USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 1 > Part 9
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A no less marked contrast is to be seen in the manufactures of those times and the present. Then, almost every article or utensil that was used was either "homemade " or manufactured at the shops which sprang up to supply the wants of the early settlers. Then, as has been stated, the cloth in which every one was clad was of domestic manufar. ture. The spinning wheel and the loom were portions of the furniture of almost every house, and clothieries, or wool carding and cloth dressing establishments, were as common as grist mills. Almost every hamlet had its tailor's shop, where the knight of the shears out the clothing for the people of the vicinity, and to avoid the responsibility of misfits, war- ranted it " to fit if properly made up." This clothing was made up by " tailoresses, or, as the tailors sometimes called them, "she tailors." The trade of a tailoress was reckoned a very good one ; for she received for her skilled labor twenty-five cents per day ; while the price of housework help was seventy-five cents per week.
Shoemakers' shops were abundant also, though there were itin erant shoemakers who "whipped the cat," as going from house to house with their " kits" was termed. After the establishment of tan- neries the people were in the habit of having the hides of their slaugh. tered animals tanned on shares, and the leather thus obtained was worked up by these circulating disciples of St. Crispin.
The ubiquitous tailor shop has entirely disappeared, and only here and there is to be found a solitary cobbler's sign. Every village has its shoe stores, and the descendants of AAbraham vie with each other in sup- plying the Gentiles with clothing " ferry sheap."
Very early, it was a portion of the business of every Black smith to make the nails that were required where worden pins could not be used. You, an old-fashioned wrought mail is a curious relic of the past : and
C5
GENERAL HISTORY.
even the rivets, bolts, and horse shoe mails that were formerly minde on every anvil are now manufactured by machinery, and furnished cheaper than they can be hammered ont by the valeans of their apprentices
So of almost everything. Where joiners formerly took lumber " in the rough " and did all the work of building a house, now houses are . almost, like Byron's crities, " ready made" for little is required but to put together the parts that are made by machinery. The wheelharrows, carts and wagons, and even the cradles and coffins that were formerly made in the shops which sprang up when the country was first settled. are now made by machinery, and sold at rates for lower than those at which hand work can be afforded, and the old hand factories have gone to decay, or degenerated into simple repair shops.
The question has offen arisen whether the invention of labor saving machinery, which has led to this centralization and cheapening of main- factures, has been beneficial or otherwise to the country. It is chimed by many that these inventions are detrimental to the best interests of the people, because, though they cheapen manufactured articles to consugars. they throw out of employment and reduce to poverty large numbers of skilled artisans. To this it is answered that the utilization of moura! forces always adds to the wealth of a country ; and that those who are thus deprived of employment are, in the end. benefited, because they are driven into more profitable avenues of industry, raised above their former condition. and made partakers of the increased general prosperity.
CHAPTER V.
THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS.
BY J. E. A. SMITH.
Events in War of 1741-8 .- Siege and Capture of Fort Massachusetts .- Rebuilding of the Furt.
T "HE interval of thirty years' peace which followed Queen Amihe's war, cannot strictly be said to have been unbroken. What is ktoswen as Governor Dummer's war began in 1722, and continued until 1725 ; bit was carried on almost entirely in the district of Maine, over which Massa- chusetts had asserted her jurisdiction. It resulted in the conquest of the French Catholic tribes : France at that time not being ready to openly support them, although her emissaries had influenced their passions. The war brought no disaster upon Western Massachusetts, except in adoting slightly to the delay in its settlement. The alarm, however, was so Sieht as to lead to the building of Fort Dummer, on the Connectiont, in the present town of Vernon, Vt. The result of the war must have done much to lessen the French power and influence in those which she ceeded it.
The thirty years' peace continued thirteen years after the first feeble and disturbed plantation in Sheffield, during which Sheffieldl. Great Bar- rington, Egremont, Stockbridge, Alford. Tyringham, and New Mail. boro began to be peopled. These towns lay in a body in the southern section of the county, and may have had, in 1744, an aggregate popula- tion of five hundred. There is no means of fixing the exact number. During the two or three preceding years preparations had also been made, by clearing the ground and in other ways- short of bringing in families -for the settlement of other new plantations in Pittsfield. Becket, and perhaps other localities.
