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 7
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been a British soldier in the French wars. He worked for the farmers and, doubtless had many a story of the tented field on both sides of the Atlantic with which to delight the farmers' boys and idlers by the winter firesides of the taverns. His is the second name on Captain Noah Goodman's list of fifteen privates "who marched in defence of American liberty on the alarm occasioned by the Lexington fight." When Captain Good- man and twelve privates returned home he, with Joseph Swan and Eliphalet Gaylord, kept on. He joined the eight months' army which besieged Boston in 1775 and served a term of three years, from 1777 to 1780, in Coloned Marshall's Massachusetts line regiment. With advancing years he became a pauper and in November, 1800, was set up at auction and struck off to Deacon Enoch White at fifty cents a week for his keeping.
This method of disposing of the town's poor to the lowest bidder, was customary at that time and enabled South Hadley to keep its pauper expenses down to one hundred and fifty dol- lars a year. The money expended for Peter's support was, how- ever, repaid by the Commonwealth, by annual appropriations of from thirty to forty dollars to pay for "Peter Pendergrass' . board, clothing and doctoring."
On September 25, 1805, Abby Wright bought of Rufus Par- sons, about half an acre of land, nearly triangular in form, on the west side of the present College street and the southeasterly corner of the lot on which the college astronomical observatory stands. On this land was a building which had been used as a carpenter shop but, at the date of her purchase was occupied as a dwelling. Here Miss Wright established a school for girls which she had opened in the spring of 1803. If is a melancholy fact in New England history that as late as the beginning of the nine- teenth century there was little or no provision for the education of girls in the public schools. Woman occupied the lowly estate indicated for her by the onee famous saying of Northampton's eminent lawyer and statesman, Joseph Hawley, "The woman's place and the cat's place is in the chimney corner." No record . remains to tell the course of instruction pursued by Miss Wright, but an advertisement in the Hampshire Gazelle of the year 1804, announcing that Mrs. Ashmun will open a school at Mr. Mann's house, in Northampton, "for the instruction of misses in reading, writing and needlework," with "the price for instruction twelve and a half cents per week for each scholar," affords a probable
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indication of what it probably was. The historian of Hadley says that she taught a number of years and that her school was in good repute. The exact date of the closing of the school cannot be learned but the occasion of its seems to have been the fulfil- ment of her destiny by becoming, some time later than 1808, the wife of her enterprising fellow townsman, Peter Allen, who thereby added to his large landed estate her little schoolhouse lot, according to the accepted theory of ancient law that a wife has been made captive by her husband and that whatever has belonged to the captive becomes the property of her captor. She was a native of Wethersfield, Connecticut, and died December 21, 1842, at the age of sixty-nine. She lived long enough to see the successful beginning of Mary Lyon's school for the higher edu- cation of women and had the inexpressible pleasure of signing, in relinquishment of dower, one of the two deeds which conveyed the original site of Mt. Holyoke Seminary to its trustees.
On April 17, 1776, John Pooler, for two hundred and ninety pounds, sold to Daniel Lamb of Coventry, Connecticut, his farm of one hundred and forty acres, situate in Taylor Field, south of Buttery Brook.
The house of the Pooler farm was, undoubtedly, what is now known as "the gambrel roof house." Until some fifty years ago it stood on the beach, a little west of the present approach to the Holyoke bridge, and was moved by James A. L'Amoreux to its present site on Lamb street. It is, without doubt, the oldest building now standing in South Hadley Falls.
Mr. Lamb built, in 1781 or 1782, the house on Lamb street now owned and occupied by Martin Dressell and began to keep an inn there in 1782. His great barns and outbuildings stood on the west side of Lamb street where Hobert P. Street's house and lumber yard now are.
Being a keen business man, he became, within a few years, the owner of all the land between Buttery Brook and Springfield line and from the river to the Springfield road, with other large tracts beyond the line and the road and north of Buttery Brook.
It was, doubtless, through his influence that the river road, now known as South Main street and extending into Chicopee, then Springfield, to the pine grove, where it turns up Long ITill and goes eastward to Ludlow, was laid out in 1787.
