USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Vol I > Part 4
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continental countries. In the same year was suggested the Great Hoosac Tunnel, one of the largest in the world, the construction of which was, however, long delayed. It was begun in 1863 and completed in 1873. and so accurate was the work, begun at opposite sides of the mountain, that, when the workmen met, it was found that the variation in the alignment was less than an inch, and in the level less than three inches, in the entire length of four and three-fourths miles. In 1826 also, an elevated railroad was proposed by Theodore Sedgwick, of Stockbridge. The principle of electric railroads was patented by Stephen Field, of the same town: and the Atlantic telegraph cable had its inception in the brain of another Stockbridge man, Cyrus W. Field, who carried the project forward to its consummation.
In more recent days have been founded within the borders of the county manufacturing enterprises of first importance, the products of which are familiar in every market reached by American commerce, and which have made the names of Pittsfield, Dalton, Hinsdale, Great Barrington, Adams, North Adams, Williamstown, Lee, and others, widely known. At Lee was made the first wood pulp, and the first paper from that material; and at Dalton are located the mills where is made the distinctive paper upon which is printed the bonds and bills of the United States, all the manufacturing operations being carried on under the direct supervision of agents of the United States Treasury Department.
The natural beauties of old Berkshire, its churches and its grave- yards with their hallowed memories, its ancestral homes with their annals and traditions, have been, through the years, an inspiration to men and women of letters, historians and poets, some native to the soil,
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others who came to dwell for a time and ply their pens con amore, in midst of congenial and suggestive surroundings.
Dr. Jonathan Edwards resided in Stockbridge from the time he came to succeed the Rev. John Sergeant as teacher and preacher, until he was called to the presidency of Princeton (New Jersey) Col- lege. Here, in a house known as Edwards Hall (torn down only a few years ago) in a room six by fifteen feet, he wrote his great treatises on "Freedom of the Will," " The Nature of Virtue," and " Original Sin." A remarkable instance of his precocious genius and knowledge is afforded in the following, written by him when he was about twelve years old :
" There are some things that I have happily seen of the wondrous way of the working of the spider. *. *
* Every- body that is used to the country knows their marching in the air from one tree to another, sometimes to the distance of five or six rods. Nor can one go out in a dewy morning in the latter end of Au- gust and the beginning of September but he shall see multitudes of webs, made vis- ible by the dew that hangs on them, reaching from one tree, branch, or shrub. to another; which webs are commonly thought to be made in the night, be- Jonathan Edwards. cause they appear only in the morn- ing; whereas none of them are made in the night, as these spiders never come out in the night when it is dark, as the dew is then falling. But these webs may be seen well enough in the day-time by an observing eye, by their reflection in the sunbeams. Especially late in the afternoon may these webs that are between the eye and that part of the horizon that is under the sun, be seen very plainly. * And the spiders themselves may be very often seen traveling in the air, from one stage to another amongst the trees, in a very unaccountable manner. But I have often seen that which is much more astonishing. In very calm and serene days in the forementioned time of year, standing at some distance behind the end of a house or
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some other opaque body, so as just to hide the disk of the sun and keep off his dazzling rays, and looking along close by the side of it. I have seen a vast multitude of little shining webs and glistening strings brightly reflecting the sunbeams, and some of them of great length, and of such height that one would think they were tacked to the vault of the heavens."
His old study table is preserved in the Stockbridge village library, and a monument to his memory, erected by his descendants, stands upon the church lawn.
Among other eminent divines resident in Berkshire was the Rev. John Todd, for thirty years pastor of the First Church in Pittsfield. He was famous not only as a preacher but as an author, and the greater number of his works were here written. He was an adept in writing for youth, and among his most widely distributed volumes were "Lec- tures to Children," which went through many editions, in England as well as in America, and was translated into the French, German, Greek, Bulgarian, Tamil and other languages; and the "Student's Manual," of which more than one hundred and fifty thousand copies were sold in London, England. Among others of his works were: "Truth Made Simple," and "Nuts for Boys to Crack." In his "Simple Sketches," and particularly in his " Summer Gleanings." he gave poetical descrip- tion of the Berkshire country, interspersed with moralizings at times delightful, and at times sweetly if rather mournfully pathetic, as in his narrative of the dedication of the new cemetery :
" We have just returned from dedicating our new cemetery. It is of very great extent. Solemn woods, sunny lawns, pleasant hills and dales, and a singing stream, which, stopping once in its course, forms a beautiful little lakelet, -- all are found in our chosen resting-place for the dead. Miles of smooth carriage road wind among the hillocks and trees, and as the stranger rides now in sunlight and now in shade, he confesses that no expense has been spared, and that it is an honor to the town. But the dedication. The morning was beautifully clear, and.
