USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Middlefield > History of the town of Middlefield, Massachusetts > Part 4
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With the coming of the Revolutionary War the repressive influences upon immigration caused by former wars was again repeated. Once more a hostile power ruled in Canada, threaten- ing the northern provinces with invasion and inciting the Indians to make attacks on outlying villages. The expedition of Bur- goyne in 1777 disrupted the settlements in northern New York, while in the central part of the state the fierce border warfare between the Patriots and Tories, in which Indians were em- ployed on both sides, drove the frontier nearly back to the
24
HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
Hudson River. The climax came in Pennsylvania in 1778 when a force of British, Tories and Indians descended upon the ill- fated Connecticut settlements in the Wyoming Valley killing the greater part of the four hundred colonists and ravaging their farms and villages.
As these scenes of bloodshed and ruin followed each other, the peaceful wooded hills of western Massachusetts must have appeared more and more attractive to those in Connecticut who were forced to seek cheaper lands or whose relatives had en- countered ill fortune or death on the western or northern fron- tiers. Protected by the towns of the Housatonic Valley, the mountain communities to the east were comparatively free from danger of British or Indian attacks. Titles to land were not clouded. It is not surprising, therefore, that the stream of in- migration, flowing steadily toward this region during the war, increased greatly at its close, as the soldiers, released from military service, shouldered the axe in place of the gun and moved with their families to localities already made familiar by military expeditions.
That this movement toward Berkshire and western Hampshire Counties was quite general is shown by the fact that all the townships bordering on Prescott's Grant, as well as the Grant itself, received an influx of settlers at about the same time. The earlier settlers paid less than a dollar an acre for uncleared land. Samuel Taylor, for instance, paid about one hundred dollars for his two hundred sixty-five acres which included much of the land within a half mile radius of what is now Middlefield Center. So low were the prices of frontier lands generally that farm values in Connecticut were seriously affected. In East Haddam the decline was reported as twenty-five per cent, and in Volun- town as much as fifty per cent. This meant a substantial loss to farmers whose only source of wealth was their real estate, and it undoubtedly hastened their removal to the cheaper lands. Many lots in Becket, particularly in the northeast corner, were sold in Hebron, Connecticut. Josiah Arnold found a ready sale for his Prescott's Grant land in East Haddam. Residents of East Windsor, Enfield and Somers purchased many of the lots in the northwest corner of Murrayfield and in the adjoining corner of Worthington.
25
THE MIGRATION TO THE BERKSHIRE HILLS
That religious difficulties at home exercised some influence in this emigration seems not unlikely. The profound effect of the Great Awakening brought about by the preaching of Edwards and Whitfield, particularly in eastern Connecticut, led to the formation of Separatist churches in most of the communities from which Middlefield pioneers came. As the members of these churches, like the Baptists, were compelled by the aid of the state law to contribute to the support of the ministry of the standing order who wielded the political power, much ill feeling was engendered among the different sects. Within the church of Rev. Timothy Edwards father of Jonathan Edwards, in East Windsor, the strife was so bitter that no sacrament was celebrated for a period of three years. Such was the re- ligious atmosphere in which the founders of Middlefield grew up and from which some of them no doubt sought to escape.
But whatever the reasons for emigration, the territory of Middlefield, which in 1770 had only two families, and by 1780 about thirty, was suddenly taken possession of during the next ten years by nearly a hundred families representing six hun- dred individuals, a number nearly equal to twice the present population of the town. By 1790, then, Middlefield was so well settled that forty families, including squatters, speculators, and those who loved the free range of wilderness, had pulled up stakes and moved on to less civilized regions farther west. The hardy, home-seeking farmers and artisans following them felled the virgin forests, made roads over the hills, and built out of their field stone, the walls which have been the admiration of less sturdy descendants. Nearly all of the prominent families of Middlefield date from this period.