In the fall of 1743. however, word was received from Colonel Stod- dard, the vigilant military commander of the western border, of a new war between England and France, and consequently between then colonies and their respective Indian allies. The embryo settlements on the Honsa-
67
GENERAL HISTORY.
tonic were therefore abandoned. not to be resumed until 1752, while il. advance of the towns already settled was comparatively retarded.
The governor general of Canada had the same anticipation of war. and in October wrote to his superiors in Paris conduunicating his plan of operations when it should be declared. This declaration was not made until March 15th. 1744, and the news was not received by Governor Shin ley at Boston for almost two months, while Du Vivier, the French com. mander at Lonisburg. Nova Scotia. received notice of it nearly a month earlier, and, doubtless being forewarned of it, sailing at once with one thousand men, captured the English settlement and garrison at Canso. The utmost alarm immediately spread throughout New England, and was most intense along the northern frontier which was so sadly exposed to French and Indian depredations and slanghter.
As long before this as 1703, when Major De Rouville, with his band of civilized and uncivilized savages, perpetrated the enormnities at Duer field, over the story of which the reader even yet shudders, the suspicion that Indian atrocities had long been instigated by the French, herame a certainty, for now they shared in them. Their object was to drive the English colonists entirely from North America, and establish their own colonial empire in their place. To this end they pressed far beyond the bounds of civilized warfare, says Drake in his history of this war, " fitted out hundreds of parties of savages for the express purpose of proceeding to other portions of the English settlements, shooting down poor med while tilling their crops, seizing their wives and children. loading them with heavy packs plundered from their own homes ; then driving them before them into the wilderness. These when no longer able to stagger under their burdens were murdered, their sealps torn off and exhibited to their civilized masters; and for such trophies bounties were paid." The French government, of which the authorities and settlers in Canada were but the agents, paid bounties for the scalps of women and children. as the province of Massachusetts did for those of wolves ; and it not only fitted out other savage expeditions, but often sent its own soldiers to aid and abet them in their atrocities. This grave charge is not based upon tradition or upon excited statements made by the sufferers, but upon detailed reports of each case, regularly sent to the government in Paris by its agents in Canada, and which may not be read by whoever will. It applies equally to all the French and Indian wars, both before and after 1744. but the essential fact was as well known to the settlers in Western Massachuetts in that year as they are to the historical investi- gator at Paris to-day. When the news that another of these atrocious wars was about to commence reached the settlers in Berkshire the memory of the last, in which some of them had participated and suffered. was still fresh. They well understood what horrors they had to dread.
In 1744 Canada, with a white population of perhaps supone, head about twelve thousand men capable of bearing arms Of these the were thirty companies of regular soldiers, but numbering only abant
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
thirty men each ; that organization being better than a larger for the species of warfare in which they were engaged. Six hundred were Indians, allied with other tribes from which they could call "young haves" whenever their help was needful or welcome ; but for the incursions made into New England the French regular troops and the Canadian Indians were more than sufficient. It was only when an invading anny approached, that it was necessary to call for aid either from the settlers of Canada or the Indians beyond its border.