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as the thousands gathered to move in procession, no banner or martial music disturbed the solemnity of the occasion. The bell tolling, a single bass-drum beating time to our footsteps, the procession, a mile in length. went forward to the grounds. In one of the beautiful groves, and on the side of a hill, the seats and the platform were arranged, and at least three thousand sat down in silence. The exercises consisted of prayer, reading the Scriptures, singing, addresses, and a sweet poem from a most gifted mind .- Dr. Holmes. We seemed to be standing between the living and the dead.
" We were drawn back to the past and connected with our fathers ; . for we are to remove, as far as possible, all the dead who have been buried in this town since its first settlement, and lay their bones here, to be disturbed no more. we trust, till the resurrection day.
" We were solemn, for we seemed to be looking into our own graves; for though it is now ' a new sepulchre wherein never man was yet laid,' yet we knew that the first graves would soon be opened, and that beneath these lofty trees our own dust must shortly sleep. We were connected with the future, for we knew that it would be at least two hundred, perhaps five hundred years, before the dead will again call for more room. We were doing what will not be again done here for centuries, and here the dust of our children and of our posterity is to be gathered. And we thought how we should then be centuries old ourselves, and through how many strange scenes of thinking, feeling. hoping, fearing, suffering, and enjoying, we should pass ere that day comes."- From "Summer Gleanings.'
Dr. William Ellery Channing, the first leader among Unitarian clergymen and writers, and who upon the platform was not surpassed by any American orator, passed several summers in Lenox, in quest of health. Among his congenial friends while there were Catherine Sedg- wick and Fannie Kemble. At Lenox, on August Ist. 1842, he delivered an address on the anniversary of the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies, an effort of great power and eloquence.
The Rev. Mark Hopkins, D. D., the revered president of Williams College for a period of thirty years, was born in Great Barrington. Among his published works was his " Outline Study of Man." He was intensely loyal to his town and county, and prided in their remarkable
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history. In an address delivered at the Edwards family meeting in Stockbridge, in September, 1870, he said :
" For a town no larger than this, there have been and are connected with it, by residence or birth, an unusual number of those whose names will live in history. In the same line with Edwards, West and Field were great men, and were worthy of the tablets in this church by which they are commemorated in connection with him. In another line are the names of Judge Sedgwick, and Miss Catharine Sedgwick, and Mrs. Theo- dore Sedgwick. We have also among the living a codifier of laws, the most eminent of this age (David Dudley Field) ; a judge of the Supreme Court of the United States (Stephen J. Field) ; and still another (Cyrus W. Field), whose name will be remem- bered as long as the swift messages of the telegraph shall make the ocean-bed their highway, and shall outrun the sun in his course. At the head of these, Edwards stands, the greatest of all
Mark Hopkins.
* * ; not great before God (for. that no man can be), but great as walking humbly with him."
Henry Ward Beecher owned a farm in Lenox, and passed several summers there with his family. Many of the brilliant word-pictures which he drew for his hearers in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, were drawn from the hills and streams of Berkshire, and his religious and ethical teachings were inspired in many instances by recollections of Jonathan Edwards and Mark Hopkins, as he traversed the paths once trodden by them. Here he wrote his famous "Star Papers," in which he drew lessons of pregnant import from most inconsequential objects :
" Ten million wings of despised flies and useless insects are mightier than hand or foot of mine. Each mortal thing carries some quality of
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distinguishing excellence by which it may glory, and say, 'In this, I am first in all the world!'
