USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Rowe > History of Rowe, Massachusetts, third ed > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10
MINES AND MINERALS
The so-called Rowe serpentine enters the town from Ver- mont at the northeast corner and extends southwest across the town as a heavy bed, ten to twenty rods wide. A few rods northwesterly of Abbot White's house it bends a little and takes the same course as the Deerfield River to the west, forming the crest of a ridge. In the Cressy neighborhood it crosses the road and runs down to Hoosac Tunnel where it changes suddenly entirely into serpentine and steatite. At the old King place nearly one mile east of the Tunnel we find a large bed of sepentine with dolomite. It is compact, even grained and in color dark gray with traces of green on the fractured or sawed surfaces. A considerable amount has been taken out of this bed for soapstone stoves and bed- warmers .* On Abbott White's farm the Massachusetts Talc Company for a number of years mined talc. £ The rock was carted to the company's grinding mill at Zoar which burned under peculiar circumstances some years ago. The Foliated Talc Company was incorporated in 1905 and operated a talc mine on the old Bullard farm, a half-mile north of the old centre. The rock was carted to the grinding mill opposite
*The rake shop was below the bridge, the dam just above, and the water was carried under the road.
** Hoosac Quarry Co. mentioned in 1874.
8
HISTORY OF ROWE
the village school. Water power was supplied by a long metal flume from the pond connected with the village saw- mill, which in turn was supplied by Pelham Brook and the reservoir formerly supplying the old satinet factory. Opera- tions ceased in 1922.
Knowledge of the existence of pyrite containing iron and sulpher on the Brown farm east of Adams Mountain, was known as early as 1840. H. J. Davis secured control and operated a mine from 1882 to 1910. Daily shipments at one time reached 150 tons; and before the mine was shut down, copper became an important by-product. The chief mineral was a mass of almost pure coarse-granular, shining yellow pyrite, with some chalco-pyrite, blende, garnets and galenite. In 1928, the Brown Co. of Portland, Maine and Berlin, N. H. made some tests to determine the practicability of reopening the mine in order to secure sulpher for their extensive pulp and paper mills, but made no further move.
About one and one-half miles west of the Davis Mine, George H. Davenport operated on a small copper vein for a few years. It was traceable for 700 feet conforming closely with the Savoy schist in which it occurs. The mine was abandoned after a few years, and the stockholders of the New England Mining Company, incorporated in 1902, had only pretty paper stock certificates and title to a few acres of land.
Nearer the top of the mountain, Joseph A. Sibley did a little blasting on a ledge having an outcrop of a small vein of copper.
9
MASSACHUSETTS
CHAPTER II ROWE IN KING GEORGE'S WAR
"It is open war with us and a dark and distressing scene opening." Col. Israel Williams.
Our narrative opens with the year 1744, when war broke out between France and England, and when our grandfathers knew only too well that a European quarrel meant trouble for them on the exposed frontier. June 8th a scout was sent from Deerfield to Hoosac Mountain. They returned three days later with the report of having seen the trail of some forty Indians at the head of the west branch of North River (probably in what is now North Heath), which they followed for some distance. We infer that this scouting party must have passed through Rowe which lies midway between Hoosac Mountain and North Heath. Sheldon re- cords that another scout sent out from Deerfield June 13th, returned two days later and "reported having seen on the Deerfield river, about eight miles above Rice's settlement at Charlemont, (near the present Hoosac Tunnel station), a place where three men had made a fire and camped, and saw two coats made Indian fashion hanging up to dry."
Deerfield now was no longer a frontier post. Tiny settle- ments had been established "on the Charlemont," at Colrain, Fall-Town (now Bernardston) Vernon and Charlestown, N. H. The Indians had been trading and mingling with the settlers, but at the outbreak of War, they returned to their tribes to prepare for trouble. In Queen Anne's War, (1703-1713), the route of the French invasions from Canada to the Con- necticut Valley had been via Lake Champlain and thence over the Green Mountains. One was by the Winooski River and down the White; another up Otter Creek and down the Black, Williams or West Rivers; and a third, up Wood Creek,
10
HISTORY OF ROWE
Paulet and Indian Rivers to the Hoosick Valley and over Hoosac Mountain to the valley of the Deerfield.
To guard against these lines of approach, the Massachu- setts General Court, in the summer of 1744, ordered the erection of a cordon of forts to run from Fort Dummer (built in 1724 in the present Town of Brattleboro), westerly to the New York line. Governor Shirley appointed a committee of three to build these forts, of whom the Chairman was Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton.
