USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Hadley > Historic Hadley : a story of the making of a famous Massachusetts town > Part 2
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Historic Hadley
for horses, oxen, and carts across Fort River on the Springfield road, and contributed toward the expense of laying out a "commodious way to the Bay." Wearied with the labor of grinding their grain in their own homes they offered Goodman Meekins a fifty-pound allotment on the west side of the "Greate River" upon which to build a mill, the citizens agreeing to patronize him so long as he made good meal. Thomas Wells and John Hubbard were appointed to carry the corn in a boat across the river twice a week, and to bring back the meal, for which they should receive threepence a bushel, each farmer to have his corn ready and his bags marked with his name. Finally a sawmill was erected on Mill River, thus making it less difficult to get out lumber.
Again the citizens brought up the matter of building the meeting-house, and on August 27, 1663, in town- meeting assembled, passed the following resolution : "The town have voted (nemine contradicente) that they will with all convenient speede, endeavour and set aboute the building and erecting a meeting house for publick worshipp." The following committee was put in charge: William Clarke, Samuel Smith, William Westwood, John Barnard, Thomas Meekins, Nathaniel Dickinson, and Isaac Graves. The work at last was started and this time the attempt was a success, although the building was not completed for seven years. The construction of the "Leantors" was abandoned and
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The Founders and Their Fortunes
there is every reason to believe that the house as first used conformed in other respects to the original plan. According to the vote the building was "scittuated and sett up in the common street," toward the north, in order to accommodate residents on the "West Side." The solid framework was put together and, after delay, was raised, but the building was not then com- pleted, possibly because the western settlers had already begun to discuss plans for having a meeting-house and minister of their own.
Great was the alarm at the thought of the desertion of the "West Siders," for the whole parish found it difficult to raise enough grain with which to pay Parson Russell's salary. Should the western part of the parish secede, taking with it the corn mill, the settlement would be crippled indeed! There seems to have been some discussion in regard to moving the half-finished meeting-house, for the vote stands to the effect: "Untill the Lord makes it appear that one part of us have a call to make a society of themselves," they would remain united and let the meeting-house stand "in or about the place where it was wrought and framed." Thus referring the matter to the Lord, they proceeded with the work, and soon the little building, similar in fashion to the one in Hartford, was firmly set upon its hill, that it might not be hid. Above its solid frame rose a sloping roof, alike on all four sides, with probably a turret in the middle for
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the bell which they hoped soon to secure. The com- mittee then collected the roughly hewn "Boards and Rales " from the individuals by whom they had been prepared, and made long benches without backs, and a rude pulpit, after which they rested to await developments.
A stranger coming into Hadley from the south, in 1663, would cross the river on Joseph Kellogg's ferry- boat, and would possibly take dinner with him and his numerous family in the ferry-house at the Aqua Vitæ meadow. The settlement at this time was laid out on both sides of the broad street which extended north and south across the eastern part of the peninsula made by the river in its detour westward toward Northampton. The land enclosed between the street and the river on the west was the fertile Meadow Plain. To the east stretched the vast Pine Plain or Woods. Leading away westward from the street were three highways, known respectively as the north, middle, and south highway to the meadow, and three similar highways led from the main street eastward toward the woods. At the extreme southeastern corner of the settlement, on the southern side of the south highway to the woods, lived John Russell, Sr., father of the minister. Nathaniel Dickinson, and his son Thomas Dickinson, lived in the same section of the town on the eastern side of the street and north of the south highway. Next in the line on the east side of
OLD HADLEY STREET
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The Founders and Their Fortunes
the street was the house of William Westwood, in the midst of his eight-acre lot, where he lived with his wife, Bridget, and daughter, Sarah, who married Aaron Cooke. Then came the home of Richard Goodman and his wife, Mary Terry of Windsor, and infant son, John. Others who lived on the east side of the street in the southeastern section were: William Lewis, who in 1662 represented Hadley in the Gen- eral Court; the Hon. Peter Tilton, recorder, repre- sentative, associate judge of the county court, and "one of the most worshipful assistants of the col- ony "; John White, also a representative; Thomas Stanley, and Nathaniel Stanley, his son; Andrew Bacon; and John Barnard, afterward slain by the Indians.