"Since the same hand made me that made them, and the same care feeds them that spreads my board, let there be fellowship between 11S. * * * I, too, am but an insect on a larger scale. Are there not those who tread with unsounding feet through the invisible air, of being so vast, that I seem to them but a mite, a flitting insect ? And of capac- ities so noble and eminent, that all the stories which I could bring of thought and feeling to them would be but as the communing of a grass- hopper with me, or the chirp of a sparrow ?
" The line that divides between the animal and the divine is the line of suffering. The animal, for its own pleasure, inflicts suffering. The divine endures suffering for another's pleasure. Not then when he went up to the proportions of original glory was Christ the greatest ; but when he descended, and wore our form, and bore our sins and sor- rows, that by his stripes we might be healed !"
Dr. Orville Dewey, an eminent Unitarian preacher, was born in Sheffield, and came back to spend his declining days and pass away. His " Autobiography " is rich in description of Berkshire county scenes and recollections of the active men of a past generation, as evidenced by the following fragment :
I remember nothing till the first event in my early childhood, and that was acting in a play. It was performed in the church, as a part of a school exhibition. The stage was laid upon the pews, and the audience seated in the gallery. I must have been about five years old then, and I acted the part of a little son. * * We are apt to think of the Puritan times as all rigor and strictness. And yet here, nearly 60 years ago, was a play acted in the meeting-house : the church turned into a theatre. And I remember my mother's telling me that when she was a girl her father carried her on a pillion to the raising of a church in Pittsfield; and the occasion was celebrated by a ball in the evening. *
" The next thing that I remember, as an event in my childhood, was the funeral of General Ashley, one of our townsmen, who had served as colonel, I think, in the War of the Revolution. I was then in my sixth year. It was a military funeral ; and the procession, for a long distance, filled the wide street. The music, the solemn march, the
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bier borne in the midst, the crowd !- it seemed to me as if the whole world was at a funeral.
** * I remember the time when I really feared that if I went out into the fields to walk on Sunday, bears would come down from the mountain and catch me. * What mistaken notions of life, of the world .- the great, gay, garish world, all full of cloud- castles, ships laden with gold, pleasures endless and entrancing! What mistaken impressions about nature ; about the material world upon which childhood has alighted, and of which it must necessarily be ignorant ; about clouds and storms and tempests ; and of the heavens above, sun and moon and stars!"
Among the authors of Berkshire county must be named the Rev. David Dudley Field, of Stockbridge, who performed a labor of love and one of permanent value in his " History of Berkshire County." He was the father of four notable sons, three of whom are eulogized upon another page of this work CATHERINE SEDGWICKS HOME. in a quotation from the Main Street. ockbridge Rev. Mark Hopkins. The fourth son, Dr. Henry M. Field. was a well known traveler and author. whose "From Egypt to Japan." and "Among the Holy Hills." gave pleasure to a past generation, and whose " History of the Atlantic Telegraph" (the great achievement of his brother). will ever remain as an authentic narrative of that stupendous undertaking.
Nor must be left unmentioned one whose indefatigable labor has given to the county and country a work of monumental importance,
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Mr. J. E. A. Smith, who wrote the " History of Pittsfield," the first volume published in 1869, and the second in 1876.
At Stockbridge was born Catherine Maria Sedgwick, the first among American women to achieve a real fame in literature, and here repose her remains in the Sedgwick family plat in the village cemetery. Her works found admiring readers even in England, unfriendly as were its people to New World authors. Among her most widely and favor- ably known books are: " The Linwoods," and " Hope Leslie." She charmingly pictured many of the natural beauties of the Berkshire re- gion and vividly described the New England life of her day. She was the peer of Cooper in depicting the Indian, even then well nigh vanished from view :
" The Indian stranger was tall for her years, which did not exceed fifteen. Her form was slender, flexible and graceful; and there was a freedom and loftiness in her movement which, though tempered with modesty, expressed a consciousness of high birth. Her face, although marked by the peculiarities of her race, was beautiful even to a Euro- pean eye. Her features were regular, and her teeth white as pearls ; but there must be something beyond symmetry of feature to fix the attention, and it was an expression of dignity, thoughtfulness, and deep dejection that made the eye linger on Magawiska's face, as if it were perusing there the legible record of her birth and wrongs. Her hair, contrary to the fashion of the Massachusetts Indians, was parted on her forehead, braided, and confined to her head by a band of small feathers, jet black, and interwoven, and attached at equal distances by rings of polished bone. She wore a waistcoat of deerskin, fastened at the throat by a richly-wrought collar. Her arms, a model for sculpture, were bare. A mantle of purple cloth hung gracefully from her shoul- ders, and was confined at the waist by a broad band ornamented with rude hieroglyphics. The mantle, and her strait short petticoat, or kilt. of the same rare and costly material, had been obtained, probably, from the English traders. Stockings were an unknown luxury ; but leggins. similar to those worn by the ladies of Queen Elizabeth's court, were no bad substitute. The moccasin, neatly fitted to a delicate foot and ankle. and tastefully ornamented with bead-work, completed the apparel of this daughter of a chieftain."-From " Hope Leslie: or Early Times in The Massachusetts," by Catharine Maria Sedgwick.
