspiration. He stood up in the boat, held out his arms and quoted scripture. Then he said, "Christ fished just as I am doing. He walked on the waters, so can I!" With that, he stepped overboard. The boys had quite a time saving George.
After a few years on Long Mountain, Lucian Moore, who had made friends with him, coaxed Tichnor to move nearer the village. He offered him a spot in the woods off Webster Road, to build another, better cabin. Here he lived for seventeen years and became known as the Tyringham Hermit. Tichnor professed to be a weather prophet, became so successful at it that the farmers declared his forecasts better than an almanac.
George Tichnor's appearance was as strange as his mode of living. He was six feet tall, straight as an arrow, with a white flowing beard and dark complexion. Over his eye socket he wore a flat cork
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the size of a silver dollar, fastened with a wire over his ear and around his head. Winter and summer, a tattered white felt hat was on his head and he walked with a long staff that reached to his hat.
One can imagine the impression all this made upon the young girls who tramped the pasture on the edge of his woods, during arbutus time. In his old age, the hermit must have found life very lonely at times and longed for some human association. Once, when he saw the girls in the arbutus field, he came out into the clearing, carrying his staff in one hand and a tight bunch of pink arbutus tied together, in the other. The girls saw him coming and were tempted to flee, but held back and accepted the proffered flowers in fear and trembling, without so much as a friendly greeting. Youth knows naught of the loneliness of age.
Mr. Moore found him one day, half paralyzed by a stroke and carried him to Riverside Farm where he shortly died at the age of seventy-five. A Shaker, a soldier, a lover and a hermit! What a never- to-be-forgotten character to blaze the annals of Tyringham!
One of the fundamental principles of the Shaker doctrine was Spiritualism. They worshiped God only, and in Spirit and in Truth. They venerated Jesus as an example but did not worship Him. Each Shaker community had its own Holy Ground where they gathered at certain times of year. That of the Tyringham Shakers was on Mt. Horeb, an open summit, above their village, of 1820 feet elevation. Here they erected a monument to Mother Ann Lee, their founder, surrounded it with benches and outside of all, a fence. And here they became inspired by the Holy Ghost, saw visions, heard prophecies and carried on their religious rites and dances. During one of these cere- monies they are reputed to have buried the devil. But listen to what William Cargill wrote about this tale. "They allowed the World's People to attend these meetings and I was present several times. At one time, so they said, the Elder that was over the Lebanon, Hancock and Tyringham Shakers came and while here holding a meeting in the church, had a presentment that the Devil was attending so they called out their forces and gave him chase into the cellar and about the premises and finally drove him to the highest hill back of their village, Mt. Horeb. Here they buried him, face down, with clam shells in his hands, so that if he dug he would go deeper instead of digging out". This story has endured for generations but often since, it has been thought that somehow the old fellow got turned around and dug him- self out. Cargill thought so too, for in addition he wrote, "They, the Shakers, did not believe in marriage but I noticed that some of the head ones were something like geese and on a sly, mated off and even- tually left with their bird. The head one in their village, Jeremiah Hawkins, went away with Miss Canon and lived on the road to Goose Pond, where her brother, John Canon, lived. But before that they went into one of the Shaker houses between their sawmill and Jerusalem. Hawkins claimed that his life had been spent with them and he had a right to the property. That displeased the Shakers and they turned out in mass one night to move him out. But Hawkins,
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learning of their plan, prepared for them by fastening the doors and, armed with a club, was ready for them. As they broke in the door, he gave them quite a pounding but they soon overpowered him and very badly bruised him. He finally took his goods, which were set out of doors, and moved them into another house in Jerusalem owned by the World's People. Hawkins brought suit against the Shakers for assault and right of property.
I went to Lenox as a witness, only a few days before I left Tyring- ham so never did learn the decision of the court nor final results of the Shakers".
It is quite evident that the Shakers had their troubles and one of them was the invasion by Cupid. But records of all who ever lived near or with them speak of their kindness, honesty and industry. The most interesting and informative records of this sect are the letters written by elderly former residents of the town and members of their community, during Old Home Week in 1905. Some of these writers were men and women who lived in town before the separation.
William Cargill wrote most appreciatively of their thoughtfulness at the time of his father's illness with typhoid fever. It was haying time and the Shakers turned out full force to do the haying for the Cargill family. "Their farming was of the first class, their gardening fine and their seeds with their labels were no discount. They did their work with oxen." "Their dress was alike", he wrote, "the men in grey with wide brim hats and hair cut short, only left long at the neck." "The women and girls", he added, "all wore white caps, straight brown dresses and a muslin cape pinned in front."
He described their place of worship as "a dancing hall with a spring floor. When assembling, they all marched in at once and were seated in silence until such time as the spirit moved, when they would rise and march around the room, singing, in a sort of trotting jog. At intervals they would turn and face each other and take a double shuffle which they had been trained to do in perfect harmony. The services were closed by a few remarks from the Elder."
