USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 1 > Part 16
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" To the Honorable His Majesty's Justices of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas for the County of Berkshire: The petition of the town of Pittsfield, assembled in Town Meeting, on Monday, the fifteenth day of August, 17745
"Humbly sheweth,
" That whereas two late acts of the British Parliament for superseding the char- ter of this Province, and vacating some of the principles and invaluable privileges and franchises therein contained, have passed the royal assent, and have been pub- lished in the Boston paper, that our obedience be yielded to them.
"We view it of the greatest importance to the well-being of this Province, that the people of it utterly refuse the least submission to the said acts, and on no consid- eration to yield obedience to them; or directly or indirectly to countenance the tok. ing place of those acts among us, but resist them to the last extremity.
" In order in the safest manner to avoid this threatening calamity, it is, in our opinion, highly necessary that no business be transacted in the law, but that the courts of justice immediately cease, and that the people of this Province fall into a state of nature until our grievances are fully redressed by a final repeal of these injurious, oppressive, and unconstitutional acts. We have the pleasure to find that this is the sentiment of the greater part of the people of this Province; and we are persuaded that no man that wholly understands the state of our public affairs, who has business at the approaching term, but will advise and consent to the sime, and wil- lingly undergo personal inconvenience for the public good. We do therefore reman. strate against the holding any courts in this county until those acts shall be repealed; and we hope that your honors will not be of a different opinion from the good people of this county. Our reasons for holding no courts in the present situation of affairs, are as follows :-
"Some reasons why our Inferior Court cannot be held in its ancient form and agreeable to charter now the new acts are published :-
"Ist. If they are now held in the ancient form, this will be in direct violation of those laws, and in defiance of them.
" 2d. Whatever business shall be transacted in the ancient form, now those laws are in force, will be illegal, and liable afterwards to be wholly set aside.
" 3d. The honorable judges will expose themselves, by not subinitting to the new acts, by transacting business in the old form, or agreeable to our charter, to an im- mediate loss of their commissions.
"4th. It will be much greater contempt of those laws to transact business in the ancient form, or agreeable to our charter, than to do none at all.
"5th. This course of proceedure will tend to bring matters to a more unhappy crisis, which we would choose by all means to avoid, than to neglect to do any business.
" 6th. The new acts will insensibly steal in upon us under pretext of doing busi- ness after the ancient Constitution; therefore, as soon as the new acts are in whole or in part in force, as they now are, no court ought to be held in the ancient form
"Our reasons why our Inferior Courts ought not to be held at the approaching term are as follows :--
"Ist. We have undoubted intelligence from York and Boston that the sald acts have passed the royal assent.
" 2d. We are also informed of their arrival in Boston.
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" 3d. It is highly probable they are published in form by the governor by this present time in order that our obedience be rendered to them.
"4th. We ought to bear the most early testimony against those acts, and set a good example for the other part of the Province to copy after.
" 5th. Some parts of those acts have taken place already, that part of which dissolves the council by whose advice the former commissions were gifted out; and that part of which empowers the governor to grant new commissions without advice of the council; and also that which respects town-meetings. For these and other reasons, it plainly appears to be of dangerous consequences to do any business in the law till the repeal of those acts, as would most certainly imply some degree of sub. mission to them, the least appearance of which ought not to be admitted
" The honor of the Court has good grounds to neglect to do business in the law, and the people just occasion to petition for it, and insist upon it without admitting a refusal."
In this matter the town of Pittsfield represented the whole county, although other towns, whose records are lost. may have taken similar action. Some of them at least. like Hancock, paid the expenses of their citizens who went to Great Barrington to help present the petition to the Honorable Court with proper force if not in proper form.
According to the report in the Boston Gazelle and Nersletter of Sep- tember first, "At the time appointed for the court to sit about fifteen hundred were assembled, unarmed. at Great Barrington and filled the court house and the avenues to the seats of justice [the justices ?] so that no passage could be found for the judges." "The sheriff com manded the people to make way for . the Court, but they gave him to understand that they knew no court, or any other establishment than the ancient laws and customs of the country ; and to no other would they give way on any terms."
