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 4
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THE FIREWORKS.
During the day preparations for the display of fireworks had been made on the beach, well down to the water's. edge, opposite Pleasant street. Early in the evening crowds began to gather on Main and South Main streets, on the beach in front of those streets and on the Connectient River bridge and, at eight o'clock there were, it is estimated, twenty-five thousand people had assembled.
The place was an ideal one for the display and the clouds which threatened rain that did not fall furnished a curtain of darkness which finely displayed the fireworks. From eight to nine o'clock the air was bright with a succession of miscellaneous fireworks and set pieces, including a handsome one made ex- pressly for the occasion, "South Hadley, 1753-1903," until the final piece, "Good Night."
Besides the very successful carrying out of every detail of the two days' celebration, the citizens had eanse for self-congratu- lation that despite great numbers of people drawn together, no accident occurred, no unpleasant incident took place, and no person of the thousands required to be taken in hand by the police except three well known piekpockets, on the first day, and two on the second, who were recognized and arrested before they could get to work.
In addition to the local police, the selectmen seenred a force of ten policemen from Holyoke and a squad of six from Spring- field to assist in handling the crowds.
The fine condition of the streets showed the interest which the selectmen and highway superintendent had taken in prepar- ing for the celebration.
PRESS COMMENTS.
Holyoke Transcript.
The old home week at South Hadley Falls closed last night at 9.30 when the set-piece of the fireworks said "Good Night." There were twenty-five thousand people who were at the close. From every point of vantage to witness the closing fireworks, peo- ple were watching the finest display ever shown in town. The celebration has never been equalled in completeness and in sue- cessful carrying out in the history of South Hadley. Nothing but
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praise can be awarded all those who worked so hard for the gath- erings. They did their work well and were aided by every resi- dent. The result was a celebration which has to be awarded the palm for beauty, cordiality and interest of the many held in this section. The closing part of the program was the fireworks on "The Beach" on Main street. It was an ideal place for fireworks, for they could be seen a long distance and great crowds could be accommodated. And the crowds were there. The cars carried over enormous loads long before the fireworks began and con- tinued to do so all the evening. When the first piece of the fireworks was set off at 8.15, it is estimated that there were twenty-five thousand watching them from every point of van- tage. The bridge was black with people so closely crowded that, once in, no one could get out until the celebration was over. All along the river bank, on both sides, stretched great crowds, watching the fireworks. And they were worth it, for no finer display has ever been seen there. That the committee got its money's worth was the verdict of all who saw the handsome display. It was half past nine o'clock when the celebration ended and everything of the program was history. South Hadley had done itself prond. Every member of every one of the efficient and hard working committees is entitled to credit for the work done. Harmony and enthusiasm had combined in giving such a celebration as probably will not be excelled in this section for some time to come. The town has reason to feel proud over it.
Springfield Republican.
The great popular day of South Hadley's town anniversary has passed its record for a magnificent display, arrangements complete in every detail and a full program carried out in every detail will long stand without an equal and can scarcely be sur- passed even by places with much larger resources. The floral and coaching parade was said by eve-witnesses to be the finest seen in the Connecticut Valley, this season, at least. The decora- tions of the carriages were complete in their beauty and the floats showed the original designs that could only be the result of enthusiastic work and co-operation. As an evidence of the fine feeling that has certainly existed, of the general interest that it had for every resident of the town and of the Falls in partienlar,
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the carrying out of the program today was a splendid testi- monial. Hundreds of onlookers were heard to say, "I never saw anything like it; I don't see how they did it." The parade was over a mile long, there were fully fifteen hundred persons taking part in it and over forty minutes were taken for the entire line to pass a given point. And one of the features of the affair was that there were no skittish horses, no breakdowns and no one was hurt. Instead of any disturbances, everyone was happy and comfortable and those having part in the display seemed glad of the opportunity. Such conditions were ample reward for the committee of arrangements that has worked so hard for weeks to bring about the practically ideal results. It was the general comment that no town that could be compared with Sonth Hadley in size and opportunities was remembered to have equalled the display made here.
