USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Brimfield > Historical celebration of the town of Brimfield, Hampden County, Mass > Part 19
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Of his descendants I cannot speak in my limited space ; but of one of his daughters, (Sarah E. Danielson,) I should not be pardoned if I pass without a notice due to her memory and her accomplishments. Afterwards the wife of Dr. Asa Lincoln, she was in her maiden life the companion of her father at Washington and Richmond, where she shone in the fashionable circles of the capitals of the nation and Virginia. I remember her distinctly in the maturity of her womanhood. She had the port of a queen and the manners of a duchess. The lady was in her every movement and in her conversation. Her powers of colloqui- alism, the finished ease of her manners were remarkable. The highest evidence of her appreciation at Washington was, that a duel was the result of a contest over her companionship in a cotillion at a Washing- ton assembly. Two of her sous are now residents of Cincinnati, Ohio. The elder stands at the head of his profession as a lawyer, in that peculiar branch of it known as admiralty law ; and no cause of impor- tance in our inland seas or affluents passes the adjudication of courts without his advocacy for one or the other of the litigants. The younger, less eminent, holds high position with the bar of Cincinnati, and both are honored and valuable citizens of the city which they have long made their residence.
I need not remind you that he who has been properly designated as the president of your to-day's festive occasion. Captain F. D. Lincoln, is in a later birth another of the descendants of the line ; and he, too, has illustrated the traditions and transmissions of his blood by an honorable service in the army of his country in its latest impending danger. His presence and person in the fulfilment of his varied luties is a better eulogy than I can utter, if the canons of good taste did not preclude my indulgence in the tribute.
I come in my order to the family of Keyes. The head had a high and wide reputation as a successful physician, but I speak less of him than of the two descendants, his sons. The one, Erasmus Darwin, a
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graduate of West Point, served in the late rebellion as a major-gen- eral, and was attached to the Army of the Potomac and held high posi- tion until its change of commanders. The junior brother, Edward L., was a man of brilliant genius, rare beauty of person and face, remark- able qualities of oratory and facility as a writer. It was said of him by the late Charles Sumner, that he was the most effective popular orator of Massachusetts, and the commendation was not unmerited. Habits with him which were congenital impaired his usefulness, and in the meridian of his years he became the king "of a fantastic realm," and was made an inmate of a public charity for the diseased brain, and passed the remainder of his life in the long blank of being which follows the unsettled reason. I can fitly characterize him and wave a sad farewell as
" The rapt one, of the God-like forehead, The heaven-eyed creature, sleeps in death."
It might be noted, in the remembrance of his better life, that he was one of the earliest advocates of the anti-slavery cause in Massa- chusetts, and was of the first who separated themselves from the reg- ular party organization, joining with those pioneers who led off to the consummation of the victory of freedom over slavery.
I pass now to the Rev. Festus Foster, a resident of the town in his later years when he had retired from the ministry and engaged in mercantile pursuits. In native endowment and variety of acquisition, or felicity of popular elocution and large leadership. be held a higher rank than any other of our numerous citizens. Elected to the House of Representatives in 1835, he at once stepped to the front as one of the most commanding members of the body. The metropolitan influ- ence of Boston was at that time supreme in shaping its legislation, but in an encounter with their leaders he placed himself at the head of the country opposition, and left a record in his second term of 1836 as the most powerful of any of the representatives of Massachusetts in influence as a legislator.
I speak with a sad regret and a tender memory of his son, Professor J. W. Foster. Nearly of the same age with myself, associated in school and academie education, connected in business interests, close in our social associations, with our families cultivating a constant and still increasing pleasure of intercourse, I, as the survivor, pay a hum- ble tribute to his worth, his manhood, his scientifie acquirements and the regretful memory which I bear to his manifold good qualities of companion and friend. But he has himself a vindication in history. As a geologist his reputation is not only American but European, and
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he has left as mementoes of his endowments .- three volumes which at publication and now, have received high commendations from his cotemporary scientists. The Mississippi Valley, its Physical Geogra- phy, etc., and The Prehistoric Race of Man, with a joint authorship with Professor Whitney of the Lake Superior Geological Survey. He was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, president of the Chicago Academy of Science, and a member of several European societies. I cannot trust myself to speak more at length of the painful emotions which crowd upon me as Psurvey the usefulness of his life and the prematurity of his death. Of no one of my youthful companions running through this long period of inter- course, and it is something for him, and I trust for me, that our con- nection, long and intimate as it was, was never darkened by a single clond or any interposition to the harmony and affection of our inti- mate society.
