USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Lee > Lee : the centennial celebration and centennial history of the town of Lee, Mass. > Part 11
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and after crossing this, passed Reuben Pixley's about 84 rods west from the crossing. (See Great Barrington town records, 1771, May 27.) A road was laid out at the same time from Isaac Davis' to the Stockbridge line. In 1761, May 18, Thomas Willcocks and John Hamblin were chosen petit jurors-immediately after the incorporation of Great Barrington. Reuben Pixley was a petit juror in 1765, and Matthew Van Deusen a collector in 1768. These names will be recognized as the names of the first citizens of Lee. In 1770, March ' 21, the people of the Hoplands very modestly requested of Great Barrington to be relieved " from paying Minis- terial Rates, School Rates, and Highway Rates." The town records of Great Barrington, from 1771 to 1777, were not entered on the book, and the papers on which they were minuted, if they were minuted at all, are not to be found. But in the Massachusetts Archives, in con- nection with the papers relating to the incorporation of Lee, it is stated that the people of Great Barrington in town meeting, 1773, December 29, made no objections to the petition of the people on the Hoplands for incorpora- tion as a town.
HARTWOOD OR WASHINGTON.
The eastern section of the present township of Lee was . taken from what is now the town of Washington, pre- viously called Hartwood. In 1757-8, Robert Watson, of Sheffield, aided and abetted by David Ingersoll, acting as his Attorney, claimed to have purchased of the Indians a tract of land now comprising the town of Washington, and part of the towns of Middlefield, Hinsdale, Lenox, " and Lee." The portion set off to Lee is marked on the east by the present town lines; on the west it may be traced, following a line beginning at the south-east corner of the Hopland district, running northerly to John
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Baker's, thence westerly to near the present Town Farm, and thence northerly, following the road from the Town Farm to the Housatonic River.
The land was ostensibly purchased of Benjamin Kohk- ke-wau-naut, John Pop-hue-hou-au-wah, and Robert Nung-hau-wot, chiefs of the Stockbridge tribe of Indians. It is said that a part of the consideration was to be in the " fire-water " of that day. This territory was called at first Watsontown, after the name of its purchaser.
Soon after this purchase, Mr. Watson sold his title to this grant to a company of sixty men, the most of whom resided in Hartford, Conn. This company divided their land into sixty-three shares, one for each of 60 propri- etors, one for schools, one for the ministry, and one for the first settled minister. They also changed the name to Greenock, in memory of the Scotch town of that name, as Blandford, near by, was for a similar reason called Glasgow, by the Suffield company.
These proprietors soon found that Watson was insolvent and in jail, and had failed to fulfill the obligations to the Indians ; and the Indians threfore retained their right to the territory of Greenock. The Company re-purchased it of the Indians 1760, July 10, paying them £179 in money ; and then applied to the Governor of the Prov- ince to establish their title to their property.
Action on the above petition, presented 1762-3, Jan- uary 13, was delayed till 1763, February 8, when the Governor and Council granted the petition, and changed the name of the town to Hartwood. The conditions of the grant " were that within the space of five years there should be sixty settlers residing in said Township, who shall each have a dwelling-house of the following dimen- sions : 24 feet long, 18 feet wide, and 16 feet posts ; and have seven acres of land well cleared and fenced, and brought to English grass, or ploughed." They were also
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to settle " a learned Protestant Minister of the Gospel in said Township within the time aforesaid." The proprietors met at Hartford, 1760, October 23, and authorized Dr. Norman Morrison, of Hartford, and Samuel Brown, Jr., of Stockbridge, to enclose with a possession fence, the north-west corner of the town land, now the northern part of the town of Lee. In 1761, the pro- prietors met at the house of Mr. Hezekiah Colyn, Jr., of Hartford, and rights were duly recorded. Besides resi- dents of Hartford, others from Tolland, Wethersfield, Windsor, Enfield, and Suffield, appear as proprietors. 1762, June 29, they met at Springfield, at the inn of Luke Bliss, and accepted the report of the Committee for laying out the 'new plantation. 1763, March 28, John Walker, of Hartford, sold (Pittsfield Registry 2:105) one-third of Greenock, alias Hartwood, to Robert Henry of Albany, for ££90. 1768, February 28, at the proprietors' meeting in Hartwood, the second division of the land was made. Subsequent business meetings of the proprietors were held in Lee. In accordance with their petition, 1808, April 8, their records are to be kept in Lee, and are now in the Town Clerk's custody. The old records were tran- scribed by Ransom Hinman, in 1853. One record, show- ing the vagueness of many of the titles is to the effect that 1788, April 14, as the line of Larrabee's Grant was not known, a Proprietors' Committee was authorized to give certain persons a quitclaim deed of land lying west of a certain definite line, said owners giving the Com- mittee a quitclaim deed to all lands lying east of said line. The people of what is now Lee, seem to have been the first to ask for incorporation as a town. Their petition to that effect, 1774, January 6, was ordered by the Legislature to be communicated to the people of Hartwood. This had the effect of bringing out a counter petition from them 1774, May 25, asking for incorporation
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as a town, with the boundaries as given in the original grant. The boundaries given in the act of incorporation, 1777, April 12, would indicate that they succeeded in securing this from the General Court. The original Western boundary of Hartwood as given in the petition, (see Holland's Hist. Western Mass. Vol. 2, p. 602) is " the east side of Glassworks Grant 550 rods to the north-east corner of said Grant, and east side of Housatonic River." But the petition of the Lee people seems to have been also granted, and by the boundaries given in their act of incor- poration a few months subsequently, a part of Washington became a constituent part of the present town of Lee.