Springfield Union.
The town of South Hadley's two-day observance of its 150th anniversary and Old Home week ended in a parting blaze of glory in the Falls last evening, closing a celebration that in every way may serve as a model for like events for years to come. Not only for excellence of program, but for the perfection with which it was carried out, even to the mintest detail, the past two days have been both the wonder and delight of all who have visited the town, and countless favorable comments have been heard. That the committee in charge of the affair has toiled day and night about this success goes without saying, but its efforts would have lacked much without the cordial support accorded it by the townspeople. The old town may well be proud of the showing it has made.
THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT.
On Saturday evening, October 19, 1903, the Exeentive Com- mittee had its final meeting, in the selectmen's room.
Treasurer Fred M. Smith presented a detailed report of receipts and expenses, summed up as follows, viz. :
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1.
2.
3
4.
MISCELLANEOUS VIEWS OF THE PARADE
1. The Old Hand Engine "Fountain No. 1"
2. Pioneer Hose Company
5. Colt's Armory Band of Hartford
3. Redcliffe Canoe Club
4. Miss Clara F. Bushee
RECEIPTS.
Received from Town Treasurer as per appropriation. . $800.00
Received from sale of banquet tickets. 325.80
Received from sale of badges. 77.18
Received from subscriptions. 38.83
Received from subscription, per account of Entertain- ment Committee 18.87
Received from subscriptions, per account of Parade Committee 703.98
Received from sale of material by Parade Committee. . 60.98
$2,025.64
EXPENDITURES.
Paid per orders of Registration and Press Committee. . $1.67.25
Paid per orders of Banquet Committee. . 350:37
Paid per orders of Entertainment Committee. .
93.85
Paid per orders of Music, Athletics and Fireworks Committee
553.52
Paid per orders of Historical Committee.
29.49
Paid orders of Reception Committee
5.00
Paid orders of Parade Committee 766.23
Paid miscellaneous expenses.
25.00
$1,990.71
Balance on hand.
34.93
- $2,025.64
The balance, $34.93, was paid over to the Town Treasurer to be applied to the town contingent fund.
. After accepting the report and an interchange of congratu- latory remarks upon the successful outcome of those two famous days of last July, the committee adjourned sine die and went home to wait patiently for South Hadley's bi-centennial cele- bration.
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HISTORICAL ADDRESS BY R. O. DWIGHT, ESQ.
THE STORY OF SOUTH HADLEY'S ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS.
The town of Hadley was settled in 1659. Its territory extended south of Mt. Holyoke to the head of the great falls on the Connecticut River, not far below the mouth of Stony Brook. In 1683, having a population of five hundred and a township of sixty square miles, it represented to the General Court that the young people were straitened for want of enlargement and removed to remote places and that they were shut in on the east and north by a desolate, barren desert, meaning thereby the territory now occupied by Granby, Amherst and Sunderland. The General Court granted them an addition on the south of four miles square, reserving, however, five hundred aeres for Major John Pynchon of Springfield. This grant was not sur- veyed until 1715 and, at the same time, were established the boundaries of the Pynchon Grant, being very nearly the limits of the present village of South Hadley Falls.
The river Indians had always lived in neighborly friendship with the white settlers. They were constant visitors in the villages and their salutation, netop, my friend, was often heard on streets and country roads. It was not until Philip's emis- saries had taught them how grievously they had been wronged by the white men that they became hostile, in the summer of 1675. As the fortunes of war, after the first surprise, turned more and more against them, they gradually withdrew from the valley. On Friday, August 11, 1676, the last remnant, number- ing fifty or sixty warriors and a hundred women, besides chil- dren, crossed the Connecticut River on rafts at the foot of the great falls in Hadley. That night, around some twenty-five camp fires, on the present site of the city of Holyoke, they slept for the last time in their native valley. Next morning, along a trail which the present highway follows, they fled by the ponds to the southwest and, circling Westfield, pushed on towards the ford of the Housatonic River, where Sheffield now stands. They were detected as they passed Westfield, but no soldiers were at
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hand to contest their passage. On the Sabbath morning, however, Major Taleott, with a force of Connecticut troops and Mohican Indians, providentially arrived and, at noon, he started in pursuit. On Tuesday morning, near the ford of the Housatonic, as the Indians were preparing to resume their flight, the pursners surprised them and killed twenty-five warriors and twenty women and children, besides taking fifteen prisoners. The sur- vivors escaped into the pathless forest and the aboriginal owners of the valley of the Connecticut were blotted from the page of history.