In the northeastern section of the settlement, on the east side of the street, just north of the middle highway to the woods, lived Parson Russell, and immediately north was the town lot. North of the town lot on the east side of the street were the homes of John Hub- bard, Thomas Wells, Samuel Porter of Windsor, whose son Samuel became judge and sheriff of the county and the father of thirteen children; John Dickinson, the son of Nathaniel; Richard Mon- tague, the grave-digger; Lieut. Samuel Smith, a "man of note "; and his son Philip Smith, who was afterwards slain by the machinations of the witch Mary Webster; Thomas Coleman; and William Par-
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trigg. Next on the north lived A. Nichols, John Ingram, John Taylor, and Wm. Pixley.
In the northwestern quarter of the settlement, north of the northern highway to the meadow, lived Samuel Gardner. South of the northern highway and on the western side of the street lived Chileab Smith, son of Lieutenant Samuel Smith; Joseph Baldwin; Robert Boltwood; Francis Barnard, father of John Barnard; John Hawkes; Richard Church; and Edward Church, his son. South of the middle highway and on the western side of the street were the homes of Henry Clark, "a wealthy and distinguished man"; Stephen Terry; Andrew Warner; John Marsh: Timothy Nash, the blacksmith; Governor John Webster; William Goodwin; John Crow; Samuel Moody; Nathaniel Ward; and William Markham, who married Eliza- beth, the daughter of Governor Webster.
The unfinished meeting-house stood in the middle of the broad street about opposite the house of John Dickinson, somewhat to the north of the middle high- way. All about it up and down the broad street were the homes of these founders of Hadley, heroic men, imbued with the spirit of the Pilgrims and the courage of their convictions. The innumerable company of their descendants, scattered abroad throughout the earth, are proud to trace their an- cestry back to the pioneer settlers of this famous New England town. The visitor would have seen
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The Founders and Their Fortunes
small, unpretentious dwellings, a rough unpainted meeting-house, and signs of a rude colonial life. But he would have found the dwellers in these homes to be men of education and refinement, and women of energy and determination, bringing up their children in the fear of God and with a wholesome respect for man. Out of such material was this nation builded.
Exactly when the congregation left the private house and began to worship in the church building we cannot tell, but probably as soon as the seats were finished. Perched in the pulpit high against the wall, good Parson Russell looked down upon his flock, and dis- cussed and determined doctrinal points to the satis- faction of all concerned. The town voted to buy a bell "brought up by Lieut. Smith and some other," and to pay for it in wheat at three shillings per bushel, which amounted to about twenty-five dollars. Finding its feeble tones were scarcely heard across the river, and fearing lest the "West Siders" would recognize in this grievance the looked for sign of a call from the Lord, a parishioner left in his will a sum of money with which to buy a larger bell, that might be heard generally by the inhabitants. At last a committee was chosen "to procure such a bell as is at Northampton," which proves that the Hadley people were progressive and not to be outdone by the town on the other side of the river.
Pending this action the lusty bell-ringer, standing
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in the audience room, pulled the rope which came down through the ceiling, and strained the voice of the little bell to its utmost, as he summoned the faith- ful to the Sunday service. Across the river in boats, and from north and south on foot, on horseback, and in rude carts, they came, fathers and brothers well armed, though in time of peace, and mothers with their younger children, through summer's heat and winter's cold, to sit on the hard benches through the long and tedious service. It seems a significant fact that two years after the galleries were put into the meeting-house the town passed the vote which has been so many times quoted: "that there shall be some sticks set up in the meeting-house, in several places, with some fit persons placed by them, to use them as occasion shall require to keep the youth from disorder."
The Indians, too, were scattered throughout the congregation, and greeted the settlers with the friendly salutation "Netop" and were seeming converts to the Christian faith; and yet the shrewd old-time fathers felt it wise not to trust them too far even on Sunday, and appointed special guards for the Lord's day, and for lectures and public meetings for God's worship. The citizens were organized into a military company for which the townsmen procured a drum, and thus in time of peace prepared for war.
