USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, with biographical sketches of its prominent men, Volume II pt 2 > Part 27
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The improvements which he is constantly making on his farm give evidence of the fact that he is both a practical and an amateur farmer. and his many liberal public benefactions evince the interest which he feels in social and esthetic culture among the people of his town.
He is noted for his hospitality and his fondness for the society of intelligent and cultured people His inflexible integrity is one of his dis- tingnishing characteristics.
Of his high professional character it is hardly necessary to speak. The positions in which he has been placed, to which allusion has already been made, certainly indicate the esteem in which he was held by those competent to judge of his ability. Besides occupying these positions he has been president of the Berkshire District Medical Society, president
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
of the Alumni Association of Berkshire Medical College, and he is a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society.
He has been many times called by his fellow citizens of Sheffield to occupy positions of trust in the town, and in 1876 he was made presi- dent of the Housatonic Agricultural Society. This was at a time of tem- porary depression in the financial affairs of the society, and by hisljudi- cions management full prosperity was restored.
His wife, to whom he was married in 1862, was Julia Atkins, 'of Fair- bury, Ill. She is a direct descendant of John Alden, who came to America in the Mayflower. She is a woman of superior intellectual en- dowment, and is highly educated.
CHAPTER XXIX.
TOWN OF STOCKBRIDGE.
BY E. W. B. CANNING.
Scenery and Natural Features .- The Aborigines .- Western Massachusetts Prior to 1720 .-- The Two First Grants in the Housatonic Valley .- Plans for Establishing a Mission .- Selec- tion of a Missionary .- A New Township Proposed .- Progress of the Mission .- Family and Boarding Schools Projected .- The Mission Under Edwards and West .- Summary of the Mission and its Results .- The Municipality .- Highways .- Allotting Individual Grants .- Mr. Edwards' Ministry .- Rev. Dr. West's Ministry .- Successors of Dr. West. -- Other Religious Societies.
" Scenes must be beautiful, which. daily viewed, Please daily, and whose novelty survives Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years- Praise justly due to those that I describe." -Couper's Task.
A N eminent son of Stockbridge of a past generation, though for many years of his later life a resident elsewhere, escorted his bride, who was an entire stranger to Berkshire, on her first visit to his native town. He planned that his arrival should occur at sunset of a bright day in the time of apple blossoming, and over the hill that rises north of the village. Its wondrous panoramic beauty and its homes nestled among the elms and maples of its quiet streets, first seen in the acme of loveliness both of season and hour, left an indelible impression upon her memory, and. thirty years afterward, engoldened the last words of life which went out . in delirium. Had she confused the unforgotten beauty of that primal look over the valley with the glories of the better land on whose shadowy borders she was lingering ?
It might well have been so ; for the unusual attractions of the scene are apparent, not only to its citizens, but to the chance visitor and to the quiet-seeking sojourner escaping the whirl of metropolitan life. G. P. R. James, the novelist. a world-wide traveler, who purchased a site for the home of his age in Stockbridge, in giving the reason for his selection here, remarked that he had known many localities where individual features constituting landscape pageantry were vastly more imposing ; but that
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nowhere had he seen the most desirable of them all grouped in a combi- nation so charming and complete.
Stockbridge is a valley town lying between the two divisional ranges of the Green Mountains-the Taconic and Hoosac, as they trend from the north toward Long Island Sound. The height of the village street above tide water at Boston is $20 feet ; while Monument Mountain rises 500 feet higher and about 1,300 above the sea. Its population, which, for nearly half a century prior to 1820, was between 1,300 and 1,500, stood in 1880 at 2,257. Its three villages are Curtisville at the north, Glendale at the west, and " The Plain" at the southeast. All these have post offices. The Housatonic River. entering from the east, flows in a tortnous-course west and north ; then turning at a somewhat abrupt angle just above Glendale, leaves the town in a southerly direction at its southwest corner. As it descends about 900 feet from Pittsfield to Canaan Falls, large use of its power has been made for more than a century for manufactur- ing purposes ; otherwise contributing more to the beauty of the scenery than to municipal convenience. The surface of the township is diversi- fied by three noted lakes-the largest, Mahkeenac, at the north, covering about 500 acres. Its neighbor, Lake Averic, half a mile southwest of it, spreads some 50 to 60 acres of surface, and lastly, Mohawk, a mile north- west of Glendale. comprises about 22 acres. Another sheet, about the size of the last named, called Smith's Pond, lies on the northeast border, which, together with Lakes Mahkeenac and Averic, has been stocked by the fish commissioners of the State. The outlets of all of them are into the Housatonic, and are utilized more or less for turning machinery.
