USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > South Hadley > History of the sesqui-centennial anniversary celebration of the town of South Hadley, Mass., July 29-30, 1903 > Part 10
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After the Enfield Canal was ready for business the use of steamboats for towing "Inggers," as the freight boats were called, became very general. In 1831, the William Hall ran as a tow- boat between Hartford and South Hadley Canal and the Ariel Cooley took boats from Stony Brook and towed them, four at a time, forty miles to Greenfield in ten hours.
The latter boat was a stern-wheeler, ninety feet long and eighteen feet wide, with two high pressure engines of twenty horse power each. She was afterwards overhauled, fitted with more powerful engines and named Greenfield. In May, 1840, when she was a short distance above Smiths Ferry, her boilers exploded, killing Captain Grawford and two other men.
It was only at a high stage of the water that steamboats could ascend Willimansett rapids. At other times, as in fact at all times of the boating season before the advent of steamboats, Captain Ebenezer Ingraham, who lived near the present site of the Holyoke Street Railway's electric plant, would hitch a long hawser to an upward bound lugger and, with his team of six horses and two oxen, draw the boat "over Willimansett." Whether the multitudinous voices of the rapids or the Captain's vociferous shouts to his team made the louder noise, rivermen never could agree, but the odds rather favored the Captain.
After the boat had passed through the canal in its upriver voyage, came the difficult operation of "getting out at the head." On account of the rocky nature of the bank, the canal was begun a good half mile below the head of the rapids. The current was swift and, in high water, it required fifteen or twenty men to get
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a boat from the head of the canal to smooth water above the rapids. This was done by "tracking." A long rope was fastened to the boat's mast or prow and the trackmen attached to it by yokes and collars, would elamber along the bank and "haul her over," with the assistance of polemen on the boat pushing to keep her off shore. The Proprietors furnished these trackmen free of expense to boatmen.
Harry Robinson, who has been credited with the invention of the swing ferry, built a machine which easily performed the work of the trackmen and was called by rivermen a "fandango." Projecting above each side of a staunch boat was fastened an upright timber strongly braced. These supported an iron axle whose ends extended outside of the uprights. To each end of the axle a paddle wheel was firmly fixed so that the two wheels revolved with the axle. The axle and wheels could be raised or lowered at will. An inch and a quarter cable, some two thousand feet long and anchored well above the rapids was attached to the axle. When the fandango had been pushed out into the stream and the paddle wheels let down, the current, winding the cable on the axle, swiftly drew the fandango upstream, attended by the lugger which was fastened astern.
On March 1, 1842, five moneyed men of Northampton with their associates, were incorporated as the Northampton and Springfield Rail Road Corporation, to build a road, "Com- meneing within one mile of the courthouse in Northampton, crossing the Connectieut River near Mt. Holyoke and passing down the valley of said river; on the east side thereof through a portion of Hadley, South Hadley and Springfield to meet the traek of the Hartford and Springfield Corporation at Cabotville; or, changing from said line at or near Stony Brook, in South- Hadley and passing over the plains and crossing the Chicopee River near the Falls and uniting with the Western Rail Road easterly of the depot in Springfield." The capital stock was to be four hundred thousand dollars. On March 21, 1845, the name of the corporation was changed to that of the Connecticut River Rail Road Company and it was authorized to change its route to the west side of the river. The road was completed to Cabot- ville, now Chicopee Junction on February 28, 1845, and to Northampton by December 15, 1845.
South Hadley people had no notion of being side-tracked in this high-handed way and procured a charter for the Hamp-
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shire and Hampden Rail Road Company, whose line was to extend from Willimansett, by Hockanum and Amherst to Grout's Corner, now Miller's Falls, in Montague. In January, 1847, engineers were surveying the route between Willimansett and Hoekanum and lands were bonded over a large portion of the line, but the project never went beyond a first assessment of three dollars a share, payable on the fifteen day of the next March.
This is the nearest approach to the acquisition of railroad facilities that the town has had and the probability is that South IIadley will never be invaded by the steam horse.
