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 9
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The town had recently received its share of the treasury surplus which Congress had divided among the states and had
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money in hand. Alonzo Lamb took the contract for the Cook's Ilill road and finished the work on time, to the satisfaction of the commissioners.
There have, until within a short time, been citizens living with us who could tell of delightful rides beside the beautiful Connecticut which they enjoyed over that road, but the time of enjoyment was brief, for, with the next spring, came the great Harrison flood which undermined and washed away a large part of the new highway.
It was not until November, 1843, that Joel Miller and others of the Canal Village informed the commissioners that the road had been impaired but could be repaired at no great expense and that upon their petition, the commissioners ordered repairs and alterations to be made by the town before the first day of next July. They estimated the probable expense at twenty-five hun- dred dollars. But South Hadley would not do the work. On March 2, 1846, the commissioners discontinued the south half of the road and on December 9, 1847, they discontinued the north half. On December 5, 1848, they discontinued the unbuilt road from the mouth of Stony Brook to South Hadley. In 1852, on petition of inhabitants of Hadley, the County Commissioners viewed the old road and ordered it repaired, but upon further consideration revoked the order.
So ends the disastrous story of the Cook's Hill road except for the unsuccessful attempt of our Hoekanum neighbors to have the road relaid, a few years ago.
Mark Doolittle was the first lawyer resident in South Hadley. IIe owned, from 1812 to 1817, the house on the west side of College street which is now the homestead of Charles HI. Bates. In 1817 he moved to Belchertown, where he had a long and pros- perous career.
A little before Mr. Doolittle's departure William Bowdoin opened a law office at the Canal Village and continued there in practice until his death in 1856.
About 1820, Epaphras Clark, who had practiced law in Granby a year and found a wife, removed to South Hadley Center and resided there five years. He then went to Enfield where he resided until his death in 1864.
Edward Hooker of Westhampton, upon his admission to the Hampshire bar in 1827 opened an office in South Hadley. Ile married a daughter of Dr. Elihu Dwight and remained until
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1835, when he went with the band of enterprising South Hadley men who helped to build up the newly founded city of Rochester, New York. He died at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1841. For twelve years after Mr. Bowdoin's death there was no law office in South HIadley, until in 1868 one was opened by R. O. Dwight. In 1878 he moved his office to Holyoke. Merrill L. Weleker, a native and resident of South Hadley Falls, has, since 1879, had an office in Holyoke.
'Squire Bowdoin's office for many years before his death was the front part of that portion of the second store of the Gaylord block which is now occupied by St. Andrew's Mission. He was not a jury lawyer but a wise counsellor and a good busi- ness man and was active in town and church affairs. He was a trustee of the South Religious Society, active in securing the loca- tion of Mt. Holyoke Seminary in the town and one of the incor- porators of the seminary, and was named in the aet incorporating the Glasgow Company. Besides holding town offices, he repre- sented South Iladley in the legislature, was a senator and was. chairman of the Board of County Commissioners.
The business which centered at the Canal Village during most of his professional career gave rise to much litigation. It was the day of long credits and every business man found fre- quent need of a lawyer's services.
The Court of Common Pleas held three sessions a year at Northampton for civil business and writs were returnable on the first Monday of each session. As February, June or October drew near, Josiah Bardwell, Daniel. Gillett, the Boating Company and other business men would draw off the accounts of delinquent debtors and send them to 'Squire Bowdoin. He would make the necessary writs and place them in the hands of that prompt, efficient and tireless deputy sheriff, Joel Miller.
Mounting his gig at break of day, this terror of delinquent debtors and evildoers would scour the highways and byways of South Hadley, Granby, Belehertown, even to Enfield, slipping a summnons under the door of some yet sleeping farmer, attaching real estate here, taking a receipt or putting in'a keeper for per- sonal property which he had attached, attaching in the hands of a trustee the goods, effects and credits of a defendant and, if a debtor had no attachable property, taking his body, pursuant to the precept of the writ. At the end of a long day he would drive up to Northampton jail and deliver into the safe-keeping
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of Jailer Clapp the unfortunate debtors conveyed by the proces- sion of hired vehicles and keepers, which followed him to the shire town.