Mr. E. M. Terrel remembered well many of the Shakers, when he lived in Jerusalem: Elder Brother, Albert Battells, Stephen and Willard Johnson, Daniel Fay, Daniel Hulett, Calvin Parker, Alvin and Edwin Davis, Hasting and Addison Storer, Michael Micue, Jeremiah Hawkins, Hiram and Henry Morrison, Henry Champion, Hiram Bailey, William and Jim Jones, William Hale, Warren and Sam Day, John and Leonard Allen, Richard Van Duesen, Aaron Manchester, Robert and Niles Wilcox, John and George and Peter Makely, George and Stephen Rouse, Stephen and Chauncey Richard- son and George Tichnor. The reason I remember so many is because I worked in the shoe shop with my father. Most every day some one of the Shakers would come in."
"The names of the women that I remember are: Mollie Thayer Mollie Herrick, Desire Colt, Hannah Canon, Annie Seton, Lydia
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Partridge, Betsey Garner, Eunice and Harriet and Wealthy Storer, Christine Bailey, Ellen Crata, Jane and Lydia Rouse, Lucinda and Charlotte Day, Margaret, Mary Jane and Emily Fair."
Reminiscent of her life at the Shakers, Mrs. William T. Hall, (Lucinda Day) wrote: "I went into the society in 1843 at 13 years of age. I lived there eighteen or nineteen years. There were from 75 to 100 members at the First or Church Family where I lived. The sisters did all kinds of house work-made most of their wearing apparel, spinning the flax for the linen cloth and the wool for winter wear. They made many kinds of fancy work, like mats and cushions, for sale." "We were always busy", she said, "cooking, washing, ironing, milking, making butter, cheese, doing all the sewing, besides the knitting of our stockings and sox."
"The brethren carried on all kinds of mechanical business, worked the big farms, did cooper work of all kinds and carried on the broom trade." Mrs. Hall said they had a lucrative business in raising and drying sweet corn-both brothers and sisters did that work. Their buildings were built by their own society. Her husband was placed with the Shakers when eight years old but left in ten years to work for William Stedman in his rake shop.
W. J. Vigeant explained how his father worked for the Shakers eighteen years, in charge of their cattle. Living in Jerusalem, he had to leave home at 5 A. M. and didn't return until eight in the evening. The Shakers furnished all his meals and good ones, too. There were 97 members when he started to work at the Church Family but only 15 or so when he left at the time they disbanded. A Mr. Richards, who was superintendent of the outside work, asked Mr. Vigeant to move to Enfield with them but the family refused.
During school vacation, the Vigeant children helped the Shakers pack sugared butternut meats and sweet flag in half pound packages for market. "We were all very happy there", he said.
The last surviving faithful Tyringham Shakeress was Elizabeth Thornber who died at the Hancock community. Her message to the town in 1905 was, "I wish it was in my power to give you the history of the many, beautiful, sweet, noble lives that have lived and died at dear old Fernside. Souls that lived as pure, holy, consecrated lives as I believe it is in the power of mortals to live in this world-I can only say that, as I look back on my childhood days, I feel they were spent with saints, although I did not sense it then, as I have since, in my advanced years."
The most vivid story of life in this Tyringham Shaker settle- ment was recorded by John Scott who lived first, at Fernside, then with his Aunt at Nakomis Lodge for many years. In 1893, Julia John- son, the Ex-Shakeress, then living in California, called to view once more the scenes of her childhood and young womanhood. She and Scott roamed the hills and pastures together while she chatted of these long-ago days. Here is the way Scott wrote it: "Julia joined these Shakers in 1837 when eight years old, lived in the North Family 19
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years, then for 3 years at the Church Family and 19 years at the Han- cock Shakers. Her great grandfather was one of the first Shakers in America, lived at Hancock and confessed to Mother Ann. Her grand- mother and father also lived with the Shakers several years. Her mother left the community at 20 years but later sent three daughters back to the fold. There were too many children at Hancock where the grandmother was, so the little ones were passed on to Tyringham. One died at 12 years, another became an Eldress and one of the minis- try.
The old Clark house at the Church Family, reputed to have been built in 1770, was demolished by Dr. Jones. In the fall of 1889 the Allen house was removed from the Lower settlement, some of the material going to Lawrenceville, in Lee. The hearth stone was retained for Nakomis Lodge. When Scott's relatives bought the North Family property, they tore down several buildings; one was the old gambrel- roofed house used for the women's dormitory, dining room and kitchen. There were two long tables in the dining room, one for the men and one for the women. The same room served alike for dining and kitchen.
When Julia lived there, there were thirty members, eight slept in a room. The walls were bare and mostly the floors bare-perhaps a strip of carpeting here and there. The two Eldresses roomed together. The house stood on a line with Nakomis Lodge, only a few feet toward Fernside. The front half of Nakomis Lodge was the dairy house. About all that is left to remind one of the Shakers are the doors. What was the Parlor in 1905 was the weave room, the dining room was the cheese room. Upstairs, the north chamber was the Shaker spinning room; the south chamber their sewing room. The Shakers raised their own flax and spun their linens and wool. They wove horse blankets, aprons, handkershiefs, and what not. They bought nothing but cotton cloth, making all else. Rushes were woven on cotton warp for carpets. They did their own farming, doctoring, carpentering, wagon-making, manufactured ox yokes, ax-helves, rakes-at the time of their greatest prosperity and prior to it.
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