The land along the river is alluvial meadow, and most of the town is underlaid by limestone. The village lies upon a terrace about twenty feet above the river on a level plain a mile in dength. In its rear rises an ele- vated plateau of 180 feet in altitude, and stretches off toward Lenox with a rolling surface of lawn, field, and forest. From this erest the local geography of the valley and its surroundings may be studied under the combined charms of grandeur and beauty. The wooded foot hills of the Taconic range slope more or less abruptly toward the lake and rivers, broken by the deep gorge through which the highway runs to West Stockbridge. The curve of the Housatonic may be traced along the meadows, glinting through its fringe of willows and gracefully bending toward Glendale. Rattlesnake Peak-the Deowcook of the Indians-rears its craggy front on the northeast : Wnauticook answers its defiance on the west ; while Monument, famed in legend and in song, with its ragged curtain of rock shuts in the southwest prospect, save the blue dome of Mount Washing- ton far beyond. Southeastwardly the hills rise rather sharply to another plateau called Beartown, and in the interval between them and Monument are discernible the dimmer heights which overlook northern Connecti- cut. A spur of the Beartown Hills projects into the valley to the verge of the river and within half a mile of the village. This has been thrice cleft by some geologic convulsion, the lowest fissure constituting Ice
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TOWN OF STOCKBRIDGE.
Glen, weird and wild. and one of the " lions" of the varied scenery. The second rise is a notable peak called " Laura's Rest," on which its owner. Ilon. D. D. Fieldi, has erected an observatory.
The valley thus described, with its prolongation through the towns of Great Barrington and Sheffield, was, when first known to the whites, the home of one of the most interesting tribes of Indians of which we have any knowledge, and their history is so interwoven with that of Stockbridge that some preliminary account of them is indispensable to the accuracy and completeness of any annalist of the Housatonic valley.
They appear to have belonged to the Algonquin branch of the Amer- ican Indians, but their origin is lost in the mists of the past. One of them, Henry Aupaumut, who was educated at the Stockbridge Mission, and who afterward became a sachem, collected the tribal traditions of his people in a monograph which President Dwight mentions as having seen complete. When it fell under the inspection of the present writer it lacked its first and last leaves. Aupanmm supports the theory of the Asiatic origin of the American race, asserting it to be a tenet of his tribe that their ancestors " crossed the great water at the place where this and the other country are nearly connected" (Behring's Straits? ) ; that. after their arrival in the Northwest, pursuit of sustenance compelled a wide dispersion over the land, with a constant trend eastward, until they reached the Hudson River, where, finding land fertile and game abun- dant, they made its vicinity the home of which the whites found them in possession. According to the peculiar ethnological tenets of our aborig- ines, the Delawares were the godfathers. the Shawanese and Oneidas the younger brothers, and the Mohawks, Onondagas, Cayngas, and Senecas the uncles of the Muk-he-kan-ew, or Stockbridge Indians, and they are respectively so addressed in all the oratory around their mutual conneil fires. The name Mukhekanew is said to signify " The people of the ever flowing waters."
The ancient connection-but not identity-of the Stockbridges and Mohawks is substantiated by a #treaty made under the superintendence of Sir William Johnson (his majesty's superintendent of Indian affairs in America), at Fort Stanwix (now Rome, N. Y.) on the 30th of Septem- ber. 1768. By this compact all title to the lands lying east of the Had- son, Wood Creek, and Lake Champlain as far north as Otter Creek, ex- cept such as had already been sold by the Mohawks, was released to the Stockbridges. One clause of the document seems to identify the Schagh- ticokes with the Stockbridge Indians, but the signers are respectively de- nominated Mohawks and Stockbridges-three of each contracting party --- those of the latter being "Jacob." "John," and " Solomon." The aboriginal surnames are undoubtedly Nannaumphtanne, Konkapot, and Unhannaunwaunut. or " King Solomon "-three sachems of the tribe.
*For the knowledge of this treaty, which has seenungly hitherto escaped public notice. I am indebted to Frank L. Page. Esg. of Elizabethtown, N. J., who has furnished me with a copy.