He was a devont Baptist and, with Rev. John Pendleton, a minister of that denomination newly arrived from Connecticut,
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who owned the farm through which the new road, as it turned from the river, was laid, planned to build a church for the widely scattered members of their denomination. Mr. Pendleton was to give a tract of land where the ancient pine grove now stands- for a burying ground and Mr. Lamb was to give as large a parcel, where the Battersby houses now are, as a site for the church. Mr. Pendleton's land had been dedicated to its intended use, but the arrangements for building the church were incomplete, when Mr. Pendleton was killed by a fall from his horse and the plan was abandoned.
The burial ground, however, was in use for some sixty years, until the river road from Willimansett was laid through it. That the plan for the building of a church was not at once abandoned is shown by the fact that in June, 1798, Daniel Lamb, with others, who were inhabitants of South Hadley, Springfield and West Springfield petitioned the General Court for incorporation as a religious society. Notice was ordered to be served upon the sev- eral towns to appear on the second Thursday of the next session to show cause why the petition should not be granted. The records make no mentioned of the hearing or its result, but the new religions society never had existence.
At that time and for some years later each town was the parish of a Congregational Church. The parish had its board of assessors of taxes who placed a valuation upon the real and personal property of every inhabitant of the town and assessed upon this property a tax for payment of the expenses of the parish. Baptists, Episcopalians and Methodists were obliged to pay this tax like good Congregationalists, no matter where they worshipped God. The only escape was by obtaining incorpora- tion as a religious society, when they could tax themselves for their own religious expenses.
In 1805 Jonathan Dwight of Springfield, who, as a wholesale and retail dealer, importing many goods from Europe, did the largest mercantile business in the valley, sent to South Hadley Canal a trusted clerk, Josiah Bardwell, to take charge of a branch store, which had a few years before been established there by Daniel Lombard. Lombard had died leaving a widow and dangh- ter. Bardwell made a snecess of the business at once and soon married Mrs. Lombard. He also bought for his residence the house which stands at the corner of Main and North Main streets and is called the Palmer Honse. It was built by the Proprietors
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about the time when the canal was completed in 1794, for the use of the superintendent of the canal, and for some years was kept as an inn by Henry Bennett.
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The building standing on Main street next east of this house and owned by Mrs. Magdefran was the store in which for forty years Josiah Bardwell carried on the largest mercantile business ever known in South Hadley. He sold goods all over Eastern Hampshire county. As an indication of the scale on which he did business, it used to be said that, in haying time, it was no unusual thing for him to sell a hogshead of rum in a day, by the jugful.
ITis store was also the local headquarters of the canal busi- ness and every raftsman or boatman, before entering for the up- trip or being discharged downstream had to call on "Unele 'Siah" and pay his toll bill. Here, in early spring, men gathered to make their yearly contracts for work on the locks and canal and here men bound down the river could always find a pilot "over Willimansett."
As the population of the Canal Village increased, the need of a place of religious worship became more pressing. for the distance to the church in the north part of the town by either the Falls Woods or Plains road was long and toilsome. Accordingly, about 1815, on a site furnished by Ariel Cooley, on the east side of the "board road," now North Main street, was erected, prob- ably at Mr. Cooley's expense, what is yet called "the Brick Chapel." The expenses of maintenance were paid by subserip- tions made by the villagers and Baptists, Methodists and Congre- gationalists had their own preachers as many Sundays of the year as the money subscribed by each denomination was proportioned to the whole amount raised.
All the church-going people of the Canal attended the Chapel except Josiah Bardwell and his wife, who drove every fair Sab- bath day to the new Unitarian Church in Springfield .. For this heterodox conduct, Mrs. Bardwell was excommunicated by the South Hadley church, of which she had been a member.
Increasing business and population at the Canal by this time demanded new means of communication with the north part of the town with Granby and with the eastern country.
In August, 1815, that part of the present Carew street which lies between North Main street and Bardwell street and the whole length of Gaylord street to Lamb street were laid out as a county road.
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In September, 1819, Lathrop street and Alvord street to its intersection by Lyman street was laid by the County Court. This was long called the new Falls Woods road.
In September, 1823, the present road from Lamb street to Granby Five Corners was laid.
Previously there had been what was known as the Eastman road, which left the present Granby road near the top of the hill along the course of the narrow way which reaches the old Springfield road between the French cemetery and John Baker's homestead. From that point it passed over the plains in a south- easterly direction crossing Stony Brook on what was called "Eastman bridge" and struck the highway in Granby near William Eastman's house now owned and occupied by Francis A. Forward. This was not a public way, but merely a "trespass road."