Of other members of families I cannot refer in the limit of what I have laid out for myself. I have already, perhaps, encroached too long upon your time and exhausted your endurance.
There is one of whom mention has been made in the historic ad- dress of the day, who left a portion of his ample fortune for the en- dowment of an institution generously provided for, and made a monu- ment if not more enduring, at least more precious than that of marble or granite. Samuel A. Hitchcock. Not only upon this, but other edu- rational enterprises, was his bounty bestowed, and he lives in the halls of Amherst College and of kindred edifices under distant horizons, and in the regard and regrets of those whom his bounty made prosperous in its conferment.
But, Mr. President, as I turn my eyes to the east I discover in its sacred enclosure the granite shaft upon whose pedestal the names of those who fell by disease or casualty in the late struggle for the perpe- tuity of our Union are chiseled. It is a fit memorial to the memory of those who gave their lives and all they had of value to the cause of their country, which was in its peril of life. There could be no more fitting perpetuation of their noble action and their patriotic self-devo- tion, beyond the enduring column in the memory of surviving friends,
" There is a tear for all who die, A mourner o'er the humblest grave ; But nations swell the funeral cry, And triumph weeps above the brave."
I leave them to their long slumber, their imperishable remembrance and the enduring monument which is consecrated to their names.
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And now, Mr. President, Iam incapable of introducing on this or- casion any topie which should in the remotest degree be considered as partisan in its character or in its deductions ; but L cannot, in justice to myself, and in regard for the people who now listen to me, forbear to say that in recurrence to those men who have fallen in this fratrici- dal strife, I should not now plead that, with every cause of national alienation removed, that there should be a returning reign of peace and tranquility throughout the whole land. Presidents are nothing; parties have no significance; the question of Christian harmony, of peace and reunion, has a higher mission and a more exalted leadership. It is not a creed in party divisions ; it broadens into the entire human- ity of the nation. If the Southern people erred, and no one than my- self better knows that, and no one advocated more severe puritive measures in reducing them to subordination to the government than I did .- they have paid the penalty in long protracted and terrible suf- fering. Give them, then, now in their adversity the poor right to live. The sky is theirs, the air is theirs, and the earth. Let them enjoy and in peaceable possession, till their soil and reap and gather the har- vest. Over their desolated fields, on those sears made by the hot ploughshares of war, let verdure again grow upon ashes, the corn tassel nod, and the orange grove bloom, cotton and cane ripen again in sweet- ness of bloom ; let the glory of the magnolia wave above their restored fields, and the perfume of the lily and the rose again give forth their fragrance. Let church and schoolhouse, the twin agents of civiliza- tion, reassume their sway . Give us peace in a national amity. The great sin of slavery which divided us in our early controversy no longer exists. Freedom has become homogeneous in the land. Our interests are in harmony. The protection of our government should extend to all alike. Purge the land of the adventurer and give the people their own right of self-government. I cannot close with a more grateful duty which I feel imposed upon me, than to propitiate from you and from all, that forgiving charity, that forgetting spirit, which will leave what has been wrong in the past to erasure and oblivion. Let them again, as restored states, be recognized as possessing all of the rights which we share, and which we should in Christianity and brotherhood, and in the good offices of community, extend to this stricken and long- suffering people. I need not apologize for making this appeal. I should not have fulfilled my duty in reviewing memories of revolu- tionary fame and later achievements, if I had not, in this matter, closed with an exhortation that the dove should again brood over our broad land, and the olive branch wave throughout its varied and distant cli- mates and domains.
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Mr. President, I am obliged for the courteous attention with which I have been listened to, and I give you now, in the presence of those whom I have once known but whose faces are now unfamiliar, the aspiration that the reputation of our town, untarnished as it has been, shall yet be made more dear to those who shall succeed us, and that in its beauty of landscape, with its rural attractions and its intelligence and virtue of public and private life, it may live to another Centennial when our successors shall give us the ovation that we have extended to those who have gone before us in the untarnished annals of the de- parting cycle.
LEITER BY GOV. FAIRBANKS, OF VERMONT.
STATE OF VERMONT, EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, MONTPELIER, Oct. 9, 1876. To N. S. HUBBARD, S. W. BROWN AND J. S. BLAIR, Committee :
Gentlemen :- It would give me great pleasure to join in the observ- ance of your centennial celebration, but my official duties at this time render it impossible. Although not myself a native of Brimfield, it was the birthplace and home of my ancestors. There my father, Eras- tus Fairbanks, was born and spent the happy years of childhood and youth. This fact renders Brimfield peculiarly a place of interest to me.
