USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 1 > Part 14
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Francis Bernard. the governor in 1761, was born at Brightwell. in the English county of Berkshire, in 1717. He was a man of taste and letters, as well as a politician, and was created a baronet in 1760. The name of Berkshire in Massachusetts is doubtless merely a memorial of his love for his beautiful native shire, to which. in many respects, its namesake now bears a much closer resemblance than could have been anticipated in 1761. It is only a wonder that the governor did not bestow the pretty name of Brightwell upon New Framingham instead of courting the favor of the Earl of Lanesborough, who, although a privy councillor, was more noted for his jealousy of his beautiful wife, celebrated in court gallantry as " Lovely Lanesborough." than for much official influence. Possibly it was the favor of the countess and not the earl which the courtly Sir Francis conrted. The lady had much influence at court
There can be no doubt as to the origin of the names of the towns in- corporated in the same year with the erection of the county. There was an evident propriety in giving the name of Pitt to the first town incorpn. rated on the frontier which he had made safe. He was moreover still prime minister, and at no time was so obnoxious to the government as to make such a compliment displeasing to them ; but the contrary. It was equally natural to give to the other town incorporated at the same session of the General Court the name of William Wildman. Viscount Barring- ton, who had been the English secretary of war from 1756 to 1761, aml might reasonably claim a large share in the credit which attached to the conquest of Canada. He was made chancellor of the exchequer in 1761. and by supple compliance retained the royal favor. The prefix " firent" is extremely common in England when two towns happen otherwise to have the same name, and the enstom was probably followed here to dis. tinguish the Berkshire toup from Banington in Bristol county, which was afterward found to belong to Rhode Island. The English town of
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Barrington is in Cambridgeshire, and may have a parish with the prefix " Great." Viscount Barrington was born the same year with Governor Bernard, and, among other estates, had one from which he took his name of Wildman, in Becket, Berkshire, near the governor's birthpace ; which his excellency may have remembered when christening Becket, in onr Berkshire, in 1765.
The formation of the new county was in this wise. In the spring of 1761. in accordance with votes passed the preceding year, the several towns and plantations sent Colonel William Williams to Boston as their agent to present to the General Court and advocate their petitions for a division of the county of Hampshire For the west ling of the town of Blandford." On the 13th of April Colonel Williams had leave to bring in a bill agreeable to their wishes. It passed to be enacted and was ape proved by the governor April 24th. The general boundariesof the county have already been described in the account of its topography.
A great majority of the population came from the Connectiont valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut, but there were not a few from Eastern Massachusetts and even from Rhode Island. As a whole they were a hardy, vigorous people, both men and women inmed to frontier life. and many of the former familiar with the dangers and hardships of war. The masses, educated after the New England fashion of the day. wore shiew 1, intelligent, thoughtful, and perhaps opinionated upon political and rolig- ions subjects. Among the higher class there were some who had acquired honorable position elsewhere: many representatives of prominent fami lies in older counties, especially Hampshire and Suffolk, and an unusual proportion of college graduates. Much deference was paid to social as well as official position, but far from obsequious servility. On the con trary, in the expression and defense of political opinions, as well as och- ers, sturdy independence prevailed, and, together with a spirit of equal- ity, increased as the Revolution approached.
Such was Berkshire and such were its people during the years in which the invasion of American rights by the English king and Parlia ment, and the denunciation of that invasion by able tongues and pens built up by the feeling which made it the first to utterly refuse abali. ence to the royal courts and the Parliamentary laws. As the earlier measures invading colonial rights began to develop the policy of the Brit- ish government all parties united in condemning them, and none in their hearts more bitterly cursed their folly and wickedness than those who afterward showed the most devoted loyalty to the king whose perverse will inspired them. All parties too, with very few exceptions, were at first willing to make trial of humble petition and remonstrance addressed to the Throne, as a means of obtaining redress ; some having full faith that these would prove sufficient ; others in the hope that, should they fail, the exhibition of their futility would convince the whole people, as it did the great majority, of the necessity of resorting to stemmer things- ures of opposition. Gradually, as remonstrance brought not redres,
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but new ontrages upon chartered rights, men divided themselves into parties growing more and more distinct in their dividing lines and with even increasing violence of passion.