They were assured that the new acts had not been received and that the court would transact business under the old laws; but everybody knew that the commissions of the judges were already revocable at the pleasure of the governor, and that, if the new acts were not aheady in the possession of the high sheriff, they might reach Great Barrington at any moment, and be promulgated as soon as the court was well benched. It was, from first to last, the policy and principle of the most influential Berkshire revolutionary patriots to take time by the forelock, and see to it that neither despotism nor what they considered usurped or nuconsti- tutional power should obtain a foothold from which it might afterward be difficult, if not impossible, to dislodge it. The assemblage at Great Barrington therefore insisted that the judges should at once leave the town. They complied lest worse might befall them.
The court consisted of only three members, the fourth, Hon. Timothy Woodbridge, having died in the previous May. Only one of the three was strongly antagonistic at this time to the popular sentiment in general, however they all may have regretted this particular practical expression of it. The judge specially in favor of submission to the authority of the
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British Parliament was Perry Marsh, of Dalton, a son-in-law of Israel Williams, of Hatfield, the leading loyalist of Western Massachusetts, and . himself of the same party, then called the " ministerial:" the action of Parliament being considered as inspired by the ministers of the crown. Judge Ashley was the only one of the judges educated in the law We have already described his patriotic position as chairman of the County Congress. William Williams, of Pittsfield, the chief justice, had, up to this time, been considered a member of the "ministerial" party, and was much relied upon by the royal governors who had conferred upon him commissions, all of which he held at this time, as judge of the Common Pleas, and also of the Probate Court, and colonel of militia. He also re ceived half pay on the retired list of the British army in regard to his early military service. He was, moreover, closely allied by blood and marriage to the intensely loyal Stoddard and Williams families in both Berkshire and Hampshire. He loved his offices and needed the pay at tached to them, and was bound to his family connections by ties of pati- tude and affection. The influences which tended to confirm him in his attachment to the party of submission were certainly very strong, and Sabine gives a sketch of him among his .. American Loyalists." This attachment did not, however, prove so great that he was not able readily to adapt himself to the change in popular sentiment, perhaps the more readily because in the French and Indian wars his relations with some of the British commanders had been the reverse of pleasant or gratifying to his pride, either as a man or a soldier. He loved local popularity, and was perhaps quick to see, after the contest had actually commenced. what the end must be. At any rate he soothed the feeling of his whig fellow townsmen when it had become excited by the battle of Bennington. by assuring them that if he was younger he would have been glad to take the field. As it was he thought it better for him to receive his half pay in gold and spend it among them rather than to forfeit it byany overt set against the British government. This plea appens to have been accepted He was at once put upon committees which implied sympathy with the people, but not active opposition to the goverment. Before 1777 he had become, however, both active and ardent in that opposition, and as good a whig as the best.
Such was the composition of the court which, without regard to any of its members, but simply in the interest of constitutional law, the peo ple of Berkshire thought it their duty to "obstruct " in the August of 1774. It is not strange that a tribunal constituted and situated as thiswas should make no very strenuous defense or assertion, moral or other, of its judicial authority. The clerk of the court. Elijah Williams, of Great Barrington, would doubtless have compelled resistance if it had been practicable, and the high sheriff, Elijah Williams, of West Stockbridge. would have maintained it to the best of his power, but in the face of the. popular force arrayed against them the attempt would have been matiness
As a rule the assembled multitude conducted itself in an orderly
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manner, and did no more than was necessary to secure its declared ah- ject ; but about three hundred of them came from the adjoining county of Litchfield, in Connecticut. These, on their return, took with them, as prisoner, David Ingersol, Esq., a particularly obnoxious tory, and a magistrate of the "General Sessions," which included all the justices of the peace in the county. Probably Esquire Ingersol was subjected to rough treatment and put in bodily fear; for the chief of his captors were arraigned by a Connecticut deputy sheriff before the . Honored. Eliphalet Dyer, Esq .. who, with great solemnity and severity, repri manded the delinquents." and bound them over to answer for their do linquencies. Before the court met affairs had assumed such a position that they were in no danger. Ingersol was 32 years old. a son of one of the first settlers, a graduate of Yale College in the class of 1761, a lawyer. a man of wealth, and prominent in the Episcopal church and the ministerial party. He was a tory of the most pronounced type, andt in the fall of 1774, recognizing that England was his proper place, went there, and died in 1796.