In the course of time the "Canal Tavern" had passed out of the hands of Landlord Stockbridge and, under the less careful management of men who made the barroom trade the main feature of the business, had become known as a "rum hole," and reputable citizens of the village resolved to make an end of the disgraceful use of the old building. The property had been inherited by Abigail L. Cooley, a granddaughter of Ariel Cooley, and she, with her husband, John I. Crandall, were living in Charlemont, Franklin County. After much negotiating, on the first of April, 1846, Mr. and Mrs. Crandall, in consideration of „thirty-eight hundred dollars conveyed the tavern with a large parcel of land to Alonzo Bardwell, William Bowdoin, Joseph C. Parsons, Joseph Carew, John Gaylord, James A. L'Amoreux, William Pearson, Otis Goodman, Alonzo Lamb, Stephen Pepper and Joseph Town. It was, undoubtedly, a "white elephant" on the hands of these resolute temperance men, but, in 1848, the newly organized Glasgow Company bought the property from them at the price which they had paid, with interest.
In the year 1846 Fairbanks & Brothers, seale makers of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, were desirous of removing their large and growing manufactory nearer to the business centers of the country. George C. Ewing, manager of their New York house, in his stage coach rides up and down the valley, had discerned the possibilities of Ireland Parish as the site of a great manufactur- ing city, using the power furnished by the South Hadley falls. Acting upon his suggestion, they proceeded in a quiet way to buy the rather sandy farms which lay west of the river in Ireland Parish. In the course of a year nearly all the land that was needed had been secured and, assisted by Boston capitalists, they organized the Hadley Falls Company, with a capital of one million dollars, to develop and control the enterprise.
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Later in the season work was begun upon the construction of a wooden dam across the river, over one thousand feet long, with a stone abutment at each end. Over two million feet of lumber were used, mainly hemlock. Most of this was floated down the river from Vermont or New Hampshire. The timber was framed at the head of the canal and sent down the canal as it was wanted for use.
The sills of the dam were very large timbers, forty or more feet long. They were laid lengthwise of the stream and were bolted to the bed rock. The bed of the river was uneven and, in some places, it was necessary to blast out the rock where a sill was to be laid, while in others, more or less blocking up of timbers was needed and longer bolts had to be used. These sills were six feet apart from center to center. Posts of lengths which varied with the upstream slope of the dam were framed into each sill and also into each of four timbers or "stretchers" which bound the posts together. The front of the dam was perpendicu- lar. It, as well as the sloping top, was covered with hemlock planks four inches thick. The erest of the dam was protected by strips of boiler iron, six to eight feet long. The overfall projected twelve feet beyond the erest of the dam and was slightly inclined. * It was framed of timbers twelve inches square and was planked and covered with iron like the dam. Across the full length of the dam was a footbridge, three feet wide and a few feet above the base. This was intended for use in inspecting the dam.
On Thursday, November 16, 1848, at ten minutes before ten o'clock in the morning, the gates of the great dam were shut, amid cheers of the people who crowded the banks of the river. The water was so completely shut off that the bed of the river below the dam was entirely dry except for little pools in hollows of the rock. Hundreds flocked down to promen- ade the footbridge, to wander over the rocky bottom, to gather mementoes of the great day and to catch the fish which had been stranded in the pools. About noon, a small spurt of water was noticed at the base of the dam abont midstream and brush and gravel were thrown in above the dam to stop the leak. Later, water began to ooze through the stone masonry at the west end. About twenty minutes past three o'clock, when the water was within two feet of the crest of the dam, it was pouring through the western abutment in such streams that the workmen were ordered to quit and fly for their lives. Harvey Rice, Isaac Hadley
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and Levi Dickinson, all of South Hadley Canal, with several other men were in a large flat boat, trying to stop the leaks half way across the river and barely reached shore before the dam gave way with a roar which was heard in Granby. Most of the spectators were watching the masonry at the west end expecting every moment that it would give way, but the break came near the center of the dam. Practical men, who had worked on the structure, generally agreed in saying that on account of the im- perfect bolting of the sills to bed roek, the pressure of the water tipped the dam over. The wave of water which went down- stream swept Main street, South Hadley Falls, which was then nearly on a level with the beach, reached the foot of the terrace on which the L'Amorenx honse stands and washed into the high bank of South Main street. The ferryboat had just landed pas- sengers on the South Hadley side when the flood swept it "over Willimansett." Aside from that of a horse tied to a post on Main street, no life was lost.
