USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > King's handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts : a series of monographs, historical and descriptive > Part 3
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
and his smaller kinsman the mastodon, himself as large as an ordinary elephant.
The glacial period came suddenly, - by what change of climate, we do not as yet well know: even less do we know the cause of the change itself. It is likely, that, without any great change in the average temperature of the year, the summers became much cooler, and the winters less cold, while the deposition of water in the form of snow was very greatly increased, so that the cool and probably short summer could not melt it away. Even with our present warm summer, if the snow-fall were to be increased so that the winter fall gave a depth on the average of ten feet, it would probably remain unmelted on the highlands of the Berkshire and Eastern Massachusetts mountain ranges, and, re-enforced by the snow-fall of the following winter, give us glaciers that would creep down the valleys and slowly possess the lowlands. Be this as it may, the glacial sheets grew in this country until the Connecticut Valley was filled to far above the tops of the hills on each side. At its time of greatest thickness, this sheet was probably somewhere near half a mile in depth. It flowed slowly, a few feet a day, down the valley to the sea. This ice-stream was not peculiar to this valley: it was a part of a great sheet that covered nearly all the northern half of North America. In New England, when this dreadful time was at its worst, the ice reached south to beyond Long Island of New York, and ended in a vast sea-wall of ice, and stretched as a vast rolling icy plain far to the north. It swept over the top of Mount Washington in the White Mountains, though that mountain rises three-quarters of a mile above the general level of the country on which it stands. From the valley of the Hudson, where the ice was even deeper than in the Connecticut basin, the ice flowed over the Berkshire Hills, augmenting the tide of frozen water that poured through this way. As this enormous weight of ice ground its way to the sea, it wore down the rocks over which it moved. The soft red sandstones and shales gave way readily, and a large part of their beds that were in the Connecticut Valley before the glacial period were ground away by the ice-mill. Where there were thick masses of lava, a much denser and harder rock, these parts remained projecting, forming the sharp ridges such as Mounts Tom and Holyoke. The pudding-stones were also solid enough to resist better than the sandstones, and so frequently stand up in ridges, while the softer rocks are worn down on either side of them.
After a long period of desolation, when this region was in the condition that Greenland is now, the ice vanished as mysteriously as it came, leaving a vast amount of rocky waste strewn over the land. One of the peculiar features of the glacial period was, that all the regions covered by the glacial sheet seem to have been pressed downwards to a depth proportionate to the thickness of the ice that had lain on their surfaces. When the ice
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
went away, the land crept up slowly to something like its old level; but for a while after the ice went away, this valley, in common with the neigh- boring regions, was very much depressed below the sea-level. This down- sinking of the valley seems to have been greater near its head than near its mouth. About Long Island Sound, the depression probably did not exceed a hundred feet or so; while, as far up as Bellows Falls, the down-sinking was probably more than three hundred feet: so that, for a while after the glaciers disappeared from the valley, it seems to have been returned to the conditions of the triassic period; it became once again a broad but shallow arm of the sea.
When the ice went away, it left the surface of the land deeply covered with a rubbish of sand, clay, and bowlders. The heavy rainfall that marked this ice-period continued to exist, though probably in a less intense form, after the ice had fallen back towards the north pole: so that much of this glacial rubbish was carried away by the streams ; and, from the hill-region about the Connecticut Valley, a vast amount of the lighter part of the waste, that the streams could easily handle, was swept out into the Con- necticut Valley, and laid down beneath the water that covered its surface. This falling of glacial waste, transported and re-arranged by the action of water, formed a very thick sheet in the Connecticut Valley: it was at least a hundred feet deep near its mouth, and over three hundred feet thick in the region near the New-Hampshire line.