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Here, in Sheffield, was born George F. Root, author of many pop- ular hymns and ballads, and whose war songs quickened the feet of hundreds of thousands of "Boys in Blue " as they marched to battle and final victory during the days of the slaveholders' rebellion. His services to the Union during that dreadful epoch were immeasurable. The writer of this narrative has in mind an incident pertinent to the present mention. It was at a great gathering in the Auditorium in Chi- cago, shortly before the death of General William T. Sherman, who presided. The assemblage was in large part made up of veterans of the war, and among them were many officers of high rank and national fame. A principal feature was a program of war songs sung by a great chorus of children and young people. The audience broke into storms of applause in listening to
" Yes, we'll rally 'round the flag, boys, Rally once again, Shouting the battle-cry of freedom, "
and
" Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching, Cheer up, comrades, they will come,"
and broke into sobs when the voices of the singers tremulously sang
" Just before the battle, mother, I am thinking most of you.
Farewell, mother, you may never Press me to your heart again."
A one-armed veteran, who had worn the star of a general, saw Mr. Root in the audience, immediately in front of him, leaned over and
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grasped his hand, and said, " Mr. Root, I would rather have been the writer of your songs than to have commanded an army corps of ten thousand men." Men turned to witness the interruption, and, as Mr. Root came to be recognized, his name was vociferously called out from all parts of the house. He was obliged to mount a chair, having in his diffidence declined a call to the stage, and received an ovation which his voice could not acknowledge, and to which his tears were the only response.
Another native of Berkshire county was Henry Shaw, who, as " Josh Billings," has been called "the queerest and wisest of humor- ists," and who gave to his countrymen an old philosophy of life in quaintest phrase. In pretended ignorance, he broke into many eccen- tricities of expression :
" The village of New Ashford iz one ov them towns that don't make enny fuss, but for pure water, pure morals and good rye and injun bread it stands on tiptoze. * * * If yu luv a mountain cum up here and see me. Right in front ov the little tavern whare I am staying rizes up a chunk ov land that will make yu feel week tew look at it. I hav bin on its top, and far above waz the brite blu ski, without a kloud swimmin in it, while belo me the rain shot slantin on the valley, and the litenin plade its mad pranks. *
* The fust thing i do in the morning when i git up iz tew go out and look at the mountain and see if it iz thare. If this mountain should go away, how lonesum i should be. Yesterday i picked one quart ov field strawberries, kaught 27 trout and gathered a whole parcell ov wintergreen leaves, a big daze work. When i got home last nite tired, no man kould hav bought them ov me for 700 dollars, but i suppoze after all that it waz the tired that waz wuth the munny. Thare iz a grate deal ov raw bliss in gittin tired."
At Mt. Washington lived Elaine and Dora Read Goodale, known as the " Sky Farm Poets," who began their verse making at the early age of nine years.
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Of later day authors are H. H. Ballard, author of the " World of Matter." and various text-books and special pages: William Stearns Davis, author of " A Friend of Cæsar; " Mrs. H. M. Plunkett, author of " Life of Dr. J. G. Holland: " and Anna L. Dawes, author of " The World of Matter."
