USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Shelburne > History and tradition of Shelburne, Massachusetts > Part 36
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The same year David Fiske, 2nd, bought the brick house and the other half of the farm. He may not have been a resident-owner, because it is known that Daniel Fiske lived in the brick house until 1861, when he sold his property to Pliny Fiske, brother of Alvarez, Sr., and moved to The Center, into the late David Long house, close to Dragon Brook. About that time, F. Alvarez Fiske, Jr., married and moved into the brick house, where his daughter, May, was born. Upon the death of his father he sold the brick
house to Jennie and Fred Dunnell and returned with his little family to his mother's home, the cottage house where his son, Henry, and daughter, Hattie, were born and his wife died. Years later, after his son and mother had died and his daughter, May, had married, Alvarez Fiske, with his daughter, Hat- tie, moved to The Center.
When he sold his place to John Cromack, who had been living in the brick house for seven years, the possessive link of the two houses and farm acres once more joined in their original entirety.
The two youngest children of John and Mary Graves Cromack were born in the frame house. Retiring from farming, John Cromack sold the orig- inal property of Major Arms to John Friend, the present owner, who moved into the brick house and polished up the cottage for a combined antique and workshop.
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THE SAM PAYNE SUMMER HOME (Bardwell's Ferry Road)
There is the long, roomy brick house in the Fox- town District. Its arrangement is unique and inter- esting. The central part with its fine front door is tall and stately. Its first and second stories each consist mainly of two large rooms with a hall between and extending from the front to the back of the house. A lower wing at each end of this part gives more room and widens the effect.
This house was built, not later than 1812, by the Bardwell brothers of Montague, relatives of the late Mrs. Jennie Skinner. Not much of it is known today before the advent of the Andrews brothers, Alfred and Edwin, and their families.
Alfred married Sarah Carpenter, and Edwin mar- ried Lydia Carpenter, granddaughters of Captain
Parker Dole. They were prosperous citizens. Alfred educated two daughters at Wellesley College. Edwin's daughter, Bertha, was a successful nurse.
The place is now owned by Samuel Payne of the Morgan Stanley Company of New York. He was formerly a Greenfield and Shelburne boy and a grad- uate of Princeton University, who had long had his eye on the Andrews place.
His most interesting development is the early Colo- niał kitchen. Three rooms are combined into one large one with a spacious bay window at one end attractively planned in keeping with the period in which the house was built. A portion of the room is allotted for each - a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. The arrangement saves both fuel and labor. Mrs. Payne, formerly a Western New York State girl, takes kindly to country life, even to the running of a tractor.
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OLD HOUSES OF SHELBURNE FALLS
WHEN the first permanent settlers, Martin Sever- ance and Daniel Ryder, came to Shelburne Falls in 1760, moving up from Deerfield, they came as farm- ers in search of land. They followed the marked trail, which as early as 1769 in the town records is called the "Chearlymount" Road, and settled near the springs on the hillside on the east of what is now Maple Street. The log cabins of these pioneers are long since gone, although a tablet marks the approxi- mate location of the Martin Severance home at the head of Bridge Street. Ryder, who built just north of Cowell Gymnasium, sold out in 1763 to Deacon Ebenezer Allis. The territory from up on the moun- tain down to the river comprised the Severance and Allis farms.
The oldest residence still standing was built by Martin Severance, Jr., in 1784 to house his increas- ing family. His daughter Achsah was born there in July 1785. It is now the home of Mr. and Mrs. John Hoyt and Miss Nina Wood, at the northwest corner of Bridge and Maple Streets. This large two- and-one-half-story house is a fine example of the colonial architecture of the time with its central hall with a balancing front room on each side. The in- terior has seen much renovation but still retains some of the original corner posts, ceiling beams, doors with
the early wrought-iron hardware and floors with extremely wide boards. The early fireplaces were removed, together with the big central chimney, but two of the Victorian era remain. Of special interest are the small-paned windows with wavy glass in the attic, beside one of which are pasted wood-cuts from an 1838 almanac. The living rooms have been fur- nished by their present owners with many pieces of antique furniture in keeping with the age of the house.
In 1839 when owned by Col. Asa Severance, a private school, which lasted only a few years, was established here for those who were not of the Bap- tist persuasion, favored at Franklin Academy. In the Eighties, a kindergarten was held here by Miss Bard- well, daughter of the owner, S. D. Bardwell.