Attempts were made to clear the highways of pine trees, logs, woodpiles, and "other encumbrances"
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The Founders and Their Fortunes
which had collected in front of the houses. The town voted "their desire of John Prentice of New London to come and sitt amongst them as a smith," and offered him the "lott sequestered for a smith." When he declined they opened communication with Deacon Hinsdale at the Bay "for a Smith then living in rox- berrie."
Before the meeting-house was finished it was con- sidered to be the center of the town, for, taking the building as an objective point, in 1663 the General Court decided that Hadley should extend five miles up the river, five miles down the river, and four miles from the most eastern point of the river. Those who were dependent upon their cattle and grain to pay their living expenses urged that they needed more extended pastures, as much of their feeding-ground was barren pine plain. After a time they were given land extending two more miles to the east, and the meadows to the south.
In 1670 the settlers on the west side of the river, assured at last that the Lord had called them to be- come a separate town, left their former brethren, and built for themselves a meeting-house on their own broad street. This was a blow to Hadley by which Parson Russell lost some of his best supporters. Val- uable members of the church had also been removed by death. The remains of Governor John Webster were carried on the shoulders of his fellow townsmen
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Historic Hadley
and laid away to rest in the burying-ground, and his loss was deeply felt. His body was committed to the grave by Sexton Richard Montague, who received for the service fifteen shillings.
The Indians still roamed from place to place, begging the planters to plow their fields, and to give them medicines and liquor for fancied ailments. Dr. John Westcarr not only cured their diseases, but sold them "strong water" contrary to law, for which he was fined and admonished. His widow, Hannah, spent his "good estate" for gay silk gowns, for which she was presented in the Northampton court. Hadley people, however, to a good degree, lived a simple life. They ate their dinner when the sun reached the noon mark on the southern window casing, lighted their houses with candle-wood, picked huckleberries in the streets and home lots, feasted on honey stored by wild bees in hollow trees, and washed their garments with soft soap brought from Connecticut by John Pynchon. The hunters shot deer for food and clothing, and waged a relentless warfare upon the wolves which destroyed their flocks. Hogs, with rings in their snouts, and wearing yokes two and one half times the thickness of their necks, ran through Hadley streets. Horses and young cattle grazed on the Pine Plain and along the mountain side.
Thus until 1675 the fifty families which composed the settlement were enabled to maintain themselves,
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The Founders and Their Fortunes
and live in peace and quietness, with none to disagree with them in matters of religious doctrine. They governed their unruly members with a steady hand. The law of the General Court that persons whose estate did not exceed £200 should not wear gold and silver lace, or garments made of silk, was rigorously enforced. The wives of John Westcarr, Joseph Bar- nard, Thomas Wells, Jr., Edward Granniss, and Joseph Kellogg, and Maiden Mary Broughton, were arraigned before Northampton judges as persons of small estate "wearing silk contrary to law," and were fined, admonished, or acquitted according to the gravity of each offense. Later certain young men were con- victed of wearing long hair, and were reprimanded by the court. A fine of three shillings fourpence was imposed "for any person that shall run and race and inordinately Gallopp any Horse in any of Hadley streets."
Parson Russell, in the little square meeting-house on the hill, was the inspiration of the religious life of Hadley, as the building itself was the center of the community. The voice of conscience, inter- preted by the voice of the preacher, was more powerful than the weak notes of the bell, and by a life of obe- dience to its dictates the early settlers hardened them- selves against the time of trial which awaited them.
CHAPTER II
A REIGN OF TERROR IN OLD HADLEY
THE founders of Hadley were brave and valiant pioneers, ready to fight for their king across the sea, or to defend with their lives their homes and hearth- stones. Their pastor, John Russell, was a farmer among farmers, who shared the joys and sorrows of his people. More than this, unknown to his parish- ioners, the unpretentious country parson was a patriot and a hero. Many years before, when the little plan- tation was only five years old, there had come, stealing from their New Haven hiding-place, two strangers whom the good minister had received into his home. Political opinions were divided then as now, but Parson Russell hesitated not to protect those whom he believed were persecuted for conscience's sake from their enemies in the new country, who would have delivered them to ignominious death.
