USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Granville > History of Granville, Massachusetts > Part 24
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16
Lyman M. Cooley
14
Ellen Clark
17 Nellie A. Cooley
13
Henry S. Clark
16
Henry Crosby
10
Hiram P. Clark
15 Burton Dewey
16
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HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
age
age
James K. Eggleston
15
William L. Marvin
16
Miles Goddard
19
Julia A. Moore
11
Caroline Hayes
21 Lizzie J. Otis
17
Jane Hayes
13 Melissa Phelps
14
Marvin C. Hayes
16
Ellen Root
15
Frank S. Henry
16 Silas B. Root
14
Alton E. Holcomb
13 Clinton Smith
14
Elma A. Holcomb
16 Burton Spelman
14
Franklin R. Holcomb
16 Llewellyn Treat
12
Mary M. Holcomb
14 Ellen J. Tryon
16
Clara Kellogg
13 Nora A. Tryon
12
Ben Franklin Knowlton
14 Frank Underhill
9
Mr. Hitchcock also noted some of the scholars attending the Academy in 1862-1863
Oliver P. Cowdery
18
Charles Levi Hinman 16
Lester Dickinson
15 Lucinda Noble
8
Otis Dickinson
19 Ira S. Root
20
David W. Eggleston
16 Addie R. Rose
16
George D. Felton
18 Emerson C. Rose 20
Mr. Talmadge was the last one to conduct a private school in the Academy building. That winter he boarded with Mr. Lester Tryon.
In 1864, as previously stated herein, part of the Academy build- ing was rented to the South East School district for use in caring for such of its pupils as could not be accommodated in its own school house. After the erection of the new school house in 1871, the Academy stood idle for about a year and a half, when the surviving stockholders sold it in 1873 to the Baptist Church. It was then remodelled and used as their parsonage.
As to the Academy building at Granville Center, or East Gran- ville as it was formerly called, little seems to be known about its early history. It is a source of great vexation to have been able to find out so little about it; exactly when it was built; who built it; how it was financed; when an academic school was first taught there ; who were the teachers; when such instruction ceased to be given there. All these have escaped the writer. Without doubt there are records in the form of old letters, diaries, account books, or some such document, which would clear up some of these points, but they
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THE SCHOOLS
are hidden away in boxes, or trunks, or just laid away in some one's attic, shed or barn. The building did exist, for the writer once went into it. It was a two-story frame structure and stood on the south side of the road from Granville to West Granville a short distance west of the beautiful old mansion owned by Holland N. Stevenson.
The earliest documentary evidence the writer has been able to find concerning it is in a vote of the East Parish dated March 30, 1846, as follows : voted "to allow a building, suitable for a school house, to be erected on the public ground near the meeting house, to belong to those who build it, and to be placed and located as a Committee chosen for the purpose shall determine." There is no report or record of the doings of this special Committee, nor of the site selected. It seems to be a fair inference from the wording of the vote that the site contemplated was much nearer the meeting house than the one the building occupied when it was sold to the Town in 1870. It would not have been a very difficult task to move the Academy building the short distance it seems to have travelled.
It is, however, definitely determined that the Academy was built within the two years following the vote noted above, for on April 10, 1848, the Parish voted that "the Parish Committee make arrange- ments with the Selectmen to hold the Town meetings in the future at the Academy Hall." Then comes a hiatus. Nothing more appears which gives any hint as to any other item of interest concerning this Academy until it was sold and conveyed by Ralph S. Brown to the Town by deed dated April 19, 1870. This deed is recorded in Hampden Registry of Deeds in Volume 276 at page 136, and con- veyed to the Town a small plot of land "with the building standing thereon known as the Academy Building."
The late Lester B. Dickenson told the writer that he attended school at this academy in the winter of 1865-1866, and the teacher at that time was George Washington Bennett.
This is all the data which has come to hand concerning the early history of this once proud institution.