But the occasion has attractions independent of my relations to the town through my ancestors. Such occasions cannot fail to awaken feelings of interest in the heart of every loyal and patriotic citizen- its purpose being, as I understand, not only the celebration of the com- pletion of the first century of the Republic, but also an occasion of the collection of its own local history, that it may be preserved, perpetu- ated and transmitted.
The importance of celebrating appropriately anniversary days, we have in a measure, I fear, come to underrate. They have come and gone to us so many times that they have ceased to make that impres- sion upon us which we recall as the impression of our childhood ; but these days leave upon the minds of the young the same deep impres- sion which they formerly did upon us. These are the occasions when the holy feelings of patriotism and love of race are planted and rooted deep in the hearts of the young men and maidens-they who are to control the immediate future of our nation.
The desire to honor our ancestry by transmitting the history which they have made, at least indicates the presence of that wholesome re- spect for preceding generations, the lack of which is said to be a sign
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of relaxing dignity, and a symbol of national and political decadence The importance and value of efforts for the preservation and transmis- sion of local history, can hardly be over-estimated. It was Goldwin Smith, I think, who said that a nation with a history cannot be over- thrown in two generations. It is because the great and good actions of our fathers stimulate us to emulate their virtues and achievements.
Let us not fail, then, in transmitting to our descendants whatever is worthy of imitation, and should our sires look from their graves to- day to see how their own reputations are getting on in our keeping, may their eyes fall benignly upon a race that honors them not more by the reverence they yield to their virtues than by the imitation of those virtues.
Permit me again to express my regret that I am unable to be with you on the occasion which you are about to commemorate.
I am yours very truly, HORACE FAIRBANKS.
You will receive by this mail biographical notices of my father and of my uncle, Joseph P. Fairbanks. My uncle Thaddeus is still living, is four score years of age, and is still vigorous, having just returned home from the meeting of the American Board at Hartford.
LETTER FROM JUDGE MORRIS OF SPRINGFIELD.
HENRY F. BROWN, EsQ. : Dear Sir .- When I received your invi- tation to attend the centennial celebration at Brimfield on the 11th instant. I thought I should be able to be present, and anticipated much pleasure in participating in the exercises of the occasion. I have al- ways felt a peculiar interest in your beautiful town. In my school days, some of my most intimate friends were Brimfield boys. I might say the same of some of the girls. Probably some of these boys and girls, if living, are grandfathers and grandmothers now. I have formed many friendships in later days with the people of your town. I should like to renew the old friendships and reinforce the new.
Brimfield is peculiarly a child of Springfield, having been originally laid out by Springfield men. Many Springfield names appear among the early settlers. Hitchcock, Stebbins, Bliss, Lumbard, Morgan, Burt, Townsley, and many other of the early names at Brimfield, were also early here.
It would gratify me much to listen to the historical address of Mr. Hyde, which I am sure will be instruefive and interesting. and which I hope will be preserved in an enduring form to constitute a valuable addition to our local histories. But I regret to say that I must deny
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myself the pleasure of being with you as I anticipated. Circumstan- ces not forseen forbid it. All I can now do is to congratulate you all on the good time which I am sure you will have and enjoy.
Very truly yours, HENRY MORRIS.
LETTER FROM REV. DR. A. J. SESSIONS, OF BEVERLY BEVERLY, Oct. 9, 1876.
Gentlemen of the Committee :- I am obliged to give up the gratifi- cation of being with you in your great celebration, such are my en- gagement- and surroundings. My heart goes out to Brimfield in both bright and shadowed memories. All success to your undertaking. Blessings he upon the dwellers there, and the sojourners who shall hasten back to the sacred festivities.
Let me send you : Our homes: God's best gift to the children of men. I am yours very respectfully,
ALEXANDER J. SESSIONS.
MESSRS. N. S. HUBBARD, S. W. BROWN, J. S. BLAIR, Committee.
LETTER FROM HON. SALEM WALES, OF NEW YORK.
Department of Docks, President's Office, 117 & 119 Duane st., NEW YORK, Oct. 10, 1876.
MR. BROWN : Dear Sir .- I regret very much that my engagements here will not permit me to join in the centennial celebration at Brim- field to-morrow. I hoped to have the privilege of meeting the citizens and neighbors who will gather to-morrow to celebrate the annals of the town.
I should have enjoyed the occasion very much, and though absent in person, I shall be with you in spirit. I wish you all a most agree- able and profitable reunion.