It would seem that at this point the town had already received more inhabitants than could carry on successfully the raising of cattle and sheep which required a considerable range of pasturage; yet by the year 1800 about sixty-five more families had arrived. Land values must have risen considerably during this boom period, inasmuch as forty families sold out to the later comers, seeking cheaper properties in other directions. The numerical loss thus sustained, however, was counterbalanced by the natural growth from the intermarriage of the families of the earlier settlers, since the population of Middlefield rose
26
HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
to its maximum of eight hundred seventy-seven inhabitants at the threshold of the nineteenth century.
An examination of the sources from which Middlefield settlers came reveals some interesting facts. The selling of the lots in towns of eastern Connecticut might suggest that the majority of homeseekers came from this locality, but such is hardly the case. While about one hundred fourteen pioneers did come from Con- necticut, as many as eighty-seven came from Massachusetts towns, indicating that some of them had purchased their lots from Connecticut owners.
There seems, however, to have been a marked difference in the character of the immigration from these two sources. The settlers from Massachusetts towns with one exception, came singly, or in twos and threes from many towns scattered throughout the state. The Connecticut people, on the other hand, came largely in colonies from a fewer number of towns. East Windsor, Enfield, East Haddam and Hebron together fur- nished seventy-three settlers, while the neighboring towns of Colchester, Bolton, Somers and Preston contributed twenty-four more.
It can readily be seen that in the formation of a community life out of people more or less unknown to each other at the out- set, it could hardly be otherwise than that the Connecticut leaders, backed by their circles of friends, should be elected to office in preference to the Massachusetts men, who, coming from widely separated towns, had no following among the people of either state. Of the seventeen selectmen chosen between 1783 and 1800 thirteen were from Connecticut and four from Massa- chusetts, while between 1800 and 1830 all were of Connecticut origin but one. Every town clerk and representative to the Gen- eral Court during this period was either a Connecticut man or a descendant of one. In important church and town committees the same situation existed. It was perhaps this solidarity among the Connecticut settlers that explains the fact that as the years went by they formed three fourths of the permanent residents of Middlefield.
The year 1800 marks a turning point in Middlefield history as regards movements of population. Up to this date the immi-
'See Appendix F.
27
THE MIGRATION TO THE BERKSHIRE HILLS
grants greatly outnumbered the emigrants, but after that date the wave of incoming settlers which had suddenly flowed over the hills and ravines ebbed almost as suddenly. No more de- sirable land remained to be occupied in this region. On the other hand, large tracts of farm lands in New York, Pennsyl- vania and Ohio, were being exploited for settlement. These could be purchased by home-seekers at reasonable prices, and were found to be more fertile and more easily tilled than the New England soil.
These conditions explain why only two dozen or so new families ventured to try their fortunes in Middlefield during the first decade of the century, while nearly a hundred families emigrated. Even this considerable loss was neutralized in large measure by the remarkable increase in the families of the older residents, as the census of 1810 records a decrease of only fifty-five inhabi- tants from the number in 1800. By 1820 about ninety more young men and families had left town, causing a net loss of sixty- seven persons at the end of the decade. By 1830, however, the emigration had decreased appreciably, and the town maintained a normal average of over seven hundred inhabitants for the next fifty years.
Like the other towns in this region, Middlefield not only pro- vided a permanent home for such adventurous pioneers as were able and willing to labor incessantly for their livelihood, but was besides a temporary haven of refuge for a large number of fam- ilies during the days of the Revolution and its turbulent after- effects. Of the nearly two hundred settlers who came to Middle- field before 1800, about two thirds moved away after a stay ranging anywhere from two to twenty-five years. It is not strange, then, that there are distributed to-day throughout the Middle West a very large number of people whose ancestors at one time or another lived on the Middlefield hills, although this fact is often unknown both to themselves and to the present day citizens of the town.5
5 For details see Appendix F.
CHAPTER IV
THE PIONEERS AND THEIR TRAILS
T HE first signs of civilization in the Middlefield region came, no doubt, soon after the founding of Pittsfield when its pioneers made their way through "the Greenwoods" to shorten the distance between this frontier settlement and the towns of Westfield and Springfield from which they originally came. It may not have been until the beginning of the Hart- wood plantation, now Washington, in 1760, that a definite trail northwest across the central ridge was blazed by the early settlers there who came from Hartford and vicinity. Before the establishment of Murrayfield, Worthington and Partridgefield the main path from Westfield seems to have led over "Westfield Mountain" and through what is now the hill-town of Mont- gomery down to the "Westfield River Branches" where Hunt- ington village is now situated.