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
The settlers of Bennington, Vt., priorily had acknowledged this proprie- torship ; for a delegation of them visited Stockbridge in 1767 to secure just title to their prospective farms.
Until the second decade of the last century, the western portion of Massachusetts remained an unbroken wilderness, with scarcely a white settler between the Connecticut River and the Dutch manors on the up- per Hudson. Hampshire county nominally covered all the forested soli- inde to the somewhat misty boundary of New York. The Housatonic Indians were scattered in uncertain numbers mainly within the present territory of Stockbridge. Great Barrington, and Sheffield. These towns were yet undreamed of, and over their unmapped wastes still roamed the untanght savage in all the wildness of unrestrained freedom. In what is now Stockbridge, a single Dutchman, named Van Valkenburg, ob- tained a livelihood by bartering whiskey and trinkets with the Indians for the products of the chase ; while a very few others of the same nationality claimed possessions along the intervale below. Many of the difficulties in locating and allotting the subsequent grants of townships arose from the extinction of the titles, real or pretended, of these Teutonic " squat- ters."
In 1722, Joseph Parsons and 170 other residents of Hampshire county petitioned the General Court of Massachusetts for two townships upon the Housatonic River. The petition was granted that year and a com- mittee appointed to effect the purchase from the natives, divide the tract. and open the way for settlement. The result of this action was the lay- ing out of the "Upper and Lower Housatonic Grants "-the embryos of several future towns. The townships were to be each seven miles square: but the territory actually laid out under the legislative act was greatly in excess of the grant, embracing what are now Sheffield, Great Barrington. Mt. Washington, Egremont. the most of Alford, with much of Stock- bridge, West Stockbridge, and Lee. To ratify this bargain Konkapot and twenty others of his tribe met the commissioners at Westfield. April 24th. 1724. The consideration paid was " $460 in money, 3 barrels of cyder and 30 quarts of rum."
The Indians of the valley at this period, comprising abont twenty families, lived mostly in Sheffield, Great Barrington, and Stockbridge. In the above mentioned sale they reservel for themselves a certain district on the boundary line of the two grants, where they might pursue the little agriculture their simple wants required, depending mainly for their support upon the forest and stream for remaining supplies. But the at- tention of sundry Christian philanthropists in the Connecticut River valley was just now enlisted in their favor with results of important bear- ing on their future welfare.
Rev. Samuel Hopkins, of West Springfield -- the real founder of the Honsatonic Mission-becoming greatly interested in these neglected natives, called on Col. John Stoddard. of Northampton, one of the In dian commissioners of the province, in March. 1734. and conferred with
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TOWN OF STOCKBRIDGE.
him concerning a plan for their instruction and betterment. Rev. Stephen Williams, of Longmeadow. was taken into their counsels, and through these gentlemen application was made to the board of commissioners for Indian affairs at Boston. The latter body held funds contributed in Great Britain to the " Society for the Promotion of the Gospel in Foreign Parts," which they desired to render available for the enterprise pro- posed.
By these officials Messrs. Hopkins and Williams were requested to visit and confer with the Indians on the subject. At a preliminary con- sultation with Konkapot through an interpreter, that sachen expressed his personal willingness to receive instruction, but deferred to the opin ions of his people as they should be expressed around a proposed council- fire. The occasion took place at the " Great Wigwam" in the present village of Great Barrington, July 8th, 1734. Hither the reverend emis- saries had arrived, after a te lions two days' toil through " the great and howling wilderness," and one night's lodging in the forest. For four days the pros and cons of the projected mission were discussed between its designers and the sages of the tribe. At length. all queries and ob- stacles being satisfactorily answerel and removed, it was resolved that permission be given and preparations made to accomplish the plan.
The two head men of the tribe at this council were remarkable indi- viduals, and would be so regarded in any assembly of civilized men. . Konkapot and Umpachenee had received from Provincial Governor Belcher, the former a captain's and the latter a lieutenant's commission in the British service, in testimony of their past good will toward the En- glish and with a view to the security of their future friendship in the ever recurring wrangles of that nation with the French over their American possessions. Konkapot was endorsed by the commissioners as " a strictly temperate. a very just and upright man in his dealings ; a man of pri- dence and industrious in business." He manifested more personal anxi- ety for the improvement of his people than his associate, whose objections were prompted by certain Dutch traders, who for-saw an impaired market for their whiskey in a missionary settlement. But the final resolve in favor of the experiment was unanimous.
