USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Lee > Lee : the centennial celebration and centennial history of the town of Lee, Mass. > Part 7
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had certificate of membership in some other society, and contributed to the support of the gospel in that "order." In 1820, there was an article in the warrant, "to see if the town will determine whether non-resident proprietors of land who do not lodge such certificates with the town clerk, shall be exempt from being taxed for the support of the Gospel."
THE TOWN MEETING ORATORS.
The town meetings afforded an excellent opportunity for develop- ment in knowledge of general business, in the elementary rules which govern parliamentary bodies, and in the art of public speech. From the drafting of the warrant with its brief and orderly setting forth in distinct articles of each separate matter to be considered, down through all the business to its final ends, it is, in many respects, one of the best possible schools for the training of men for public work, leadership and influence. At these meetings in Lee, I remember well in my younger days, the quiet and logical manner in which, as a well- disciplined lawyer and logician, Mr. Porter was accustomed to state his views; Mr. Tremain of South Lee was one of the best of the de- baters ; the committee reports of Walter Laflin were good specimens of minute accuracy of detail ; and there were many men, of capacity much above the average, who used to figure in the business and speech of those meetings, some of which (held till 1836 in the audience room of the Congregational church) were long and stormy, ran far into the evening, and sometimes continued and closed with rude and boisterous uproar. Clear above all, I seem to hear the trumpet tones of the clear, ringing voice of the late Samuel A. Hulbert, as (generally in the stormiest moments of the wordy war) he stated his opinion and with a zeal which sometimes amounted to vehement and stormy elo- quence, urged his views upon his fellow-townsmen. I have heard bursts of eloquence in town and society meetings from Mr. Hulbert, which in magnetic power and force, were not inferior to the best efforts of the greatest of the many eloquent men whose public speech it has been my occasional good fortune to hear. Among the men of Lee whom I have known, Mr. Hulbert had the most dominant person- ality, and was the most liberally freighted with brain and heart and force of will and vehemency of nature. He was at all times and everywhere, a power in whatever direction he gave himself with a will, and, with the training which Dr. Hyde and Mr. Porter had en- joyed, would have filled a large place outside of and beyond the com- paratively narrow circle in which he was known here.
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PAPER MILLS AND OTHER INDUSTRIES.
The earliest mills in Lee, as in other new settlements, were saw and grist mills. There were also powder mills and a fulling mill at an early day. The powder mills frequently blew up, and the one in the Center was abandoned by Laflin, Loomis & Co., after the disastrous explosion of 1824; the one on " Powder Mill brook" at South Lee has since been abandoned. Ball, Bassett & Co.'s woolen factory in North Lee, and one in South Lee, at one time did considerable busi- ness, but both have been superseded by other mills. The Bassetts (Thomas and Cornelius), and before them, Fenner Foote and Chap- man, and Leishman, used to get out chair stuffs, and send away $8,000 to $12,000 a year. Paper, for many years the leading manu- facture of Lee, was started where Owen & Hulbert's mills were after- wards located at South Lee, in the early years of this century, by Sam- uel Church, who came to Lee from East Hartford. Mr. Church after- wards built a mill near where the Eagle Mills now stand. This business increased rapidly, and in 1851 there were twenty-five paper mills in Lee, with an annual product of nearly $2,000,000. W. & W. C. Laflin built where the Housatonic Mill now stands, a mill, which, in its day, was deemed a marvel of extent and capacity. The mills of Owen & Hurlbut at South Lee, of the Mays (formerly Inger- soll & May), of Benton & Garfield, of Ives, Sturgis & Co., of Phelps & Field, and of Whyte & Hulbert, and other mills still owned and managed by well-known and honored citizens ; the long-continued and well-managed carriage manufactory of S. & A. Hulbert, the cotton factory of Beach & Royce, and the machine shop of Tanner & Perkins, are all too fresh in memory, or in observation, to need more than a mere mention here. Full statements as to all of these, will be found in the historical notes. No business in Lee has probably ever been conducted with the vigor, enterprise and energy which result in the twenty tons a day of paper, that can now be produced by the Smith Paper Company ; but our smaller mills, our stores and banks of dis- count and of saving, have been generally prudently and energetically conducted, and some of them have been models of prudent manage- ment and fair and honorable dealings and results.
LOCAL POSSIBILITIES FOR THE NEXT CENTURY.
Another Centennial will undoubtedly find some changes of which we do not now dream; but without disturbing our present self-compla- cency, we may hope to see the general prosperity considerably in- creased, and showing itself in many more of the beautiful homes, which in some respects are models of taste and of comfort ; with addi-
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tional evidence, in well-selected and well-worn libraries, of that in- creased intelligence which should wait upon added wealth and leisure ; with memorial hall filled with curiosities and mementoes ; with some tasteful works of art in sculpture, and in painting, and with maps and charts and an increased number of well selected books. The roads and bridges in all your valleys and over your beautiful hills, we may hope will all be as well hardened, as some specimens of your best roads now are ; and let us hope that your beautiful "Fern Cliff " will have been secured as a place of pleasant resort, to which all shall have a right to go, and its enjoyment not be dependent on the kindness of any single citizen.