Soon after this filling-in of mud, sand, and gravel was completed, the floor of the valley was lifted above the sea, and the river began to wear the waste away. If it were the rule that rivers kept their places unchanged, it would merely have cut a deep channel through this rubbish, leaving steep high banks on each side; but it is a law of rivers, that they swing to and fro in their valleys, cutting first against one bank and then the other. In these swings, the Connecticut River has crossed its valley nearly from side to side, leaving here and there scraps of the old stratified drift in the form of bits of plain ground called terraces. Constantly swinging to and fro. and as constantly cutting downwards towards its bed, these platforms, or terraces, have been left at different heights above the present level of the river. The highest are the oldest, the smallest in area, and the most ruined by the action of frost, rain, and snow. About Springfield, the most prominent and extensive of these terraces is at the height of about a hundred and eighty feet above the level of low water in the river; but it varies more or less in height. Some have thought that the uppermost of these terraces are as much as four hundred feet above the sea; but, above the level of three hundred feet about Springfield, the evidence becomes too obscure to be trusted.
If the reader will go to some convenient hill-top that commands a wide
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
view of the Connecticut Valley, and in his mind restore the vast mass of sand and gravel included below the level of the highest terraces and the present level of the river, he will then see how great has been the work done since the close of the post-glacial period. If he will remember that this post-glacial period probably occupies not over one five-hundredth part of the time that has elapsed since the building of this valley began, he will get a better idea of the wonderful changes that have been witnessed by it, only a small part of which have been recorded in any way that we can read.
- NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
Springfield as a City.
ITS GROWTH FROM A TOWN OF FOURTEEN THOUSAND TO A CITY OF THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND INHABITANTS.
TN the autumn of 1852, - the year that Springfield took on the swaddling- clothes of a city, and had civic incorporation, - I set permanent foot in the then " Infant City," and from that time made it my home for almost a third of a century of years. I went to it at the time named, on a locomotive, from the Berkshire hills, with the complete vote of every town of Berkshire County in my pocket; it being the night of both the National and State elections of that year, the 2d of November. An iron horse, with the long- time faithful locomotive-engineer, - first of the Western, and afterwards of its successor the Boston and Albany Railroad, -the late Louis Sherts, for driver; a young IEL stoker, now a successful officer of a celebrated S line of railway at the West, and myself, in the ORGAN TOWN cab, - dashed into the old Springfield depot, at II P.M .; at which hour the vote of every town in the four western counties of Massachusetts, A CITY save that of one of the towns in eastern Hamp- TY MAY 25.1852. den, - that being lost through a misunderstand- ing as to the meeting-place of the post-riders 14.1636 O.S sent out for it, - was in the "Springfield-Re- The City Seal. publican " office, ready for tabulating and com- piling for the next morning's issue of that paper. And this successful gath- ering of election-returns from the remotest towns of Hampden, Hampshire, Franklin, and Berkshire Counties, was compassed with but limited aid from the telegraph; as the telegraphic service was then both very feeble in quality and small in quantity quite generally throughout the Western Massachusetts towns. Almost the whole election-return collection service was then done by special horse and locomotive expresses. And in this connection it is but simple justice to say, that in the State election of 1883, with all the aids and assistances which a complete and thorough telegraphic service in nearly every village and hamlet in the State, with the addition of efficient and widely established telephonic service, the morning papers of the next day after the election had no better or more complete returns than were given thirty-one years ago, when horse-flesh and steeds of steel were
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
the main factors relied upon for gathering the election-returns for newspaper publication. On the occasion referred to, fifty miles by rail, and nearly as many by carriage or on horseback, - about one hundred in all, - were com- passed by myself, after the counting of the votes at their respective polling- places, reaching Springfield before midnight. Other messengers did equally efficient service in different directions, but none had so wide a reach of country to gather from as the one who scoured the Berkshire hills.