All the places around about the home of my youth, and the home of the fathers, are very dear to me. I love to return to them; they grow more precious to me as the years go on. When sorely pressed by the burdens and cares of life I feel with the poet :
" Happy the man whose love and care A few paternal acres bound ; Content to breathe his native air In his own ground."
Yours very truly, S. H. WALES.
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PETITION OF SPRINGFIELD PEOPLE .- Mass. Archives, Vol. 113-256.
To the Truly Honurable William Stoughton, Esq .. Leintenant Governner of his Majesties Province of the Massachusetts Bay with the Honorble Council & Representatives assembled in General Court to Sit at Boston Within the sa Province on the 12th Day of Febry 1700-1
The humble Petition & Submissive Representation of the sub- seribers Inhabitants of the Town of Springfield in Hampshire, within ye gd province
Most humbly sheweth,
Our high esteeme & value for the Government & establishment of this Province of the Massachusetts Bay, By his most Gracious Majes- ties Royal Charter & extensive Priviledges from thence aceruing to his good subjects the Inhabitants thereof, which ourselves (as a smal part of the Whole, Greatly rejoyce on the account of our sharing therein, and earnestly desire our long continuance so to doe, any thoughts of fall- ing short thereof being very afflietive to us, arising only from our want of accemadations of land for our Posterity to live comfortably on, the want whereof may enforce their removing (as wel as some of our- selves) out of this Province to such Place where they may obtaine land to live upon, some of our young men already being gone & others Indeavouring to sute themselves in the neighborn Colony, where new Places are agoeing forward & Incouragements offered us whereby we are in hassard not only of being diminished & weakned ourselves, But the Province to come short of such Increase & Inlargement, by Improvements and settlements as is to be desired & promoted by all that wish its welfare & Florishing : In order to al which & to ad- vance its Growth & desvred Inlargements we give this Honourable assembly on account of a Tract of land about twelve or fourteen miles Eastward of this Towne, which may make a Plantation or Towneship of fifty or sixty famylys or more if large Bounds be allowed it as is requisit in regard that within it fals much land which is no ways capable of Improvement so that to erect and make a com- fortable Towne enabled to defray its own charge & subsist wel, there is a necessity of large bounds for its accommodation, Wherefore we sub- missively propose and humbly ask leave of this Honourable assembly for errecting & setting of a Towne on the Tract of Land before men- tioned and so grant us this land Eastward of Springfield Bounds a line From Chikkeepy River on the North to run Southward to Enfield Line which is in length from North to South only Eight miles it hav-
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ing bene exactly measured And that this Tract of land for this new Township may extend East at least Eight miles from Springfield bounds or line on the West of it & to which it will adjoin on Piney Land : And although some good Land for hopefull Improvement be within this Tract now desyred & humbly Craved for, yet there is In- termixed much that is meane & a greate deale of Pine Land being of little or noe use for the Townships Improvement, except leading to some small quantitys of Meddow of which there is little & will be much want of only it may be made & increased out of swampy low- land betwixt Hils unto which the bounds must extend to accomadate a meete settlement : And at best as it is Wilderness land hard to win & must be gained by Industry & Som Labore wrestling with many Difficultys & charges Incident to new beginings, But yet may it Please this Honourd Assembly according to their Wonted Bounty To Grant unto us such Immunitys as new Places call for with the needful Bounds before expressed without which this Place Cannot Subsist : It will Fortifie us against our Incumbent discourage- ment & Invite a settlement for our young People before they disperse & breake away to other parts, whose leaving us as it will diminish our members so our strength being once Gon it will disable us in our speedy entring upon the worke & promoting it to a considerable Towne so as that Twenty famylys if not more may be building there and proceeding to setling & there Dwelling within eighteen months from May next which we Intend & wil Indeavour by the help of God assisting us thereunto & that more may soon after setle theron (We leave our Ernest & humble desires with your our honoured Fathers, Whose tender Care & Reedyness to provide for your children we have experienced & are so wel assured thereof that we nothing doubt of your most Judicious statements of this matter for the speedy Settle- ment & management of a Comfortable Towne whether by Impowering of a Committee to admit Inhabitants Grant allotments to particular Persons & order of the Prudential affairs of ye Place for a time or otherwise as in your Wisdome you shal Judge best only are Bold to suggest to your Consideration that the honourable Col Jno Pynchon be one of the Committee having been Improved in Contriving and Settling new Places, whom upon that account we have prevailed with to subscribe to this Petition & only crave leave to say that men from other towns are not so sutable in regard of their remoteness & thereby unready to attend the worke which may retard matters more than those of Springfield who are likely to help it on & further the de- signe, we being in earnest for present settlement of the Place least we loose our young men & others here That are towards removeing who
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are fit for new Plantations & meete for Labor & forward to Joine in worke If it be Caryed on without delay.