The preliminaries having resulted thus auspicionsly, the next step was the procurement of a suitable man to inaugurate the work. Rev. Messrs. Williams and Bull, of Westfield, were empowered by the com- missioners to provide for this, and he was shortly found in Mr. John Ser- geant, of Newark, N. J., a graduate of Yale, and then officiating there as tutor. He avowed his willingness to devote his life and labors to the red men, and made his first visit to the locality in October, 1734. He ad- dressed the Indians through an interpreter and made a favorable impres- sion. With willing hands they brought material and soon had a rude building completed to serve the two fold purpose of a school and a church. To facilitate operations the Indians from the lower (Sheffield) and from the upper (Stockbridge) lodges were gathered into the vicinity of the new
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
center (Great Barrington), and Sergeant opened his school with twenty- five pupils, preaching on Sundays, and remained until December. Then, having procured as substitute in his school Mr. Timothy Woodbridge, of West Springfield, he returned to finish out his four years' official engage- ment at Yale, taking with him two native boys-sons of Konkapot and Uinpachenee-for private instruction.
In July, 1735, Sergeant returned and took up his life's work with the Indians. On August 31st of that year he received ordination at Deer- field, at a convention composed of Governor Belcher, a large committee of the House of Representatives, and a numerous delegation of his adopted people, who gave formal assent to his reception as their spiritnal guide and teacher.
The initiatory operations of the mission had been instituted in the present town of Great Barrington ; but meanwhile its originators and patrons had been devising a scheme to secure for its beneficiaries greater facilities for instruction and permanency. It proposed the laying off of another township above and adjoining the Upper Housatonic grant and the gathering of all the natives there ; the erection of a framed church building, a school house, and residences for the minister and teacher. The proposal meeting the entire approval of the Indians, was next presented to the Legislature, sanctioned by that body, and Messrs. Stoddar.l. Pom- eroy, and Ingersoll were authorized to carry it into effect. A township six miles square was surveyed, overlapping more than 9,000 acres of the upper grant. To satisfy the proprietors of the latter. compensation was made from unallotted lands in the two grants and elsewhere, the Indians aiding by the surrender of their reservation in Sheffield by the deed of 1724. All this having, with considerable time and trouble, been accom- plished, the plan was perfected, the new township named Stockbridge. the Indians of the other localities gathered into it, and matters shaped toward municipal autonomy. By agreement one sixtieth of the land was set apart for the support of Mr. Sergeant and the same amount for Mr. Woodbridge. Four other white families were also to be " accommo- dated with such part as they should see fit"-a provision intended not only for the society of the missionary and the teacher, but to afford prac. tical models for the education of the natives in agriculture and house- keeping.
Henceforward the history of this mission pertains entirely to Stock- bridge, and its beneficiaries are so connected with its municipal affairs as to render it essential to narrate its results with some detail-albeit with a succinctness compelled by the limits assigned to this memorial.
Before the removal of Sergeant from Great Barrington he began to gather in his spiritnal harvest. October 18th, 1734. Ebenezer, his native interpreter, was baptized and admitted as the first member of his church. This event was followed, November 2d, by the baptism and admission of Captain Konkapot, his wife, and only daughter, who received respec- tively the names of John, Mary, and Catharine. Lieutenant Umpachenee
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TOWN OF STOCKBRIDGE.
and wife, with the wife of the interpreter. were received November 16th. and before the close of the month the infant church had increased to eleven members, besides nine other baptized. These converts all pledged themselves to temperance and held to their vows. no advocate therefor, in preaching and practice, excelling Umpachenee. Such was the status of the mission on its removal to Stockbridge in May, 1736, comprising, as nearly as can be ascertained, some fifty souls, of whom forty children and adults were pupils in its school.