The wooden part of the dam was almost entirely carried away beyond recovery and the total damage was estimated at fifty thousand dollars.
One incident of the disaster which has floated down the years concerns James K. Mills, the hustling agent of the Hadley Falls Company, who was as energetic in language as in action. He used the newly established telegraph line to Boston for hourly despatches to keep the directors advised of the progress of the great work. At such an hour he reported that the water was at a certain height on the dam; sixty minutes later, the water was so much higher, at three o'clock the water was within two feet of the crest of the dam and at half-past three he telegraphed, "Dam gone to hell by way of Willimansett."
Now, Canal Village had another fit of the bhies. However, the Hadley Falls Company made preparations at once for re- building the dam and there were busy times at the "head of the canal" where the timber were framed, in the early months of 1848.
During that winter, also, William Bowdoin, Charles Peck and George M. Atwater were incorporated as the Glasgow Com- pany, with a capital of three hundred thousand dollars, to mann- facture cotton, woolen, worsted or silk goods, at Sonth Hadley.
A little later, Joseph Carew, Francis M. Carew and James B. Rumurill were incorporated as the Carew Manufacturing Com-
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pany to manufacture paper at South Hadley, with a capital not to exceed seventy-five thousand dollars. The paid-up capital was thirty-five thousand dollars and was never increased.
In the spring of 1848, the "burnt district," where the ruins of the old mills stood, was invaded by the builders of new mills and the Canal Village, now coming to be known as Sonth Hadley Falls, was alive again.
With the passing of the old canal and the raising of the river thirty feet above the rugged bed which for untold ages had torn and fretted its current, the Canal Village lost oue of its most attractive spots. Between the canal and river was a plateau of varying width along which ran the towpath. It stood some thirty feet above the river level and, on the bank, sometimes sloping, sometimes a precipice, great trees found footing to shoot up and overarch the pathway, while, interspersed, was all the thick, wild growth of bushes, vines and flowering plants that haunts the riverside. The fresh, cool air, beneath the shading trees, was alive with nmusical tones that rose from the swift flow of the river in its rocky bed. Here, if ever, was the place for "sessions of sweet, silent thought." Here the ministers came to ponder the "deep things of God" and prepare their two sermons for the coming Sabbath. Here the children found their happiest playground. . Here, of an evening, tired workers sought rest and refreshment and here, as the evening grew to its end, was the lovers' walk.
On June 6, 1850, Alonzo Lamb conveyed to Benjamin Cong- don of Sturbridge, Augustus Rice of Fitchburg and Stephen C. Weld of Pahner, land on the east bank of the Connecticut River, above the dam at South Hadley Falls, and they at onee erected a mill for the manufacture of boxes and box shooks. The next June Rice sold to his partners his one-third interest in the plant and business of Congdon, Weld & Co., and they, on the same day, sold the share to Stephen Hohan of Fitchburg. In September, 1864, Mr. Weld sold his interest to his partners and in December, 1867, Mr. Hohnan sold his half interest to William E. Congdon, son of the senior partner. The firm did a large business, having in faet nearly a monopoly of the manufacture of packing cases for the mills of Chicopee and Holyoke. Soon after Mr. Holman left the firm, the plant was burned down. B. Congdon & Son rebuilt on a larger seale with every modern improvement and a fine arrangement for hauling logs from the river. But they began
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to meet with competition and, being on the wrong side of the river, were subjected to expenses which disabled them from holding their customers. Failure was, therefore, but a question of time. Then came the fire that so often follows failure and the Holyoke Water Power Company purchased the land.
The schoolhouse which the South Preeinet voted in 1738 to build and which was not finished until 1754, one year after South Hadley had been incorporated, remained on its original site until about 1826, when it was moved to a lot on the easterly side of what is now College street, forty feet wide and sixty feet deep which Joseph Story sold to the Middle School District. In 1847 the agents of the North Division of School District Number One conveyed the land and building to the agents of the Sonth Division of School District Number One. In October, 1848, Jonathan Barnett sold to School District Number One the land south of his residence on the west side of College street where the South Middle schoolhouse was built. The schoolhouse and lot were sold by the town to Jonathan Burnett in 1870, when the school distriet system was abolished.