The first grant of land south of Mt. Holyoke by the town of Hadley was made in 1675 to Thomas Selden. It comprised six aeres on the Connecticut River at the month of Dry Brook. In 1682, a tract of land, lying between the mouth of Bachelor's Brook and Stony Brook, and a famous salmon fishery, was granted to Timothy Nash and is now held by title derived from him.
Before 1719, the town had granted land to twelve men, with permission to ereet sawmills and eut timber, south of MIt. Holyoke, but no permanent improvements had been made.
This "southland" was covered by an open, park-like forest. in which the underbrush had been kept down by the ammal fires set by the Indians and, after then, by Hadley hunters. It be- longed to the great horse and cattle pasture of the town and abounded with deer and other game. Wild turkeys made their homes on Mt. Holyoke and, in chestnut and oak groves upon the plains, wild pigeons, during their spring and fall migrations, roosted in countless numbers. .
This pasture land was interseeted by many Indian trails. One came from the north through the "notch" or "crack" or "turkey pass" over Mt. Holyoke, where the highway and electric road now go, to the sandy hill on which South Hadley Center now stands. Another went eastward over Cold Hill and one came from the east over the plains to the fishing ground at the foot of the great falls. They were narrow paths, only wide enough for the foot falls of a single person, as the aborigines never traveled two or more abreast but always in " Indian file." They took the shortest course from point to point, and, as each Indian for countless generations had carefully followed where innumerable predecessors had placed their feet, each trail was worn into a narrow rut.
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The only civilized road through the transmontane part of the town was the highway from Hadley to Springfield, which crossed the Chicopee River by a ford at Seanungamunk, where Chicopee Falls now stands. It was laid twenty rods wide, the width of the present West street in Hadley, so that travelers might find, somewhere within its limits, a passable way.
From this road, at a point near its intersection by the pres- ent road from South Hadley Falls to Granby, was laid. in 1673, a highway to Springfield through the site of the present village of Willimansett and Chicopee street and across the Chicopee River by way of the islands near its mouth.
This gave access to the Great River at the head of boat navigation, below Willimansett rapids and, for more than a century, was used in connection with the river route to Hartford.
On January 25, 1720, the town voted to lay out the land south of Mt. Holyoke, according to the list of estates and polls taken that month. The number of those entitled to draw shares of land was one hundred and seventeen and the total assessed value of their estates was six thousand and sixty-three pounds. ranging from Samuel Porter's two hundred and ninety-five pounds to John Graves' two pounds.
On March 14th of the same year, it was voted to lay out Falls Woods Field, the only general field that was laid ont. Its western boundary was the river, its sonthern, the Pynchon Grant or Farm and its northern, Stony Brook. It extended eastward from the river three hundred and sixty-one rods and seven links or over one mile. The Field contained seventeen hundred and seventy-five acres and each pound of estate drew between forty- six and forty-seven square rods of land. The lot extended east- ward from the river with varying widths. Every man was re- quired to fence according to his share of land.
The fence was on the outer or easterly side of the Field and more than eleven hundred rods long. The only access to each lot, without trespassing on another's land, was at the east end, through this fence, and, of necessity a roadway was worn along the boundary of the Field which, though long disused, shows now in places where the fence once stood. The street in front of the houses of John E. Lyman and Ellis R. Smith preserves the course of this old trespass road. A few years ago, Charles A. Judd obtained a vote of the town to discontinue so much of this road as crossed the portion of his farm which lies east of Lathrop
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street. The Paoli Lathrop or JJonathan White house was built near this road, which, at the time was the only traveled way from Pynchon Grant to Stony Brook.