Until after 1760 Richard Cronch, an Englishman who settled in Hadley about 1731, and the nephew of his wife, Richard Crouch Kellogg, were the physicians of South Hadley. For a visit in Hadley, they charged eight pence but for one in South Hadley their price was eight times as much, each mile traveled being reckoned equal to a visit near home. They carried their medicines in their saddlebags and the farther they went the more their powders, pills and potions cost so that the expense of medi- cines was usually two or three times that of the visit.
Of course it was a saving of money to have a doctor near by except for the possibility of his calling more often than was absolutely necessary. Dr. Samuel Vinton was the first physician to reside in town. He settled in the Second Precinet in 1762 and, of course, left South Hadley when Granby was incorporated. bnt, about 1782, he returned and died here in 1801. Benjamin Rng- gles Woodbridge was a practioner of medicine in town as early as 1765 but soon abandoned the profession. Ezekiel White was the first native of Sonth Hadley to study the healing art and was in practice here from about 1775 until his death in 1789. Dr. Elihu Bissell came to town about 1784 and lived on the west side of College street where the house of Charles H. Bates now stands, if not in that very house. Lawyer Mark Doolittle afterwards owned and occupied the place. Dr. Bissell died in 1802.
Dr. Elihn Dwight, a native of Belchertown and graduate of Dartmouth College as well as of the famous office of Dr. Ebenezer Hunt of Northampton, settled in town about 1793 and continued in practice until 1833 when, at the age of seventy, he retired from business. He died June 1, 1854, at the age of ninety. llis house has been removed to make place for the Dwight Hall of Mt. Holyoke College and is now the college in- firmary. In the rear of the dwelling was a building in which he conducted a prosperous drug store. He was an energetic and very successful business man, generous, large minded and public spirited, who well served his day and generation. The vet re- membered quatrain of a local poet, more than a century old, indicates the prompt attention to professional duties which assured his prosperous career.
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Dr. Bissell, he drinks rum: Dr. Vinton is never at home ; Dr. Stebbins, he's the dandy ; Dr. Dwight is always handy.
Dr. Daniel Stebbins afterwards moved to Northampton, where he was for many years the treasurer of Hampshire County.
William W. Dwight, Edward G. Ufford, Samuel D. Brooks, William Lester and Louis II. Clark have, since 1833, been she- cessively the good physicians of the Center Village and Dr. George W. Hubbard now acceptably serves the people.
Dr. Otis Goodman was the first physician of the Canal Village and resided in the house at the corner of Bardwell and Gaylord streets which is now owned by Edward B. Searle. He was succeeded by his son-in-law, Dr. William Pearson, who be- came a convert to homeopathy and was followed in his change by the larger portion of the village families. He died in 1870 and was succeeded by Dr. George G. Hitchcock, who continues in practice. Dr. Gardner Cox, an allopathie physician, opened an office in 1868 and eight years later removed to Holyoke. A year after his removal Dr. Adolph Franz commeneed practice in South Hadley Falls and in 1903 he, also, went to Holyoke. Dr. David E. Harriman opened an office in the village in 1899 and has not yet moved across the river.
In the early forties the Thompsonian system of vegetable medicines and hot baths for the eure of disease became very popular throughont New England, to the great wrath of physi- cians of the old school and believers in the heroic treatment of allopathy. The newspapers enlarged upon the foolishness of the new practitioners and of the patients who trusted them, much as they speak now of believers in the Christian Science treatment. Frequent mention was made of the deaths of those who had taken the baths to cure disease or had trusted their lives to doses of "composition." South Hadley Center had, at one time, two Thompsonian doctors. One resided in the house at present occu- pied by Dr. Nathaniel E. Preston, which stood then where the Woodbridge Inn now stands and the other in the house now owned by the Andrew MeElwain heirs, on College street. The throng of patients at both houses was great and the consumption of wood for heating the baths was enormous. But while the regular doctors and their followers raged the Thompsonians were not mobbed and imprisoned as the venerable Dr. Thompson had been in New Hampshire.