July 20, 1744 Stoddard wrote a letter to Captain William Williams his nephew, which reads as follows:
"Sir you are hereby Directed as soon as may be to Erect a fort of the Dimensions above mentioned, and you are to employ ye soldiers under your Command, viz such of them as are effective men and to allow them by ye day in manner as above expressed and in case your soldiers chuse rather to undertake to build sd fort for sum in Gross or by ye Great you may promise them Two Hundred pounds old Tenor Exclusive of the Nails that may be necessary the fort is to be erected about five miles from Hugh Morrison's house in Colrain in or near the line run last week Under the Direction of Colº Tim' Dwight by our order and you are hereby further directed as you may have Opportunity to Search out some Convenient places where two or three other forts may be Erected Each to be about five miles and a Half Distance upon the line run Last week as above mentioned or the pricked line on the platt made by Colo Dwight you will have with you.
"and further you are to order a sufficient Guard out of the men under your Command to guard such persons as may be Employed in erecting sd fort and further you have liberty to Exchange of the men under your command for those that are under the Command of Capt. Elijah in case there be any such that will be proper to be Employed in building sd fort you will take care that the men be faithful in their business, they must be watchful and prudent for their own safety.
"There must be good account kept of the various Services in case men work by the day.
John Stoddard.
To Capt. William Williams
Northampton, July 20, 1744."
11
MASSACHUSETTS
Accompanying this letter was a certificate approving the erection of a line of forts "from Colrain to the Dutch Settle- ments," with the signatures of the Committee-John Stod- dard, Ol. Partridge, and John Leonard. At the top of the letter is a memorandum :-
"The fort 60 feet Square Houses 11 feet wide Mounts 12 feet Square 7 feet high 12 feet High the fort roof of ye Houses to be shingled the Soldiers Employed to be allowed the Carpenter nine shillings others six shillings a day Old Tenor."
Such were the instructions for the erection of Forts Shir- ley in Heath, Pelham in Rowe, and Massachusetts in Wil- liamstown, and the crude dimensions for Shirley. Colonel Dwight, the father of President Dwight of Yale College, in July 1744, had surveyed the line parallel to Hazen's Province Line at two miles' distance, on which two of the forts, Shirley and Pelham, were to be located. Fort Shirley was completed in short order, for Stoddard began billetting him- self in the fort beginning October 30, 1744. The next we hear of Fort Pelham is the following March in a letter from the Stoddard Committee :-
"Northampton, March 6, 1745
To Capt. William Williams of Fort Shirley
Sir you are hereby fully authorized and Impowered In ten days after this Date to employ so many of the soldiers under your Command as you Judge necessary In finishing a fort in the place where the Comtee for Building a Line of Block Houses &c agreed with Capt. Moses Rice to Build one and employ for that purpose the Timbers the sd Rice had drawn together (the sd Rice having Desired sd Timber may be employed for that purpose) you are to allow to a Carpenter Nine Shillings and other Effective men Six Shillings a Day Old Tenor you are to finish sd fort with all convenient speed provided the sd Rice do not within sd ten days take effectual care to your Satisfaction that he will finish it.
John Stoddard."
Apparently Stoddard had bargained with Rice for the erection of some sort of a fort on the hill-tops of Rowe.
12
HISTORY OF ROWE
Moses Rice had come from Rutland to be the first settler in Charlemont .* He built his first cabin in the spring of 1743 near a buttonwood tree that is still standing a few rods from the Charlemont bridge. In June 1755, twelve years later, Captain Rice was killed and scalped by Indians and his remains buried nearby. The grave is marked by a small monument which was dedicated in 1871.
Fort Pelham was erected on a slight swell of ground a scant half mile southeast of the old centre of Rowe. The site until recently was an open pasture on the farm of Henry Wright .** Perry described it as a "stockade twelve rods by twenty-four, probably enclosing nothing but a well and a small magazine and a covered lodging-place for the garrison in one or more of the interior angles. There was certainly a mount at Pelham in all likelihood upon the northwest corner, and under this would naturally and cheaply be the quarters for the soldiers."
Perry's conclusions were: (1) That Pelham was a purely palisaded fort constructed of upright posts or forest staddles sunk into the ground and bound together in contact with each other above, and not like Fort Shirley and the two bearing in succession on the same site (between North Adams and Williamstown) the name "Massachusetts," a jointed block- house of hewn timbers; (2) that it was in form a parallelo- gram twelve rods by twenty-four in extent, thus enclosing more than an acre and a half of dry ground on the swell of a broad hill; (3) that a trench, perhaps a foot deep, was dug around the four sides, and posts of a pretty uniform size (perhaps hewed) were set upright into the trench, unless na- tural trees of the right dimensions were already growing in line, and then the earth thrown back into the trench and up-
*The first mention of Charlemont is in a deed from Phineas Stevens to Othniel Taylor dated Nov. 3, 1742, in which it is called "Checkley's Town, otherwise called Charlemont."