These fugitives, members of the High Court of Justice, by which King Charles I of England was dethroned and executed, had, with the restoration of the king's son, Charles II, fled to Boston, where under assumed names they would fain have made
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A Reign of Terror in Old Hadley
their homes. But royal vengeance tarried not. Good friends informed the refugees that officers were on their track, and the hunted men, led by an Indian guide, threaded the forests on foot through Springfield to New Haven, where for a time they were allowed to rest in peace. News that special commissioners for their arrest had arrived in Boston was accompanied by the warning that they were no longer safe on Con- necticut soil. Then came the journey by night to Hadley, and the unseen entrance into a dwelling that was indeed to prove a haven of refuge.
Thus beside the simple life of the country minister's home, the unpretentious roof-tree covered a tragedy, for within a secret chamber dwelt the regicide judges, General Edward Whalley and General William Goffe, each with a price upon his head. The children and servants of the household went in and out, and knew not of the strangers' presence. Peter Tilton and other good friends brought letters and supplies sent to Boston from the wife and daughter in Old England, and carried messages in return. In this rural home the cousin of Oliver Cromwell, and his son-in-law, chief officers in the Lord Protector's army, dragged out the remnant of their lives in constant apprehension of discovery. Creeping forth at night, they may have been seen by a belated traveler, but such an one, imagining that spirits walked abroad, disturbed them not. By day, if alarms arose, they descended through
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the trap-door in their closet to the cellar, and there remained concealed. Deprived of all companionship, with little news from the outside world, their linger- ing hopes grew fainter, until, it is believed, about 1676, the old man Whalley died, and was buried in an unknown grave. With the safety and maintenance of these fugitives, added to the many other cares upon his mind and heart, the friendly host and jailer settled the petty details of every-day life, adjusted disputes with regard to seating the meeting-house, and looked sharply after the interests of the grammar school, on which depended the educational welfare of the youth.
Suddenly, one morning, when not a cloud was in the sky, the sound of heavy ordnance, as of great guns firing charge after charge, shook the earth, and could not be explained. Frightened by this strange phenom- enon, the despised red "salvages," considered to be as harmless as the lazy dogs about the doors, disappeared from their accustomed haunts. The record states: "They plucked up their wigwams and took away the goods they had laid up in our houses."
News of the Indian uprising led by King Philip had reached Hadley, and the strange actions of the natives about the settlement had been noted, but rather with relief than alarm. Wise men were anxious, but the majority felt no fear. Was not the whole county protected by the "Hampshire Troop of Horsemen," under the leadership of Captain John Pynchon of
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A Reign of Terror in Old Hadley
Springfield ? When this famous company paraded up and down Hadley street, in uniforms decked with gold and silver lace and gay silk sashes, with gaudy trappings for the horses, the Indians looked on in speechless admiration, eager to see the red flag flutter and to hear the martial strains. And, although less than twenty Hadley men were enrolled in this troop, yet did not the Indians know that every farmer had a musket, and a pike fourteen feet long, and that some had also the lighter snaphance, with barrel three and one half feet in length ? The Hadley militia also was ready for defense, with Samuel Smith as its lieutenant, and Aaron Cooke, Jr., for its ensign. Civilized men, thus armed and well drilled in the fifty- eight postures of the gun, and the various maneuvers of the pike, ought surely to be able to cope with naked, ignorant savages. Thus reasoned many, when almost without warning a breathless runner brought tidings of the massacre at Brookfield, and terror reigned in every heart.
The Indians in the fort across the river, upon hearing the news, gave "eleven triumphing shouts," waking the echoes far and near. Too late the settlers realized the folly of having so carelessly supplied the natives with guns, and attempted peaceably to disarm them, but in vain. Their headquarters was the Indian fort half-way between Northampton and Hatfield. Cap- tains Lothrop and Beers, with about one hundred
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men, crossed the river to Hatfield, while reenforce- ments from Northampton came to meet them, in- tending to parley with the Indians and to try to persuade them to give up their weapons. They found the fort deserted, but, as they were following the trail, suddenly the enemy, hidden in the woods, "let fly 40 guns." The fight lasted three hours, during which nine men from nine different towns were killed, Azariah Dickinson, son of Nathaniel, of Hadley, being among the first to fall. Too late the soldiers realized that men accustomed to march in bodies, though well trained in the arts of war, could not compete with an unseen foe, concealed behind trees and unencum- bered with clothing. Pikes and heavy muskets were of no avail. This was the beginning of sorrows.