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Asabel Robinson, who lived in the building on Gaylord street now called "the tannery," owned a large tract of land on both sides of the present street. On the east side of the street next north of Josiah Bardwell's pasture, which is now called Ehm Park, he had a brickyard, where the barn and sheds of the Lynch Brothers Brick Company now stand. One hundred years ago, when the Robinson brickyard was flourishing, there was no machinery to do the work. There was in the yard a level piece of beaten ground on which clay and sand, in proper proportions, were dumped and wet down with Buttery Brook water. Then a yoke of oxen was driven to and fro through the compound until it was trodden fine. The workmen, having hand frames con- taining four or eight molds, with their hands pressed the sticky mass into the molds. The bricks were then struck from the molds and left to harden in the sun. When forty or fifty thousand were ready for the kiln, they were piled up and burned.
Charles A. Bardwell has a brick of twice the usual size which has imprinted on it the words, "July 4, 1819, Robinson & Stanley," which came from this old yard.
Robinson and his yard had vanished for many a year when Ebenezer T. Richards, a Holyoke brickmaker, in 1867, purchased of Joel Miller and George W. Bolton some fifteen acres of land at the south end of South Hadley Falls upon which he established a brickyard that for many years did a large business. Richards died in 1882 and the business was continued by his son, George, until 1895 when the yard was closed on account of the exhaustion of the supply of sand and clay.
In 1880 Charles A. Bardwell sold his nice mowing lot of ten acres on the west side of Lamb street and including the old Robinson brickyard, to Maurice. Michael and John Lynch of Holyoke. They at once prepared the land for a brickyard and bought of the Goepel heirs land on the opposite side of the street for its clay and sand. Later, they purchased the Suhanek lot, on the Granby road, which is a solid bank of clay. The brothers did a large business in briek making, but have all passed ou and the sons now manage the Lynch Brothers Briek Company.
In 1880 Charles Rannenberg bought the share of his tenant in common, John Gaylord, in the pasture on the east side of Lamb street, opposite the new yard of the Lynches, and set up a brick- yard. Although new to the business he prospered. In 1882, however, an offer of fifteen thousand dollars tempted him and
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he sold the yard to D. J. and P. J. Landers of Holyoke. The Landers Brothers greatly enlarged the yard and business.
Foreseeing the exhaustion of the clay at their yard, in 1892, they bought from Mary Kilkelly twenty-two and a half aeres of land on the east side of Newton street and, a few years later, moved their plant to this site.
Few who are not directly interested can realize the amount of business done by these yards. Ten and fifteen years ago, when Holyoke was building mills and blocks, these yards, in more than one year, turned out nineteen million bricks.
Some years before his death, Ruggles Woodbridge had allowed his favorite nephew, Maltby Strong, to use his elegant residence for a boys' boarding school. As the school prospered and required larger quarters, new buildings were erected, until the mansion was the center of quite a little settlement. The house of Loomis T. Tiffany was one of these buildings and two were afterwards moved to the north side of Park street as has before been stated.
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This school was very famous in its day and had students from many states. Here the Gilletts, Bowdoins and Dwights and many other South Hadley boys were fitted for college or business. .
These studious youths added much to the life and stir of the village and had many a stout fight with the townies.
But the chief glory of South Hadley, which has carried her fair name to all parts of the habitable globe, came to her in humble guise, in the year 1836.
Mary Lyon, born in Buckland, Franklin County, filled from earliest youth with a consuming desire for her own education and, later, for the education of other young women, in September, 1834, severed her connection with a prosperons boarding school at Ipswich, to give herself to the establishment of a seminary for the higher education of women. Her enthusiastic and tireless devotion to the cause gradually drew around her helpful friends and won contributions of many a widow's mite with now and then the larger gifts of stewards of the Lord.
Sunderland, South Hadley and South Deerfield, each offered the sum of eight thousand dollars to secure the location of the proposed institution and it was only after prolonged discussion and by a bare majority that the committee of seven of Miss Lyon's friends, who had the matter in charge, decided in favor of South Hadley.
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On February 10, 1836, William Bowdoin and Rev. Joseph D. Condit of South Hadley, Rev. John Todd of Northampton, Sam- uel Williston of Easthampton and David Choate of Boston, were incorporated as trustees of Mt. Holyoke Female Seminary.
