USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > King's handbook of Springfield, Massachusetts : a series of monographs, historical and descriptive > Part 4
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Stephen C. Bemis, as one of the leading coal-merchants and hardware- dealers, was one of the best-known men of the city, when the mayoralty reins were placed in his hands, during the stormy days of the war of the Rebellion, and when recruiting and drafting for the army were the order of the day. But his energy and faithfulness, all through those trying days, gave the city most excellent service during that exciting emergency.
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Henry Alexander, jun., one of the ablest financial men of the city, first as cashier of the Pynchon Bank, and afterwards as president of the old Springfield -now the Second Nation- al - Bank, was a notably active and efficient mayor, who was never hap- pier than when he was serving Spring- field, or some of Springfield's people or its interests. His capacity for busi . ness was marvellous ; and his physical endurance during the last years of his official life, which was the closing period of the war, was noteworthily great.
Albert D. Briggs was well known to the business world, in and outside of Springfield, as a successful bridge- Charles A. Winchester. builder. His official life as mayor was characterized by the same excellent management as had won for him much success in his business. He was one of the promptest in action, as well as one of the most intelligent mayors,
the city has had; always keep- ing well up with the procession of his predecessors, who had come in and gone out so hon- orably before him, in loyally laboring at all times for the city, and its well-being and well-doing.
Charles A. Winchester, a lawyer of good reputation and sterling worth, was a careful, pains - taking, and excellent mayor, whose death, occurring as it did when just coming into the prime of life, was a great loss to the city to which he gave valuable and efficient service.
Of the later ex-mayors, all of whom still survive, William William L. Smith. L. Smith has a large practice, and a valuable reputation in legal circles, where he is still active and prominent. Soon after coming to Springfield,
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he took the editorial chair of "The Hampden Daily Post," which brought him, I imagine, more honor than profit; and he has consequently devoted his energies and later years entirely to law and its profits.
Samuel B. Spooner, now register of deeds for Hampden County, fur- nishes abundant evidence of his merits and popularity, by holding, as he does, a virtual mortgage on the registry office, with no one to rise up and dispute his claim thereto.
John M. Stebbins snatched a year from his legal profession, that he might serve the city a little while as mayor ; and he served it well, putting on his legal mantle again at the first turn of the tide, and retiring to pri- vate life to grow old and good as he does, quietly and grace- fully.
Emerson Wight walked so correctly the strait and narrow path of the perfect man as mayor, that the city called him back repeatedly for a continu- ance in public life. He always found time to devote to the city's affairs, in addition to those which came to him in his legitimate business as a builder and real-estate owner; and he has been for years, until 1884, president of the Morgan Envelope Company, one of the prosperous manufacturing in- dustries of the city.
Samuel B. Spooner.
Lewis J. Powers, newsboy, bookseller, paper and envelope manufacturer and dealer, a successful boy and man in all these, was equally successful in his labors for good man- agement in city affairs, while mayor. He was born and bred in Spring- field, and has ever been one of its most active and public-spirited citizens, ready at all times to help bring fame and a good name to his native town.
William H. Haile, jolly, genial, and good, lavishly dispensed his smiles and sensible ways of managing the city while mayor, and in such a manner as to secure the good-will of his city family, all of whom said " Well done " when he retired from the field of local public life. He came to Springfield from Hinsdale, N.H., where he still has large manufacturing interests; but he has become so thoroughly and happily "acclimated " in the city of his
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adoption, that he has come to believe that there is no place better than Springfield as a place of residence - and there isn't.
1
John M. Stebbins.
Edwin W. Ladd, a practical builder, and a good one, took the city gov- ernment over into the camp of the Democracy, from Republicanism, when he was made mayor; but the whirligig of time brought about such reverses,
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that it was hard to tell, before his year of earnest and faithful service was over, just where his politics were to be found.
Henry M. Phillips, the present father of the city, though with a very large city family on his hands, is still far from round-shouldered from the weight of official cares, and makes a dignified, doting, and dutiful city father. He, like all of his predecessors, including his father -in-law Henry Alexander, takes great pride and pleasure in saying, at all times and in all places, that his home is in Spring- field, and that " there is no place like home."