When the Town bought the building in 1870, the town offices were established there on the first floor. In 1871 the second floor of the building was rented to the Center School District for use as a school room. This arrangement continued until the number of pupils
260
HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
in that District became so small that they were transported to the Granville village school. The building became so unsafe that it could not be used for Town meetings, and the Town, at a special meeting November 7, 1922, authorized the Selectmen to sell it, which was done August 11, 1924, for $500.00. Dr. Holland N. Stevenson was the purchaser and he had the building razed the next year. Thus passed out of existence the tangible evidence of some one's dream.
The Rev. Nelson Scott gave instruction to private pupils in the early 1870's, in that part of the parsonage of the First Church which is now used as a chapel. Among others who sat at the feet of Mr. Scott, Mr. Edwin N. Henry, who died in 1941, was the last survivor in Granville.
Another educational feature of the earlier days in Granville which must be mentioned is the so-called "Singing School." Until comparatively recent years nothing in the way of music was taught in the public schools of rural New England. So the singing school gradually developed to meet this lack in part. It was a brief course in musical instruction for both old and young, with a strong social tinge. It was a winter enterprise and was strictly a private affair. Neither the Town nor the School Districts had anything to do with it.
A singing school was started by some of the residents who were musically inclined who formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of securing a teacher and raising the necessary funds to finance the enterprise. The teacher was always a man. The length of the term was governed by the amount of money raised. The school was conducted in some convenient place ; private hall, town hall, school house or private home, as the exigencies of the case might require. In Granville the Academy buildings were sometimes used, also Gibbons' Hall, and the Methodist Society Building (now the Grange Hall). The funds were raised by circulating a paper for general subscription. One such document of sixty years ago sets forth its purpose as follows :-
"This subscription is for the purpose of raising money for the support of a Union Singing School. One half of the schools to be held at the Corners and one half on the Hill, providing each section raise its proportion of the money. Eighteen lessons of the forty shall be devoted principally to instruction in the rudiments of music.
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THE SCHOOLS
This paper shall be void unless at least seventy-five Dollars are raised. All money to be paid before the first of December."
Such singing schools accomplished two ends. First, they served as a trial ground for those who thought they could sing, with the result that some good, and some excellent, voices were discovered which were a source of much private pleasure and not a little public enjoyment. And second, they afforded opportunities for social inter- course not otherwise presented. Those who attended did so because they enjoyed singing and the informality of meeting together. The sessions were characterized by a spirit of pleasure and sociability with a bit of hilarity in the background. Here were trained, for the most part, the members of the various church choirs in the town. At the close of the term a concert was given which not only gave the students further experience but also afforded an enjoyable occasion to the town's people.
One of the singing teachers who conducted singing schools in Granville was Sterrie J. Weaver, a man of unusual musical ability, who at that time, or later, lived in Westfield and had charge of the musical instruction in the schools of that city. Mr. Weaver origi- nated and established the well known and widely used Weaver System for teaching vocal music, thereby doing for rural New England what Dr. Lowell Mason had done for the schools of Boston.
The Post Offices
W HEN trying to reconstruct the past in the light of records examined in the process of research, one sometimes is aston- ished by the difference between that which was expected to develop and that which actually does develop. The post offices in Granville are a striking example of this fact.
The settlement of the Town commenced in the northeast corner in 1735, and gradually the settlers crept along to the Hill where the meeting house stands, and there a group of houses arose which came to be a village. Then after a few years the settlers pushed across the Great Valley and another group of houses arose which came to be another village. Then afterward the settlers continued to make their homes further west and a third group of houses came to be another village. In the course of this development, names were attached to these three villages. The one farthest east was called East Granville, the one farthest west was called West Gran- ville, and the one in between was called Middle Granville. All very simple and easy. These were all thriving villages when, in the year 1810, the West Parish was set off and became the Town of Tolland. Granville was a town having over 1500 inhabitants after being separated from the West Parish. It was seventy-five years since the first settlement. Where was the post office ? In East Granville, the older village, or in Middle Granville, the larger village, or at Gran- ville Corners, or up Northeast? The United States Post Office Department in those days was functioning smoothly, but there was no post office in the entire Town of Granville. Strange as it may seem, this is the story the records of the Post Office Department discloses. How did the residents get their mail? In the first place there was not much mail, and in the next place what there was was dispatched in charge of stage drivers or friends in accordance with the custom of centuries. This condition continued eight years longer. Then it seemed desirable to have an office in the Town, so the Department established the post office of Middle Granville, in the village of that name on May 8, 1818, with Reuben Hills as the
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THE POST OFFICES
first Postmaster. Eighty-three years after the settlement of the Town it had its first post office.
