USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume I pt 2 > Part 14
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In 1777, probably during the absence of Israel Jones, Oliver Parker kept a sort of a hotel at the Jones homestead. Soldiers from the east and southeast passed through the town on their way to " take Burgoyne." in such numbers that landlord Parker had almost a captain's company to dinner every day for some time, and they consumed four or five fat oxen per week. Every nook and cranny of the house was often filled at night. the bar room and other floors were thickly piled with weary soldiers, and even the barns and sheds were appropriated to their use. Hardship and fatigue made sleep sweet on the roughest couch, and no pay was received from a large share of these customers. The old "Continental money " had de- preciated so as to be almost worthless ; at the close of the Revolution it required $20 to pay for a dinner and $1,000 or more to pay for a suit of clothes. The condition of the poor discharged soldiers, who were paid off in these miserable shin-plasters at their face value, was pitiable in- deed. They were so destitute that many of them illustrated the proverb "Hunger will break through stone walls." At the tavern kept by Oliver Parker many amusing incidents occurred. Mrs. Parker was taking bread from an enormous oven on one occasion and placing the loaves in a basket behind her; when she had finished and had looked around her with a
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housewife's satisfaction to observe her goodly pile of loaves, all were gone save one. The ravenous soldiers had snatched them piping hot and fled. An old lady named " Aunt Cook," begged the soldiers not to steal the onions from her garden, but her request was of no avail, for they rushed into her "patch " and stripped it of every onion and every other eatable thing.
Under these circumstances hotel keeping could not have been a lucra- tive business, but the Parkers were too staunch whigs to act penurionsly toward the defenders of American liberty. While Oliver Parker sus- tained the bodies of the soldiers with good fare, his brothers, Didimus and Ezra, and his nephew, Giles, marched to Bennington and shared in the glory of winning that memorable victory. Didimus Parker was a captain at Bennington.
Among the men of the old town of Adams who were implicated in Shays rebellion in 1786-7, and were pardoned on giving up their arms and taking an oath of allegiance to the commonwealth, were "Joshua Read, trader, and Truelove Brewster, trader." Joshua Read was a trader at. South Adams, and probably Truelove Brewster also. Read was born on a farm in Cheshire. These are the only traders mentioned in the town records prior to 1800, and although they are there mentioned as culprits there was undoubtedly a strong sympathy felt with the insurrection, and some of the " first men" were engaged in it.
Some time prior to 1795 two men, whose names are unknown, came to the village of North Adams and opened the first store for the sale of dry goods, near the Main street bridge. They did not keep a large stock, nor continue in business more than a month or two. The Williamstown traders kept a better variety and undersold then. At that time people walked from the village of North Adams to Williamstown to purchase groceries, though the roads were exceedingly rough, and it was necessary to ford the river more than once, the stalwart boys and girls of those days did not shrink from the trip. Indeed, they enjoyed it more than many of their descendants do their ride in carriages. Bounding health made severe exercise a pastime to our ancestors. The trade of Adams also went to Lanesborough, to some extent. Oliver Parker brought grain one season from Greenfield, on horseback, by an Indian path over the Hoosac Mountain ; and a part of it he carried to Williamstown to be ground at the "Krigger Mills," fording the river three times to get there, these mills having a great reputation at that time. William Farrand opened a store for the sale of groceries about 1790. He hauled his goods from market by ox-teams, and therefore kept but a limited supply. He sold a bushel of salt to Captain Shippee, of Clarksburg, for ten dollars. To say that a man was not " worth his salt " could not have been considered a very severe slur in those days. In 1795 Sutton & Wells opened and kept a store for the sale of goods in the Corliss House, situate in the rear of the present Richmond House.
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The name of "George Thresher, brickmaker," of Adams, is among those who were implicated in Shays rebellion. He was pardoned with the others, and allowed to resume business. It is impossible to tell with certainty whether he carried on this business in North or South Adams. At the March meeting in 1792 Jonathan Remington was chosen " sealer of brick moulds for the town of Adams," showing that bricks were then manufactured in sufficient quantities to require such an officer. Some person, probably Thresher, carried on brick making on the old Harrison farm, as traces of that industry were found there. The first cabinet shop was established about 1788, by a Mr. Veazie from Boston, and was located near the site of the school house in Braytonville.