Lenox will ever preserve as a tender reminiscence the memory of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who, coming to Berkshire in search of health, in the "Little Red House " (and probably at his desk which is preserved in the Berk- shire Athenaeum), wrote some of his most delightful works -" The House of the Seven Gables," and his " Tanglewood Tales." the book taking its title from the name by which his home place was known. His "American Note-Book " contained many excellent descriptions of Berkshire county scenery :
" Hudson's Cave is formed by Hudson's Brook. There is a natu- ral arch of marble still in one part of it. The cliffs are partly made verdant with green moss, chiefly gray with oxidation; on some parts the white of the marble is seen ; * there is naked sublimity seen through a good deal of clustering beauty. Above, the birch, pop- lars, and pines grow on the utmost verge of the cliffs, which jut far over, so that they are suspended in air; and whenever the sunshine finds its way into the depths of the chasm the branches wave across it. There is a lightness, however, about their foliage, which greatly re- lieves what would otherwise be a gloomy scene. After the passage of the stream through the cliffs of marble, the cliffs separate on either side, and leave it to flow onward ; intercepting its passage, however, by frag- ments of marble, some of them huge ones, which the cliffs have flung down, thundering into the bed of the stream through numberless ages.
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Doubtless some of these immense fragments had trees growing on them, which have now mouldered away. Decaying trunks are heaped in va- rious parts of the gorge. The pieces of marble that are washed by the water are of a snow-white, and partially covered with a bright green water-moss, making a beautiful contrast.
" Among the cliffs strips of earth-beach extend downward, and trees and large shrubs root themselves in that earth, thus further contrasting the nakedness of the stone with their green foliage. But the immediate part where the stream forces its winding passage through the rock is stern, dark, and mysterious. * *
" The cave makes a fresh impression upon me every time I visit it .- so deep. so irregular, so gloomy, so stern. * I stand and look into its depths at various points, and hear the roar of the stream re- echoing up. It is like a heart that has been rent asunder by a torrent of passion."- From Hawthorne's " American Note- Book."
Among those whose memory is most pleasantly treasured is Fanny Kemble. At- Nathaniel Hawthorne. tracted to Lenox, she here built a cottage which was her summer home for a space of thirty years, and where she wrote a number of works, poetry and prose, among them "Sketches of a Girlhood." A gift from her remains in a clock in the Congregational Church, and it is pleasantly remembered that the purchase was made with means earned by her Shakesperian readings one evening in the long-ago. She penned an ode for the Berkshire Jubilee of 1844, and which contained the following stanza :
" And may God guard thee, oh, thou lovely land. Danger. nor evil, nigh thy borders come, Green towers of freedom may thy hills still stand. Still be each valley peace and virtue's home : The stranger's grateful blessing rest on thee, And firm as Heaven be thy prosperity ! "
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At Lenox also was the Rev. John T. Headley, who on stirring pages fought again the battles of Napoleon, and Washington, and Grant ; the scholarly Dean Stanley, of England; and the romantic novelist, G. P. R. James.
At " Arrowhead," near Pittsfield, abode for a time Herman Mel- ville, traveler, author and lecturer, and who gave name to the place through the incident of his there picking up a flint arrow-point, and here wrote his famous " Piazza Tales."
" In the summer, too, Canute-like, sitting here, one is often reminded of the sea. For not only do long ground-swells roll the slanting grain, and little wavelets of the grass ripple over upon the low piazza, as their beach, and the blown down of dandelions is wafted like the spray, and the purple of the mountains is just the purple of the billows, and a still August noon broods upon the deep meadows, as a calm upon the Line: but the vastness and the lonesomeness are so oceanic, and William Cullen Bryant. the silence and the sameness, too, that the first peep of a strange house, rising be- vond the trees, is for all the world like spying, on the Barbary coast. an unknown sail."-From. " The Piassa," one of " The Piazza Tales," by Herman Melville.
The Berkshire hills and vales were ever a favorite resort of poets. William Cullen Bryant, in his young manhood, resided in Great Bar- rington, where he was town clerk for several years and practiced law. But he frequently turned aside to the fields and streams to indulge his poetic fancies, as he depicts in his poem on " Green River ":
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