For fifteen years thereafter the name Middle Granville stuck, although that village was no longer in the middle, so powerful is the habit of speech. Then some of its residents began to chafe over the incongruity and thought the name West Granville, which had been discarded by the West Parish, would be more in accord with the facts. So, on May 29, 1833, the Department changed the name of the post office from Middle Granville to West Granville.
For three quarters of a century mail came to and went from the post office in West Granville. However, during that time the center of population in the Town had moved eastward and West Gran- ville was no longer the largest village in Town. The patronage of the office grew less and less and finally it became quite unprofitable, so on July 15, 1909, after ninety-one years of service it was dis- continued and closed. The late Laura E. Welch was the post- mistress in West Granville from 1901 until the discontinuance. It is of interest to note that the letter case used in the West Granville post office may now be seen in the collection of antiques in Wiggins Old Tavern at Northampton, Massachusetts.
The residents of the eastern half of the Town did not relish being compelled to go across the Great Valley for their mail, so they set about getting a post office in their part of the Town. This was ultimately accomplished after nine years of effort and the post- office at East Granville, on Granville Hill, was established October 2, 1827, with Lyman Root as the first Postmaster.
The name East Granville was fitting and appropriate for the next thirty years or so. It was then the only village in that part of the Town. Granville Corners was just an ordinary country cross road with a store of small proportions, a tavern, a blacksmith shop and five or six scattered houses, and in the parlance of the day was spoken of rather disparagingly as "Jockey Corners." However, when Noble & Cooley moved their drum business from East Gran- ville to their new factory at Granville Corners in 1857, the Corners began to grow. Soon after that, the people living at the Corners felt that they ought to have the post office instead of the village a mile away on the Hill. The thought was father of the deed. A trip
264
HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
to Washington; conferences with the political powers; and the trick was turned. An order came from the Department and the post office was removed from East Granville to the Corners. At once trouble was brewing. Instantly two factions were developed, a common and wholly unprofitable condition to arise in any town. Should Jockey Corners, an upstart village, having a more or less unsavory repu- tation, be permitted to take the post office away from the Hill, a village existing for more than a century? No. This would never do. Another trip to Washington; other conferences with the political powers; and the mischief was overcome. An order came from the Department and the post office journeyed back up the hill to East Granville. Having experienced the pleasures of a post office in their community, the growing village at the Corners could not just sit down and quit, so, more trips to Washington; more politicians interviewed. Lo! An order came from the Department giving the post office again to the Corners. Nothing daunted, the forces on the Hill returned to the fray, and exerted every effort to recover its lost post office. By this time the Department was thoroughly vexed with such pulling and hauling, and put a stop to it by ordering the post office back to East Granville, where it functioned serenely many years.
The fact that East Granville was a mile west of Granville dis- turbed neither the Post Office Department nor the inhabitants of the Town. At long last, however, this came before the Department and it did what it could to remedy the confusion. On January 17, 1894, it changed the name of the post office from East Granville to Granville Center. After that time, events passed smoothly on the Hill and the patrons of the office were calm and contented. The last occupant of the post office was the genial Postmistress Mary Degano. The Granville Center post office was discontinued June 30, 1944, after 117 years of service.