A letter from Great Barrington, dated August 20th, and probably written by Ingersol. expresses the opinion that the measures of the " Hon. Eliphalet Dyer, Esq., had happily restored order and due deference to the laws in those parts of the two provinces." Never was there a greater mistake. Never again did any court sit in Berkshire under the com mission of a royal governor, nor, with a slight exception in favor of the Probate Court, under any authority until the adoption of the State Con. stitution in 1981. And not only was this so, but the other counties of the province followed the example in rapid succession. Most of them. and probably each of them, would have been glad to be first in the patri otic work had the opportunity fallen to it. Shortly after the spirited action of the Berkshire people at Great Barrington. Governor Gage Wrote to his chief in the British cabinet. the Earl of Dartmouth. " A flame sprang up at the extremity of the province. * * * The popular rage is very high in Berkshire and makes its way rapidly to the rest."
This letter was written on the 27th of August, when his excellency had only " heard by common report that the inferior court had been stopped in Berkshire county and the judge maltreated, and only feared that there was some foundation for the report." No other courts hai l. at that date, been obstructed. His expressions must therefore refer to the influence chiefly of the County Congress. On the 20 of September. however, he was compelled to write: " Civil Government is nenr its end : the courts of justice expiring one after another. * The judges of the Superior Court have been with me, in a body, to represent the im- possibility of carrying on the business of the court in any part of the province."
The governor quite correctly attributed the proceedings in the in- terior counties to the advice of the Revolutionary leaders in Boston, or. it may be strictly said, in the province. He stated what wis perfectly
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trae, that the Boston committee desired to have all the counties hold County Congresses. He had a special horror of these congresses, and ordered that called at Salem to disperse or he would send the sheriff to disperse them. They dispersed with " great decency." but he had no doubt the deputies did their business just as effectually as though they had met in the place originally designated The Berkshire Congress. strong in the strength of the hills, would have laughed at slick att order. and the Berkshire sheriff, strong and brave loyalist as he was, would have been afraid that any posse which could have been called out to disperse them would do something very different. So in regard to the proceed- ings at Great Barrington. the people of Pittsfield in a memorial to the General Court of 1777 represented that "from the purest and most di -- interested principles and ardent love for their country withont selfish con- siderations and in conformity with the advice of the reisest men in the colony they cordially aided in suspending the executive coutts in the county." There is abundant evidence that in all the acts which we have related the patriots of Berkshire in 1774 acted in entire harmony with those at the eastern part of the province, and played a bold and most im- portant part in carrying out a well conceived and well defined policy. There is every reason to believe that they had also their proportionate share in forming that policy. In patriotic action preliminary to and pre- paratory to the Revolution. Berkshire surely stood among the foremost counties. The proceedings of the County Congress and the suppression of the courts worked grandly when throughout Berkshire the spirit of resistance to the aggressions of tyranny was roused and united in action, as it could not have been in any other way so speedily and efectually. The great object of committing the western portion of the province de. votedly, enthusiastically, and irrevocably to the cause of liberty was ac- complished in spite of obstacles which would have interposed a danger. ous delay before any less vehement advance. It was a moment when de- termined, unwavering measures were imperatively demanded, when the slightest indication of weakness would have been fatal. None such were seen in Berkshire. Something of conflict there was for a time between the rich and previously influential loyalists and the sons of liberty who composed the mass of the people, but the contest was too unequal to be long continned openly.