Rev. Solomon Stoddard, in his story of these battles, says: "Many sins are so grown in fashion that it becomes a question whether they be sins or not," and especially mentions "intolerable pride in clothes and hair." The Puritans firmly believed that calamities came in punishment for sin. The Hadley people were not able now, however, to spend much time in repen- tance for minor transgressions, as safety was to be secured only by constant vigilance. At this time, ac- cording to an oft-told tale, the settlers were observing a fast day service in the church when it was surrounded and attacked by a body of Indians. "Suddenly, in the midst of the people, there appeared a man of very
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A Reign of Terror in Old Hadley
venerable aspect and different from the inhabitants in his apparel, who took the command, arranged and ordered them in the best military manner, and under his direction they repelled and routed the Indians and the town was saved. . .. The inhabitants could not account for the phenomenon, but by considering that person as an Angel of God. . .. The Angel was cer- tainly General Goffe." Thus runs the tale as related by the historian of olden time. For many years this story was believed, and the scene, as depicted in the old engraving, "The Angel of Hadley," is to-day preserved in many homes. Sir Walter Scott, in Peveril of the Peak, related the incident, and only recently has the modern historian discovered that Hadley was not attacked that day, September, 1675, and that the story is based only upon a tradition which has no real foundation.
But though this particular attack may not have been made, yet the air was full of rumors of war, and the panic-stricken inhabitants lived in constant expec- tation of slaughter and destruction. We can hardly realize the terror of those days in the unprotected hamlet, when the forests all about seemed filled with the shadows of unseen foes. Again and again, alarmed by some unknown cause, the cattle and horses came rushing into the clearing in a wild stampede, and the women and children hid in the darkest corners of their homes, and held their breath for fear. Captain
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Lothrop, with seventy men, started toward Deerfield to act as a guard for a train of carts laden with grain for Hadley. A sudden attack at Muddy Brook caused its waters to flow red with the blood of fifty-four soldiers and seventeen teamsters, taken off their guard as they were plucking grapes by the roadside, while the brave captain, attempting to rally his men, fell to rise no more. The words of the historian give but little idea of the desolation which that fated expedition brought to many happy homes. He says: "This was a black and fatal day, wherein were 8 persons made widows and 20 children made fatherless, all in one little plan- tation, and above 60 persons buried in one dreadful grave." The brook, so muddy then, has since been known as Bloody Brook. The "dreadful grave" is marked by a monument with an appropriate inscrip- tion that all the world may read. John Barnard, son of Francis Barnard of Hadley, was among the teamsters slain on this expedition.
Alarmed by this calamity, the Commissioners of the New England Colonies despatched three hundred Massachusetts militia and two hundred Connecticut soldiers for the defense of Hampshire County. Major Pynchon was in Hadley commanding these forces when an express reached him in the middle of the night with the warning that five hundred of King Philip's men were in readiness to fall upon Springfield. Almost frantic the Major with his troops started toward
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the south, to see afar off the sky red with the flames of thirty-two blazing houses, only thirteen remaining un- harmed. This disaster was not wrought by Philip, but by the near neighbors and sometime friends under Wequogon, that peaceful sachem who signed the deed by which the meadow of Hockanum was added to Hadley. That those who had almost been inmates of their homes could do such fearful wrong to their benefactors created in the hearts of the settlers a
desire for revenge. By order of the soldiers an old squaw was torn to pieces by dogs, and other cruel acts unworthy of a civilized people were committed. Good Parson Russell, feeling the helplessness of men, wrote: "Our town of Hadley is now like to drink next, if mercy prevent not, of this bitter cup. We are but about 50 families and now left solitary. We desire to repose our confidence in the living and eternal God who is the refuge of his people."
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