When the Department stopped the peregrinations of the East Granville post office, it pacified the residents of the Corners by giving them a post office under the name of Granville Corners. This was done on February 11, 1863, with Rufus H. Barlow as Postmaster. Mr. Barlow served until January 11, 1875, when John M. Gibbons was appointed Postmaster. On March 6, 1883, the name of the
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THE POST OFFICES
post office was changed from Granville Corners to Granville. Mr. Gibbons continued to serve the office until March 18, 1901. Then his son, Benjamin F. Gibbons, was appointed and carried on the duties of the office until, in 1941, he reached the age limit prescribed by the government and was automatically retired, making an enviable record of 58 years of continuous service by father and son. His successor is Olav R. Petersen, the present incumbent. On Octo- ber 1, 1944, Mr. Peterson moved the post office from the Gibbons' store where it had been so many years, to a new building of his own on Granby Road just south of Dickinson Brook.
The Everline Barber Memorial Home
O N February 27, 1866, Isaac W. Barber purchased the farm owned and occupied by Ozro Z. Huggins in the northwesterly part of the town, said to contain three hundred ten acres of land, more or less. That fact by itself is of no particular significance, but it was the beginning of a chain of events which had a quite unex- pected outcome. This farm was, like many another hill farm in New England, suitably divided into tillage, pasturage and woodland. It was stony and laborious to cultivate, but it bred and nurtured a hardy and unselfish race.
Mr. Barber and his good wife might quite well have been aboli- tionists before the Civil War, for their son George W. seems to have been imbued with a desire to help the colored people in the eastern part of our country.
Before his death, Mr. Isaac W. Barber conveyed this farm to his wife Everline, who lived there until her death. Upon her decease the farm was inherited by her only child and heir-at-law, George W. Barber, who, not wishing to live on it, conceived the idea of making it a home for aged colored people. Finally the plan was perfected and by deed dated February 14, 1893, he conveyed the entire farm, with the buildings, to "J. W. Hood, and others, being the Board of Bishops of the A. M. E. Zion Church in America," and their suc- cessors in office, "in trust, however, to and for the following uses and purposes, to wit :- said premises shall be used, kept and managed, improved and maintained as and for a residence and home for the aged, infirm and incapacitated ministers of said Church, their widows and orphans, and such other needy and worthy per- sons as said Bishops and their successors in office may from time to time permit to reside there, and said home shall be known as The Everline Barber Memorial Home."
It is evident that Mr. Barber overlooked the fact that aged and infirm people who had spent most or all their lives in the warm
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THE EVERLINE BARBER MEMORIAL HOME
lands of the South might find it difficult to endure the rigors of winter in a hill-top home in New England. The Board of Bishops has seen fit not to maintain there a home for the aged, but the terms of the gift are sufficiently broad to permit its use for those whom the Board deem worthy. The premises are maintained as a camp during two months of the summer. It ordinarily is opened June 25 and closed August 25. Those who come there are recommended by the various Churches of the denomination for approval by the Board. There are accommodations at the camp for two hundred people and some come from as far south as Georgia. The Board appoints a Superintendent who has charge of the camp. In 1947 the Superintendent was Rev. Ralph Gullette, pastor of the Clinton A. M. E. Zion Church in Ansonia, Connecticut. A caretaker inspects the buildings daily. The buildings consist of an assembly hall, cot- tages and barracks. Recreation consists of athletic games, such as base ball, tennis, pitching horse shoes, swimming, etc. Sunday serv- ices and prayer meetings are held regularly, and choral singing as well.
A rather unlooked-for result growing out of the purchase of a farm nearly a hundred years ago.
The Libraries
AN NY Town fortunate enough to have within its borders two such uplifting spirits as the Rev. Timothy M. Cooley and the Rev. Joel Baker, could no more escape their influence for improvement mentally, as well as spiritually, than water can run up hill. They were both members of the town school committee over thirty years together. For half a century Dr. Cooley had taken boys from the country schools and fitted them for college. For a third of a century Mr. Baker had in a more modest degree done likewise, and without a doubt he was responsible for the existence of the West Granville Academy, although it was not erected until after his death. Equally without doubt, he was directly the cause of the formation of the first library in Middle Granville.