In July of the same year Governor Belcher invited Mr. Sergeant and a delegation of his flock to visit him in Boston. It was accepted. The guests were cordially received. Umpachenee making an eloquent speech and presenting the governor with fifty-two square miles of land, lying on both sides of the traveled path from the Housatonic to Westfield, to- gether with a bale of valuable pelts. In return he asked for aid in build- ing a church for his people. This was promised and the visitors re- turned, bearing presents of guns, blankets, etc., and a profound satisfac- tion with their new friends. The governor was true to his word. and on his recommendation the Legislature ordered a meeting house, 30 by 40 feet, to be erected, together with a suitable school house. and appointed Messrs. Sergeant. Stoddard, and Woodbridge a committee to see the order executed. Both these projects were carried out ; the church occupy- ing the site of the new Memorial Tower, and the school house that of the residence of Mrs. Averill. The church was dedicated with abundant joy on Thanksgiving Day, November 20th. 1739. It stood about forty-five years, when, the increasing white population requiring ampler accommo- dation, it was removed and converted into a barn on the premises now owned by Mr. Southmayd. After another half century's use in this function, it was demolished and its oaken fixtures manufactured into various memorial articles for the curious.
The fame of the mission went abroad and many Indian families from over the New York and Connecticut borders came in to enjoy its benefits. Its members gradually increased until, at the general migration westward, they are supposed to have numbered about 400.
Soon after the removal to Stockbridge, Mr. Woodbridge married and built himself a house on the present premises of Mr. Samuel Goodrich. and Mr. Sergeant became a boarder with him. As the numbers and needs of his flock increased, the school was given in charge to the former, while Sergeant devoted himself entirely to the spiritual interests and for- eign correspondence of the mission. He closely studied the native tongue. and in August, 1737, was able to preach and pray without an interpreter. Indeed, his command of the unconth vernacular became so complete, that his swarthy hearers bore testimony that he spoke their language better than did themselves. His professional labors involved two sermons each Sabbath to the Indians and two to the English, besides Bible readings and exposition, and constant pastoral visitations. The natives were fond of singing, and excelled in it. The congregations were
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HISTORY OF BERKSHIRE COUNTY.
summoned to worship by a large conch shell-still preserved -- presented by a friend in Boston, and blown through the settlement by a strong- lunged Indian named Metoxin, for twenty shillings per annum. Kon- kapot also had a house erected on a knoll just north of the stream bear- ing his name, on the highway to Great Barrington, which was burned in 1814.
The mission had many friends and patrons both within the country and beyond the ocean. Rev. Dr. Ayscough, chaplain to the Prince of Wales, presented the little church with a copy of the Bible in two large folio volumes appropriately inscribed, saying, with a truly catholic spirit, " What if he be a dissenter : he is a good man, and that is every. thing. It is time these distinctions should be laid aside and the parti- tion wall thrown down. I love all good men alike. whether churchmen or dissenters." These volumes have been religiously preserved by the tribe through all their wanderings, and are still in their possession.
Meantime the mission continued to prosper. constantly receiving ac- cessions. In 1737, Yokun, another sachem, his wife and three children were baptized, and occasional visitors from abroad publishel it's success. As an instance, a writer in The Boston Post-Boy, under date of Septem- ber 3d, 1737, says. " I have lately visited my friends in Stockbridge and was well pleased to find the Indians so improved. I saw several young women sewing ; but I was in special gratified to find them so improved in learning. Some of them have made good proficiency and can read in their Bibles and several can write a good hand."
In 1738 the Indians received from the patron society before mentioned $300, which was expended for agricultural implements and other neces- saries. This year also Mr. Sergeant was married-an event which gave great joy to his people, ninety of whom attended the ceremony, demean- ing themselves with great propriety.
The strongest obstacle to the good work was the natural love of the natives for intoxicants. But, by the constant efforts of their devoted leader, this vice was overcome and redneed to a minimum-a drunken Indian, during his day, being a notable exception to the almost universal sobriety.
"To do good and to communicate" has ever been a main tenet in the creed of philanthropy, and with its spirit Sergeant and his flock were deeply imbued. For the benighted red man elsewhere their sympathies were kindled, and personal efforts put forth for their elevation. Quite a number of lodges existed in and around New Lebanon, N. Y., which Ser- geant with a delegation of his charge repeatedly visited. This resulted in the attendance of a danghter of their chief at the Stockbridge school, and his baptism with that of several of his tribe. Embassies from the natives at Danbury and Canaan, Conn., came requesting civilization and the gospel. Messengers were sent to the Shawanese and the Delawares along the Susquehanna, offering missionaries and instruction. The for. mer declined, while the latter accepted the proffer, and to them, through
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