The barns were on the opposite side of Bridge Street, but were burned by an incendiary when owned by Mr. Bardwell.
Ten Maple Street
The next house to the north. 10 Maple Street, home of Mr. and Mrs. Elliot Whitbeck, is built of "hewn timber and plank" and was originally prob- ably a shop or a carriage house connected with the Severance house. According to one tradition, however, it was at first a mill making use of the power in the brook which flows at the west end of the lot.
Up along the "Charlemont Road" came the other pioneers, following the trail to the present north end of Maple Street, continuing northwest through what is now Arms Cemetery, coming out near the present Dickinson residence and following what is now the Colrain Road. Then up across the North River, where as early as 1793 a second bridge was built to replace an earlier one. (It is a matter of interest that this was the route followed by the early Shel- burne inhabitants to their county seat, Northampton, fording the river near Buckland Station, then follow- ing the Buckland Station Road, to one passing through Hog Hollow and then on to their destination.)
Shortly before 1799, Levi Steele came "with his
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axe on his back" and built his house near the spring on the bank north of the barn on the present Gordon Purrington place. He and Achsah Severance Merrill were the only persons still living in the Falls in 1849 who were living there in 1799. This early house, now owned by Mr. Wayne Hillman, was moved to its present location by Levi's son, John, as a home for his daughter, who married a Stockwell about 1850. This is a typical old-time story-and-a-half cot- tage, but in the many renovations, little of the original distinctive interior remains.
To replace the family home, the present Gordon Purrington home was built. At about the same time arose the rooftree of the second Steele daughter, who married a Coney, and whose husband built the house lived in now by the Ralph Bassetts.
On this same road the Dickinson house is very old, with its cellar stairs made of the original heavy plank held down with the old pegs. There is also a "step-down" between the main part of the house and the ell, as was often customary in the early days.
Near the North River Bridge the home of Miss Betty Manning was built in 1846 to replace the original house which burned, leaving only the ell. This contains the old fireplace with a shelf above to warm the "nightcap." Was this for external or in- ternal use ?
To the south of the village, on the "Charlemont Road" ( Mohawk Trail), where the Franklin For- estry is now, settled various families of Dodges. (The Samuel Dodges were "warned out of town.") Not one of their dwellings remains. A house, built to replace one destroyed by fire in 1815, is the present residence of Edward A. Roberts, and known variously as the Deerfield Valley Poultry Farm, the McDonald Farm, and the Wilcox Farm. In 1835 it was the home of Capt. Thaddeus Merrill, his wife Achsah Severance Merrill, and their large family. In that year it was the birthplace of the Merrill Band, soon to be the Shelburne Falls Band, which holds the rec- ord for the longest continuous existence of any band in the United States. Solomon F. Merrill remem- bered in 1887 that, "in the fall of 1835 Martin Merrill, Jonathan Nims, and S. F. Merrill, three farmer boys, having by some Yankee boys' way of trading got hold of two old 5-keyed C clarinets, and one 5-keyed C bugle, commenced to torment all the people then living where Wilcox now lives, and all on both sides of the river for a mile or two each way." There soon grew up a band of fourteen men who played all over New England, traveling in their own band wagon.
The first schoolhouse was on this road, with the district extending from Isaac Dole's (the Geiger farm) to North River Bridge. And no school bus! Levi Merrill, born in 1810, says, in 1887, that the first schoolhouse was on the west side of South Maple Street and a little to the south of the George Merrill dwelling, now occupied by Mr. Roy Merrill and Mrs. Alice Merrill Ware. Soon, however, a "little
yellow school house" appears in the records, placed by one "near the Allis farm, a little north of the Severance home," by another "between the Severance place and the Mansion House." It was probably about where Arms Academy is now. Lucretia C. H. Churchill, who died in 1907 at the age of ninety-four, lived "as a child near the west end of the North River bridge." She recalled that what is now Arms Cemetery was in her early days a dense forest through which she used to pass on the way to school. The schoolhouse was near the old Severance place. This schoolhouse was later an early meeting-place for the Methodists.