As early as 1760 there were settlers here on small private grants, some of whom were squatters from Blandford, and it was from this locality that the first settlers in Middlefield territory came. From such meager indications as can be found travelers from this point to Hartwood seem to have followed up the val- ley of the Middle Branch to the Den Stream, climbing westward and northward along this tributary. A study of the county records and early road surveys leads to the conclusion that this trail crossed the central ridge in a northwesterly direction, pass- ing just east of the horsesheds of the Highland Agricultural Society, and meeting the location of the present highway to Hinsdale at the Charles Wright farm half a mile north of the Center.1 From here it continued across the upper part of the bed of the fornier Reservoir and on in the same direction over West Hill to Hartwood.
For convenience this path is called "the squatters' trail," as the first settlers in the Middlefield country were squatters pure
1 Where G. E. Cook now lives. (1924)
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29
THE PIONEERS AND THEIR TRAILS
and simple and they were able to develop their new clearings by the use of this trail without the necessity of climbing over the Moose Hill range on which Murrayfield Center was established. It was not destined, however, to become a permanent thorough- fare. The formation in 1762 of the townships of Murrayfield, Worthington and Partridgefield eventually led to the develop- ment of new trails by travelers between their centers and between them and the older settlements at Becket Center and Hartwood over which town roads were later laid out which superseded the earlier trail. The portion crossing Prescott's Grant, however, was laid out as a town road by Middlefield, but was early abandoned.
As the map facing page 62 will show, most of the other trails just mentioned are represented in a general way by the present highways across the township. The most striking exception is the path from Becket Center to Worthington Center which crossed the West Branch some distance west of the present road at "the Switch." It then continued northeast over the southern slope of West Hill to Factory Brook, and, turning east, it climbed over Johnnycake Hill, passing near the present house of Arthur D. Pease and continuing to the Den and the valley of the Middle Branch where it met a road coming down from Worthington Center. Travelers from Becket to Partridgefield branched north at Factory Brook, and followed this stream to the upper part of the Reservoir bed where there is still an old road leading to the county highway toward Hinsdale and Peru.
With these trails in mind we come now to the actual settle- ment of Middlefield territory. So far as can be learned the first inhabitants were the Taggarts,2 James, John and James, Jr., who in 1769 sold their lands near the present Norwich Bridge and took up residence on Province land near the head of the former Reservoir through which the Hartwood trail led. It seems prob- able that before selling out they had made some preliminary clearing at this spot. The Taggarts were immediately followed by a neighbor from Norwich, William Mann, who took up four hundred acres of Province land adjoining the Worthington west line-somewhere on the slope west of the Charles Wright farm already mentioned. It was not until 1771 that this Province
" See Appendix A, page 353.
30
HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
land lying between Worthington and Hartwood was granted to the Prescotts, and though the tract was soon sold and redistrib- uted to prospective settlers, the first legal claimants to the land did not arrive until 1777. Before this date, Miles Washburn, who had purchased Taggart's land in Norwich, also established himself on the Grant, laying claim to two hundred acres on West Hill which extended from the east brow of the ridge to Coles Brook on the west.3 This frontier community was early known as "Taggartstown."
As the Middlefield territory formed a part of the same general range of hills as that on which Murrayfield Center was located, it became more accessible from this direction as the Murrayfield citizens gradually extended their roads toward the northwest corner. The growth of settlement can therefore be traced from the south to the north along the early trails, spreading out grad- ually to the east and west. Each new comer cutting a path to his lot was not only providing for his own home, but was making it possible for another pioneer to advance still further into the forest.