The town, while yet a town, had grown up such a diversity of interests, - to such a reach of area and number of population, - that its governmental functions and its vital interests suffered much from the unwieldiness of its administra- Emerson Wight. tive machinery, which was speedily put into good working-order when once
it fairly became a city. And that machinery, having been kept well oiled, and quite gen- erally driven by competent and steady-going motive power, is in excellent condition, and prom- ise for worthy achievements in coming years. The improve- ments of the streets and side- walks were soon apparent when the new order of things was fully established. Educational facilities were largely increased. and quickly took rank among those of older and larger neigh- boring cities. The last score of years have witnessed the erec- Lewis J. Powers. tion of seven fine, commodious, and well-appointed school-houses. The school-buildings are well up to the
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times, both in construction and appointments; and the schools, with scarcely an exception, have earned proud positions in management and achieve- ments. The Catholic Parochial School on Everett Street in connection with the Church of the Sacred Heart, and that on Elliott Street belonging to St. Michael's Cathedral, provide excellent facilities for children of the Roman-Catholic faith. Taken as a whole, probably there is no city of its size in the Union that has better or more perfectly maintained schools than has Springfield.
The erection of church edifices since the incorporation of the city is something quite remarkable. With one exception the writer has watched with much interest the building of all the church edifices which have been erected since Springfield became a city, - fifteen in all, -four Methodist, four Congregational, three Catholic, one Baptist, one Episcopal, one Univer- salist, one Unitarian, besides Brightwood Chapel in Ward One, and Faith Chapel in Ward Six. The First Congregational Society has also erected a large chapel and parlors, -a church really in size and appointments ; and the First Baptist has raised and altered its building at considerable cost. With one or two exceptions, all of these church buildings have chapel accommodations in some one form or another, such as church parlors and kitchens, and all " modern conveniences."
The public buildings erected since the city organization are the City Hall, the City Library Building, the new Court House, and the new Alms- house, - all valuable acquisitions to the city's growth and prosperity.
The city was fortunate indeed in being one of the earliest "railroad centres " of note in the country. The Western, the Hartford and Spring- field, and the Connecticut-river Railroads were all running trains regularly, either through or into the Springfield depot, several years before she became a city. The Western, now the Boston and Albany, was opened for travel and traffic, from Worcester to Springfield, on the first day of October, 1839. The Connecticut-river road was opened from Springfield to Cabotville, on the 28th of February, 1845; the Hartford and Springfield Railroad, now the New-York, New-Haven, Hartford, and Springfield, preceding it only a few months, that having "come to town" on the 9th of December, 1844. These roads, in combination, made what might be called a railroad " four corners." They furnished an excellent "distributing centre ; " and as our country has since reached out, from year to year, almost to the ends of the earth in every direction, Springfield has improved its opportunities, and reached out, likewise, over its daily lengthening line of railway connection, to the outer rim of Uncle Sam's domain, and even far beyond. Her peo- ple could early go easily and readily, North, South, East, or West; and they went, many, it is true, to build homes for themselves elsewhere, and many others to return, "bringing their sheaves with them." Later years
HENRY M. PHILLIPS.
The Present Mayor.
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have added to the railroad facilities first enjoyed, in the Springfield and North-eastern Railroad, formerly known as the Athol; and the New-York and New-England Railroad, which comes to the city from the land of wooden nutmegs, over the Springfield and Longmeadow road-bed. These open up, . and turn Springfield-ward, a local trade of some considerable volume and importance. Thus has Springfield grown in goodness and grace, in brains
1
Edwin W. Ladd.