Among the Indians were a large number from New England who when driven from their old homes, had fled to the Canadian tribes and become incorporated with them. They bore with them their naturally intense hatred of their conquerors, with which they inspired then how associates, who hardly needed it, as they had been converted by the Jesuits, and had been taught by them the most litter detestation of the English heretics. What was of more importance, the New England In- dians carried with them a thorough acquaintance with the topography of the regions they had left: and if this did not extend to the Berkshire valley among the eastern Indians, there were enough Mohegans who had voluntarily migrated to Canada to supply the deficiency. There was not a spot in all the exposed sections of New England to which its enemies could not find perfect guides. The settlers in Berkshire had everything to fear from an enemy thus provided and trained, both French and In dians, to rapid and stealthy movements. The Canadian towns, villages. and farms, mostly scattered along the St. Lawrence between Quebec and Montreal, were so located, and the habits and conditions of their New England enemies were such that they had nothing whatever to fear excele from the regular approach of armies governed by the laws of war. They were free from the perpetual dread of midnight massacre with which the settlers on the Connecticut and the Housatonie made their evening prayers. They tilled their fields in safety, and needed to carry no nous- kets to them. The Canadian military force, savage and civilized, was also scattered in the same localities in such fashion that it could be rapidly concentrated at any given point from Quebec to Crown Point. There was perfect canoe and batteaux navigation from the ocean through the Gulf and River St. Lawrence, the River Richelieu or Sorel, and Lake Champlain to Crown Point. At the southern extremity of that great water highway, and from that point twenty-five miles further south, Crown Point was occupied and fortified by the French in 1731, and hos came the grand point of organization, preparation, and departure for the raiding parties, large or small, sent ont to ravage the northern borders of New England and New York. Trails led from it to the various settle. ments selected for destruction. All those leading to New England con verged in the Hoosac valley. Canoe navigation extended about twenty- five miles southeast from Crown Point, which brought the maranders very nearly to the Hudson River at no great distance from the junction of the Hoosac. Very small parties, carrying canoes overland, could and
GENERAL HISTORY.
did use them by paddling down the Hudson and up the Hoosac. Largey expeditions, where secreey and surprise were aimed at. left the most of their canoes at the end of canoe navigation, twenty five miles south- east of Crown Point, and taking a few with them for specific use. fol lowed through the woods a trail which crossed the Hudson a consid- erable distance above the month of the House, which it finally struck at a point some twenty or twenty five miles below North Adans. The war path then led through that part of the House valley which was east and west, and then passed over the House Mountain and along the Deerfield River to Deerfield and other places in the Connecticut valley. Thus the great war path of the merciless French and Indian foes passed within, at the most, thirty miles of Stockbridge and thirty five of Great Barrington, with no natural barriers intervening.
Between the years 1713 and 1744 both the French and English col- onies had grown in wealth and population, and approached nearer to each other, although still with a wide wilderness intervening. This in crease on the part of the English, as regarded danger from the war. was most notable in the Connecticut and Housatonic valley's.
Except in its magnitude, the war of 1744. as well as that which fol- lowed it in 1754, did not essentially differ from that which preceded it. The contest was still for religious as well as political and commercial supremacy in North America: French fleets and armies again threatening the sea coast, French partisan soldiery and the Indian proselytes of the Jesnits again keeping the northern frontier of New England and New York in perpetual dread of midnight surprise and massacre.
The region now covered by Berkshire and Franklin counties was especially exposed to the latter danger. although an enemy successful there would have been a source of danger to Eastern Massachusetts and Northwestern Connecticut. In the latter section, settlements were chop- ing up very close to those in Southern Berkshire, and for this regsit Connecticut aided liberally in building the forts and maintaining the gar risous in Berkshire during this, and still more in the succeeding war.
The alarm which arose upon the approach of the war of 1714 was general. Governor Shirley and the General Court fully appreciateri the situation, and did what they could to meet it. The General Court appro priated $100 each for forts at Sheffield. Great Barrington, and Stock bridge about the time of Colonel Stoddard's warning to the settlers at Becket and Pittsfield ( Poontoosack). One was perhaps built at Sheffield and another at Stockbridge. although we have no evidence of it, and there was none at Great Barrington as late as the fall of 1745. The probability is that neither was built.
Governor Shirley raised five hundred men for the defenseof the pre- ince, of which he sent to the northwestern border two hundred, who were placed under the command of Major William Williams. afterward the most prominent early settler of Pitsteht. Particulars as to Major WII liams' life as a civilian are given elsewhere. He had served as an ensign
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
in the unfortunate expeditions of General Oglethorpe against St. Angus tine, and Admiral Vernon against Carthagena. In 1743 he had. for a liberal consideration, agreed with the proprietors of the township of Poontoosue to engage in its settlement. Being a nephews of Colonel Stort. dard, and a brother-in-law of Colonel Oliver Partridge. he obtained mili- tary position readily, and afterward, showing himself worthy of it. received rapid promotion. The forts, of which frequent mention is made in the history of these wars, and in the archives of Massachusetts, were of two classes. The first were intended chiefly as places of temporary refuge for settlers in their locality in sudden alarms. They were gen- erally built by plantations or by individuals, who expected, and in most instances received, some sort of recognition and support from the General Court, even when they acted without specific authorization, Where they were considered to aid in the general defense some remuneration was made to the builders, and where they merely enabled the settlers to hold their advanced posts of civilization until the return of peace the province con- tributed to the support of the garrisons. These garrisons nominally con- sisted of a limited and small number of men. but, by a liberal construction of the appropriation, it was divided among as many as could agree to share it and eke out their subsistence by work in common in the neighboring fields or forests. The enlisted men were subject to military law, but it was not more strictly enforced than the safety of the forts required, and they were rarely if ever ordered into field service without their consent. except as scouts in the approaches to their own posts.