In these early times the political duties of the town were promptly discharged. In the first year after the incorporation of the town Rev. Samuel Todd was elected representative to the General Court, and in 1780 Reuben Hinman was chosen. Enos Parker was elected at the Octo- ber meeting in 1780, the State Constitution having been adopted on the 16th of June in that year, and two representatives were required in each year. He was also elected in 1781 and 1782. In 1783 and 1784 there is no record that any representatives were chosen. The expenses of the representatives were light, and defrayed by the town, and it is probable that the town did not feel able to assume the expense in those years, as times were hard and money was exceedingly scarce. In 1785 Israel Jones was chosen, and again in 1786. with instructions given by a committee of seven on September 30th, and on December 18th it was voted that the town had no further business for him-a polite hint that he was not re- garded as a Shays man. In 1787 and 1788 Reuben Hinman was again chosen, in 1789 Jonathan Remington, in 1790 and 1791 Reuben Hinman, and from 1792 to 1798 Israel Jones.
In 1798 Abraham Howland received 114 votes to 94 for Israel Jones. In this year the democratic party gained that supremacy in the town which they maintained for over forty years. Mr. Howland was reelected five times.
The modes of traveling to Boston by representatives to the General Court were slow and primitive. The representatives were in the habit of meeting at a given place, on their way to attend the session, all mounted on good steeds, there being no stages and but few private vehicles in use. They would engage pasture during the session for their horses, a few miles this side of Boston, and walk into town. Provisions for the jour- ney were carried in the old-fashioned saddle-bags, and bread and cheese were eaten on the steps of the State House.
The great difficulties which attended the making of the first road in the village of North Adams have already been mentioned. Such enor- mous tree stumps, formidable boulders, rapid running streams, and up- and-down hill routes were enough to discourage almost anybody. Most of the early roads were built over the hills instead of around them, for
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the reason that the early settlement was on the upland, and the roads must run past the houses. The meadows on the Hoosac River were fre- quently overflowed, especially in South Adams, and it was considered unsafe to settle very near the stream. The highways were therefore built and maintained with heavy labor and expense, running as they did on unfavorable routes. Stump machines were not then invented ; though some of the ingenious mechanics, like Jeremiah Colgrove and Charles Peck, contrived means for " snaking" out ugly stumps with a moderate expenditure of musenlar strength, and at a saving of whiskey and hard words. At the very first regular town meeting, March 8th, 1779, it was voted to raise £100 to make and repair highways. Eight persons were chosen highway surveyors, and they acted in districts-the village from Furnace Hill to the summit of Hoosac Mountain forming one district. In 1780 the highway tax was £120, and the number of surveyors was in- creased to thirteen ; in 1786 the tax went up to £200. In 1795, the roads having been built to a convenient extent, the tax for repairing was only £160 and the number of surveyors was fifteen. Among them was Jere- miah Colgrove, whose name appears at this time on the town records. He was a most efficient, practical, and thorough road-maker, and pos- sessed the faculty of inspiring other men with his own industry. In 1779 forty-one cents a day was allowed for the labor of a man upon the roads. and the same for a span of horses or a yoke of oxen.
The town records contain many surveys of the early roads-some in almost every year. On the 1st of July, 1782, a town meeting was held for the special purpose of considering certain proposed alterations in the roads. In 1785 no less than twenty-one surveyors of highways were elected, showing that there was either an uncommon amount of road- making, or that some of those officials had got into the habit of " shirk- ing." 1786 the highway surveyors were snubbed, for the town " voted that the selectmen see to the Laying of the money voted on the roads to the best advantage." This method of working the roads has with few exceptions prevailed in North Adams and Adams ever since. The roads in Adams in 1794 were as follows : the main traveled road was the road which runs from Williamstown through the village of North Adams over Church Hill and then over the Hoosac Mountain ; the road to Stamford, which was opened as early as 1780 to reach the mills of Oliver Parker. and which followed the course of the " Clay bank road," and then the road as now in use. The road to the south part of the town was the West road which passed over Main street bridge, then along the present loca- tion of the Troy & Greenfield Railroad, joining the present road near the Whitman farm. The East road was the county road and passed down Church street and led over the mountain through Savoy to Northamp- ton. This was intersected by the road which now runs over the mountain to Savoy Center. In South Adams, besides the main road now known as the West road, there was only one other road which ran southeast along
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the brook which runs into the Hoosac and which was then known as the East River. There was also a town road leading to the Notch and a town road laid out high up the mountain running southerly from the Hoosac mountain road to the south line of the town. These were all the traveled roads existing prior to 1800. At that time the whole tract of land in the village of North Adams south of Main street, embracing what is now known as Summer, Quincy, and Chestnut streets, was a pasture, very much overgrown with brush.