and brawn; and while it may not appropriately be called a great manufactur- ing city, it holds a prominent place by reason of its several large manufac- tories and its many small ones, and also as the centre of a commercial manufacturing region of country. Besides the Smith & Wesson and Wason Manufacturing Company establishments, before mentioned, there has been, and still is, much manufacturing done in the belongings of paper ; the natu- ral consequence, doubtless, of so large an amount of paper being produced within easy reach of the city limits. During the war, and when photograph- albums were in the height of fashion, it had the largest album manufactory
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in the country. And, again, when paper collars were first introduced as wearing-apparel, Springfield men were early in the field, and profitably en- gaged in their manufacture. At one time four large and profitable paper- collar manufactories were in the full tide of "successful experiment ; " but these, by means of combination, have reduced the number in the "survival of the fittest" process, until one alone remains to represent the business and
William H. Haile.
emoluments of a large and valuable industry. The manufacture of envelopes has also been introduced extensively and profitably. Papeteries, now so generally used in a wide range of styles, had their origin with the Morgan Envelope Company, which also had the first contract with our government for the manufacture of postal-cards. The manufacture of envelopes and papeterie has been large and, in the main, remunerative; and the “ storm centre " - so to speak - of the envelope and papeterie business still hangs over the city of Springfield. Card-board and glazed-paper making, though of later introduction than paper collars and papeteries, are a prominent
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branch of business, which is increasing in volume yearly. Counting-house calendars are also made by the million in their season, each year, and sent broadcast throughout the land, as an advertising medium of different branches of trade, the most prominent of which, however, is insurance. Paper boxes were early manufactured in Springfield, and a large trade is still had in this line of manufactures.
Buttons, skates, small hard- ware, steam-boilers, foundery-cast- ings, watches, spectacles, thimbles, games and toys, candy, rubber type, woollen goods, cotton waste, sewing - machine needles, wire goods, and other lines of greater or less prominence, are made and sold with much success, aggre- gating a very handsome manufac- turing business, and keeping many David Ames. thousands of hands busy, and many thousands more of mouths well filled.
The banks and insurance-compa- nies of Springfield, though smaller in number and capacity than those of Hartford, rank well with them, however, both in character, and capa- bility of management. Especially is this the case with its insurance-com- panies, - the Massachusetts Mutual Life being one of the soundest and most successful of American life- insurance companies ; while the Springfield Fire and Marine, in its special line of insurance, ranks among the best, both as regards its able management, its immense as- sets, and its financial results. The Mutual Fire Assurance Company John Ames. had existence, success, and much prestige, a quarter of a century before the town became a city, having been
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incorporated in 1827. It has a wide reputation for furnishing trustworthy insurance at a minimum rate of expense, and this has been secured by writing only on property that might well be considered "fire-proof."
Springfield put a very handsome feather into its cap of notoriety the first year after its incorporation, in originating the Simon-Pure horse-show busi- ness. "Mammoth three-sheet posters," with a spirited "group" of two horses' heads for illustration. were sent out far and wide, and attracted much attention, and succeeded in bringing large crowds of people to the first horse-show ever known. Hamp- den Park had its origin in that horse-show ; and although Henry Ward Beecher, at its first public opening, dedicated the park to horse-shows, it has often of late years been crowd- ed with people who came to witness bicycle and other mod- ern forms of amusement.
Interesting details of what Springfield has been and done might here be given to a com- paratively indefinite extent ; MOSS- ENG. CO. N.Y. but the space is limited, and Joseph C. Parsons. there is no end to what might be said in admiration and praise of Springfield. "The people are the city," as Shakspeare has said. Her people have made Springfield what she is. Daniel Webster said of Massa- chusetts, "There she stands." The same may be as pertinently said of Springfield, and she will stand the closest scrutiny and criticism. Who ever knew of either a native or adopted citizen of Springfield, who did not feel a just pride in claiming that there is where "the noble have their country " ? Springfield boys are found everywhere, and Springfield girls everywhere else, scattered all up and down the earth, from " Dan to Beersheba," from the Orient to the Occident, and from the North Pole to Patagonia. Some of. these have become millionnaires, some have secured a firm footing on the ladder of fame, and some, like Micawber, are still waiting for "some- thing to turn up;" but all have a warm place in a corner of their hearts for Springfield, the metropolis of the Connecticut Valley.
- CLARK WIIITMAN BRYAN.
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KING'S HANDBOOK OF SPRINGFIELD.
Surroundings of Springfield.