The schoolhouse for the Canal village, which the town voted to build in 1798, was placed on land of the Proprietors of the Locks and Canals. It stood within the bounds of what is now called Carew street near Dr. G. G. Hitchcock's house and was approached by a lane leading from North Main street over land of the Proprietors, along the sontherly side of the present Carew street.
The land on which the building stood was sold by the Pro- prietors to Josiah Bardwell and he, in August, 1817, sold it to Lawyer William Bowdoin, reserving the schoolhouse, with liberty to the school district to remove it before the first of April next.
The building was moved to the present site of the "old white schoolhouse," some time in 1818. On December 16, 1818, Ariel Cooley leased in writing to the inhabitants of the Canal School District, for six thousand years, the land on which the school- house stood, containing about twelve rods, with a lane twenty feet wide extending to North Main street and a passageway six feet wide leading to the new road which is now Carew street, all in consideration of one cent and "the good wishes he bears for the prosperity of said district."
As the district records are lost, it is impossible to say when the old schoolhouse was superseded by the yet standing brick building known as "the old white schoolhouse." Some of the oldest citizens have, however, boyish recollections of a school- house which was moved up North Main street one Fourth of July time in the thirties and placed behind the house of Carlton
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Wilcox, now owned by James Ford. There it was used for a car- penter shop until Peregrine Waters, the next owner, made it into the double tenement building which Charles H. Lippman now owns and ocenpies. The "old white schoolhouse" was built about the time of its predecessor's removal.
It was in 1836 that Professor Hitchcock of Amherst College had his attention called to footprints of birds preserved in stone, which had been discovered on the bank of the Connectient at Montagne. Six years elapsed before he could proenre admission to the realm of science of the new department of lehnology, to which his noble collection at Amherst and superb monograph are lasting monuments. Yet it was at Moody Corner, in South Had- ley, and in the year 1802. that Pliny Moody, a boy, ploughing on his father's farm, discovered the first known specimen of these prints of ancient feet, consisting of five tracks in a row.
So strikingly did they resemble the footprints of birds that they were popularly called "turkey tracks," while some local biblical students maintained that they were made by the tired feet of Noah's raven. Dr. Elihn Dwight of South Hadley bought the slab containing the tracks from the boy and it is now in the Appleton cabinet at Amherst. In after years, Mr. Moody, then a graduate of Williams College, helped President Hitchcock find many other highly prized specimens.
About the year 1810 Sonth Hadley owners of real estate along the river bank added to their incomes by leasing the right to mine upon their land for "sea coal, fossils and other minerals." Daniel Lamb, for one hundred dollars and a share of the valu- ables discovered, gave Perkins Nichols of Boston a right to mine all over his broad acres. Moses and Josiah Gaylord, for thirty dollars, sold George Gibbs of Newport, R. I., the privilege of exploring the depths of their Falls Woods farm. Jacob Robinson gave the same George Gibbs the right to mine and dig all over his homestead, which inelnded the Carew estate and all the land abutting the east side of North Main street down to the Brick Chapel. No record or tradition remains of mining operations having been carried on by any of these lessees.
Their project, however, seems less absurd when we learn from Hitchcock's Geology of Massachusetts that pure anthracite coal exists in the rocky formation which underlies South Hadley, though in very minute quantities and are informed that a elass in geology from Mt. Holyoke Seminary or College who studied the
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river bed below the dam at a season of very low water, some years. ago, found the outeropping of a very thin vein of genuine anthra- cite coal.
The volcanic force which created Mt. Tom and Mt. Holyoke so many thousands of years ago, has slept ever since, deep in the bowels of the earth. But, in all these ages, nature has preserved as a memorial of that cataclysm, a sulphur spring, whose outlet is in the valley of a little brook, north of Woodlawn, on Charles S. Boynton's farm. When Sherebiah Butt owned this farm, early in the last century, he developed the spring and its virtues brought from far and near, visitors who filled his inn and over- flowed into the houses of the Center village. Forty years ago, however, the spring had lost its vogue but the health-giving though unsavory water had its votaries among the older people of the town.
Of late years the abundant spring of cold pure water high up on Mt. Holyoke, beside which "Shaking Thomas" had for many years his lonely home, has been found to be highly charged with lithia and is now owned by the Mt. Holyoke Lithia Spring Water Company, who are making its virtues known to the public.