In like manner house lots and meadow, plain and woodland were divided among the men of Hadley. Six divisions were made and, in all, nineteen thousand seven hundred and seventy-five aeres were thus disposed of, giving each of the proprietors three and a quarter acres for every pound of his assessed estate. The result was that Esquire Porter or his heirs or assigns realized nine hundred and sixty-eight acres, while John Graves had to be content with six and a half acres.
Rev. Jonathan Edwards, writing in 1751, said that there had been for forty or fifty years two parties in Northampton, "some- what like the Court and Country parties of England, if I may compare small things with great." The first party, he says, embraced the great landowners and the parties contended about land and other matters.
It may well be believed that men of Hadley and South Hadley, of like estate with John Graves, had their bitter thoughts and talk about the bloated landholders, which bore fruit a gen- eration or two later in the excesses of Shays' Rebellion.
Settlers were slow about moving into the new country. Elderly people, accustomed to the rich meadow land of Hadley, doubted whether the thin soil of the uplands beyond the moun- tain could furnish a living for farmers and discouraged the bolder spirits who inclined to make the venture. Then, too, a French and Indian war broke out and men were killed or cap- tured by Indians in Hatfield, Deerfield, Greenfield, Easthampton and Westfield, until peace was concluded in 1726. During 1725, also, the river towns suffered from "sore sickness" which occa- sioned many deaths.
Despite these drawbacks, the new home lots were gradually occupied. In November, 1727, twenty-nine men petitioned the General Court to make a precinct or parish south of Mt. Holyoke and to add to the eastern limits a tract of land four miles long by two miles wide. The petition was granted on condition that they should have fifty families within two years and should settle a learned and orthodox divine within three years. On a new petition, next year, the legislature granted their prayer, provided they built a meetinghouse and settled a minister in three years. On July 4, 1732, upon a further petition, the indulgent General
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Court granted them two years from the first of the next August in which to settle a minister.
On March 4, 1728, occurred the first death among the settlers, that of John Preston, and his was the first interment in the bury- ing ground, laid out on the west side of the road over Sandy Hill. This ground was twenty-eight rods along the road by twelve rods wide and ocenpied half the width of the Springfield road.
The first meeting of the South Preeinet of Hadley, of which a record remains, was held March 12, 1732. The frame of a meet- inghouse, forty by thirty feet in size, had then been erected and covered, but the interior was not finished until 1737.
Rev. Grindall Rawson, a Harvard graduate, was installed as minister on October 3, 1733. The precinct granted him a lot of land and built a house upon it in 1734. This house is no longer in existence except a part which was moved and now forms the rear of the Misses Eastman's residence. Upon the lot Col. Rug- gles Woodbridge afterwards erected the stately dwelling house now owned by Mrs. Hollingsworth.
As late as 1750 John Lane was paid for *blowing the eunk" or conch shell, on the Sabbath "as a sign for meeting."
In 1740 dissatisfaction with Mr. Rawson became prevalent among his parishioners and it was inflamed by his refusing, in a publie way, to recognize thirty-nine members of his church as worthy of the name of Christians. Finally, a mutual council of churches was called and advised a separation. The preeinet at once accepted the advice and notified Mr. Rawson to refrain from ministerial services among them. He, however, claimed that the council's advice was conditioned upon the payment of the arrears of salary due him and, as the preeinet had not the money to pay him, he foolishly continued to occupy the pulpit. At length there came a Lord's Day on which a committee of fifteen men, appointed for that purpose by the preeinet, forcibly removed him from pulpit and church.
On April 21, 1742, Rev. John Woodbridge was installed as minister of the church and he remained in office until his death, September 10, 1783. The precinct granted him a home lot and built him the house long afterwards known as the Dunlap house.
The South Precinet of Hadley was made a district by the General Court, with the full consent of the mother town, on April 12, 1753.
