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 11
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On the south side of Buttery Brook and east of the old Springfield road there stood until some ten years ago a frame building which was known as the Red Shop. When or by whom it was built neither records nor tradition tell, but about sixty- five years ago it was occupied by Stephen Merchant for the first manufactory of friction matches in the valley if not, indeed, the very first one in the United States. They were made in cards like the common matches now in use and each card was dipped by
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hand into a preparation of sulphur. The cards were placed in piles to dry and, when dried, were packed in boxes for sale. Mr. Merchant and his family, with the assistance of a De Witt boy from Granby, did the manufacturing and when a one-horse wagon load had been prepared, Mr. Merchant peddled his goods around the country. A man who claimed that Merchant, in some way, had infringed a patent which he held sued and attached all Merchant's property as well as his body and the Red Shop went out of business. There is a legend that the shop was, once upon a time, a counterfeiters' den, from which the valley was flooded with base coin until the United States officers put the old shop, again, out of business. The last known manufacture carried on in the building was that of perenssion caps by our late townsman, Edward Lester, not long before the outbreak of the civil war.
A few years ago Charles C. Abbey moved it to one of the streets which he laid out north of Fairview and there it now does duty as a dwelling house.
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Mention has been made of Harry Robinson and it would be unjust to one of the best known and most notable figures in the river world of our valley to say nothing of his brother Rufus, or, as he was always called, Rufe Robinson. He was, by conimon consent, the most consummate waterman on the Connectiont. One of his most famous feats was the sailing of a boat loaded with a valuable cargo up to Wells River, Vermont, the first time that he had ever been beyond Turner's Falls. It was said that not merely by ripples which the common eye could note, but by. the changing hue of the water's surface and by many another sign which he alone understood, he could avoid hidden rocks and snags and find out the safest channel. When there was anything to be done upon the river which required the utmost conrage and perfect skill, Rufe was the man to do it. When the owners of the steamboat Adam Dunean found that she could not be made to pay on the route from Stony Brook to Turner's Falls, they decided to run her over Hadley Falls and Rufe agreed to pilot her. All the machinery and movable things were taken out and, with another man as brave, whose name has not come down to us, he cast off the boat from Stony Brook landing at a time of high water. Rufe in the bow picked out the course, motioning with hands and arms to the steersman and in less time than it takes for the writing, boat, pilot, hehnsman and the only passenger, Rufe's faithful dog, were over the falls and Willimansett, and
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safe at the lower landing. At that time he lived in what had been the old Pomeroy in, on the Granby road. The site of the house has now nearly disappeared as the Lynch Brothers Brick Company has excavated it for its elay.
When the canal was closed and navigation of the river came to an end, theold waterman fell on evil days. He lost wife and fam- ily and what little property he had and at last lived in a shanty back of Hiram Smith's store. In those days the old rivermen were more than once called on to show their watercraft by taking a boat up the rapids to resene someone who had been carried over the dam and, by rare good fortune, found refuge on a rock in midenrrent. Rufe was always ready and always the leader in the work. At last, in March, 1854, while he was returning from Holyoke by boat, above the dam, the time came for him that comes to all and the river, as if loth to part with her true lover, kept him in her embrace until, long afterwards, far down towards Chicopee, she gave up her dead.
Wild turkeys were abundant on Mt. Holyoke when South Hadley was first settled and, long before white men came to live this side of the mountain, the Hadley hunters had given the name of Turkey Pass to the notch in Mt. Holyoke through which ran the Indian trail to the southern hunting ground, and where the electric car now speeds from South Hadley to Amherst. There was a ready market for them and, from 1730 to 1735, the price for the dressed birds was a pemy and a half a ponud. The price gradually rose as their number diminished and in 1820 it was from ten to twelve and a half cents. The dressed weight ranged from five to fifteen ponnds. There was a flock on Mi. Tom in 1842, a few in 1845, and a single one in 1851. A few remained on Mt. Holyoke later than that. It is said that a year or two before the outbreak of the civil war, a party of hunters from Springfield and Holyoke went to Rock Ferry and there divided, a part ascending the north peak of MH. Tom and the others eross- ing the river to Mt. Holyoke, north and east of the well known roosting place of the birds. The latter party beat the woods and drove the few surviving turkeys to the southerly end of the mountain, whence they took flight for Mt. Tom, but before the poor creatures could light, the guns of the ambushed hunters had exterminated the noblest species of birds that ever winged the air of our valley. South Hadley, of course, had many turkey hunters, but the only one of whom memory remains was Chauncey
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HIale, who lived in a stone house, beyond Bachelor's Brook, across the road from Blodgett's Forge, at what is now called Pearl City. Hle was a noted hunter and had a whistle made ont of a turkey's wing bone, with which he called the birds. He succeeded in- effecting a cross of the domestic with the wild turkey and the offspring were a noted breed of fowls. But his bones are dust, the stone house has disappeared, the famous breed is lost and the wild turkeys have perished from the face of the valley.