** Henry Wright in 1943 sold his farm to Miss Florence N. Neal. In 1956 the site of the fort was difficult to find due to the undergrowth.
13
MASSACHUSETTS
on both sides of the staddles, which now (1894) forms the pillow of turf that can be traced almost unbroken, particular- ly on the south and east sides; (4) that the well of the old fort was near the middle of the enclosure and upon the highest ground within it, and that the removal of four or five large stones that now choke the opening would practically restore the digging of 1745, and discover with certainty whether it were originally walled up within or constructed with corner- posts like the corresponding well at Shirley; (5) that the con- siderable circular depression a little northwest of the old well either indicated that the magazine of the fort was in part, at least, a substructure, or that the beginning of an unfinished well there was thwarted by a ledge, and a tho- rough excavation at that point might reveal which of the two, and possibly a stone floor or some remains of side walls; (6) that the main opening into the parade of the fort was, undoubtedly, on the north side, along which, at some dis- tance further north, on account of the head of a swamp in the direct line east and west, the military road from Fort Shirley certainly passed in a northerly curve to the west, the straight west line being resumed about half a mile further on; (7) that the fort was placed where it was by the rude engineers of the time near the head waters of what came in consequence to be called Pelham Brook, in order to guard against access to the Deerfield by means of one of its many tributaries by parties of French and Indians coming from the north with hostile intent; (8) that the mount (or mounts) of the fort gave to the sentinel a wide survey of glorious moun- tain scenery in every direction, and that to the west Greylock itself, then as now, towered with bended arch above the long range of the Hoosacs; and (9) that the barracks of the men posted at Fort Pelham, of whom twenty was about the com- plement during King George's War, were within the pickets and probably at the corners in connection with the mount or mounts, although, naturally enough, there are no such re- mains of chimneys and ovens and bricks there as fairly clutter the ground at Fort Shirley.
14
HISTORY OF ROWE
We have seen that Capt. Moses Rice of Charlemont had agreed to build the fort. But Stoddard's letter of March 6, 1745 authorizes Williams to finish the fort and in so doing to "employ so many of the soldiers" under his command as were necessary and to "employ for that purpose the Timbers the sd Rice had drawn together." Williams was further in- structed to "finish sd fort with all convenient speed," "pro- vided the sd Rice do not within sd ten days take effectual care to your satisfaction that he will finish it." This letter reveals a delay in constructing the fort on the part of Rice, but history does not tell us whether it was Rice or the sol- diers under Captain William Williams at Fort Shirley, who finished the work. Perry holds to the latter theory. An in- teresting question, however, presents itself. By March 6, 1745, the date of the letter, the fort had been partly con- structed. The frost could hardly have been out of the ground so early in the year, and we are left to speculate as to whether the work was started in 1745 or in the fall of 1744.
Now Dr. Perry tells us that there is little doubt that the old military road continued west from Fort Pelham in Dwight's line, and passing Pulpit Rock to the right followed the present road southwesterly to the Deerfield at Hoosac Tunnel station. After a careful search of all available sources the writer is forced to disagree with this contention, and submits the following argument :- Dr. Perry's only authority cited is Colonel Stoddard's order to Captain Wil- liams in 1744, "and you are hereby further directed as you may have Opportunity to Search out some Convenient places where two or three other forts may be Erected Each to be about five miles and a Half Distance upon the line run the Last week as above mentioned or the pricked line on the platt made by Col° Dwight whe platt you will have with you." Nowhere is there any record of the building of any road or the blazing of any trail west of Fort Pelham. No fort was ever constructed five and a half miles west of Pelham which would be on the heights of Florida and Monroe, and the third
15
MASSACHUSETTS
fort in the cordon was Massachusetts, built the same year (1745) in the town-ship of North Adams some fifteen miles southwest of Pelham. The steep slopes in the western part of Rowe and west of the Deerfield would discourage any sur- veyor from laying out a trail to be travelled by pack horses. The topography of Rowe one to two miles west of Pelham is such that any engineer would draw a fairly straight line in a southwesterly direction and not a line due west forming a right angle with another due south. It was the custom for New England towns to build two intersecting main roads, one north and south and the other east and west. The town of Rowe in 1786, forty-one years later voted to establish the road four rods wide, west of Fort Pelham site, to the "west line of Lieut. Abner Chapin's farme" where it stopped; and the town at the same time voted to establish a road two rods wide from William Steel's northeast corner (near Steel Brook) to the southeast corner of Abner Chapin's meeting the four- rod "main road leading east and west through the Town." The road from the Cressy Neighborhood down to the Tunnel was first used in the 1860's and became a public road some 20 years later. The map of 1793 shows five roads, the east road to Heath, north road to Whitingham over Streeter Hill, north road from the old center past the Robert Wells farm to Readsborough, south road to Charlemont over the mountain, and the southwest road to Zoar. The west roads are omitted as they but connected outlying farms and led to no town.