The second class were built and garrisoned by the province to pro teet itself against incursions and invasions. They were of colle as a rule more elaborate and larger than the local places of refuge. These ordered by the General Court of 1743 in Southern Berkshire would. it they had been built. ranked as province forts, but the small sum appro printed for the construction of each-less than half that estimated the next year as the cost of small Fort Shirley in Heath would have ren- dered them of no value except as places of temporary refuge. Fort Massachusetts in the northern Hoosae valley was the only province fort in Berkshire during the war, but that was the most noted and important of any in the province, except one or two on the seaboard : as its story will show.
We have intimations and traditions of local forts in southern Berk shire, but no distinct mention of any except Elisha Noble's, at Sheffield. in 1745, when there must have been at least one other there and Coonrad Burghardt's, at Great Barrington, in 1995; and of these there is only incidental mention without any description.
Under the general designation of forts a variety of strongholds were included. Some were merely dwellings stockaded with more or less en- gineering skill and expenditure of material and later. Others were solid Mock houses constructed of roughly squared logs laid else jegother and perforated with loop holes for maskerry. If properly constructed the
GENERAL HISTORY.
upper story overhang the lower and was pierced with loop holes so that assailants attempting to force the doors or set the below might be prop- erly dealt with. If moderately well garrismed, as it would be sure to be by the men who fled to it with their families, and supplied with arms. ammunition, water, and provisions, such a stronghold was impregnable against an enemy without artillery and incapable of maintaining even a short siege, as the Indians and the class of French soldiers associated with them notoriously were. The province forts and some of the local ones were of more elaborate and costly construction. The stockendes were more formidable, and arranged upon the principles of military sci- ence. They often enclosed barracks which were in efect bjork hauses. There were what were called mounts, one at least, and generally more. These were towers with bullet proof walls, if possible, for the purpose of taking observations of the besiegers' movements, and for the nep of sharp shooters.
These fortifications we shall find more numerous in Berkshire in the war of 1754, but they were similar in character, and, for the sake of gis ing a clearer idea of all, we present here a diagram, found in the Massa- chusetts archives, of Fort Anson, built at Pittsfield in the fall of 1754. by Colonel William Williams, being a fortification of his own residence, which was accepted by the province.
FORT ANSON.
M
K
E
M
1
2
===== 0
1
1
5
A
H
0
0- 0=
L
-
J-0
Oc
H
N
G
L
D
GROUND PLAN.
A-The hours, 40 by 24 feet. nine feet posts, with a gambiel roof, the roof filled with four inch white ash plank.
B-The storehouse. 35 by 10 feet: the outside. M. M. H feet high; the inside, at X : fert; double covered with boards up and down, salt box fashion, dropping inwards.
C-The well.
D-A flanker, to defend the dead wall. F.
E. G-Dead walls, scoured from the upper works.
H. H-Large sills, let into the ground, to support the pillars, I. K.
I. I-Large pillars, let into the sills, just dicht miles from the house, in every part that reach as high as the caves, and support plates that go all around the house, and are looked at the corners.
K. K-large pillan-, 16 inches square, i feel higher than the topof the plate, supported to alla pillars. Each girted to his fellow, and Fresh airted to the plate.
L. L-The yard. floored all over.
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
-
×
SOUTH PROSPECT.
X. X-Ends of house.
F
A
E
P
C
D
C
C
PROFILE FROM THE CENTER. EAST AND WEST.
A. A-Pillars filled with square timber, let in with a groove from the gift. I to the top; better 7 feet all round ye house.