Powerful influences inclined the more wealthy citizens, those who held or aspired to official position and those allied to leading loyal fami- lies elsewhere, not to oppose any overt acts of opposition to the laws enacted by Parliament, even when they acknowledged them to be uncon- stitutional. Wealth naturally dreads any disturbance of established authority. Under the new laws all offices, except those of a strictly beat character, would be at the disposal of the royal governod. as the most im portant ones had long been. Judge and Colonel Israel Willianes, of Har- field, the head of the Williams family in Massachusetts, was the most zealous adherent of the king west of Boston, and the highest in favor at Province House. Most of his kindred and their wide connections by marriage adopted his political views. Many of them were in office, and most of them held high social position. Similar connections with offer uncompromising loyalists at the east affected other citizens of high stand. ing in Berkshire. Unswerving loyalty to the king had been instilled into the minds of men and women of this class from their childhood; and. hardly less earnestly, reverence for their representative of royalty in the Province House, and this feeling had been sedulously cultivated by the latter. Conscientious scruples, doubtless often sincere, were pleaded by many who held, or had held, offices which required them to take and subscribe an oath, which would now be called "iron clad " by reason of the following clause in it:
" And I do swear that I will bear faith and true allegiance to His Majesty King George, and will him defend to the utmost of thy power agains: all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against has Person, Crown and Dignity. And I will do my utmost endeavor to disclose and mike known to his Majesty and successors all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which I Mall know to be against him or any of them. * * And all these things I do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear according to the express word, by me spinken. and according to the plain common sense and understanding of the same word). without any equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reservation whatsoever."
This oath was the same throughout the British empire, and the last sentence in the clause quoted was framed to meet the Jesnified practice of the English and Scotch Jacobins, who nullitied their sacred assevera- tion by mental reservations and unexpressed qualifications But Ammi- can loyalists who had subscribed this attestation of unlimited allegiance alleged that it applied very strictly to their own case. American whigs maintained at first that treason to the king lay with those who supported and encouraged him in unconstitutional acts, and that time alleging required resistance to them. In Berkshire, even when the courts of the king were suppressed, we shall find the " County Congress " affirming the right of King George to reign, and their allegiance to him, while they utterly refused obedience to the unconstitutional gets of Parliament which
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were inspired by him and received his sanction. Later in the contest. when they found the king deaf to their remonstrances and gonding on his Parliament to new acts of aggression, they considered that, by vio- lating his coronation oath, he had relieved his subjects in America from the obligations of those they had taken, relying upon his royal faith, But the application of the oath as interpreted by the tories proved more than in some exigencies they were willing to admit: for if it required him who had taken it to refrain from rebellion against the king, it no less strenuously and definitely demanded that he should. "to the utmost of his ability," oppose any such rebellion by others, and communicate any information he might gain regarding it to the king sofficers. This, co fa! as sending information to the royal governors and commander want, was precisely what the radical whigs charged the local tories with doine. and what they emphatically, indignantly, and often falsely denied.
Ever after the granting of King William's charter in place of that ravished from the colony by his infamous predecessor there had been growing up in Massachusetts a provincial aristourney which gradually supplanted, for the most part, what it did not absorb of a similar chiss. but made of sterner stuff, which dominated society in colonial ting. The old regime held its own. after a fashion, here and there in the east ern portion of the province, but it had few representatives in nealy sof tled Berkshire, and these chiefly among the clergy. The new anistopy looked to the Province House as its head and center, although it was rarely that any except the most distinguished of its country mentbers were guests of that little vice-regal palace. All the tory leaders of Berk shire belonged to it. and a large proportion of the humbler loyalists were their relatives, or otherwise under their immediate inthe nee. In spite of all the acknowledged wrongdoing of his government they religions !! loved "the King and all the Royal Family." were still submissive. and- so far as they dared to be-helpful to all in authority under him in Amer ica. Some of them were gratefully proud to have been permitted pop- sonally to share a little in that authority. It did not matter much loods little. All could not expect the more honorable and Incrative offices : hur there was dignity as well as gain in that of justice of the peace : the country magistrate dearly loved the gracious sovereign in whose mums he issued writs against poor wretches who were guilty of not being able. to pay their debts, or of other petty ill doing.