About the time when the squatters had first settled on Pres- cott's Grant, the northward growth of Murrayfield had reached the North End, or what is known to-day as the Holcomb Hill region. By 1770 Benjamin Eggleston, of Windsor, Connecticut, had pushed on to his lot near the foot of Gordon's Hill as the northerly slope was called, just inside the present Middlefield line, and others from the same town or from Enfield soon fol- lowed in his footsteps. Two years later his father, Bigot Eggleston, had settled on the adjoining lot to the north, while John Thompson and John Taylor4 located on the lot beyond near the Becket line. It is impossible at this late day to discover where the log houses of these earliest settlers stood, but they were probably not far from the present highway.
About 1774, John Jones, of Enfield, Connecticut, purchased a lot west of the Egglestons near Collins Hill. The path which he made to his lot is now an abandoned road running southwest
3 An unidentified cellar hole 300 yards southwest of the farmhouse, now owned by Mr. Drozd, may have been the site of his house.
4 Taylor may have lived at the Field place, a few rods north of the A. D. Pease house.
31
THE PIONEERS AND THEIR TRAILS
from the present Chester Center road near its junction with the road leading east to Glendale Falls. Jones sold a portion of this lot to Ebenezer Babcock, of Coventry, Connecticut, which is still called the "Babcock Lot." Samuel Jones, brother of John, and the most influential of this early group in the north- west corner of Murrayfield, purchased some of Bigot Eggleston's land on the main road.5
The first man to settle in the adjoining corner of Becket was Daniel Meeker, formerly of Blandford and Murrayfield, who located about 1774 on the cross trail from Worthington to Becket Center about half a mile west of John Taylor's.6 ( He purchased several lots toward the west and had the largest farm yet estab- lished on Middlefield territory. The portion of this cross trail between his house and the Murrayfield trail, by which he trav- eled to what is now Chester Center, was known as "Meeker's Road" and was much used by other early settlers in the Becket section in reaching their lots. The brook running south down the mountainside to the West Branch and roughly dividing the Becket section from the Murrayfield section was early known as "Meeker's Brook."
Settlement in this region would have been much more difficult had not John Rhoads, of Voluntown, Connecticut, located on the meadows above Glendale Falls about 1772.7 Rhoads made immediate use of the water power for a sawmill and gristmill, and the foundations of this first mill established on Middlefield territory 'can still be seen near the highway at the head of the Falls. Rough paths were soon beaten to these mills by the settlers along the Murrayfield trail which later became town roads. The most important of these at first was the trail from Becket Center which crossed the Murrayfield-Partridgefield trail at John Taylor's on its way to the Den. Along it between Tay- lor's and the mill located four sons of John Rhoads, William, Joseph, Isaac and Silas. The crossing of these trails at Taylor's marked the beginning of the community known to-day as the "Pease District" and was destined to become a center of con- siderable activity.
5 Jones built the original gambrel-roofed house at the George Bell farm where Ovid Eames lives. (1924)
6 The Andrew Meacham farm, owned by Mr. George Millot. (1924)
"Near the Clark B. Wright place.
32
HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
Few of the names of these early settlers are familiar to Mid- dlefield people of the present day, or were known even to their fathers. In only one or two cases have their names been perma- nently attached to the places where they lived. Like the squat- ters, they were frontier adventurers who built only log houses and cleared only enough land to make their property salable at a profit to a more solid type of pioneer.
The first settler whose family was permanently connected with Middlefield was Samuel Taylor, the former Pittsfield pioneer, of whom mention has already been made. Taylor purchased most of the land surrounding what is now the Center, then in the ex- treme southwest corner of Worthington and bordering on Wil- liam Mann's claim on Prescott's Grant. With his six stalwart sons, all of whom were in the Revolution, he did much to clear the land in this locality. His house was built on the old Squat- ters' Trail half a mile east of the Center. About 1773 his son, Elnathan, located along the trail a half mile further northwest, where a younger son, Lewis, succeeded him after a few years.s Most of the land on which the Center now stands was purchased by Moses Orcutt, of Tyringham in 1776. His log house was probably along the trail between the Taylors near the Ambrose Newton house.º He sold out the following year to Robert Cochran, of Blandford, who improved the property before selling it intact to Joseph Blush, of Bolton, Connecticut, in 1783.