AN OUTLINE HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION; ANECDOTES, COM- MENTS, AND REMINISCENCES.
TT is well to premise, that the surroundings of Springfield belong to a civilization lining the Connecticut River, that taken in its total elements of good ancestral foundations, a generally diffused intelligence, religious and social culture, agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial thrift, facili- ties of education, and the most charming of natural accessories, is unsur- passed within American limits. When the Indian sachems of Agawam and Woronoco emerged from time to time from the Bay Path, to bring their packs of beaver, mink, and other peltry, to William Pynchon and his Rox- bury neighbors, their glowing talk about their great river Quonektacut, and its tributaries the Agawam and the Chicuppe, alive with fish and beaver, their luxuriant meadows, and outlining forests full of game, was no exag- gerated story. As the Western fever grew, and one company after another started from Roxbury, Dorchester, and Watertown, for this El Dorado of the Connecticut Valley, they were of the choicest and most enterprising spirits ; and none of them more so than William Pynchon and his followers, who settled Springfield and its surroundings. The original settlement included the present Springfield, West Springfield, Agawam, Feeding Hills, Westfield, Suffield, a part of Southwick, Enfield, Somers, Longmeadow, Wilbraham, Hampden, Ludlow, and Chicopee, a territory about 25 miles square.
We should bear in mind, as we survey the environs of the present Springfield, the fact of a thoroughly homogeneous population of the best English stock, the traces of whose religious, social, patriotic, and industrial energy, and high intelligence, are everywhere to be observed.
Let us take our stand upon the tower of the Springfield Arsenal for a bird's-eye view of the surroundings to be delineated. Towards the north, niidst the interval of wooded hills and spreading meadows, with the Chico- pee River flowing through, and framed in by the graceful outline of Mount Tom and the Holyoke range, are the manufacturing chimneys, towers, and spires of Chicopee, Chicopee Falls, and Holyoke, the fertile bottom-lands of old Chicopee Street, and the higher plain of Ludlow. Towards the east is the wide expanse of champaign country through which the old Bay Path highway and the Boston and Albany Railroad thread their course towards
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Palmer, with the Wilbraham road diverging to the "Springfield Mountains " on the right. Towards the south, the lovely Pecousic vale, and Pecousic hill merging into the wide stretches of the Longmeadow forest, with East Longmeadow on its left, and on its right the old village of the " long-med- dowe " itself, its spacious street and elevated plateau looking down upon the fair expanse of level acres whence it derives its name, and along which glides and winds and gleams the bordering river. The westward view be- yond the silver stream includes the green expanse of the farther meadows belonging to West Springfield and Agawam; the towering elms and leafy maples under which nestle the village mansions and the scattered farm- houses ; the old sentinel white meeting-house on West Springfield Hill; the fresher beauty of Mittineague as it creeps up the terraces of the fretful Agawam; and the magnificent stretch of broken interval that vanishes in the distant horizon of the Berkshire Hills.
Let us now take these surroundings in their details. Passing by the cavernous entrance of the old bridge, an ancient marvel of clumsy architec- ture, with its huge superfluity of massive timbers, intricate in construction as that schoolboy puzzle of Julius Caesar's, we will cross the Connecticut by the light, spacious, and airy North-end Bridge, - said to be the noblest highway structure in the country, -for a ride among the western environs of Springfield. As we strike the ancient common of West Springfield, its gen- erous breadth lined with quaint homesteads of the olden time, and the more elegant mansions of a recent date, and adorned with the new Town Hall and Park-street Church, historic scenes begin to throng the memories of other days. This old common was the camping-ground of two British armies. Gen. Amherst with 7,000 men halted here for two days and two nights, on his march to Canada. Gen. Burgoyne with his captive army were encamped on this spot as long a time, on their way to Boston; and here several of his men, attracted by the advantages of the location, deserted, and settled in the vicinity; their descendants, the Millers, Worthys, Ewings, Silcocks, and others, being of well-known families in this valley. Gen. Riedesel, the Hessian officer, was the guest of the parson, Joseph Lathrop, in the old parsonage on the green; and they conversed together in Latin. His magnificent charger was shod here by blacksmith White.I Here Capt. Luke Day drilled his insurgents in the "Shays Rebellion." It very likely was the plain advice given him in the old parsonage, that hindered the junc- tion of the West Springfield rebels with Shays at the attack on the Spring- field Armory. Capt. Day insisted on divulging the secret of the proposed attack to Parson Lathrop, whose judgment he very highly valued, and received the following rebuff : "Capt. Day, your army is deficient of good, true, and trusty officers. You are engaged in a bad cause, and your men know it. I advise you to disband them, and let them return peaceably to
I His son, Sewall White, is our main authority for these local incidents.