THE GRANTS : WILLIAMS', LARRABEE'S, GLASS-WORKS. WILLIAMS' GRANT.
Three different special grants, or parts of them, were also taken by the act of incorporation of the town to constitute the township. The Williams' Grant, more com- monly called the Minister's Grant, forming the north- west corner of the town, was a grant of about four thou- sand acres, made by the General Court, 1740, Jan. 21, to Col. Ephraim Williams of Stockbridge and partners .*
* The Col. Williams mentioned above as the grantee of the Williams' Grant was not the founder of Williams College, as stated by Mr. Amory Gale in his History of Lee, but his father, one of the first four white settlers of Stockbridge. The mistake is a natural one, for both father and son had the same name and military title. Ephraim Williams, Jr., was born in Newton, near Boston, in 1715, and at the time of this grant, had done nothing in the way of public service which should entitle him to such a favor. In early life he followed the seas, but at the breaking out of the war against France and England in 1740, the year in which the Williams' Grant was made, he joined the army and distinguished himself as the commander of a company in the Canada service. At the close of the war (1748), he resided for a short time at Stockbridge, but never was much identified with Southern Berkshire. In 1750, the General Court, in consideration of his services, granted him two hundred acres of land in East Hoosack, now North Adams. On this grant was soon afterwards erected Fort Massachusetts, located between the villages of North Adams and Wil- liamstown-then called West Hoosack,-and the head-quarters of Col. Williams after he was assigned to the command of the forts west of the Connecticut River. He was shot through the head the 8th of September, 1755, while heading a scout- ing party against the French and Indians near the south end of Lake George.
17
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The whole transaction is a peculiar one, and reveals the shrewdness of the benevolent persons who took such good care of the affairs of the Stockbridge Indians. 1739, May 3, (Mass. Archives, xxxi, 238,) a memorial was presented to the General Court, representing that there was a piece of meadow owned by Williams and partners which the Indians would like to have. Williams offered to give it to the Indians if the General Court would grant him an equivalent* in the unappropriated lands of the Province, but the number of acres bought is not specified. In 1739, June 15, a grant was made accordingly of 4,000 acres of land, which had been sur- veyed Feb. 10, 1739, by Oliver Partridge, " adjoining Westerly and Southerly on the Indian township on Hous- atonic River."
There must have been some surprise about the quan- tity of this "equivalent," but it was represented that the land consisted of very valuable meadow land, and the four thousand acres were wild. Besides this, it appears that Col. Williams had some partners in this transfer, five ministers, and Mr. Timothy Woodbridge, the schoolmaster of Stockbridge. In the Springfield Registry (Vol. M : 525) are articles of agreement and division, 1742, Jan. 20, between Mr. Williams and Mr. Woodbridge of Stockbridge, and Rev. Stephen Williams of Springfield, Rev. Samuel Hopkins of Springfield, Rev. Peter Raynolds of Enfield, Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton, Rev. Nehemiah Bull of Westfield, deceased, represented by Oliver Partridge of Hatfield. (Miss Eliza- beth Partridge of Hatfield, was married in 1728, Feb .- to Rev. Mr. Bull. He died 1740, April 12, aged 38.) A very goodly array of names, a very respectable "ring "
for those days or these days. A plan of the land is
* The Stockbridge Indians affirmed that it belonged to the Shawanose. Wil- liams and Woodbridge paid these Indians £15 for their title.