The crisis advanced with startling speed. Governor Gage having rr voked his call for a meeting of the General Court at Salem on the 5th of October, ninety of the members chosen resolved themselves inton Po- vincial Congress " to be joined by such other persons as luol been, or should be appointed for that purpose," at Concord on the next Theonly There was, of course, no time for any Berkshire towns to act in the inter- val ; but the emergency had been anticipated by the Boston committer. who had called a Provincial Congress at the same place and at the same time. The members from Berkshire were as follows: Shethen. Goes Barrington, Egremont, and Alford, John Fellows, Esq. and Dr. WHNam
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Whiting ; Stockbridge and West Stockbridge, Mr. Thomas Williams ; Tyringham, Captain Giles Jackson ; Pittsfield. John Brown : Lenox, John Patterson ; Becket, John Wadsworth. Four of this number, Most Fellows, Patterson, Williams, and Brown, attained distinction as officers in the Revolutionary army. Although few of the towns in the county were represented, it was a remarkably strong delegation in all its niem- bers. Major Fellows served on the committee to make a minute inquiry into the state and operations of the Massachusetts army, and on that of one member from each county to prepare a statement of the population. commerce and manufactures of every town, for the use of the Massachu- setts delegates in the Continental Congress. These were the most important committees of the session, and required extraordinary qualifications in all their members. The selection of Major Fellows shows the estimation in which he was held, and the manner in which he performed his duties proves that this estimation was just. Mr. Williams was one of the mem- bers chosen to present the address of the congress to Governor Gage who must have been rather astonished to see so prominent a member of the famously loyal Williams family in that position. He was also on the committee to prepare the agreement for the non consumption of British goods.
In the second Provincial Congress, which met February Ist. 1775. Berkshire was represented as follows: Sheffield and Great Barrington. John Fellows; Egremont and Alford, Dr. William Whiting of Great Barrington): Stockbridge, Samuel Brown ; New Marlborough. Dr. Eph raim Guitean : Richmond. Captain Elijah Brown : Lenox, John Patter- son ; Pittsfield and Partridgefield (Peru). John Brown: Sandisfield, David Deming ; Williamstown, Samuel Kellogg ; Gageborough Windsor's Cap- tain William Clark. The other towns were umrepresented. Messis. Whiting. Patterson, and John Brown wer : active and valuable members of this Congress, as will appear in other connections. In the thin Pro vincial Congress, which met at Watertown. May 31st, 1775, Berk shire was represented as follows: Sheffield, Great Barrington, Egremont, and Alford, Dr. William Whiting; Tyringham. Major Giles Jackson ; Stock- bridge, Timothy Edwards and Jahleel Woodbridge; Lenox, Captain Caleb Hyde ; Williamstown, Samuel Kellogg : Richmond, Captain Elijah Brown ; Sandisfield, Deacon Samuel Smith : Tyringham, Elijah Warren and John Chadwick, Esq.
John Brown was chosen for Pittsfield, but was transferred to a more important duty. Captain Charles Goodrich, who, before the meeting of the Congress, was chosen to fill the vacancy, for some reason did not take his seat. Jaleel Woodbridge (whose name is incorrectly printed in the record as Jerathmich was a man of much distinction afterward, and then of high local position. He was one of those whose connections would have naturally led him to the support of the royal government. He was a worthy associate for Timothy Edwards.
It will be observed that the three Provincial Congresses wore lo bl
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while many considerate men were deliberately deciding where they should range themselves, and that the action of these convocations in a great degree determined the status of the people of the province. It must also be remembered that the British government at this time considered every Provincial Congressman as guilty of high treason, and deserving the horrible punishments provided by English law for such offenders against its majesty.
The last of these congresses commenced its session only about six weeks after the battle of Lexington, and continued only until the nig. teenth of July, but it completed the work which the two previous ones had begun, of, by its " advice " to the towns, thoroughly organizing the province for resistance to the invasion of its liberties, and of projecting it for what proved to be revolution. In some of the most important of the measures to this end Berkshire delegates had a distinguished part.