By the 1780's it was being discovered that the river was filled not only with salmon, but with power. The route to the falls left the Charlemont Road somewhere near the Wilcox place (the Roberts' poul- try Farm) and then followed the ravine, "winding like a narrow ribbon round the hill by the falls down yonder," as recalled by Stephen Kellogg in 1868. The road is variously remembered as branch- ing off to climb "the sandy bank" at places opposite the end of Mechanic Street or opposite the end of Baker Avenue. What was left of it was washed out in the great flood of October 1869.
Jonathan Wood was the first man to operate a mill at the falls, and at an early date he put in a footbridge for the convenience of his patrons. He is noteworthy for being the leader of the Shakers, who were in town from 1782-1785, and for being the owner of the building which housed them and fur- nished them a meeting-place. This was the famous "old Abbey" which was clothed in mystery even in the early 1800's. It was a structure, "3 stories in front, 2 stories in back" standing on the north side of the "town brook," approximately in the location of the parking lot in the rear of the First National Store (formerly the Shelburne Falls Hotel). In 1788 Mr. Wood sold for "385 pounds current money 25 acres bounded northly by Ebenezer Ellis [Deacon Allis] east by Martin Severance and south and west by land I bought of the 'Publick' with house and barn, also land north and east of the Deerfield River with 3% of 2 grist mills and 1 saw mill all under one roof and another tract on river of 5 acres." He is heard of no more in town. The Abbey was turned into tenements, and is mentioned frequently, but it be- came more and more shabby until torn down in 1854.
In 1818, Jarvis Bardwell, aged sixteen, arrived in town. On his one hundredth birthday he recalled that there were hardly six houses on the Shelburne side at that time, but the "first saw mill, the first grist mill together with the first cloth-dressing machine and first carding machine" in the vicinity drew people to the Falls in large numbers. Which were these houses that were standing then? It is hard to say. The various "fifty years ago" reminiscences are some- times contradictory, and official records hazy. The "chestnut sapling" referred to, and the "pile of rocks
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by the river" have long since vanished. Discrepancies are unavoidable.
At that time, the "Charlemont Road," Maple Street, was not considered as of the village. We have first, therefore, the "Abbey." and, perhaps, also a brick building which in 1879 was replaced by the Stebbins Block, now containing the Innis and Ben Franklin Stores and owned by Mr. Albert W. Daven- port. A newspaper of that year reads, "another old landmark has bitten the dust. One of the first brick buildings in the village . . . where hundreds of fam- ilies have once lived has been torn down to make room for the Stebbins block."
David Fiske House
The oldest house now remaining from this early cluster is the Harry Waste home at the southeast corner of Cross and Water Streets. We should be thankful to those who saved it for the present genera- tion, when the proposed extension of Cross Street through from Main threatened it with destruction. It was preserved by being moved some feet to the south, barely out of the way of the new road.
According to historians, this is the "pretty little house on the riverside" built by David Fiske for his bride, Laura Severance, in 1814. Of their eight chil- dren born here, two were the distinguished Rev. Asa Fiske, and Rev. Samuel Fiske. the latter noted as a pastor, traveler, and soldier and as the author. "Dunne Browne." In 1832 Fiske moved west and sold the house to J. MI. Macomber, a brilliant man, who became the second principal of Franklin Acad- emy and an occasional preacher.
He and his brother, Kingsley Macomber, were in 1843 converts to Millerism. J. M. Macomber told friends that no other doctrine was so well attested as this Millerite belief, and if the great event did not come to pass as predicted, he would never more be- lieve in the Bible. The world still stood on April 23. Mr. Macomber left town shortly after, and it is understood lived up to his promise in regard to the Bible.
In 1837 the house was bought by Ira Merrill, who was the son of Capt. Thaddeus and who was notable for his work in stone.
The exterior is substantially the same except that a sun porch has been added, and the door changed at some time from the south to the west side. It is delightful to find that this house still retains its old fireplaces with the flagstone hearths. In the "spare bedroom" downstairs is a unique corner one, and in the front room a large family-size one with wide mantel and old oven with a curved top, still usable for baking. There are the corner posts, the old pine doors with strap hinges, and especially one unusual door made of one wide board, which leads to a side hall containing the narrow stairs to the second floor.