In 1860, when Deacon Bardwell's second and nnrenewed bridge charter expired by limitation, the country was in the pre- liminary excitement of the opening presidential campaign which resulted in Lincoln's election and the civil war. During the five years' strife South Hadley did her full share. Out of a popula- tion of a little over twenty-two hundred, she sent two hundred and twenty-four of her sons to battle. Many of them died at the front, some came home to linger and die and some are with us yet, with unhealed wounds and wasted health as honorable tokens of service, but never a man failed in duty or in prompt sacrifice for his country.
During the war the Glasgow Company had its full share of the prosperity which rolled in upon every manufacturing con- cern and in 1864 devoted a part of its surplus profits to building a paper mill on the canal just below the Carew mill. The mill made writing paper and the prodnet was mainly sold by Lewis J. Powers of Springfield, whose phenomenal rise from the posi- tion of a railroad newsboy to that of quite the leading paper dealer in the valley was the sensation of the day.
In April, 1866, the mill was sold to the Hampshire Paper Company, a corporation of which the Glasgow Company's stock- holders and Edward Southworth, Wells Southworth and Jolm II. Southworth were members.
In 1855 the village of South Hadley Falls was organized into Fire Distriet Number One in the Town of South Hadley. A hand fire engine, manned by a volunteer company was maintained and cisterns or reservoirs of water were established in all parts of the district.
That seetion of the district which lay east and south of Buttery Brook was well supplied with water for domestic pur- poses by the Grove Street Aqueduct Company and the Spring Street Aqueduct Company and by many lines of pipe supplying one or more honses. This water was obtained from the numerous
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springs which issue from the high bank that slopes down from the eastern plain.
The hill portion of the district was dependent for water upon the seanty supply furnished by shallow wells sunk into the underlying rock and a water famine came often at midwinter as . well as in hottest August.
It was only after several attempts that the hill folks, in 1872, secured a vote of the district in favor of procuring authority from the legislature for the introduction throughont the village of a system of waterworks for fire and domestic purposes. The water was furnished by a reservoir on Buttery Brook which has since been enlarged to the capacity of three million gallons. In 1891 another reservoir of thirty million gallons' capacity was constructed on Leapingwell Brook, near the Granby road.
For nearly one hundred years there had been a sawmill at the lower falls of Stony Brook when, on April 1, 1834, Peter Allen sold the mill site, containing nearly three acres of land. to John N. Hastings and Alonzo Cutler, both of Enfield, in this state. The purchasers owned the right to use in Hampshire County certain patented sash-making machinery and at once erected buildings and fitted them with machinery and tools for making sash tools and sashes. On the eleventh day of the next September, Cutler sold his half interest to his partner. On April 9, 1836, Hastings sold the plant to JJoseph and Chester Hastings. Chester soon afterward sold his interest to Joseph and Joseph made a success of the business. He was a hustler and spent his days at the shop and his nights in traveling to places where busi- ness called him. It is said that his horse became so well. trained that Hastings could sleep in his buggy, as he knew that the horse would go the right road, and, if at fault, would waken his driver by coming to a stop. On January 1, 1853, he sold the plant and business to Eleazar Howard and Moses Gaylord for twenty-five hundred dollars, of which, as the deed states, Howard paid one thousand dollars and Gaylord the remainder. The business has been continued ever since with great success and is now controlled by the second generation of the original Howard and Gaylord families, under the name of Howard, Gaylord & Co.