Springfield, at that time, had 14,000 inhabitants, and was often called by would-be smart people, outside its new- ly made boundaries, the "Infant City ; " and more appropriately, by smarter ones inside its legitimate limits, the "City of Magnificent Distances," for it was, in- deed, a city made up from three or four almost distinct villages, or, more prop- erly speaking, localities. Court Square Alior was the acknowledged centre of the city. The Armory Grounds on the hill, Caleb Rice, the First Mayor. bounded by State, Federal, Pearl, and Byers Streets, was one locality, com- paratively by itself. Uncle Sam's Upper Water-shops, on Mill River to the eastward, was another. The Lower Water-shops -farther down the same stream, but since entirely demolished, all marks of buildings, dams, etc., being now obliterated - was still another. The river-bankers bounded the city on the westward, and multiplied exceedingly, as they do now, and prob- ably will to that very indefinite period when "time shall be no longer." To the northward, the railway-depot, into which the tracks of the Western, the Hartford and Springfield, and Connecticut-river Railroads were then laid, was the centre of another settlement, substantially its own; and it took some brisk examples of pedestrianism to compass all these points in the course of an ordinary " constitutional " walk.
The Springfield Armory was then the lion of the town ; and it was shown up to all strangers as such, where
" From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ, rose the burnished arms."
It had prominence, -its grounds for their beauty, and its buildings for their business. At times it was a very busy industrial centre, and brought much money to the town in the support of the skilled workmen who held positions there. To be "an Armorer," in those days, was to be one of the
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
noted men of the town, or city when city it became. The railway-depot was then quite "out of town," and the distance between it and Court Square was broken and badly disconnected. A few scattered blocks and dwelling-houses were arranged along on the west side of the street, with fewer still on the east side; "Barnes's Lot," a large open space where cir- cuses blossomed annually, having prominent place, about midway, with Town Brook, which forks at the corner of Main and Worthington Streets, locating its western boundary, and flowing thence, both northwardly and southwardly, through the city, to the Connecticut River, the southern branch running under the sidewalk on the east side of Main Street, from Worthington Street to York Street.
The young city grew slowly but steadily, and became pretentious only by degrees ; but every day of its city growth has added materially to its beauty, wealth, and permanence. The word "boom" had not then been written down in the popular vo- cabulary; but a boom neverthe- less, of no ordinary dimensions, came to the city with the opening of the war of the Rebellion. The Armory just before the war -for reasons more apparent since than were obvious at the time - had had its stock of arms almost en- tirely removed, and its force of employees reduced to a very few men, enough only remaining to keep the grounds in order, the machinery from rusting, and the property in general from going to decay. But all this was changed when President Lincoln found himself obliged to call repeatedly for troops with which to fight the battles of the Union, and when Philos B. Tyler. the loyal heart of the North responded so patriotically, as they came to the rescue beneath banner and bunting, with shout and song, -
" We're coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more."
Workmen were called from all quarters, gun-making machinery was built and bought as best it might be, old buildings were enlarged, and new ones erected on the grounds, until the Springfield Armory was enabled to equip a full regiment with arms in a single day. This fact necessarily made
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
Springfield famous, and gave much occasion for its name and locality to be kept constantly before the eyes of the people, not only of our own land, but incidentally of the world at large. Over three thousand men were at work at gun-making early in the war; while, just before its breaking-out, only some two hundred and fifty could be counted. The city limits had scarcely room to contain all its new-comers, - had not food and shelter sufficient for the proper accommodation of all the workmen who had been so suddenly gathered upon the grounds of our national Armory. From sheer necessity, many of these swarmed into the outlying regions of country, in search of temporary homes. The cars brought to the city, each morning, scores of workmen from Chicopee, Chico- pee Falls, Holyoke, Northamp- ton, West Springfield, Mitten- eague, and Westfield ; while hastily improvised vehicles came loaded, daily, from Long- meadow East and West, Aga- wam, Wilbraham, Ludlow, and intervening farmhouses, - all returning at night, with weary workmen and empty dinner- pails. Every house in the city was stowed full of humanity, from basement to attic ; board- ing-houses sprang up, like Jo- nah's gourd, in a night, and were ready to " take boarders " in the morning ; and prosperity Eliphalet Trask. reigned on all hands. When the war ended, and the occasion for more arms had passed away, many of the men who had sought and found work in the Armory had seen enough of Springfield to convince them that it was an excellent place in which to make homes for themselves and their families ; that it had good church, school, and general social privileges and advantages, with the promise of a rapid growth and development. As a consequence, many found ways and means for becoming permanent residents; and the building of houses, stores, and blocks, the opening and improving of streets and thoroughfares, and the successful development of industrial interests, have been constantly and steadily made. Three or four years before the outbreak of the Rebellion, the manufacture of the Smith & Wesson pistol was commenced, in a modest way, in hired apartments on Market Street; prospering marvellously, and growing from small beginnings to the rearing of the immense manufac-
-
PHOTO FIL
.00
HENRY ALEXANDER, JUN.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
turing buildings now located on Stockbridge Street ; finally overshadowing the Armory, both in amount and value of its productions, making great wealth for its projectors, and securing to the city a remarkably prosperous and very valuable industry. The railway-car-building industry of the Wason Manufacturing Company, now located at Brightwood, - a northern district of the city, - has also had a rapid and successful growth and development within the limit of years under discussion in this article, until, like the Smith & Wesson estab- lishment, it far outranks the Armory, both in amount and value of its manufactures.