In 1811 Clark Fisk, with his brother, Joel, did wool carding at the Falls and also had for sale "white pine boards, scythes and mill saws." In 1815 he built the brick house at 12 Main Street, now owned by Dr. and Mrs. Galbo. It was sold soon after to Apollos Barnard, who brought his bride here in 1819. He was a leading businessman for many years and left the house to his son, Lucius. The exterior, which boasts a fanlight over the front door and a decorative hand-carved molding under the eaves on the front, has been attractively refinished by its pres- ent owners. The requirements of more convenient modern living by successive generations have left few of the original interesting details in the interior.
As early as 1816 there is a record of the two guns kept in the "old gun house" of the artillery company, consisting of fifty-nine men under Capt. Merrill. This became the Swan house at 105 Bridge Street, now the home of Mr. and Mrs. John ( Mary Swan) Spencer. Since the infantry drilled on the second floor, the ceilings there are higher than the first floor ones, to provide room for the bayonets when guns were shouldered. The building then stood facing the west with its end to the street.
One wonders if the Shelburne Falls Light Gardes (Company B) made up of boys of fifteen and sixteen, "a crack company well drilled," trained in this hall. Did they foresee the conflict in which two of them would die when in 1854 they adopted "artical 1st, being sensibil that judicious and systematic regula- tions are indispensibily necessary to the best interist of the company . . . we do hereby subscribe to the following articles which each member shall consider himself bound in law, equity and honhor to observe . . . as become a soildier"?
Included are such rules as
Fines
"No Swaring while under arms 1 ct.
No leveing the company without leve from the capting 10 ct
No smoking aloud in the ranks 3 ct."
Drilling was with wooden guns.
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In 1821 a covered bridge was finally built across the Deerfield to replace the fords and the pine-trunk boat of the ferry. There was no ferryman and the boat was too often on the "other" side of the river. The traveler's "Hello, the boat" found many "mis- creants," "skulking" or "shunning" the direct road so as not to hear the summons. Things got so bad finally that a fine was imposed on those who did not heed the call. Even this failed, and at last it was ordered, that those who did not pay, "should be con- sidered as aliens and excummunicated." The fords were near the Bridge of Flowers and a "safer" one near the former marble shop.
"In 1831," S.L.B. writing in 1882 says, "I arrived in the village and found the Greenfield road, now called Bridge Street was about all that could be called a street. What is now River Street (Water Street 1958) ended about 100 rods north of the bridge near a house built by R. B. Bardwell in 1832 or 1833. One other road or lane led from the Green- field road in a curved direction to the 'old Abbey' thence east to the residence of Apollos Barnard, Esq. ending at the 'Cleveland' house. All the territory north and north-east from these lanes was almost a barren plain. There was at this time no minister, doctor or lawyer in the village. The whole number of dwellings on the Shelburne side did not exceed 12, including Martin and Col. Asa Severance and Dan Townsley, Jr. on the Col. Allis place, afterward the Academy farm."
The Cleveland house is the Benton house at 9 Main Street, which was built by Dr. Cleveland, the first physician at the Falls. "No doctor" in 1831, says S.L.B. Records place the erection of this domicile about 1835. This brick house, like that of Dr. Galbo, faced on a lane to the south.
A certain tavernkeeper, mentioned often in the town history, sought to further the cause of temperance by considerably diluting the liquor he served. He went to Dr. Cleveland for some disorder and was told, "he was probably strained by lugging water from the river." The doctor did not remain in town too long.
The home of the Clifton Walkers at 20 Main Street was built probably in the 1820's by Charles Pelton. He was a "boss carpenter" and constructed many of the houses rising in the village.
Mr. Robert Fellows Wood, author of "Shreds and Patches," for many years a column in the Springfield Republican, writes in 1944, "All those Pelton houses were of wood, excellently proportioned with recessed front doors and pilastered corners. The builders of the nineties who were called in to remodel some of these houses including my father's residence [now in 1958 belonging to Dr. John B. Temple at 11 Main Street ] did not have the elder Pelton's eye for sym- metry. Charles Pelton's son came over into our front yard and seized a hand-wrought board that had been ripped off, remarking, 'My father made that; I'll take it home and keep it! Tell your father that I said he is spoiling this house that his father left to
him.'" Incidentally, when this house (Dr. Temple's), was owned by Elisha Putnam in 1853, the preliminary meeting was held here, preparatory to forming a Universalist society. The church edifice, now the home of Mountain Lodge of Masons, was dedicated in 1870.