In 1847, the old first schoolhouse and its site were sold to Eliza M. Dwight, who lived next south of Shubael Cook and owned the land north, east and south of the premises. Two years later she sold her homestead and the schoolhouse lot to Sheldon Snow. Mr. Snow ten years later sold the school lot and other land to Lorenzo W. Lyman. From Mr. Lyman the property passed to Fannie A. Esterbrook and it is now owned by the college.
The school building was moved to the rear of Mr. Snow's house and made into a shoeshop and after moving on once more is now used as a storehouse by Howard Gaylord & Co., being the oldest building in town except the dwelling which was the first meetinghouse.
On November 8, 1848, Cyrus and Luther Alvord conveyed to School District Number Two, for school purposes only, the land on which the Falls Woods schoolhouse now stands. The school- honse which was built at the intersection of Alvord and byman streets in 1769, had in its two rooms accommodated ninety pupils at a time when large families were the rule in Falls Woods. It was sold and converted into a tenement but was torn down a few · years ago.
About 1846 a small schoolhouse was built at the corner of High and North Main street in South Hadley Falls, on land
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whose use was given by Alonzo Lamb. Mr. Lamb's son, Deacon George E. Lamb, has this year bought the building and the town has surrendered all right to use of the land.
Those who lived near the old white schoolhouse, at Sonth Hadley Falls, disliked it so much as a neighbor that they could not wait for the six thousand years' term of Ariel Cooley's lease to expire but, in 1851, persuaded the voters of the district to bny eighty-four rods of land from Mrs. Edith Gillett on what was thereafter known as School street. Here a brick schoolhouse was built at once and, with sundry alterations and enlargements, it is in use today.
The discarded schoolhouse was sold by the Cooley heirs to the Glasgow Company and has since been occupied by representatives of each new nationality that has come to town until it has become so dilapidated that there are none so poor as to live in it.
In May, 1851, the First Parish of Sonth Hadley, in con- sideration of one hundred and fifty dollars, conveyed to nineteen members of the parish, who had formed the South Hadley Acad- emy Association, land at the northeasterly corner of Park and College streets, which lay west of a line drawn one foot west of the horse sheds. The academy had already been built upon the land. The ambitious plans for an institution that should rival Hopkins Academy of Hadley, or Deerfield Academy, were never realized. The building served at thes as a high school honse and was much used by the Ingraham Brass Band for practicing and concerts. In January, 1866, the land and building were re- conveyed to the First Parish for eleven hundred and fifty dollars.
The second dam across the Connecticut River had not long been completed before Deacon Alonzo Bardwell of South Hadley Falls took steps to seeure the building of a bridge between that village and the infant town of Holyoke.
In April, 1850, the legislature made Alonzo Bardwell, Charles Peek and James IL. Clapp a corporation under the name of the South Hadley Falls Bridge Company, to ereet a toll bridge between Chapin's brick store, the building now occupied by the Public Library, and the public landing, on the South Hadley side and between the west side of Bridge street and the swing ferry landing, on the Holyoke side of the river. The company was authorized to hold real and personal property to an amount not exceeding seventy thousand dollars. The bridge was to be of wood and at least twenty-six feet in width. The charter was to
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be forfeited if a bridge had not been completed at the end of five years from the date of the act.
In March, 1855, the charter was renewed for the term of five years from April 24, 1855.
On April 27, 1865, Alonzo Bardwell, Stewart S. Chase and Stephen Hlohman, the last two being citizens of Holyoke, were incorporated as the Holyoke and South Hadley Falls Bridge Company, with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars and provisions similar to those of the preceding charters.
In 1866 the company was authorized by the legislature to construet, maintain and use a horse railway track over the bridge to be built by it.
Mr. Chase was agent of the Holyoke Water Power Company which, nearly six years before, had succeeded to the ownership of the dam, canals and town site of the insolvent Hadley Falls Company.
The Water Power Company was then possessed with the notion that Holyoke must be surrounded by a wall to prevent people who had once ventured within her bounds from going elsewhere to live.
In pursuance of this policy, the two Holyoke members of the Bridge Company found ready excuses to delay the beginning of work until Deacon Bardwell died in 1868. a bitterly disap- pointed man.
Meanwhile the travel from the eastern towns to Holyoke had far outgrown the ferry facilities. At times, when travel was good, especially in winter, there would be fifty, sixty, eighty or more two-horse teams waiting to cross the river to Holyoke and nearly equal members of those which patiently watched their turn to regain the east side of the river.