The first map of the town was made May 22d, 1795, by Abraham Howland and Israel Jones, then selectmen, and Charles Parsons, who were appointed a committee for that purpose by the town according to an act of the Legislature. The plan was made from a survey made by Israel Jones in November, 1794.
CHAPTER XXIV.
ADAMS AND NORTH ADAMS (continued).
First Mills .- Financial Depression .- Condition of Town at the beginning of the present cen- tury .-- Colegrove's Oil Mill .- Fulling Mills and Carding Machines .- Jeremiah Colegrove. -Hotels and Stages .- Post Office .- Hat Shops .- War of 1812 .- First Town House .- Growth and Progress of the Town.
A LTHOUGH the land was poor, the great water power-the Hoosac River being then much deeper than now-and the probability of the early erection of mills here attracted the attention of settlers. Cap- tain Ephraim Williams, as has already been stated, in consideration of the grant of two hundred acres to him, was bound to " build a grist and saw mill within two years on the Hoosac River, and to keep the same in repair for twenty years." These mills were erected in North Adams. The dam was thrown across the river near the point where the machine shop of James Hunter & Son now stands, just above Main street bridge. The grist mill was upon the west side of the river, and the saw mill upon the east side. An old fashioned trestle bridge, uncovered, and with no railing except a huge log on each side, but supported by strong abut- ments, spanned the river just below the mills, exactly where the present bridge stands. The dam and mills were erected by a Mr. Hurd. un- doubtedly according to some arrangement made by Captain Williams with him. Although the time of its erection cannot be ascertained ac curately, it is reasonable to suppose that it was not many years after 1750 -- in order to conform to the terms of the grant, in that year. Mr. Hurd-perhaps the Jedediah Hurd, who was one of the committee of safety in 1779-sold the water power and mills, either directly to Elisha Jones or to some one who did sell to him, before or in the early part of the Revolution. Elisha Jones was brother of Captain Israel Jones, a staunch whig, and a member of the first board of selectmen in Adams : but Elisha and his father and several brothers were loyalists, and having left in the year of the battle of Bennington, 1777, probably to avoid the rough whig discipline, this mill privilege and five acres of land, princi- · pally on the east side, were confiscated to the commonwealth. This
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property afterward passed into the hands of Giles Barnes, who derived his title from a committee of the Legislature appointed to take care of the " spoils of the Tories."
In the year 1780 Mr. Barnes had a partner; for at a town meeting, held October 25th, in that year, it was voted that "the bridge near Day & Barnes' mills be repaired at the town's expense." Mr. Barnes appears to have been a business man of some ability, for he was chosen assessor at the March meeting in 1780, and selectman and town clerk in 1781. If he kept the record that year, he wrote a plain, neat hand. and his knowl- edge of grammar and orthography was very fair, considering that the recruiting sergeant was "abroad" in those days much more than the schoolmaster. In 1782 he seems to have become sole owner of the mills again, for a road survey was made " on the west side of the river at Mr. Barnes' mill." along the present site of the Troy & Greenfield Railroad.