That this region was for a short time a typical frontier coun- try where the few settlers sometimes felt themselves free and away from the restraints of the law is indicated by the records of the Court of General Sessions. Samuel Taylor, for instance, sought to recover damages from William Mann for the theft in 1773 of four hundred feet of hemlock boards and also for assault and battery, alleging that said Mann "set upon him with force and arms and clubs" and "did beat and wound and grieviously abuse him" so that "his life was despaired of.") Daniel Meeker also sought the aid of the court to recover from John Rhoads who had promised in the same year to deliver five pounds worth of hemlock boards by a certain date and had failed to do so. In
$ The Taylor place, just north of the Center where the Wayside Lodge now stands. (1924)
º Now the summer home of Miss Kate W. Smith. (1924)
GLENDALE FALLS FOUNDATIONS OF RHOADS' MILL
34
HISTORY OF MIDDLEFIELD
each case justice seems to have been tardily administered, as it was several years before the plaintiffs were awarded their damages.
Most of the pioneers already mentioned were men of seasoned experience, but in 1773 an adventurous young man of twenty- two, on returning to Connecticut from a trading trip to the In- dians on Lake Champlain purchased a lot in the northeast corner of Becket a short distance south of Samuel Taylor's land. This man was David Mack, of Hebron, Connecticut, the forerunner of many other young men from his own and other towns. After boarding with his neighbor, Taylor, for one season while cutting a path to his lot and building his log house,10 he brought his wife and baby to the new home in 1775, making the arduous, and at times perilous, journey in the usual conveyance of the time,- the ox cart.
Before the year was out Mack had a nearer neighbor in Josiah Leonard, of West Springfield, who settled on the lot between him and Taylor.11 Leonard also brought a wife and baby, but the latter did not survive the rigors of pioneer life. The small grave- stone in the back part of the lot marks the first death among the early families, and a parcel of land containing her grave was later set aside to form the first cemetery for the community.
Up to 1775 nothing had been done by the townships of Mur- rayfield, Becket or Worthington, to aid their settlers on the Middlefield ridge in the way of roads. As early as 1772 Hamp- shire County, recognizing the need of a better route to Pittsfield, had surveyed a road from Norwich to Hartwood, apparently over the squatters' trail to Prescott's Grant. Nothing came of this, however, probably because there was no prospect of getting a road across the Grant, which lay in Berkshire County.
In 1775 Murrayfield and Worthington took steps to connect their distant inhabitants with their centers in order to give them their rightful opportunity to attend church and town meeting with as little inconvenience as possible. Murrayfield built a road from the Eggleston's to John Taylor's near the Becket line,
10 His permanent house, built in 1781, is probably the oldest house in Middlefield and is now (1924) owned by Rev. J. B. Clark.
11 The "Parsonage Lot" where the Mack Graveyard and Memorial are located.
35
THE PIONEERS AND THEIR TRAILS
while Worthington made a path from what is now "Smith Hol- low" almost directly southwest to Samuel Taylor's. The present highway from "Blossom Corner" to the turn into the north road near the cemetery is the only portion of this old Worthington path now in use. A road was also built from the top of Glendale Falls down to the river and up the east side of the valley for the benefit of John Rhoads and the other Worthington citizens who desired to have access to his mills. 1193944
But the greatest need of the people on the central ridge still remained,-a through road from Murrayfield to Pittsfield, in- cluding particularly a connecting link across the corner of Becket. As the counties had done nothing to this end, a con- certed movement by the towns seems to have been determined upon by the handful of citizens on the Middlefield ridge who were most interested. In the annual meeting in March, 1776, Josiah Leonard and others petitioned the town of Becket to construct a highway from the Becket line near his house across the corner of the township to meet the road from Murrayfield. At the an- nual meeting in Worthington held at the same time Samuel Taylor headed a similar petition to continue the proposed Becket highway northwest to the Prescott's Grant line,-presumably passing Taylor's house and over the existing squatters' trail.
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