Before the year 1869, the members of the order of Free and Accepted Masons, resident at South Hadley Falls, were affiliated with the Mt. Tom Lodge of Holyoke. Owing to the early hour at which the swing ferry suspended business, the
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zealous brethren were obliged to purchase and maintain a row- boat, for crossing the river above the dam. This added a certain piquaney to the sense of duty done, especially on dark and stormy nights, when the roar of the falls was unpleasantly near. In that year Mt. Holyoke Lodge was instituted at South Hadley Falls with a membership of twenty. The first officers were Rev. George E. Fisher, Master: Emerson B. Judd. Senior Warden ; William Harris, Junior Warden; Benjamin C. Brainard, Treas- urer and R. O. Dwight, Secretary. The first hall in which the lodge met was the second story of a double tenement frame build- ing owned by the Glasgow Company which is yet standing on the west side of School street. From there a change was made to George E. Dudley's block at the southwest corner of Bridge and Main streets, where Harvey G. Smith's block now stands. When that block was burned, the lodge was opened in due form in its present quarters, in the Suhanek and Carey block, on Main street.
The year 1869 was marked by the orgination and completion of more publie improvements of permanent and farreaching benefit than almost any other twelvemonth of the town's history.
Main street at South Hadley Falls for much of its upper length was nearly on a level with the beach, along which it was laid and every freshet in the river, of more than moderate height, : flooded it near Buttery Brook bridge, so that there was no pass- ing for foot travelers except by boat. An unusually high flood in April. 1869, made the citizens realize that patience was no longer a virtue and the selectmen were directed to raise the street above high water level. A stone wall nearly one thousand feet long was built on the south line of the highway, varying in height from font to nine feet according to the surface of the ground, and the roadbed was raised to the level of the wall. This was the height of that year's freshet and the railing which stands fifteen inches above the wall shows the height of the great freshet of 1862. Travelers along that street have ever since gone dry- shod over Buttery Brook.
The second achievement of that year was the abolishing of school districts and introduction of a system of graded schools throughout the town.
This required the building of a house to accommodate four schools at the Center village and of a one room schoolhouse at Pearl City.
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A high school was maintained for some years in the new schoolhouse at the Center but it has recently been united with the school of that grade at Sonth Hadley Falls. At the latter village a building to accommodate six schools was erected three 1 years ago near the School street building.
The last great work of the year was the obtaining of the charter for the Connecticut River free bridge.
The opening of this bridge to travel in 1872 tended to de- velop all parts of the town but more especially South Hadley Falls, where a number of new streets were laid out and mummerous houses built.
Among the many new comers were a notable munber of sub- stantial citizens from Granby.
After the bridge was in use the next important publie im- provement was the laying out of Bardwell street, which shortened and made easier the way to the Center village by avoiding the long detour over that part of the old Carriage Hill which is now called North Main street.
The fourth and final attempt to obtain the shortest and easiest route between the north and south ends of the town was made in 1875 when what was at first called the "Byron Smith road," after its most zealous promoter, but is now officially designated as Newton street, was built through the Newton Smith and Charles S. Boynton farms.
On this road was soon built up the village of Woodlawn, midway between the Center and the Falls and we may well hope that it will, in time, grow to occupy the interval between those villages.
In 1878 that portion of the historie Springfield road which lay between Charles S. Boynton's house and the Granby road at the "Big Pine Tree" was discontinued and became for the first time private property.
In the autumn of 1884, the Holyoke Street Railway Com- . pany, having its stables, car sheds and office building on the Atwater lot, corner of Main and Bridge streets, at South Hadley Falls, began running horse cars to South Holyoke. In the year 1891 the headquarters of the line was transferred to Holyoke and its motive power changed to electricity.
In 1895 the line was extended through South Hadley Falls to the village of Fairview, in Chicopee, and in 1896 trolley cars began running to South Hadley Center. Last year an electric
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road was built from the Center village to Amherst by the old hunters' "turkey pass" over Mt. Holyoke and there is a lively hope that our neighbors of Granby will next year see electric cars speeding through their beautiful town and that Belehertown will ere long make connection with the Holyoke Street Railway's system.