The growth of the two villages was at first very slow. There was very little money in circulation. and none of the early settlers were men of means. Every man was compelled to put his own shoulders to the wheel, and to work with his hands. Oliver Parker, who settled in the village of North Adams and was a conspicuous whig and a town officer for many years, built two dams and a saw and grist mill at the "upper union " -- the saw mill standing where the Eclipse Mill now stands and the grist mill a little further up the stream. These mills were in opera- tion before 1780, and did considerable business. They were carried off in a terrible freshet, called " Parker's Flood" for many years after, on ac- count of the damage inflicted upon him. He lost about 50,000 feet of sawed lumber by this flood, and the grist mill stones were lodged in the bed of the river and remained there several years. This flood was one of those which deluged almost the entire village, as above described. Giles Barnes, whose mill property was in great peril from it, and who was a blunt-spoken man, said " Noah's flood was the only one that everequalled it." The only road to Parker's mills was the old " clay bank road " over Church Hill. Daniel Harrington built another saw and grist mill on the site of Parker's mills, probably before 1790. He ran these mills for ser. eral years, and was reputed a very straightforward man. Mr. Amos Bronson, familiarly known as " Elder Bronson," ran a saw mill on the north bank of the north branch of the Hoosac near the lower bridge on Union Street. The only road to it was from Eagle street up the north bank of the stream, past the Eagle Mill now owned by the Freeman Print. Works. Mr. Bronson lived on the corner of River and Eagle streets, in a house which was torn down in 1858 to make room for the store built for Homer, Richardson & Co. Elder Bronson was a remarkable man in many respects. He was a very ingenious mechanic. a millwright, and handy at anything. He was also a sort of a doctor, and a preacher of the Baptist denomination. He labored in the latter capacity for many years without salary. He was faithful in exhortation, and especially kind and sympa- thizing at funerals. Though plain and and rough cast in his speech. he
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was a man of sterling honesty and sincere piety. He moved west in 1815 and died there at a very advanced age.
In 1792 or 1793 David Estes came to the village of North Adams from Rhode Island. In 1795 he bought settling lot No. 25, embracing all the land north of Center almost to Liberty street, and extending eastward to the land now owned by the Freeman Print Works. This lot was formerly owned by John Murray and Elisha Jones, who were two of the three original grantees of the township. Murray fled in the Revolutionary struggle, as he was a tory, and his share of the lot was confiscated. Eli Persons bought it of the committee of the commonwealth ; he sold it to Burrall Sutton and Burrall Wells. They sold it for $150 to Jenks Rut- tenbur, and he sold it to David Estes. This lot was then almost a com- plete wilderness, and valuable chiefly for its mill privileges. The few garden spots did not thrive. David Estes was a man of great industry and economy, and had a keen eye for practical utility. He commenced making eut nails by manual labor in 1793 or 1794, having procured the tools in Rhode Island and brought the nail rods from Salisbury, Con- necticut, in a one-horse cart. The nails were cut of proper length by heavy shears, and headed cold in dies brought together by pressure of the foot on a spring. Most of the early buildings after Mr. Estes came were put up with his nails. They were tough and would clinch like wrought iron ones, unlike the cut nails of the present time. Many of these nails taken out of old buildings, would last another half a century ; and many yet remain in buildings. Shingle nails sold for seventeen cents a pound, or fifty cents per thousand, larger nails for twelve and one half to fifteen cents per pound. Saddle nails were also made by Mr. Estes, and sold in Brattleboro, Greenfield, and many other places. The nail business was continued until about the year 1810, when Mr. Estes became engaged in more extensive enterprises.
In February, 1794, Jeremiah Colegrove, with his brother-in-law, Elisha Brown, of North Providence, Rhode Island, bought Giles Barnes' property before mentioned as doubtless the first saw mill in North Adams. The estate included an old saw and grist mill, the mill privilege, and about eighty acres of land, five acres of which was west of the river, and a part of confiscated lot No. 26, and the remainder comprising the most thickly settled part of North Adams were on the east side. It also in- cluded a story and a half house standing on the east side of the river, and a large garden. The price paid Mr. Barnes was about $1,200. Most of the pine timber had been cut off. The mills being probably forty years old, were much dilapidated ; the grist mill was never run by Mr. Cole- grove, and the saw mill was only run to prepare lumber for building new mills. The following year he built a new dam, where the present dam of M. D. & A. W. Hodge stands, and a grist mill on the site of Hodge's grist * mill. The new saw mill was directly opposite, on the west side of the ricer. These mills stood until about the year 1820. They enjoyed a steady run of custom. Wheat was a staple crop on new land, one farmer
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in the Notch raising nearly seven hundred bushels in one year. Lumber for building purposes was also furnished extensively on contracts by Mr. Colegrove, who carried on the business alone after the first year, having bought out his brother-in-law, Mr. Brown.