When Capt. Moses Rice agreed to draw the timbers for Fort Pelham, there must have been some kind of trail from his cabin to the fort site. Furthermore, the ancient Mohawk Trail crossed the Deerfield a mile and a half above Rice's, as- cended the heights on the southerly slopes of Todd Mountain and crossed Hoosac Mountain in a northwesterly direction. This was used by the early settlers with their pack horses and cattle. * Finally, we have the diary of John Norton, the
*See appendix G.
16
HISTORY OF ROWE
chaplain appointed to these forts in 1745.
"Thursday, August 14, 1746 .- I left Fort Shirley in company with Dr. Williams, and about fourteen of the soldiers; we went to Pelham fort, and from thence to Capt. Rice's, where we lodged that night. Friday, the 15th, we went from thence to Fort Massachusetts, where I designed to have tarried about a month."
Rice's homestead was about midway between Deerfield and Fort Massachusetts and the valiant captain was so often forced to act as host to travellers that he petitioned the Gen- eral Court for assistance. Under date of Dec. 4, 1752,- "'That his living was of great service as he humbly appre- hends to the Publick, as being the only House where People could be Supplied. And as Soldiers were often Travailling that way, as well as small Parties on Scouts, it was very Ex- pensive to your Petitioner, who often Supply'd them at his own cost."
The old road from Isaiah Adams'* above Rogers mills southerly over Adams Mountain has long since been closed (1837) to all but a stray traveler, but is still known locally as Norton's Trail. This was the military road.
John Norton was born in Berlin, Connecticut, in 1716, was graduated at Yale College in 1737, was ordained in 1741 in Deerfield to be the minister of Falltown (Bernardston), and was appointed chaplain of the forts in 1745. He began his new duties in February 1746. August 1, 1746 he came from Shirley to Pelham and continued on to Rices. The following
day he arrived at Massachusetts intending to stay a month. But on August 20 the Fort surrendered to 800 French and Indians under Vaudreuil, and the 20 inmates were carried captives to Canada. In this seige which lasted 24 hours, the Chaplain shared the honors with Sergeant John Hawks, the gallant commander, and this fight forms one of the most brilliant pages in American History. He returned to Boston
*The writer's bungalow was erected by his father on the Adams House-site in 1900.
17
MASSACHUSETTS
August 16, 1747 and took his family to Springfield. In November 1748 he settled in the ministry at East Hampton, Connecticut where he died in 1778. For many years there stood in Shirley field a rude headstone with the following inscription:
Here lys ye body of Anna D: of ye Rev. Mr. John Norton. She died Aug. ye-aged-1747.
It requires but small imagination to picture the hardships of life in Shirley Fort and the desolation felt by the young wife and children during the chaplain's captivity of one year. His place as chaplain for the line of forts was never filled.
In his diary, Norton states that he travelled from Fort Shirley to Pelham and thence to Massachusetts by way of Rice's, in company with Dr. Williams and about fourteen soldiers. This Dr. Williams was Thomas Williams, half brother of Captain Ephraim Williams, and was born in New- ton in 1718, which would make him 28 years of age at this time. He was the surgeon for the line of forts, having be- come such probably when John Norton was made the chap- lain and Ephraim Williams the captain. Dr. Williams arriv- ed at Fort Massachusetts August 15, 1746 with Norton and fourteen soldiers, but left the fort the following day for Deer- field "with fourteen men", and so escaped capture when Fort Massachusetts surrendered.
Captain Ephraim Williams, later the founder of Williams College, was in full command of the line of forts, twelve in all, including Deerfield, from June 9, 1745 to December 10, 1746.
The war continued in a desultory way in various parts of New England. In 1748 various moves were made by the authorities at Boston which indicates their determination to make that year a decisive one. Fort Massachusetts and No. 4 (Charlestown, N. H.) were made the important centers
18
HISTORY OF ROWE
probably to the neglect of the Shirley and Pelham forts. The Hobbs fight (12 miles west from Fort Dummer) took place in June 1748, and another attack by the French and Indians on Fort Massachusetts in August, this time proving unsuccess- ful. Captain Ephraim Williams had only shortly before changed his headquarters from Shirley to Fort Massachusetts.