The site of the seminary was decided upon at a meeting of the trustees held in May, 1836. Messrs. Bowdoin and Tyler, the Canal Village members of the board, were not present at the meet- ing and were very much dissatisfied with the selection. They attempted to have the vote reconsidered, but in vain. Miss Lyon wrote a friend, "I am not partial to the spot but I dread to have the subject agitated." Her lifelong friend, President Hitchcock of Amherst, in his life of her, says, "Some who are familiar with the ground cannot but regret that a more eligible site had not been chosen from among the beautiful building spots in South Hadley."
Tradition has it that a spot north of the Misses Eastman's house and another near the Willard Judd farm in lower Falls Woods were considered by the trustees and rejected.
Among the early fortunate escapes of the infant institution had been the rejecting of a name compounded for it by a zealous friend, namely, The Pangynaskean Seminary which, being trans- lated, signifies the seminary in which all the powers of woman should be cultivated. The newspapers made sarcastic references to this name and chilled to some extent the public interest in the project.
In September, 1836, after the excavation for the basement had been nearly completed, a defeet was discovered in the founda- tion and an expert, who was called in for advice, decided that the foundation was safe but that it would be better to move it back twenty-five feet, making the distance from the highway line sixty feet.
Then, there was doubt about the quality of the brick pur- chased, but, finally, they were pronounced not bad but pretty good.These bricks are said to have been made in a yard opened for the purpose on the high bank east of Bachelor's Brook near the north side of the road from South Hadley Center to Hocka-
After the walls were well underway, one morning, when the masons had gone to their seven o'clock breakfast, after the cus- tomary two hours of work, the structure fell to the ground. Miss
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Lyon's only reply to the superintendent who carried her the news was to thank God that no one had been in the way of injury.
On October 3, 1836, was laid the cornerstone of a building ninety-four feet long, fifty feet wide and four stories in height, intended to accommodate eighty young women and their teachers.
Miss Lyon, while the building was going up and in process of completion, boarded with Rev. Mr. Condit, pastor of the village church, and one of the board of trustees of the new institution. Mr. Condit occupied the house which now stands nearly opposite Mrs. Hollingsworth's residence, but which then stood next north of the seminary, on land which is now a part of the college campus.
She gave all of her time to overseeing the workmen and it is fair to presume that, like "the builders in the early days of art," they "wrought with greatest care each minute and unseen part," for the energetic little woman, with auburn hair, a nose to com- mand and keen blue eyes, saw everywhere.
On November 8, 1837, the seminary opened its doors to eighty elect young women while other eighties had, of necessity, to be refused.
On March 5, 1849, Miss Lyon died, only fifty-two years of age. In a little over eleven years, nineteen hundred young women had entered upon the course of higher education, which with rare exceptions, in all ages of recorded time had been forbidden to their sex and, under the vital force of her personality had re- ceived a mental, moral and spiritual uplift which the world has learned to recognize as the type of Mt. Holyoke's daughters, "cornerstones," indeed, "polished after the similitude of a palace," as reads the seminary and college seal.
It was freely predicted that her death would end the "ex- periment," as it was termed, but the strength of the Lord in whom she had trusted was made perfect in weakness. The teach- ers, whom as pupils she had trained, and on whom her mantle fell, took up the burden and for nearly half a century the insti- tution as seminary, seminary and college and as chartered college, continued its beneficent and ever-broadening career.
There lacked three years of the half century when, on that Sabbath of September, in the year 1896, the building, enlarged and beautified, indeed, but sacred with memories of its founder and of the thousands of women whose lives had been ennobled within its walls, stood four square under the night sky, cireled
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MT. HOLYOKE COLLEGE-PAST AND PRESENT
Mary Lyon's Grave The Old College Building
Mary Lyon, the Founder Mary E. Woolley, the President of the College of today
The New Art Building The Administration Building
and shot through with consuming flames, like the altar builded by the prophet on Mt. Carmel on which the fire of the Lord fell.
Again the false prophets predicted the end of the experiment and foolishly wise people planned the removal of the college from South Hadley. But here she stands and here she will remain while Holyoke and Mt. Tom lift their blue summits to the sky.