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given in connection with the articles of agreement, from which it appears that Col. Williams had for his portion 900 acres lying around Laurel Lake. The ministers fol- lowing along in order northward had each a lot of 480 acres, while flanking the last three ministers' lots, Mr. Partridge had a lot of 700 acres. In the Springfield Registry (Vol. M : 420), 1741, Nov. 3, Timothy Wood- bridge of Stockbridge, school-master, deeds his lot, which then measured 510 acres, to Isaac Williams of Goshen, Hartford Co., Conn., "Husbandman alias Shoemaker," for £280. It had grown in value and in size very quickly. In the same volume (M : 475) is the deed of Williams and his partners, 1741, Jan. 21, in return for the " 4,000 acres granted by the General Court," of 280 acres of land in Stockbridge to Paul Umpeckhow, Nicholas Uwaanmut and other Indians. In various papers in the Massachusetts Archives (118 : 132) as also in the old deeds of the Springfield and Pittsfield Registries, this "Williams' Grant " is called " the Ministers' Grant." 1750, Oct. 24, Rev. Jonathan Edwards of Northampton sold 240 acres of the Ministers' Grant to Elizer Dickinson of Stockbridge, Joiner, in exchange for the same amount of land in Stockbridge. 1769, Aug. 25, Timothy Edwards sold all his father's remaining right in the Ministers' Grant to Joseph Woodbridge for £328. Most of this grant was annexed to Lenox, 1770, Nov. 20. That belonging to Col. Williams is the part that was taken to help form the present township of Lee.
(2.) Larrabee's Grant was located in the neighborhood of Lenox Furnace. A long controversy was waged with the town of Lenox in regard to the rightful boundaries of this tract terminated, 1818, May 4, by a vote of Lee that Lenox should have it, if the town should see fit to agree to the proposition made. The Legislature, 1820, Feb. 7, established what has now been the boundary line for about
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fifty years. John Larrabee was the officer in command of " Castle Williams," the one fort which was supposed to afford sufficient protection to Boston harbor. In 1739, May 30, after a service of seventeen years at the fort, he petitioned the General Court for special addition to his
pay.
He had a family of six persons dependent upon
him. His wages had been barely sufficient for his own subsistence. He had not been able to provide for his children. The Legislature, 1739, June 22, voted him £175 and a grant of 500 acres of the unappropri- ated land of the Province. 1740, Jan. 11, the plan of this tract, drawn by John Huston, Surveyor, in Dec. 1739, was presented to the General Court, accepted, and the land duly confirmed to Lieut. Larrabee, his heirs and assigns. He was a brother of Capt. Benjamin Larrabee, who had command of a fort at what is now Brunswick, Maine. John Larrabee died in 1761, and in 1762, Feb. 19, the General Court granted his heirs an addi- tional £50 in testimony of his faithful services. The original petition is to be found in the Massachusetts Archives, Vol. xlvi : 108. The plan of the land shows its location on the east line of the grant made to Ephraim Williams and Company. Lenox was incorporated as a
district, 1767, Feb. 26. Its southern boundary was changed 1770, Nov. 20, before Lee was incorporated. In very ambiguous phrase the Legislature annexed to Lenox all the lands and persons living on the south line of Lar- rabee's Grant as protracted west of the Housatonic River, and also Samuel Whelpley and his farm, jutting south of this grant and the Stockbridge line. (Deacon Samuel Whelpley was the father of Rev. Samuel Whelpley, a Presbyterian minister, the author of a " Compend of An- cient and Modern History" and the "Triangle," a cele- brated theological treatise on the three points of old school Calvinism.) These facts account for the irregularity of the
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line between Lenox and Lee. Lenox claimed east of the River to the south line of Larrabee's Grant. Lee claimed that the River was the boundary fixed by the Act of 1770. 1820, March 6, the selectmen were instructed to petition the General Court to fix the bounds of Lee and Lenox, near Lenox Furnace, as agreed upon by the committees of both towns. That agreement, as recorded, 1818, May 4, reads :
" Beginning at reputed S. E. corner of Lenox about 18 rods west of the Housatonic River: thence northerly a parallel line with the west line of Larrabee's Grant until the line shall reach the middle of the said river above the furnace : thence northerly in the middle of the said river as far as the north line of said grant."