A petition presented to the Congress February Ist, 1775, and signed by Seth Pomeroy and nineteen other delegates from the cities of Hampshire and Berkshire, represented that the hthabitants of those counties were very generally determined to perform all the duties required of them, including the purchase of full town stocks of ammunition, the organizing and equipping, accoutreing and disciplining the militia men in general, and the minute men in particular ; that as the military officers recently chosen there by the people reported that in the county of Berk- shire, and in most of the towns of Hampshire, able-bodied, effective, and well disposed men, generally equipped and furnished with good firearms had already freely offered themselves to complete their full proportion of minute men, as recommended by Congress. Nevertheless, they say good sufficient firearms are not to be found in those counties to equip all the men able and willing to bear arms in defense of their country; that many of them are utterly unable to furnish themselves with arms, and. living in unincorporated districts, cannot be furnished by towns in the manner prescribed by the Congress. They further say that " the enemy of these colonies "-to wit the tories-" continually throw out that administration have conceived a bloody plan of mustering great numbers of French Canadians and remote tribes of savages," to bring them against the province, and these counties will be first attacked. They think. there fore, that every well disposed man there ought to be furnished with a good firelock, and pray the Congress to so order it. The petition was referred to the committee on the state of the province with permission to make it public, but nothing further appears to have been done in the matter.
The threat of bringing down the Canadian savages mpon the county of Berkshire was no doubt often made in the heart of the moment's pas sion by local tories, some of whom, at least, when the attempt to execute it came, in Burgoyne's campaign, were ready to resist it to the best of their power. In the meantime, however. their hasty words on this matter. and the information against their neighbors given to Governor Gage were
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the chief of the exasperating causes which inflamed the popular mind against them, and led to a more severe handling than perhaps was neces. sary merely to secure the ascendency of the friends of liberty in the province.
This "handling," which was the technical terin for the measures taken to substitute loyalty to the province for loyalty to the king. in recusant minds, was certainly often severe, and sometimes unjust. Men who had been of the highest standing, and some of whom were hou ged after the war, were ostracised, subjected to obloquy and insults of all kinds, to fines and imprisonment. Some fled to the protection of the British lines, but mostly returned, and submitted themselves to avoid the confiscation of their property, like Woodbridge Little and Israel Steal dard, of Pittsfield, who were nevertheless afterward imprisoned at North- ampton. The more prudent, like Justice Ingersoll of Great Barrington. sold their property before they left, and submitted to the perpetual ban ishment imposed by the General Court.
Under the direction of the Continental and Provincial Congresses, the towns of Berkshire chose committees of correspondence and inspection to preserve union among the towns of the province, and "observe" the conduct of their own inhabitants as regarded the great affairs of the day. These committees became very formidable, and were, to a large extent. the ruling power of the county till 1781. On the 12th of April. 1775, the Provincial Congress appointed a supervising committee of five members for each county, who were required to meet once in every two months to receive the reports which the town committees were asked to send to them. Events followed each other so rapidly that two months made a wide interval, and we have no record of the action of the supervising committee for Berkshire, which consisted of Sammel Brown, of Stock bridge; Mark Hopkins, of Great Barrington: Capt. Charles Goodrich, of Pittsfield; Capt. Caleb Hyde, of Lenox, and Major Jonathan Smith, of Lanesboro. These gentlemen, although as firmly grounded as any others in the principles of the Revolution, were all among the more moderate and conservative class of whigs in regard to measures and the disciplining of recusants. Major Smith, who may be regarded as the representative of the whole, although others held more distinguished positions. had the honor to be eulogized by Daniel Webster, in the Massachusetts Constitu. tional Convention of 1820, as one of the men whom he had known who were most characterized by sound sense, correct principles, and good judgment as to public affairs. In his later life he was a favorite arbitra tor between conflicting parties in the neighboring towns, and between citizens in his own. In the respects mentioned he was a fair representa tive of his associates on the committee.
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