The ten acres of land which the trustees bought in 1836 have broadened into one hundred. The building which was burned, dormitory, refectory, lecture hall, administration office, gymna- sium and chapel at once, has been succeeded by half a score, each adapted to its special use and the little band of students who made the beginning of Mt. Holyoke has multiplied tenfold.
It was, doubtless, the incoming of this new element of wor- shippers that made the first parish realize the need of a more spacious and modern church building and in 1844 the meeting- house of 1764 was taken down and a new church erected in its płace.
This church was the second victim of the besom of fire which destroyed the principal building of the Center Village, within quarter of a century.
First came the conflagration of the hotel, stores and postoffice on the west side of the common, when the seminary girls showed the practical efficiency of their fire drill by the only organized attempt made to prevent the spread of the fire along the street.
Before time for morning services on Sunday, January 17, 1875, the third church was burned to the ground. It was a day of raging wind and the blazing shingles carried to the roofs of houses and barns on Cold Hill and in Granby West Parish a slight return for the ten years' war which was waged against the building of its immediate predecessor.
A new church which cost with its finishings and organ about twenty-eight thousand dollars, was dedicated February 23, 1876.
On Sunday, March 4, 1894, soon after the Sabbath school had been dismissed, this church was found to be on fire and speedily went the way of its predecessor.
The present beautiful church was dedicated January 16, 1895, and may it long be the last.
Daniel Lamb died December 27, 1819, and left a widow who long lingered out the patrimony of her step-children. At her death, in 1835, none of his children survived and the grandehil- dren inherited his great landed estate. The children of his son
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Ezekiel became owners of most of the land between Buttery Brook and Springfield line. One of their earliest acts was to deed between two and three acres of land. with an entrance from what is now South Main street, to five trustees of The New Burying Ground Association of South Hadley Falls. The grounds have since been enlarged and are now controlled by a corporation.
It was many years after the canal had been in successful operation before the process, known in our days upon so much larger a scale, of associated capital crowding individuals out of a line of business, asserted itself upon the river.
Gradually boating companies were formed which controlled the freighting business of certain towns or sections of the valley. They owned larger, more convenient and serviceable boats, which were provided with sung cabins, were well rigged with masts and main and topsails and had rudders and hehns instead of steering oars.
Two Springfield companies controlled nearly all the busi- ness of Hampden County.
Bardwell, Ely & Co., composed of Josiah Bardwell, Hiram Smith and Broughton Alvord of South Hadley, Whiting Street and Joseph and Peletiah Ely of Ireland Parish, and David Strong of Northampton, boated for South Hadley, Northampton and adjacent towns.
Their headquarters was at the Canal Village in the large frame building, now owned by Charles A. Bardwell on the west- erly side of Bardwell street, but which then stood on the east bank of Buttery Brook, south of and at a right angle with Main street. The street in those days was nearly on a level with the beach.
The Canal Village was the distributing center for a large portion of eastern Hampshire County and there was a deal of business done in the old storehouse.
Hiram Smith, known throughout the valley as "King Hiram." was the chief executive. Broughton Alvord had charge of business at Hartford and, upon occasion, could throw a troublesome riverman or town rowdy off the pier into the river. David Strong had charge of the upriver business. He was well named for, when really thirsty, he could lift a barrel of cider by the chimes and take a drink out of the bung hole.
The Proprietors of the Locks and Canals realized at an early date that a large portion of the river freight would be carried
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THE HOLYOKE DAM-THE OLD AND NEW
The New Dam at High Water
The Old Dam, with the Apron Partly Constructed
The Old Dam as Originally Built (From an Engraving) The New Dam at Low Water
The Old Dam with the Apron
no farther north than Buttery Brook and, in 1800, obtained authority from the legislature to levy, between Chicopee River and Lamb's Landing, at the foot of the great falls, one third of the tolls charged for the passage of the canal.
Owing to the hard work of poling over Enfield Falls af- though a number of what were called " Falls men" were always at the foot of the falls ready to help a crew, the boats used for freighting were, at first, quite small, rarely exceeding ten tons in capacity.
After the locks and canal at Enfield were completed in 1829, the boats increased in size and could carry sixty or seventy tons.
In November, 1826, steam navigation was introduced by a small stern-wheeled boat which, passing through the canals, ran up the river from Hartford to Bellows Falls, Vermont.
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