(3.) Before its incorporation, the present territory of Lee village was commonly designated Glassworks, or Glassworks Grant. This was a tract of land, in what is now the center of the town, granted by the General Court, 1754, January 16, to John Franklin and Company, of Germantown in Braintree, now Quincy, Mass. It appears from the Suffolk Registry, (Vol. 80: 169) that in 1750, August 8, Col. John Quincy leased to a company consisting of John Franklin, merchant, Norton Quincy, merchant, Peter Etter, stocking-weaver, Joseph Cullins and Isaac Winslow, merchants, of Boston, 100 acres of land on Shed's Neck, at 10s per acre. They proceeded to lay out streets and building lots, and to begin what we would now call a manufacturing village. A company of Germans, skilled artisans, were induced to emigrate to this country, and to locate on this land, the proprietors holding out inducements for the establishment of various industries. They called their estate Germantown, and in 1752, August 24, Joseph Palmer and Richard Cranch, card-makers of Boston, (see Suffolk Registry, 81: 109) leased seventeen lots on Hanover Square, Hague, Zurich,
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and Manheim Squares at a yearly rental of 5s for each lot. 1750, April 12, and June 6, (see Mass. Archives, 50 : 355) William Bowdoin and Nathaniel Holmes of Boston, peti- tion for a grant of land if they begin glass-work in five years. 1752, November 27, Isaac Winslow, for himself and his partners, asked of the General Court, assistance to enable them to carry on the manufacture of glass at Germantown. They had leave to prepare a bill, granting them the monopoly of glass-making for twenty years. It is to be found in Mass. Archives, Vol. 59 : 376. The Gen- eral Court, however, did not see fit to enact the bill, when presented, 1752, December 1. The next move was a petition, 1753, December 19, of John Franklin and Com- pany, for "a grant of money to encourage the making Potash." 1754, January 16, the petitioners were granted 1,000 acres in any part of the unappropriated lands of the Province, provided that they carried on the manufactories at Germantown for the space of seven years from the date of this vote. Twelve of their workmen were to be exempted from military duty or other public service. The manufactories named were weaving, making cider, glass-making, pottery, and as appears from a petition of Josiah Quincy, of Braintree, 1752, December 12, also, " refining Sperma Coeti, from the Oyl, and making the same into Candles." In the Mass. Hist. Soc. Library is a History of Quincy by George Whitney, published 1827. On page 28, he says : " Had they met with no discour- agement, and been permitted to continue, there is good reason to believe the place would now have been thickly settled and in a flourishing condition. Continual impedi- ments to their success were thrown in their way." Most of the Germans left and went to " Broadbay Plantation, incorporated 1773, as the town of Waldboro," Me. Here they were imposed upon anew, and when by their pa- tient industry the town had taken form and they began
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to feel at home, they learned that they had no valid title to the land they occupied. Again, they were obliged to abandon house and land. It is said in the History of Waldboro, that most of them went to North Carolina. 1756, May 28, Joseph Palmer petitioned the General Court for assistance " by Way of Lottery," in view of the losses and embarassments in connection with the manufactories at Germantown. (See the New Englander, 1839, Janu- ary, for an interesting account of Gen. Palmer.) 1757, January 25, the council voted to dismiss the petition, but the House of Representatives was in favor of granting it, and 1757, February 12, the bill legalizing the lottery was passed to be enacted, and permission was given for the use of the Hall of Representatives for the purpose of drawing the lottery ! Truly, an accommodating Legisla- ture. When the Glassworks Company made a survey for their grant, they selected the then unappropriated land between the Ministers' Grant and the Hoplands, extend- ing up along side of the Ministers' Grant and beyond it. They modestly asked that as the plat surveyed included about 64 acres more than the 1,500 voted to them, that the whole tract surveyed might be confirmed to them, which was done 1755, January 9. They bought - the Indian title 1757, April 27, of two Indians of Stock- bridge, John Pop-hue-hou-au-wah and Robert Nung-hau- wot. As James Bowdoin of Boston owned one-sixth of the Upper Housatonic Township, it was probably through information given by him, that the grant was located as it was, just north of the Hoplands. (Spfd. Reg. 1: 25.) Of this grant, Pelatiah West and Joseph Hatch, of Tol- land, Conn., became large, if not sole owners. 1769, Jan- uary 22, they bought (Pittsfield Register, 8 : 118) of James Bowdoin, Isaac Winslow, and Thomas Flucker, fifteen- twenty-fourths (}4) of the Glassworks Grant for £520 16s. A plan of the tract of 1,564 acres is given showing that
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it extended from Stockbridge line east of the Housatonic to the western line of Hartwood, and lay south of the Ministers' Grant and Larrabee's Grant and north of the Hoplands. Eleazer West also owned a part, according to a deed dated 1768, March 23 (Pittsfield Register, 6 : 202). One-sixth of the Glassworks Grant was bought 1771, June 6, by Pelatiah West, and Joseph Hatch, of Norton Quincy, of Braintree.