Messrs. Chase and Holman little realized the bonanza which they were throwing away while they sought to keep people shut up in Holyoke.
The last charter had yet six months of life when, late in October, 1869, Mr. Lyman, editor and proprietor of the Holyoke Transcript, Robert B. Johnson, treasurer of the Holyoke Savings Bank and Austin L. Shumway, the leading dry goods merchant of Holyoke, came to the office of R. O. Dwight, in South Hadley Falls and with him visited the offices of the Carew. Hampshire and Glasgow Companies to discuss the project of building a free bridge across the Connecticut River. Messrs. Joseph Carew
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John HI. Southworth and Theodore W. Ellis, the treasurers of the companies, enthusiastically favored the plan and furnished the money to pay the expenses of a survey, to be made at once. This survey was made very soon afterwards by Stockwell Bettes, civil engineer of Springfield, who also furnished plans for a bridge.
Then followed conferences with leading citizens of Holyoke, Sonth Hadley and the eastern towns. The newspapers took up the cause and by the time the legislature met in January, 1870, petitions in favor of the free bridge, signed by fifteen hundred taxpayers and voters of Holyoke, South Hadley, Granby, Belcher- town, Enfield, Ludlow, Amherst and Hadley were ready for presentation.
Deacon Edwin Chase of Holyoke, having served a term in the Senate, had the most legislative experience of any of the petitioners and spent most of the winter at Boston in the interest of the movement. Messrs. Shumway and Dwight also spent time about the State House preparing for the hearing before the Committee on Roads and Bridges. At the hearing, all the towns interested were represented and no one appeared in opposition.
A special providence seemed to attend the movement for, when the committee of the legislature came to Holyoke to view the proposed site of the bridge, a great freshet, most unusual at that time of year, had swept away the ferry boat and, as the committee appeared on the Holyoke bank, the crowd of people who stood on the river wall in South Hadley Falls, where the bridge approach now is, could only helplessly wave their hands, while the river raged between.
The committee promptly reported the bill which had aecom- panied the petitions and it was enacted with little opposition. This was the first aet for the construction of a free bridge across the Connecticut River that passed the legislature of any of the four river states.
The construction of the bridge was placed in charge of a joint board of the commissioners of Hampden and Hampshire counties. Several hearings were held by this board before the location was decided upon. Up to the date of the passage of the bill, it had been agreed by all parties in interest that the bridge should be placed where it now stands.
Not long before the commissioners' hearings began, some malign influence suggested that a location just below the dam, from near the Carew office to High street in Holyoke, would
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better accommodate the publie. There was, at once, a sharp and embittered division in the ranks of the friends of the free bridge. Capital favored the new suggestion while the people who would make most use of the bridge fought for the original location. Many years have passed and the decision of the board has been fully justified.
An iron bridge, sixteen hundred feet long and twenty-seven feet wide was built at an expense of one hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars and opened to travel in 1872.
This bridge became insufficient for the accommodation of the travel across it and was replaced in 1890 by the present structure, which is eighteen feet wider than its predecessor. The new bridge was built around the old one, with little interruption of its use.
The fine water power on Bachelor's Brook, west of the high- way at Pearl City, was first used for a mill in which Josiah Snow and, after him, his son, Spencer Snow, ground hemlock bark for their tannery. Towards the end of 1854 Ezra Allen bought the Snow "bark mill lot" and by 1857 had acquired all the land around the lower falls of the Brook. In that year he and his son, Ezra Augustus Allen, built what was for that day a first class mill for making manila paper. In January, 1865, this mill was sold for fifteen thousand dollars to Samuel Couverse who, a year later, sold the plant for eighteen thousand dollars to George M. Stearns and a member of other Chicopee men, with Frederick Taylor and S. Mills Cook of Granby. They bought as tenants in common and the youthful attorney, who was to become the brilliant and beloved leader of the Hampden bar, owned a one-thirty-second share of the property. Gradually, the Chicopee proprietors sold their interests and, at last, the Granby men be- came sole owners. Under the firm name of Taylor, Cook & Co. they conducted a prosperous business for some years until there came that fatal fire which ends so many business enterprises on our smaller streams.
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