It is but proper that our daughter, Granby, should receive the credit which is her due for obtaining the first state highway for eastern Hampshire county. After her section had been built, from the Five Corners across Stony Brook to the South Hadley line, South Hadley had, perforce, to ask for a continuance of the good work the whole length of Granby road to Lamb street. This year the state is making Newton and College streets more worthy to be the main thoroughfare of the town.
In the year 1867 Rev. P. J. Harkins, pastor of St. Jerome's Church, in Holyoke, purchased on North Main street, at the Falls, land on which St. Patrick's Church was soon afterwards built. The church remained in charge of Father Harkins for several years and for some time the dwelling house in the rear was oceu- pied as an orphanage, the beginning of that system of benevolent care for needy childhood and old age which this church has so nobly developed in Holyoke and its suburbs. Rev. David F. MeGrath was the first resident pastor.
In 1892 the church was moved down the long hill of North Main street to its present location on Main street, beside Buttery Brook.
In 1863 the South Religious Society became two bodies and the seceding portion organized as the First Congregational Church of South Hadley Falls, with Rev. Richard Knight as pastor. A hall, fitted np for the purpose in the second story of Josiah Bardwell's old residence, was the home of the new organ- ization until 1865, when a beautiful church, built by Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Carew at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars, was deeded to trustees to hold for the use of the ecclesiastical society. In 1878 Mr. Knight and Rev. George E. Fisher, then pastor of the South Religious Society, resigned their offices to facilitate a re- union of the two organizations and Rev. W. S. Hawkes became pastor of the united church, which took the name and house of worship of the younger church.
In 1880 the house of the South Religious Society was sold to the Methodist Episcopal Church.
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On October 19, 1874, Lyman Morton conveyed to Rev. A. B. Dufresne four acres of land on the west side of the old Springfield road and south of the Granby road and the traet was consecrated as a place of burial under the name Precious Blood Cemetery.
On May 4, 1884, Michael Lynch conveyed to Bishop P. J. O'Reilly twelve and a half acres of land on both sides of the Granby road, a little west of the old Springfield road. This land was laid out as a burial ground and consecrated as St. Rose Cemetery.
On April 29, 1892, Bishop O'Reilly purchased a large traet of land, lying east of Woodlawn, which was prepared for use as a burial ground and consecrated as Notre Dame Cemetery.
The Evergreen Cemetery Association was organized in 1868 and now owns abont ten aeres of land, lying west of College street, at the Center village, and having an entrance from Hadley street.
In 1897 the legislature anthorized the town to remove the remains of all who had been interred in the ancient burying ground at South Hadley Center and to convey a portion of the land to Mt. Holyoke College, and reserve the remainder for public use.
Money sufficient to defray the expense having been raised by popular subscription, the handfuls of white ashes which alone remained of the men, women and children who had made the happy life of the town for nearly five generations, were tenderly removed from their resting places and committed again to the bosom of mother earth in the grounds of the Evergreen Cemetery Association.
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In 1897 the town established a free public library, placing it in charge of nine trustees and making an annual appropriation of one thousand dollars for its maintenance. The library now contains four thousand books, in two depositories, one at the Center Village and one at South Hadley Falls. In connection with the latter is a reading room which is well patronized.
In 1902 the town granted its portion of the old burying ground site to the Gaylord Memorial Library Association which had been incorporated to receive from South Hadley's grand old man, William II. Gaylord, a sum of money in trust for the eree- tion and maintenance of a building for the use of the South Hadley free public library. The building has already received its roof and will be completed during the coming winter.
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Mr. Gaylord had previously shown his thoughtful generosity to the town by erecting, on the park at the Center village, a monument, surmounted by the bronze figure of a soldier of the , civil war as a memorial of the sons of South Hadley who have fought for their country.