That the Soveraigne disperer of al things who aimes at his owne Glory & his Peoples Good May direct you in al you' Councils & de- terminations, for the advance of the kingdome of his deare Son We humbly Pray & Subscribe for ourselves & many others of Springfield.
SPRINGFIELD Febr 4th
1700
JOHN HITCHCOCK SENR
JOHN PYNCHON
JOSEPH STEBBINS SEN Or
THOMAS COLTON
THOMAS DAY SENT
PELATIAH GLOVER
. JOHN BURT .
JAMES WARRENER Sen
DANIEL MUN
DAVID MORGEN
DANIEL COOLEY SENT
JOSEPH WILLERTON
JOSEPH COOLEY
SAMUEL STEBBINS
TILLY MIRICKE
LUKE HITCHCOCK SENR
EPHRAIM COLTON
SAMUEL KEEP
WILLIAM WARRENIER
EBENEZER DAY
DANIEL GRAVES
FRIDAY
June 20th 1701 S ACTION OF COUNCIL.
A Resolve in the Words following being past by the Representatives, and Sent up from that House (together with the Petition of Several of the Inhabitants of the Town of Springfield) was read at the Board and Concurred with In answer to the Petition of Several of the In- habitants of Springfield thereunto subscribed, humbly Craving the grant of a plantation or Township twelve or fourteen miles Eastward of Springfield Adjoining to Springfield Bounds on the West In a Tract of Land there from Chickapy River on the North to run along by Springfield Line on the West of this Traet South Eight miles to Enfield Line, taking in from Chickapy River the said Tract of Land there of eight miles Square
Resolved-That there be granted unto the Petitioners and Such Others as the Committee of this Courts Appointment shall Associate to them, the Afore described Tract of Land for a Township, Provided they Settle thereon, and Distribute it to Sixty Families, and that within two years from May next there be twenty Families dwelling on the Place and Provision by Grants made for Entertaining to the number of Seventy families if the Land will Conveniently Accomo- date so many, And for the Admitting of Inhabitants, granting Allot-
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ments, Distributing, or Proportioning of Land there, and Ordering all the Prudential Affairs of the place, This Court do Appoint & impower Coll John Pynchon Esqº Capt Thomas Colton. M' Pelatiah Glover, Mr James Warrener Send Ensigne Joseph Stebbins, and M' David Morgan, or any three of them (the s4 Coll" John Pynchon or Capt The' Colton being one) a Comittee fully empowered to Manage, Order, and Determine all that is needful unto Stating, and setling the place at Present for five or Six Years, or According as this Court shall See Cause or further Order, when the Inhabitants Setled on said place shall then be allowed to have, and enjoy all Such priviledges Immunities, and powers as Other Towns in this Province have, and do enjoy, And in the Meantime the Committee Aforementioned in forming the place for a Town are to Consider Compactness, and Safety as well as Mens convenieney and Advantage for Husbandry, as also the Endeavouring the Setling of an Able Orthodox Minister of the Gospel there as Soon as may be, The said Committee also in their making Grants of Lands to Such as they shall Admit Inhabitants there to have respect unto Mens Estates, and abilities to improve the Same, Stating, and Appointing the time for the Grantees to be im- proving their Land by an Actual dwelling thereon or Building there According as said Committee shall Order ; on a forfieture, that if Men, even any of the Petitioners desert the place or Neglect to Attend the terms of their respective Grants in One Kind or Another the Town- ship may notwithstanding be Carried on by others that may have the forfieted Grants given them Upon Such Conditions also such new Grantees carrying on, and Setling on said Township, It is further provided that the said Committee grant to no One person that may have the Greatest Estate more than One hundred and Twenty Acres of all Sorts of Land, And that while this place is in its Infancy, Un- subdued, and Little improvements made, All rates, and Charges for carrying on And Setling it be raised on the Grantees, or Inhabitants by the Poll, and according to their Grants or Quantities of Land allowed to each person, And Accordingly to be proportioned and paid by the Grantees for five or six Years, and until other Order taken, and for so long time the place to be free from all public Rates or Taxes, or till this Court shall See it is in a way of Subsistance, and raising on the place wherewith to defrey the Same, SAVING all former Grants.
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