In 1794 Joseph Darby built a blacksmith's shop, and set up a trip hammer. It was located on the " Notch" road, about two rods from the bridge over the stream that flows from the Notch. Mr. Darby made scythes, saws, axes, hoes, steelyards, &c. The iron was brought from Salisbury, Conn. Emigrant parties passed through Adams frequently for the " Great West," which was then Western New York, and Mr. Darby did many jobs of iron work for them, besides repairing their wagons and shoeing their horses. It was then a greater undertaking to remove to the shores of Lake Erie than it now is to go to the shores of the Pacific ; and adventurous men who went 300 or 400 miles into the wilderness to settle, where war parties of Indians still roamed, were regarded with the same admiration for bravery that Captain John Brown and the heroes of free- dom who emigrated to Kansas to save that lovely territory from the curse of slavery. The first blacksmith's shop was built by Jeremiah Cole- grove, near the foot of Main street, and Thomas Dickinson opened the first regular wagon-maker's shop in 1798, about twenty rods north of the Eagle bridge.
The town of Adams, like a great many other towns in the State, la- bored under a heavy burden of debt incurred by its aid to the Revolu- · tion and the suspension of industrial enterprises and loss of profit there from by drawing off so many of the best men for the army, and especially the lack of a uniform circulating medium in which payments could be made excited men into violent and lawless demonstrations. Shays' re- bellion was mainly kindled by the oppressive load of taxation, and the impossibility of easing off the load through the courts or Legislature. There was a constant money pressure, ten times worse than that of 1857, because there was neither money nor property in the town sufficient to pay the taxes and leave a bare support behind. The State tax imposed on the town of Adams was felt to be peculiarly onerous ; in one instance it was not paid under four years ; for at a town meeting held January 9th, 1792, Israel Jones was chosen an " Agent to go to General Court and obtain an abatement of Tax laid on the inhabitants of this town in 17SS." The "notes" were abated almost every year. It was easier squeezing blood out of a turnip than paying debts or taxes with neither money nor property. One poor family, who had contrived to " winter " through in this harsh climate, and kept their cow -- almost the only property they possessed-had the grief of seeing her swept away in the spring, for arrears of taxes.
Oliver Parker, sen., was ruined pecuniarily, sent to jail, and his bonds- men mulcted, because he could not collect the taxes. Town meetings without number were held in order to overcome this difficulty. farmer's produce was accepted for taxes at certain stipulated prices, in 1781 the
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town debts were paid in the same way, and all highway taxes were worked out by men and oxen for many years. But even with a general barter system it was " hard sledging." A great many honest, industrious, and frugal men were unable to feed their households and satisfy the tax- gatherer, from the product of their stony, stumpy, rudely tilled acres.
At a town meeting held August 26th, 1786, it was "voted that the Collectors collect the Town Taxes and pay them into the Town Treasury immediately, and the Town will support them in so doing."
The pressure of poverty was so severe that the town's poor were in- creasing with undue rapidity; and March 11th, 1791, Ezra Parker was in. structed by the selectmen "to warn and give notice unto twenty-eight persons," whose names were set down in the warrant, the same being " Laborers or transient persons, as the case may bee, who has Lately Come into this town for the purpose of Abiding therein, not having Ob- tained the towns Consent thereto, that he or she Depart the limits there- of, with their Children and others under their care, if such they have within fifteen days." The constable made return that the warning was given by him in due form, to the twenty-eight persons named, and such further legal proceedings were threatened as would be requisite to save the town from becoming a panper's nest. The offense of being poor and " shiftless" was more severely punished in those days than now. No man was allowed to vote unless he owned a freehold estate of the annual income of £3, or some estate of the value of £60.
The river and brooks were nobly stocked with trout at this time. The woods afforded considerable game, consisting of deer, squirrels, and par- tridges. Bears ranged the mountains, foxes were more numerous than poultry yards, and wolves were so troublesome that the town offered bounties for their heads. But the chance of getting a steady subsistence by hunting and fishing was not flattering. Very few attempted it except the " shiftless" class who were warned out of town as above mentioned. Among the earliest residents there was so much destitution, and yet such a neighborly spirit, that Giles Barnes, who seems to have been quite a wag in his way. said that a family would make a soup from a beeves' bones on one day, pass the bone to another family on the next day to make soup of a second time, and so it would go round until the entire settlement had participated. Deer reeves were appointed annually until the year 1800, and as late as 1808 $666 was raised to pay bounties for kill- ing wolves.
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