The fishery at the foot of the great falls was conducted in a more systematic and businesslike way after Daniel Lamb became owner of the beach from Buttery Brook to the Springfield line. Ile appears to have built a fishing wharf at the water's edge where the eastern approach to the bridge is now placed. This was called South Hadley wharf. Some half dozen other wharves were built in the river, one beyond the other, at a distance of one hundred and fifty or two hundred feet apart, nearly in the course of the present bridge. Several of the bridge piers stand on an- cient wharves and other wharves remain as islands in the river. A few of the names of others of these wharves are preserved as Dwight, Chicopee, Westfield, Treland and Negro. The South Hadley and Chicopee wharves were the best fisheries. At the latter three thousand shad were taken at one haul. Each of these wharves was owned by a company, who held as tenants in com- mon. That these fishing privileges were highly vahted is shown by recorded deeds, usually of the one-fortieth part of a fishing wharf, for which the consideration named varies from thirty to forty dollars.'As money was worth more in those days than now, these sales would be equivalent to a price of from three to fon thousand dollars for a fishing wharf at the present time.
Besides what was done at these wharves there was a fishery in the eddy below, which for many years was controlled by the "Old Shiggard Company." This was composed of men from Granby, South Hadley Center and the Canal Village, who had a fish house under the steep bank which leads up to our South Main street and a large flat boat manned by six or eight oarsmen. On a platform in the stern was carefully laid the seine, wide enough to reach from the water's surface to the riverbed in the deepest holes that the sinker line might find and several hundred feet long. As the boat, starting from the beach, well down toward the Springfield line, swept with long strokes far ont into the enrrent and then upstream until it rounded to the shore, above the bend of the river, the captain skilfully threw off the net and noisily directed the rowers. When the boat was bow end on the beach the sturdy oarsmen seized the rope at the end of the seine
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and partly on shore, partly knee deep in water, began to pull in the net, walking the while down the river. At the same time other Old Sluggards were pulling in the downstream end of the net and walking towards the oarsmen. When the two ends were within a hundred feet or so of one another the fishermen halted and pulled the net straight in toward the shore. By this time the net stood up like a fence above the stream and now and then a silvery glint flashed and disappeared in the troubled water. As the fence drew nearer shore these flashes became more frequent in the shoaling water until at length there was between shore and seine nothing but a swirling mass of fishes beating the water to foam in desperate attempts to escape. Then came the fishermen's harvest time and "the hanl" was soon jumping and flapping over the white beach in the agonies of death. Any one who has experi- enced the excitement attendant upon a haul of one hundred and fifty or two hundred fishes can, in a mild way, imagine the scene upon the beach at Taylor Field when the ancient fishermen made their hauls of twenty-five hundred or three thousand shad.
Old Sluggard used to "go 'round" every hour and a half or two hours each week day during the season, giving the fish thne to come up the river and "settle in the eddy" between hauls.
In the intervals of rest, the members and their numerous friends enjoyed cards, "fly loo" and a deal of horseplay, not omitting liquid refrehsments, which were served in the fish house.
The season ended with the twenty-fifth day of June, pursu- ant to an act of the legislature passed in 1812, which made a close time for shad and salmon in the Connecticut River from that date to the first day of December. The same act prohibited the use in the Connecticut River of a seine exceeding forty-five rods in , length and of more than one seine at the same time on a fishing ground.
While Daniel Lamb's widow survived she compelled the Old Sluggard Company to count ont to her a certain proportion of the fish which they caught.
After her death and the division of the Lamb estate, the owners of the beach, in 1853, brought an action of trespass aganist six men of South Hadley and Granby for entering upon the beach and taking and carrying away shad and other fish. This was intended to test the right of Old Sluggard to carry on its fishery and a fierce legal controversy was expected, but the defendants made no fight and acknowledged the exclusive right
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of the owners of the beach to the fishery. The beach owners thereupon formed a fishing company, which controlled the fishery until in 1886 the gill nets at the mouth of the river and the closing of the gap in the Enfield dam which, for sixty years had afforded a passageway for fish, made an end of the business. In 1847, the last year in which the river above the great falls ran untrammeled to the sea, on Monday, May eleventh, two hun- dred shad were taken at one haul and nine hundred during the day, the largest mumber which had been taken in one day for many years. On Monday week, however, twenty-two hundred were taken and during that season the total catch amounted to twenty thousand.
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