As the Armory in the turn of years lost caste in the matter of being the lion of the town, other lions came into existence, growing apace, until strangers who wanted to "see the town " came by degrees to be shown or told of the Smith & Wesson Pistol Works, the Wa- son Car Manufactory, the establishment of " The Springfield Re- publican," - which pa- per had won for itself, while the city was still very young in years, not Ansel Phelps, jun. only a valuable national reputation, but a wide fame abroad as being a leading representative of dis- tinguished American journalism,- the large printing and publishing house of Samuel Bowles & Co., the modest quarters of G. & C. Merriam (where Webster's Unabridged Dictionary was, and still is, published with much honor and profit to all who have ever come within the charmed circle of its interested parties), and the great Indian Orchard Mills at Indian Orchard, one of the villages of the city.
Springfield, as a town or village, was not, however, unknown to the world in the field of manufacturing, or in the general run of business marts. In- deed, it had a wide name as being the home of one of the earliest and most
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
successful paper-manufacturing establishments in the country, -that of D. & J. Ames. Their works were located on Mill River, where the shops of the Springfield Silk Company now stand. Their paper went to every city, village, and hamlet of our civilized country ; and their name and fame were spread through all the world. In addition to their mills in the suburbs of Springfield village, they had others at Chicopee Falls, at South-Hadley Falls, at Northampton, and at Suffield, Conn., with their business head- quarters for all of them at Springfield. Of the founders of that then wealthy and weighty paper - making firm, the junior member and the inventor of much of the paper- making machinery both then and now in use, - John Ames, - still lives a quiet, retired life, enjoying a fair degree of health, in the old Ames homestead on the easterly slope of Ames Hill; while the senior member, Da- vid Ames, died at the age of 92, on March 12, 1882, after reaching the rank of the oldest and one of the most extensive William B. Calhoun. paper-makers of the United States.
The origin of the paper-making industry of the Connecticut Valley, now so prominent and prosperous, and of such vast dimensions, can easily be traced to the Ames family : the builder of the first paper-mill in Holyoke, Joseph C. Parsons (the president of the Third National Bank of Springfield), having had prominent connection with the Ameses, at the time of their greatest prestige and prosperity ; and George L. Wright, one of the oldest and best practical paper-makers, still in active business-life, at the head of the Worthy Paper Company of West Springfield, acquired his mastery of the paper-making business at the Ames Mills, and had prominent connection with them in their palmiest days. For many years, in the long ago, it was
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
a difficult matter, indeed, to find a sheet of foolscap or letter-paper- the only kinds of writing-paper made in those days -in any bookstore, school- house, or household even, that did not have the stamp of " D. & J. Ames " upon it. And the writing-down of this fact recalls to mind the circumstance, in evidence of the correctness of this statement, that the sheet of paper upon which the hand that writes these lines first attempted to make "pot-hooks " bore the Ames stamp.
Springfield was then broadly known for its Ames paper, while still a town ; so that, when it took on city life and airs, it had the advantage of
Stephen C. Bemis.
being formally introduced, at least in a business way, to "all the world, and the rest of mankind."