According to Jarvis Bardwell's recollections, the "old brick tavern" was built by Joseph Merrill in 1828. This stood a little behind the present Bank Block containing the Shippee and Joyce stores, and was across the "town brook" from the Abbey. It contained the first post office in 1831, when postage was from 61/4 to 24 cents a letter and the total annual revenue less than $20. This was the tavern where Ole Bull, the famous violinist, stepped from the stagecoach and astonished the dancers in the ball- room above by his playing. It was torn down in about 1869 to be replaced by the Bank Block in 1871.
The house mentioned as being built by Ralph B. Bardwell on Water Street is the Reed Nursing Home at No. 45. Here one can view some of the original wide-board floors, old doors and corner posts in the front rooms.
In the spring of 1833 when Franklin Academy opened its doors, the "whole number of dwellings at the Falls did not exceed twelve." This school was housed in the brick building at 71 Main Street, owned by Mr. Ernest Tudor, and even now known as The Franklin. When built, it was the wonder of the countryside, as it was the tallest building in the county. One guest at the tavern, who got up to see it before breakfast, reported that he became dizzy just from looking at it.
The first principal, Rev. John Alden, Jr., was also pastor of the Baptist Church, and the Baptists, who founded the Academy, used the top floor as a meeting- place until their first church was built in 1836. It was later owned by the Lamsons, then became the site of Shelburne Falls Academy. In 1909 it was bought by Juan C. Wood, who turned it into tene- ments.
The brick for these early buildings could have been furnished by any of several brickyards. One was on the Buckland Road near Roswell Miller's, one below Gardner Falls, and one on the West Oxbow in East Charlemont run by a Mr. Giles, who sold brick at $4.00 per thousand.
The boardinghouse for the Academy, occupied by the principal and others connected with the school, was known as the "Mansion House" and was on the east side of Maple Street, across from the head of Grove Street. Soon more room was needed and an addition sixty feet long and twenty-five feet wide was attached to the original farmhouse. This annex was later moved to Mechanic Street and made into apartments. It was long the residence of the late Henry Legate, but was razed in 1957 to make room for the new elementary school. The farmhouse re- maining on Maple Street and barn were burned, it
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was thought by incendiaries, when owned by S. T. Field, because of his positive stand on the temperance question in the latter part of the last century. The cellar hole of the barn can still be seen, beautified as a garden, in the back yard of the Robert Fritz home.
According to records and recollections, we can place the following houses in Shelburne Falls, as be- ing built in the 1830's. The present Mills house at 34-36 Water Street was built by a Mr. Morse be- tween 1832 and 1836.
"L.H.M." in a letter to the Gazette & Courier in 1907 recollects that. "in 1835 there was no house on the east side of Main Street between Dr. Cleve- land's and the academy till 1836-37 when Cyrus Alden erected his on the corner just south of the academy" (the present Wallace Temple residence, 71 Main Street). The barns belonging to this prop- erty were later turned into two dwellings, one being on Adams Court, the other facing Mechanic Street and occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Stanger.
Dr. Lawson Long came from downtown Shelburne in 1836 and built the brick house (the Baptist par- sonage) at the northeast corner of Main and Church Streets. Dr. Long was another Millerite convert and was seen on April 23. 1843, going to mill in his long, white robe, ready for the "second coming." He left town in 1845, having sold his property to Josiah Pratt, Jr., who manufactured axes. In his memory and that of his wife, the Pratt Memorial Library building was given in 1913 by their son, Francis Pratt, who was also the donor of the Pratt Prizes at Arms Academy. The house was bought by the Baptists in 1883 for use as a parsonage.
The Carley House
Shortly after 1835. Thaddeus Merrill moved to the Falls and built what now forms the west end of the Carley house. 45 Main Street. still owned by a member of his family. There have been several addi- tions on the east. Here Ira Arms came after the death of his wife and adopted daughter and boarded till his death in 1859.
Jarvis Bardwell in 1832 married Emily Merrill. daughter of the tavernkeeper, and, probably not long after, built the house at the northeast corner of Main
and Cross Streets, now owned by Everett Sommer. He was chided for building so far out of the village.
His brother, Apollos, the tanner, was at the Falls before 1818. At his house, the Baptists met to form their society in 1833. Oral tradition places his resi- dence then in the Gordon Shippee house at 33 Main Street. "L.H.M." however, says he lived then on the hill on what is now Bridge Street.
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