The Peace of Aix-la-chapelle was signed October 18, 1748 which terminated the hostilities between England and France. Nevertheless, the New England frontiers remained in a state of semi-hostilities until the outbreak of the next war in 1754. All the garrisons, however, were reduced and Shirley and Pelham became relatively unimportant as outposts.
Capt. Ephraim Williams remained in command of the new Fort Massachusetts, rebuilt in 1747; but thereafter, the line of forts to the eastward was under a separate command. Capt. Israel Williams, half-cousin of Ephraim and nephew of Col. John Stoddard, in 1748 was given command of the forts with headquarters at Shirley. He then had 36 men at Shirley,* 30 at Pelham, 25 at Morrison's Fort in Colrain, 16 at South Fort in Colrain, and 12 at New Hampton and Bland- ford. Lieut. Samuel Childs commanded at Fort Pelham, with John Foster as Sergeant and Samuel Barnard as Clerk. Sheldon quotes a tradition to the effect that Joshua Hawks' son Jared Hawks, was born at the Fort March 27, 1752, per- haps the first baby within the present limits of Rowe .** Fol- lowing is the list of men at Fort Pelham in 1748:
Lieut. Samuel Childs, Deerfield Joseph Bucknan Oxford
Clerk Samuel Barnard,
Aaron Rice, *** Rutland
Sergt. John Foster,
Ebenezer Altbee, Holliston
Centl. Moses Copley,
Suffield
Joseph Gould, Hopkinton
Daniel Warner,
Elias Witt, Marlborough
Joel Kent,
Josiah Child, Grafton
*Cf. Letter from Col. Stoddard to Gov. Shirley, March 1, 1748.
** According to Joseph White (Historical Discourse, 1885), Jared Hawks was born in Charlemont March 17, 1752, while a family tradi- tion had his brother Eleazer born at Fort Pelham Feb. 29, 1747.
Aaron Rice was the son of Capt. Moses Rice.
19
MASSACHUSETTS
Joseph Ball, Jun.
Springfield Samuel Allen,
Kingston Brimfield
Moses Wright,
Northfield John Post,
66
Josiah Burnham,
Deerfield Aaron Graves,
Archalaus Beadeau,
Weston John Bagg,
Springfield Rehoboth
Ezekiel Foster,
Deerfield
Ithamar Healey,
Jacob Foster,
Samuel Abbott,
Lamktown
Joshua Wells,
Josiah Walker,
Westborough
Jonathan Evans,
Joshua Hawks,
Somers Ralph Wardell, Deerfield Samuel Ball,
Longmeadow Springfield
The muster roll of the garrison at Fort Massachusetts ex- tending from December 11, 1749 to June 3, 1750, gives twenty-one men to Fort Massachusetts, five expressly to Fort Shirley, and five, apparently, to Fort Pelham, although, as Ferry points out, the official indorsement mentions only "Ephm Williams and Co. at Fort Massachusetts." The five apparently given to Fort Pelham are
Joseph Allen, Sergant Joshua Hawks, Cent. Joshua Wells, Cent. Daniel Donnilson, Cent. William Stevens, Cent.
On November 1, 1748 Capt. Williams had 88 at Shirley, Pelham and Colrain, but then dismissed 35, retaining 53 men until April 3, 1749. £ Lieut. William Lyman in his return gives 26 as the number in the entire line of forts, from June 1749 to January 1750.
On June 13, 1754 Governor Shirley sent a message to the House of Representatives which contains the following:
"Upon this Occasion I must put you in mind of the hazardous con- dition Fort Pelham and Fort Shirley are now in, if there should be any sudden Assault from the Indians on that Frontier; we must expect that the thing they will do would be to burn those forts, which they might easily do in their present Circumstances. There- fore I must recommend it to you, that provision be made that some better care may be taken for preserving them."
Israel Williams, now Colonel in command of the northern regiment in Hampshire County, was entrusted with the de- fence of the northwestern frontier. He drew a sketch of the
20
HISTORY OF ROWE
region for Governor Shirley, to whom he recommended the abandonment of Pelham and Shirley Forts, and the establish- ment of forts in the valley on the north side of Deerfield River, Taylor Fort at East Charlemont enclosing the houses of Othniel and Jonathan Taylor, the same arrangement in the western part of Charlemont, at the houses of Gershom and Seth Hawks. The General Court accepted these plans, and Rowe and Heath again became a wilderness.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.