Massachusetts has for many decades been one of the leaders in education and more than a century ago made the establishment of libraries free from red tape and easy to accomplish. On March 8, 1806, a bill before the General Court became a law. It provided that "any seven persons who shall become proprietors in common of any library may form themselves into a corporation" having sundry rights and powers, and the name of such library shall be "the Proprietors of the (First, or other ordinal number ) Social Library of (the name of the Town)" .*
The library in Middle Granville was established at an unascer- tained time, for no records of its early existence have come to light ; but while the above mentioned law was in force, it seems to have been incorporated as the Proprietors of the Third Social Library of Granville. This fact at once gives rise to the query as to where the First and Second Social Libraries of Granville were located, and what became of them. If the library in Middle Granville was the Third, there must have been two others before that time. How many books it had, where they were kept, and who were the librarians, are all unanswered questions. But they had books, be- cause some of them have come down to us, bearing on the title page,
*Laws of Massachusetts, 1805-1809 at page 84.
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THE LIBRARIES
or the inside front cover, the name of the Third Social Library. It was in existence prior to 1821, because on February 3rd of that year certain proceedings of the Library at a meeting held on Janu- ary 5th, 1821, probably its annual meeting, were validated by the General Court, "as though held on January 3," by a special Act, and also its name was changed from The Proprietors of the Third Social Library of Granville to "Dickinson Library Company, incor- porated," and its corporate powers were defined. It was authorized to receive donations, gifts etc. not to exceed $6000.00, of which not more than $1000.00 could be in real estate, and its personal property (its funds) could not be expended for anything except books and objects necessarily connected with the Library .*
The Dickinson Library was so named in honor of Richard Dick- inson of Granville, who had given both land and money for the use of the Library. Books were acquired, some by gift and some by purchase, until several hundred were on its shelves. Some were books of travel, some were for reference, some were histories, but by far the largest number were fiction. If the condition of the covers is any fair criterion to judge by, they circulated freely and much. This Library has been inactive now for many years, due to lack of funds and the changes in the social and economic life of its readers. Then too, those who were most interested in it have either died or removed to other places. At this time there are left only three or four members of the corporation. The books which remain were stored in the gallery of the meeting house in West Granville.
Before library facilities became what they are today, the various churches each had its own library for the benefit of its own members. These small libraries were generally kept at the meeting house of the church, and the books were chiefly those which were suitable for the younger members.
There soon arose, however, a demand for a larger library and the matter came up before the annual Town meeting in 1893, at which time the sum of $25.00 was appropriated "for a free library," and a board of three Trustees was chosen to take charge of the venture. The Trustees were John A. Gillett, Marshall V. Stow and Ethan D. Dickinson. This seems like a pretty slender
*Acts of Massachusetts, 1818-1822 at page 489.
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HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
beginning for a Town free library, but it must be remembered that we all have to creep before we can run. The next year a similar appropriation was made, but in 1895 the appropriation was one half of the money realized from the licensing of the dogs in town. Locally, the money arising from this source is called the "dog money." In this year, too, a librarian was provided. The Rev. George A. Beckwith was chosen to have charge of the Free Library. It was also voted that the Trustees of the Library "shall not place books in any of the villages of the Town unless said village provide a suitable place and furnish a librarian without cost to the Town." From the small beginning of two years before, much progress had been made. Books were now available in the three villages, and the various allotments were changed at times during the year, an arrangement wisely adapted to the needs of the people of the town. In 1896 it was reported that there were 329 books in the Free Library, one half of which were deposited in the chapel of the Congregational Church and one half in the chapel of the Baptist Church, the pastors acting as librarians. The next year the Trustees recommended an additional appropriation so that the librarians "could have a little fire in the cold weather."
Thus, not only were there books at hand for those who cared to read, but of far greater importance was the wider horizon created by a little acquaintance with some of the great works of literature, the broader outlook given to the growing boys and girls, and the increase of their knowledge.
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