We do not mean to intimate that all the Berk shire gentlemen who adhered to the king, or the most of them, did so from ignoble of con- seriously selfish motives, any more than we should dare affirm that all who warmly supported the patriotic cause were impelled thereto by the postest patriotism, unalloyed by any thought of self. A variety of influeners. the baser necessarily intermingling with the more noble, determined the course of the majority of those who acted with deliberation and did not abandon themselves to the popular clamor of the hom. But there were some on each side who, governed by fixed principles, took a self sacri
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ficing stand for that which they believed to be required by conscience and best for the country's good, although it might be detrimental to their own fortunes, and would certainly separate them from. if it did not ren der them odious to, friends whom they valued highly. The puldie ser- vices and upright conduct. after the war, of some of the Berkshire tory leaders gives assurance that, however misled, they were always patriotic at heart ; but swayed unconsciously by the circumstances and conditions mentioned-and very consciously by the violent measures of the white. which they considered as tending to anarchy -- they, until the war war far advanced, pursued a course which could only miserably prolong it and postpone a beneficent and almost inevitable end-an end the alternativ. of which could be only the triumph of tyranny, with all the horrors which tyrants visit upon those who unsuccessfully resist them. Theirs were not the bold, far-seeing eyes which, piercing the dun, ling over. hanging cloud of war, could discern the glorious future beyond. What they saw in their visions of the future was the gibbet and confiscation of property for traitors to King George. All who professed themselves loyal to the king were not of the provincial aristocracy or its followers. There were a few sturdy and substantial citizens who often monthed their tory ism pretty loudly, and were sometimes roundly disciplined for it. Gen- erally, however, the committees and others who had charge of the "hand ling of the tories." as the phrase was, took a lenient view of their offense as a pardonable freak of independent feeling rather than any really deep seated hostility to the " liberties of America." One of them in Pittsfield, who went so far as to burden his three sons with the names of General Burgoyne, Admiral Rodney, and another British commander. was even elected to local office in the very height of the conflict. Never- theless. some of the tory yeomanry were very active as the conductors on the " underground railroad " of that day, by which British prisoners of war escaped, British spies eluded detection, and messengers, whom the military laws regarded as spies, passed from one British commander to another. In those modes of giving aid and comfort to the enemy, they often executed skillfully commissions given them by leaders less dating than themselves. Even when the whole country was on the alert, while Burgoyne lay at Saratoga, they succeeded in escorting two at least of his messengers to Lord Howe on the lower Hudson ; one of them passing through Pittsfield.