"A Plan of the Town of South Hadley from a survey taken November 17, 1794," shows a "eorn mill" on the north side of "Bachelor's River" and east of the bridge over which the road from South Hadley to Moody Corner passes ; a corn mill on Stony Brook, where the college pumping station now is; a corn mill on Stony Brook north of the road to Granby Five Corners; a felting mill on the same brook where the Stony Brook Paper Company's mill now stands; a corn and sawmill where Howard, Gaylord & Co.'s sash shop now is and a sawmill on the Connecticut River near the mouth of White's Brook.
In March, 1831, Daniel Paine, who was afterward town clerk, made a map of the town which shows a sawmill added to the Moody Corner gristmill on Bachelor's Brook; "Blodgett's Forge" north of "Forge Bridge" across Bachelor's Brook, at what is now called Pearl City; Woodbridge's cotton factory, where the college pumping station now is; Ingram & Kellogg's button factory, where Otis Kellogg now makes eider; Stephen White's sawmill upon the Stony Brook privilege now occupied by Howard, Gaylord & Co .; the sawmill on Connecticut River at White's Brook ; at the Canal Village, between the eanal and river
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a saw, grist, oil and two paper mills and on Buttery Brook near the Granby road, Alonzo Bardwell's tannery.
On April 25, 1770, Samuel Rugg, for the consideration of five pounds, granted Caleb Ely "full liberty and power of ereet- ing a mill and mill dam on Stony Brook, above the falls in said brook in the place where a dam has for many years been standing on my lot on which I dwell," with the right of flowing grantor's land by a dam not to exceed seven feet in height. The water was to be drawn off from the first of May to the tenth day of Septem- ber in each year. Ely erected a fulling mill and dye house and seems to have prospered in business. December 2, 1804, for six hundred and sixty-six dollars and sixty-six cents, he sold to Daniel Moody five aeres of land, with dwelling house, barn, fulling mill, dye house and all tools and implements therein for carrying on the clothier's business. Within two years Daniel Moody sold the property to Joel Clark for five hundred dollars. Clark in 1815, for one thousand dollars, sold to Moses Wood and Enoch Ely, twenty-five square rods of land on Stony Brook, with all the buildings thereon and the tools and implements for fulling and dressing cloth. Two years later Ely sold his half-interest in the property to Moses Wood, who continued the business some twelve years, when Josiah Bardwell became the owner. He, in 1829, sold the property to Stephen White for three hundred and fifty dollars. White added over three acres of land and two houses to the property, replaced the old fulling mill, which was on the east side of the Brook with a satinet factory and batting mill on the west side and improved the power by securing the right to turn the water of Leaping Well Brook, by a canal, into Stony Brook, above his dam. In 1854 he experienced the usual fate of woolen manufacturers on the small streams of New Eng- land and became insolvent. His assignee sold the property to Ellery T. Taber of Fairhaven, Mass., under whom Mr. White managed the business, enjoying the prosperity which the later year's of the civil war brought to all manufacturers. In January, 1865, Taber reconveyed to White and on the same day White sold the houses, mills, water privilege and much other land to Inther H. Arnold for ten thousand dollars. Mr. Arnold had to contend with the business reaction which followed the war and, in 1880, sold to the South Hadley Woolen Company all the property, except what is now the Dunklee homestead, for twenty-two hun- dred dollars.
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The Woolen Company in 1885, after the factory buildings had been destroyed by fire, sold the land and privilege to Kate Shannon. She erected a small mill, and, in 1893 sold the property to B. F. Perkins & Son of Holyoke, who do business as the Stony Brook Paper Company and manufacture paper for calender rolls.