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their homes ; for, as sure as you advance upon the public stores, 'tis as certain that you will meet with sore defeat."
Leading eastward from the common, to the river and the old ferry, is " Shad Lane," thus called because of the great supply of shad, -so plentiful,. that, according to Sewall White the West Springfield chronicler, a single man could take with a scoop-net a thousand in a day. In Horace White's day-book for May, 1770, shad are charged to several persons at 2 cents apiece. Sewall White records his seeing 100 fine salmon lying together on the bank of Heman Day's and Tilly Merrick's fishing-place, one of them weighing 42 pounds ; and that, with the roe of a shad for bait, he had him- self in a single morning thrown upon the shore, as he stood in a fish-boat, eight fine bass. The largest he had ever caught weighed 12 pounds, while his neighbor Justin Ely took one on his line weighing 22 pounds.
It was in Shad Lane that Jonathan Parsons was driving his two yoke of fine cattle, and a horse, attached to a load of stalks, when two horsemen overtook him with the order to turn out for Gen. Washington, whose coach was making for Springfield Ferry. He refused, probably doubting the courier's word, and declared that he had as good a right to the road as the General. While the coach was waiting for the boat, Parsons, who had come up, overheard the General say, " That man was right : he had as good a right to the road as I have."
At the east end of this old common was a ship-yard, where the sloops "West Springfield " and " Hampshire," and the schooner " Trial," ranging from 60 to 90 tons burthen, were built by Daniel Ely and Benjamin Ashley. In the centre of the common stood the old meeting-house of 1702, - 42 feet square, with its quaint three-storied hipped and gabled roofs, the highest coming to a central point, surmounted by a huge sheet-iron vane cut into curious devices, and above it the weathercock of gilded copper. The win- dows were of diamond panes set in lead, and the interior wood-work of massive oak and yellow-pine.
In those days, and through that century, West Springfield exceeded Springfield in population by about 800, and was, indeed, in most respects the leading town in Western Massachusetts.
The second meeting-house, yet standing on its sightly eminence of " Orthodox Hill," was located there by the gift of John Ashley, which stip- ulates that it shall remain there for a hundred years from 1800. It was contracted for $1,400 and 10 gallons of good rum, and occupies the most commanding site of any building in the region, - unless it be the Arsenal, - rejoicing also in historic memories of a notable succession of able ministers.
As we cross the Agawam not far from the lower end of the old common, we leave to the left picturesque Mittineague perched upon the rugged
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banks and bold headlands of the turbulent little river, and made busy by the Agawam and the Southworth paper companies. Across the grand reaches of the meadow, and beyond the silver river, Springfield stands in bold relief. Historic suggestions multiply. The Agawam was famous in the olden time for its beaver-dams, and it also swarmed with fish, while the fertile meadow- lands were of easy tillage. For these reasons a large Indian population re- sorted to its banks. Not far off, on the sides of the old river-bed, is one of the four Indian burying-grounds that lie within the limits of West Spring- field; and many interesting relics have been found with the exhumed skele- tons. As our road winds around the edge of the high plateau that rises from the southern side of Agawam River towards the village of that name, we look down on the "house-meadow," where John Cable and John Woodcock in 1635, having been sent forward by William Pynchon and his- friends, built, at the common charge of the planters, the first house. They were the first English tillers of the soil ; occupying the house and adjoining ground "all that Sommer," and perhaps all the winter, although probably returning in the late fall to Roxbury.
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