Before this date, the British Government, in order to restrict the popular representation in the legislature, which had shown
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too sturdy and independent a spirit, had instructed the Governor of Massachusetts to consent to no aet incorporating a town which authorized the election of a representative. Thereafter, no towns but districts were created, having all the powers of a town except the right to choose a representative to the General Court. They had, however, the right to join with other towns in making such choice, as Amherst, Granby and South Hadley did with Hladley.
After the outbreak of the Revolution districts sent their own representatives and on March 23, 1786, it was enacted that all distriets incorporated before January 1, 1777, should be towns.
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The first meeting of the district was held in the meeting- house on April 30, 1753. Deacon John Smith was moderator; Samuel Smith, Thomas Goodwin, Deacon John Smith. Deacon John Smith, Jr., and Luke Montagne were chosen selectmen; Daniel Nash, town elerk; Deacon John Smith, treasurer; Samuel Smith, Deacon John Smith, Jr., and Luke Montague, assessors; Moses Montague and Asabel Judd, constables; Josiah Moody, Experience Smith and Joseph Cook, hogreeves; Reuben Smith, clerk of the market, sealer, packer and ganger; Thomas Goodwin and Job Alvord, fence viewers, and Stephen White, Jr .. and Josiah White, surveyors of highways.
In all the French and Indian wars from 1744 to the peace of 1763, the precinct and district furnished its full share of men and the bodies of its sons filled many nameless graves in the dark and bloody ground over which the cruel strife raged.
In August, 1757, when news came of the dreadful massacre of the surrendered garrison of Fort William Henry, the valley was filled with horror and terrified lest Western Massachusetts had been laid open to an incursion of the victorious French and Indians. The situation was so alarming that the provincial authorities made preparations to remove the entire population of the town west of the Connecticut, with their personal property, to the eastern bank and there defend the province against the terrible foe. Meanwhile, the militia had hurried to Albany, to keep the war as far from their homes as possible and had gone in such numbers as to make the country seem "evacuated," as General Pepperell wrote from Springfield. Of course the incap- able British officers had no use for them, more especially as it fortunately happened that the French and their allies, satiated with blood and plunder, had gone homeward.
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Capt. Samuel Smith, Lieut. Luke Montague, three sergeants, four corporals and fifty-four privates from South Hadley, were gone twelve days on this expedition.
Though many of us can recall the profound and exulting sense of relief from the burdens and sorrows of war, which the opening spring of 1865 gave our land, none can realize the joy which ran riot through old Hampshire county when Quebee fell, in September, 1759, and an end was forever put to that haunting fear of Indian outrages in which the people had lived for well-nigh three generations.
But the inhabitants of South Hadley were relieved from war's alarms only to plunge into a strife almost as heated if not so deadly.
In 1751 the residents of the South Precinet had grown too minnerous to be accommodated by the meetinghouse and, in March, they voted to build a new one, near the site of the one then occupied. By 1755 they had learned caution and voted to build, if they could agree upon a place. For seven years, in meetings well-nigh innumerable, the men of the west side struggled with the more or less wise men of the east to settle this great question of where to build. In three meetings, held within three weeks, the precinet voted to set the building in five different places, the eastern people being determined that it should stand on Cold Hill. In March, 1760, the east-siders petitioned the General Court to send a committee to decide the place. The preeinet, meantime, had voted to come into a lot to fix the site. When the committee arrived, they cast a lot and it fell to the location near the church. The west side people were well pleased to abide by the lot. Not so the east-siders, for, in January, 1761, they asked of the General Court that they might be separated from South Hadley if the meetinghouse must be built in the place selected. "Owing to the soil," said these stout fighters, "the eastern parts of the district are likely to be much sooner filled with inhabitants than the western part. We think a large portion of the land in the western part is so poor that it will never be inhabited." They asked for a second committee. It came in April and decided that the meeting house should be placed on Cold Hill. It so reported to the General Court, but the two houses disagreed and the report was not accepted. In June, William Eastman, speaking for the men of the east, preemptorily ordered the General Court to accept the
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