B. B-A platform. S feet wide, round the house.
C, C-Pillars that support the plates that support one side of the platform; the other side- being supported by the gifts that pass from ve pillars. A. A. sideways.
D-The lower part of the house.
F -- The space of the Gambo.
H-The storeroom.
E-The chamber. or soldiers lodging room.
G-The yard.
K. K-Doors, out of which the soldiers may run and cover any of every part of the house.
In regard to strength these forts were all that could be expected of wooden structures: and wood was all that was necessary except from danger of fire. A reasonable number of fairly well armed men could do- fend them against a host : but there was, after all. a miserable deficiency of arms and ammunition : and. in some striking cases, of men. Their lack of guns and ammunition, articles so essential to the frontiersmen, is among the strongest proofs of the poverty of the Western Massachusetts settlers in money and that which it requires money to buy. however rich in better things. It also marks another strong contrast between the con- dition of the English settlers in New England and the French colonists in Canada. The French government on the banks of the Seine being in full accord with its people on the banks of the St. Lawrence, permitted no lack among them of the munitions needful in their predatory warfare England gave no such aid to her colonists. Ten years later, at the com mencement of the next war in 1953, the population of New England and New York was proximately estimated : Massachusetts 207.000. Commer tient 133,000, New Hampshire 50.000, New York 85,000.
The population in 1743 was of course something less than this but at both dates all had a common interest as regarded these wars, and if they had not chosen to waste their revenues in boundary contests with each other they would have been able to furnish the settlements on this northern frontier with the means of selt protection, And with such and as was occasionally needed in them : leaving the mother country to meet the
6
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GENERAL HISTORY.
fleets and armies sent out by France for conquest, and to furnish the net essary contingent of troops to cooperate with those of the provinces in the conquest of Canada.
The conquest of Canada was early recognized by the leading minds of Western Massachusetts as the only safeguard from the incursions made from it. So long as it remained under French domination they knew well that it would be a menace in peace and a source of ernel danger in ways Both the home and provincial governments shared in this feeling, and all parties in their several positions, and governed by the different conditions which respectively surrounded them, united. or attempted to white. from time to time between 1744 and 1750, in attempts to make the conquest The plans for all these expeditions involved the passage of large bodies of troops through Berkshire. Regiment after regiment halted at Great Barrington and Poontoosuck, the site of Pittsfield, for rest and i. freshment, and relies of their visits are still sometimes found. Many. who then made a more intimate acquaintance with Berkshire soil than was agreeable, afterward returned to cultivate it as settling farmers, as is proved by the rolls still preserved in the archives of the commonwealth But yet, until Canada was practically subjected to British rule by the capture of Quebec in the fall of 1759 the French and Indian war- kom hit terror, danger, and distress, and not population of wealth to Berkshire! although the settlers suffered little from actual destruction of life and property, or from other outrages, compared with what befell cheil brethren in the Connecticut and upper Hudson valleys, or with what their apparently exposed position led them to fear. But we must return to the beginning. in 1744, of what is known as the Third Interodonial War In the spring Captain Williams had raised a company for the expedition against Louisburg, but was not permitted to go.
In the winter of Li44, some months before war was actually declared. the General Court ordered the erection of the line of forts from Coleraine to the Dutch settlements on the House, subsequently known as Fert Shirley in Heath, Pelham in Rowe, and Massachusetts in North Adams On the 6th of March Colonel John Stoddard. Oliver Partridge, and Thomas Ingersoll, a majority of the committee appointed to the change of this work, ordered and empowered Captain William Williams to em ploy as many men under his command as he deemed necessary in fur nishing the fort where Captain Rice had agreed to build it. unless Rice took effectual care to do it to his satisfaction. It appears to have salli- ciently advanced to receive a name ; but the locality seems to be vagy nearly the same as that indicated in an order to Captain Williams, July 20th, in which he is peremptorily directed to eret a fort, for which sper ifications as to size and other particulars are very minutely given. The location pointed out in the order is " about five and a half miles from Hugh Morrison's house in Coleraine, in or near the line the last week under the direction of Colour Tim why Dwight, by an order." The explanation may be that Fort Shirley being unfinished when the line was
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