All of the provincial aristocratie class in Berkshire did not rank themselves with the supporters of king and Parliament at the beginning of the Revolutionary troubles, or at any other time. Some were among the most active and influential whigs : including several who were can- nected with the Williams and Stoddard families. A majority of the bet- ter educated and wealthier citizens who did not belong to this class wep ardent whigs from the first, and the proportion increased rapidly as diey were convinced, by argument and the logic of events, that Great Britain had determined on the complete subversion of American liberties. With
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the exception of Roy. Mr. Collins, of Lineshan, and the restors of the Episcopal parishes in Great Barrington and Lanesboro, who were decided loyalists, all the clergy of the county preached the gospel of liberty clearly and vigorously, although not always in the pulpit. The greater part of the lawyers and physicians took the same side, and some of them very prominently : and the same was nue of liberty educated people not in the professions, of whom there were several. With the mass of the people whig sentiment, early predominant soon bepano. almost universal. and before hostilities actually commence! acquired & fervor which well nigh. in some cases, reached the point of fanaticist. although instances of this kind were common month amsale to ofessional men. It must not be supposed that, in any class, this growth of particle conviction and sentiment was spontaneous It was the result of patients investigation accompanied by serious and frequently by pengerful thought. Every fact, every principle. all precedents of history at all pertinent to the discussion, and some that were not were brought into it in the pamphleteers, newspaper writers, orators, and preachers njom each side. and were gravely and anxiously scanned bath by those who finally decided for the king and Parliament and those who followed the fortunes of the colonies. And, after all. although there was a line which sharply divided parties on the great issues of the day, and although upon these issues men ordinarily acted with their respective organizations, yet individual sentiment ranged through all shades of opinion and feeling, from the log alty of the most obdurate tory to the fervor of the radical whig who, from the beginning. foresaw and longed for the end in which he finally and triumphantly rejoiced. On the part of both whats and toties these hands of opinion were chiefly manifested in action regarding the means which they considered were wise and justifiable in striving for the ends which they antagonistically desired, and in addition, on the part of the white, in regard to the proper mode of dealing with opponents who were finde. niably dangerous to the liberties of North America, and whom get the more moderate whigs found it difficult to classify either as traitors of alien enemies. Long after Lexington fight many tories and conservative whigs could not realize that the condition of public affairs had changed from that of merely an angry political difference to that of a pronounced and desperate international war. To say the truth the Continental Con- gress itself was slow to avow it. And even when it was avowed and acknowledged by all there were many who found it very hard to adjust their ideas to it, partienlarly in regard to their relations with old friends and neighbors.
This general review of the state of parties covers, to some extent, the period bath before and during the Revolution. During the Revolution. ary period the records of Berkshire town meetings were kept in a peca- liar manner that deprives us of much information which we now eagerly desire. "The minutes were taken on house of slightly attached sheets of paper, and at intervals the town voted what should be recorded. what
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placed on file, and what destroyed. This was a matter of prudence in dangerous times, and occasionally of personal convenience when sudden and violent changes took place in the attitude of locally influential pub- lie men. The early writers of Berkshire history, also, were careful to avoid reference to acts, not only in this period, but in the Shay's Rebel. lion and in the political discords connected with the war of 1812, which any citizen would find unpalatable. In still further addition to this, the records of several towns have been accidentally burned or otherwise lost. either wholly or in part.
For these reasons, while the general Revolutionary history of the county and its several towns can be told with great fullness and accu racy, specific incidents and acts illustrating it must be gleaned from those whose town meeting records and other archives chance to be pire served.
The people of Pittsfield, in a memorial to the General Court. May 20th, 1776, state correctly and concisely the conduct of all Berkshire up to that time. They say "that they with their brethren in the other towns in this county were early and vigorons in opposing the destructive measures of the British administration against these colonies ; that they early signed the non importation league and covenant, raised minute. men and agreed to pay them, ordered their public moneys to be paid to Henry Gardner [the receiver general appointed by the Provincial Con- gress, and not to Harrison Gray, the treasurer appointed by the gov. ernor] ; cast in their mite for the relief of Boston, and conformed in all things to the doings of the Honorable Continental and Provincial Con- gresses."
With regard to most of the carlier encroachments upon AAmerican rights, Berkshire men. on account of their inland position, could act only by resolutions and remonstrances; and these give no uncertain sound. The stamp act came home to them, and their opposition to it was so general and determined that Colonel William Williams, the judge of Probate, found it expedient to be sick and not attempt to hold a court in which he must either obey the law and require the use of stamps or dis- regard it and dispense with them. On the 14th of June. 1766, he wrote to the register, Elijah Dwight, of Great Barrington. " My state of ill health has prevented my attention to almost any sort of business ; but the stamp act being repealed, and being some better. I desire you to dis perse the following advertisement as soon as may be among the several towns." The advertisement announced Probate Courts in Stockbridge. at the house of Mr. Benjamin Willard. innholder, in April. June, An gust, and October ; and in Pittsfield, at the house of Deacon James Easton, innholder. in December and February. Both the judge and reg- ister were at that time attached to the Province House loyal party.