Asa Rumrill for many years owned and operated a corn mill or what would now be called gristmill on Stony Brook, where it crosses Park street. Maltby Strong. the favorite nephew of Ruggles Woodbridge, to whom the homestead was devised. was either wearied of his famous school or needed additional business cares to occupy his mind for, in 1829 he bought the old mill with its site of two and pond of eight acres and transferred the prop- erty to the Woodbridge Manufacturing Company, a corporation which he had organized. A mill, fully equipped for the manu- facture of cotton cloth, was at once erected and began business with Daniel HI. Lamb, as agent. Two of the buildings annexed to the Woodbridge school were moved to the north side of Park street, west of the mill and made into dwelling houses. The one next the mill was burned long ago but the other, which was placed yet further west remains to this day. Mr. Strong was the largest owner of the company's stock and, as business was good and dividends satisfactory, he invested in other enterprises. Ile became a large stockholder and director of the Belchertown Bank and spent much time in pushing the business of the institution. In the summer of 1834, the affairs of the bank became much involved and Mr. Strong, realizing what its failure would mean for his reputation and property, mounted his horse, without a word to any one, and made his way to Rochester, New York, where a colony of South Hadley people were helping to lay the foundations of the rising metropolis. There he became ac- quainted with Erastus T. Smith, a recent comer from Connecti- cut. Mr. Smith had secured a quantity of real estate that was daily rising in value and to him Strong proposed an exchange of the cotton mill at Sonth Hadley for a portion of Smith's Rochester land. Mr. Smith came East to examine the mill and was so well pleased with it that, in August, 1834, the exchange was agreed upon and the Woodbridge Manufacturing Company conveyed its property to him. After arranging for the continu- ance of the business, Mr. Smith went back to Rochester for the winter, intending to return to South Hadley with his family in the spring. It was not long, however, before the cotton mill
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was burned down. Mr. Smith was not discouraged but came to Sonth Hadley in the spring of 1835 with his wife and two little boys, G. Morgan and Byron. He decided to try the manufacture of wrapping paper and built a brick mill on the ruins of the cotton factory. Whether the bricks or the mortar or the brick- layers were at fault is not known, but the new machinery soon played havoe with the walls and, in the end, the building was taken down and replaced with a wooden one. This mill was afterwards purchased by Salathiel Judd, the local innkeeper, and continued in successful operation under the management of his sons, Edwin and Harvey, until the death of Edwin, some ten years ago, when Mt. Holyoke College purchased the property and tore down the mill.
There have been a number of tanneries in town. The house lot now owned by Miss Purrington on the west side of College street was for some years before 1800 the site of the "tan works and vats" of Asabel Judd, cordwainer, as he styles himself in a deed, or, in simpler phrase, the village boot and shoemaker. His son, Elijah, sold the old homestead, which included the Higgins property, recently purchased by Louis I. Alvord, to Ralph Snow and, in 1813, Snow sold what is now Miss Parrington's property to Giles Chapin and Ralph Stebbins, who continued the business of tanning for some years.
Josiah Snow was also a boot and shoemaker, who had a tannery. He lived on the south side of the present Silver street where his granddaughter, Mrs. Maranda House, now resides. His shop was east of the house and beyond was the tamery. Ile owned a privilege on Bachelor's Brook, west of the highway, at what is now called Pearl City, and improved it by a "bark mill" in which he ground hemlock bark for his tammery. His son Spencer succeeded to the business but in 1854, after his death, the "bark mill privilege" was sold to Ezra Allen and utilized for what was, later, the Taylor, Cook & Co.'s paper mill.
In February, 1827, Elisha Pomeroy sold to Alonzo Bardwell two acres of land on the northerly side of the present Gaylord street, with a water privilege on Buttery Brook and a "shop frame." This shop frame soon became a tannery, which con- tinued in successful operation for a quarter of a century. A large business was done, amounting, in 1837, to eighteen thousand four hundred dollars. Much of the leather was shipped down the river to southern markets. After the burning of the Howard
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& Lathrop and D. & J. Ames paper mills, the Canal Village would have been dead but for this busy tannery. After the dam had revived the village, however, the end came to the tannery by the hand of an incendiary. Deacon Bardwell built again on his privilege, this time a factory for the manufacture of farming tools. He had for a partner his son-in-law, Benton, who was an energetic business man, very popular among the townspeople. Benton's tragic death by being caught in the machinery of the mill was a shock to the community and his loss affected the com- pany's business. Again an incendiary wreaked his malice on the deacon. Nothing daunted, Mr. Bardwell erected a saw and grist- mill on the tannery site and, with his son, Charles A. Bardwell in chief control, did a profitable business until the winter of 1868 when the mill was burned to the ground. It is supposed that the three fires were occasioned by Deacon Bardwell's outspoken and energetic opposition to the sale of liquor in the village. The mill was not rebuilt. Deacon Bardwell died in the following summer and only a few slight traces of what was once a flourish- ing place of industry remain on the banks of Buttery Brook, west of Newton street.
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