INCORPORATION.
1774, January 6, the people living on the Hoplands, and on a part of Hartwood (now Washington) and those on the Glassworks Grant, and the Williams' Grant, peti- tioned the General Court to be incorporated as a Town or District. (Mass. Archives 118 : 742.) 1774, Feb- ruary 18, the General Court voted that the petitioners should notify the Hartwood people of their desires. 1773, December 29, Great Barrington in town meeting had voted that they would raise no objections. But 1774, May 25, Hartwood people petitioned for an act of incor- poration keeping what they called " the original bounds." Hartwood was not incorporated till 1777, April 12. Oc- tober 17, 1777, a Bill was introduced incorporating the town of Lee, in accordance with the boundaries originally given. Some amendments were introduced, and the Bill was passed to be enacted. It was signed by the Governor the same day, and Lee became a town 1777, October 21. It is said that the two towns had the choice of the two names, Washington and Lee. Gen. Lee was at the time thought to be the best officer in the American army, and the people of Lee desired to have the new town named in honor of one from whom so much was anticipated.
NOTE ON GENERAL CHARLES LEE.
General Charles Lee was born in 1731, in Devonhall, Cheshire, England. He was the youngest son of Col.
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John Lee, of the 44th Regiment. He is said to have received a commission when eleven years old; at twenty years of age, as Lieutenant in the 44th, he came to America, and in Braddock's campaign had his first experi- ence of war. He became a Major in the 103d, and in 1772 was a Lieutenant Colonel on half-pay. He served under Burgoyne in Portugal in 1762, and distinguished himself in a night attack on a Spanish port. He was not promoted as fast as he thought he deserved, and became one of the aides of the King of Poland, and in 1769 a Major General in the army. He led for three or four years a roving life in Southern Europe. Returning to England he wrote newspaper articles against the ministry. He came to America, in October, 1773. Here he talked and wrote against the measures of the English Court. He was present at the session of the first Continental Congress, and in 1775, Congress, under the impression of his supposed military ability, appointed him 2d Major General, a rank which placed him next but one to Wash- ington. Only providential interposition prevented him from betraying the cause he had professed to espouse. It seems as if he wanted only an offer of money and position under the English Government corresponding to the high rank he had sought in the Continental Army. Congress undertook to indemnify him for any supposed loss in the resignation of his position in the English Army by a donation of $30,000, and sent him to the Southern States as Chief Commander in that department. His plans when in command, all proved disastrous failures. He was taken prisoner while dawdling away his time in a tavern, though he had always boasted he would never be taken alive. He was exchanged in May, 1778, for Gen- eral Prescott. His insubordination to General Washing- ton is well known, and Washington's indignant rebuke of him for his ordering a retreat instead of a charge
18
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. at the battle of Monmouth. Tried by a Court Martial, he was suspended from his command. An insolent letter that he wrote to Congress was followed by his dismission from the service ; and soon after this he died in Phila- delphia, 1782, October 2. At the time Lee was named in his honor, the gallant defence by Moultrie, of the harbor of Charleston, S. C., June 28, was erroneously attributed to General Lee, and put in unfavorable contrast with the defeats on Long Island and White Plains, where Wash- ington had command.
There are eight or ten other towns in the United States bearing this name, and four or five counties, but none so named by emigrants from this town in honor of their former home. Lee was the twenty-first town incorpor- ated in Berkshire County. Those incorporated at an earlier date, were, Sheffield 1733, Stockbridge 1739, Great Barrington 1742 (as a parish), New Marlborough 1759, Egremont 1760 (district), Pittsfield 1761, Tyringham 1762, Sandisfield 1762, Becket 1765, Richmond 1765, Lanes- borough 1765, Williamstown 1765, Lenox 1767, Peru (Partridgefield) 1771, Windsor (Gageborough) 1771, Alford 1773, Otis (Loudoun) 1773, West Stockbridge 1774, Hancock (Jericho) 1776, Washington 1777, Lee 1777. At the session of the General Court in May, 1761, the western part of old Hampshire County was set off as a new county, after 1761, June 30, to bear the name of Berkshire. The Courts of Common Pleas and General Sessions were held at the Upper Parish (now Great Bar- rington) and at Pontoosuc (now Pittsfield). County build- ings were erected at Great Barrington, but in 1784, it was ordered that the Courts should be held at Lenox. But the County buildings were not erected at Lenox, without opposition, and not completed till 1790-1792. Numerous efforts were made to change this location, Lee every time voting against it, in 1813, 1824, 1825, 1855.
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