Its first mayor was Caleb Rice, who, some half a score of years ago, with the armor of business warfare belted and buckled closely about his loyal heart, as he went to his long home on one of the sunny hillsides of the city of which he was the first official head, was as proud of Springfield, and as free to proclaim her good name and deeds, and as bold to fight for these, as Springfield was appreciative of him in its early days of city life. His busi- ness ability, and faithfulness in official life, have full acknowledgment in the recognized fact, that the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company was built up, under his 22 years' presidency, from a crude local society, to
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
a gigantic national organization. The love for and loyalty to Springfield and its interests, so pleasantly prominent with him, were by no means ex- ceptional in his case. The same record that is made of him in this respect may with equal pertinence and force be accorded to all the city fathers, who have in turn kept up the line of succession most nobly and well from the first days of the mayoralty to the present time.
Nine of the city fathers-including Mayor Rice, Philos B. Tyler, Ansel Phelps, jun., William B. Calhoun, Daniel L. Harris, Stephen C. Bemis, Henry Alexander, jun., Albert D. Briggs, and Charles A. Winchester - have joined the great majority on the other side of the River of Life; while Eliphalet Trask (the third mayor, and the only surviving ex-mayor from the incorpora- tion of the city to the year 1870), William L. Smith, Samuel B. Spooner, John M. Stebbins, Emerson Wight, Lewis J. Powers, William H. Haile, E. W. Ladd, and Henry M. Phillips the present worthy mayor, still remain, - nine again ; thus drawing the line equally between the living and the dead, as to number.
It would be a pleasant thing to do, with time and space at command, to write here, at some considerable length, of all the mayors of the city, with every one of whom I have had most agreeable-never any other-business and social relations ; so much so, indeed, that I cannot allow the occasion to pass without having pleasant thoughts, or of giving a good word or two of the many which I find in my heart for each and every one of them. Limited time and space narrow me down to the following hastily made observations.
In looking over the occupations of those who have filled the office of mayor, it will be noticed that they have been chosen from many walks in life ; and, although a few were in the legal profession, a large number have been active and thrifty manufacturers.
Philos B. Tyler, the city's second mayor, was an active, wide-awake business man, who had much prominence, both at home and abroad, as the president and presiding genius of the American Machine Works, which built cotton-presses for the South, and steam-engines and the like for anybody who wanted them. He controlled a large trade throughout the Southern States before the war, and had much prestige and popularity at home, especially so among his employés and immediate business acquaint- ances.
Eliphalet Trask knows all about Springfield as a city, from A to Z, hav- ing already passed far beyond the prescribed threescore-and-ten milestone on the highway of life, having been a prominent actor in both the political and business circles of the city. His political predilections won for him the lieutenant-governorship in the Know-nothing régime, and he served the State in that capacity from 1858 to 1861. His kindly nod of recognition
Thes Chubbuck, Eng !_ Springfield ,Mass
D. L. Harris.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
and warm grasp of hand for friends are still among the pleasantest features of every-day life on the city streets.
Ansel Phelps, jun., came to Springfield from Greenfield to practise law, and was well known as the attorney for the Western Railroad, where his ability and industry won for him much fame among the railway magnates of his time.
William B. Calhoun, a dignified, scholarly, and pleasant gentleman of the old school, was a popular mayor, who left a city full of mourning friends when he went out for- ever from among them. His early years were given up to the legal profession; but later in life he took the presi- dency of the Hampden Fire Insurance Com- pany, - then a pros- perous institution, - edited " The Connecti- cut Valley Farmer " during its publication by Samuel Bowles & Co., and was also, for a few years, an edi- torial writer on "The Republican."
Daniel L. Harris, whose business - life had been largely spent in successful railroad Albert D. Briggs. building and manage- ment, gave the city a year of vigorous and valuable administration, after the Andrew Jackson style of dispensing authority. His really warm heart and tender nature, hidden as they were at times behind the uprisen walls of his positive nature, were duly accepted and fully appreciated only by those who were the closest to him, or who knew him the most intimately.
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