For some years after the date of this letter, however, the people of Berkshire maintained a prudent and conservative conse. although firm in their determination to resist taxation without their own consent through
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their representatives. Pittsfield was, perhaps, finally the most radical in its revolutionary action of all the Berkshire towns, but as late as Jan- uary 19th, 1774, its people. "alarmed at the extraordinary conduct of number of disguised persons at Boston on the evening of the preceding 16th of December." to wit, the famous Boston tea party, held a special town meeting, in which they adopted a series of instructions to their representatives in the General Court. prepared by a committee consisting of William Williams. Woodbridge Little, David Bush. Eli Root. and John Brown. Little was a very decided and ardent loyalist. Williams and Bush were on the same side, but very moderate ; Root and Brown were exceedingly earnest whigs. Still, in the instructions to Captain Charles Goodrich, the representative and a moderate whig. they finani- mously express the town's condemnation of the destruction of the temas " unnecessary and highly unwarrantable, every way tending to the sul. version of all good order and of the constitution ; as we determine that the king himself hath two superiors ; his heavenly king and his own laws." "At the same time," say they, " we are as much averse as any of the patriots in America to being subjected to a tax without our own free and voluntary consent, and shall, we trust, always abide by that principle. And, was there not an alternative between the destruction of the tea and the people's being saddled with the payment of the duty thereon we should not have the like reason to complain ; but as far as wp live in the country, judge otherwise."
After reciting that the owners of the tea having sustained great dam- age, and that they would doubtless seek compensation for it, and that the inhabitants of the province had before been made to pay large sums for like unjustifiable acts on the part of individuals not duly authorized thereto-that is, the Boston rioters who had destroyed the property of obnoxious officials-they proceed :
" We do therefore enjoin it upon you that by all prudent ways and means, you manifest the abhorrence and detestation which your constituents have of the extra- ordinary and illegal transaction, and also of all the other public transactions which have been leading to, or in any degree countenancing, the sime; and especially that you do not directly or indirectly consent to any proposals which may be made or any measure which may be taken, to render your constituents chargeable to any payment or satisfaction which may be required to be made to the owners of said tea, as we have determined never to pay or advance one farthing thereto; and if your assistance is called for, that you exert yourself to the utmost of your power to bring the persons connected with the destruction of said tea, and other such the offenders to condign punishment; and it is the expectation of this town that you strictly adhere to these their instructions as you value their regard or resentment "
The committee, no doubt fairly representing public opinion as a whole in the county as well as the town, were unanimous in signing these instructions, and apparently harmonions in framing them. although there are indications in qualifiying phrases that they were the result of a com. promise. Yet it was but a very few months before the course of events
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rent the members as widely asunder as it was possible for men living in the same community to be ; each party looking upon the otheras traitors; on the one hand to the king. on the other to the country. Nor was it long before patriots even " living so far in the country " as the Berk shire Hills, learned to regard the making of a tea kettle of Boston Harbor, like their brethren on the coast, as a necessary and splendid achievement of bold, true spirits. Even when the instructions quoted above wele adopted there was an advanced section of the Berkshire whigs del by Rov. Thomas Allen, the Pittsfield pastor, vigorously aided by Elder Valentino Rathbun, who had, two years before, established a Baptist church in Pittsfield), which was as radical as at that time it well could be, and which soon gave tone to the whole revolutionary sentiment and policy of the county, and held control of it until the adoption of the State con stitution, in 1781, and which was very powerful long after that, although there was always a respectable conservative minority of the whigs, con sisting of such men as Theodore Sedgwick. of Stockbridge. Capt. Charles Goodrich, of Pittsfield. Gen. Fellows, of Sheffield, and the like, hotel although they had the sympathies of the majority of the General Court. they had little influence in county politics, and some of them. Captain Goodrich at least, was at one time treated almost as severely as the tories.
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