Your schools have progressed from the smallest beginnings in teach- ing and a maximum quantity of flogging, to a government by moral influence and a teaching which fits a young man for college; your school houses from mere barn-like places of shelter, with little warmth in Winter and abundant heat in Summer, have been transformed to rather comfortable buildings, but neither are in all respects and in all parts of your town up to your ideal ; nor are they quite all they should be, in a wealthy and prosperous community, and when exceptional and excessive taxes for other and more questionable purposes, shall have been wiped out and forgotten, (and perhaps before, ) we ought to, and therefore probably shall see, further progress in that always safe direction, in preparation for the next Centennial.
PROGRESS IN PEACE.
When we extend our vision beyond our own narrow bounds, and be- hold the universal progress, we see that Lee has no more than kept step to the music of the universal procession, which bears along our town, our country, and the world. Progress during the last century has been universal and rapid. In agriculture the plow, the hoe, the scythe and the sickle, are still used, but greatly as they are improved from those used by our grandfathers, they are quite eclipsed by the reaper, the mower, the planter and the thresher, even as the wheat fields of 30,000 and 50,000 acres, owned by a single proprietor, eclipse the narrow strips of the golden grain, which a century since were scat- tered among the girdled trees or blackened stumps of the New England farmers' wheat fields.
PROGRESS IN WAR.
In war, the old shot gun of the Revolution, which in time of war was all too slow, and in time of peace :
" Though well aimed at duck or plover,
Steered wide and kicked it's owner over,"
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has been superseded by the revolver, the breech-loading rifle, and the needle gun : while the old-time cannon (well imitated by Mother Per- ry's yarn beam) has given place to the rifled cannon ; and the Mitrail- leuse, the huge columbiad, the improved torpedo, and other ingeniously and fearfully terrible weapons, improvements in which, we may hope, will, before our next Centennial, render war impossible by securing the certain annihilation of both hostile parties, whenever it is at- tempted. We need not multiply illustrations from telegraphy, from steamboats, railroads and locomotives, from improved printing presses and bank locks, of this universal progress.
PROGRESS IN USEFUL INVENTIONS.
Our nation has had its full share in it all, and, more than any other, has compelled genius and science to adapt themselves to the practical uses of man. The telegraph was used as a plaything for the amuse- ment of princes and nobles in Spain, doing small duty in a circuit of 300 feet, three centuries ago, but it was reserved for our Morse to in- vent and give to mankind an instrument which binds the earth in electric net-work by which distant seas are crossed and continents bound together; by which war in all its details, is directed from the office of the strategist, by which distant diplomacies are regulated and the commerce of the world is kept in perfect and instantaneous communication. Shakespeare's Puck would girdle the earth in forty minutes, but the poetic inspiration of Shakespeare has been distanced in real life, by the splendid achievements of the telegraph, and "every electric click, that flashes upon the thousand wires its messages over the land and under the seas all round the globe, proclaims to all peoples, and shall perpetuate the memory of Morse."
Egypt knew of, and in certain limited ways, employed the steam engine, fifteen centuries ago ; but it was reserved for our own Fulton to make it useful on the seas and by it,-almost to annihilate distance ; while our English-speaking brother, was at the same time, harnessing it to the iron horse, and compelling it to perform like duty on the land.
THESE TIMES BETTER THAN THE OLD TIMES.
With this wide-spread and manifest progress in that which dimin- ishes human labor, and facilitates in countless ways the increase of wealth and of seeming prosperity, has there been concurrent advance- ment in the highest type of civilization, refinement, religion and higher education ? Are the people more virtuous and more intelli- gent ? I answer, unhesitatingly, Yes. Beginning with the average household, compare it with that of a hundred years ago. Who doubts
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that it is wiser, broader, purer and more intelligent ? The material for thought, has grown silently, and sometimes without appreciation. There is in the average home less whisky and more books and news- papers and journals and chromos and engravings, all of which are silent workers toward the higher life. Instead of spending the even- ing at the tavern or the store, the average American of to-day is prob- ably reading what was done last week or yesterday, in Turkey or some other center of present thought or interest.
THE NATIONS HERE UNITED.
There has never before been such a gathering together and admix- ture of the races of the earth as in our country, and while this has its dangers for the future and its inconveniences in the present, the aug- mentation of freedom, of breadth, of human charity and of the highest and best philanthrophy, is great beyond our computation. I well re- member that in my boyhood one of the chief prayers of the church at all missionary meetings of concert for prayer was that God would "open wide and effectual doors," by which our teachers of Christianity might go in and enlighten the dark places of the earth. How has God answered these prayers ? Has he not sent of the men of all these divers nations to our doors that we may find, ever ready to our hand, the highest and best work waiting to be done ? How shall we receive the Mongolian ? Surely, unless we would turn the clock of the cen- turies backward, as we have received the other nations of Caucasian race, and in these last days the African.
AMERICA FORETOLD OF OLD.
Is not ours the land which Ezekiel saw in vision ? "Between two seas-whose people were gathered out of the nations of the earth-the land where the stranger hath an inheritance ; the land of unwalled towns and villages-the land of broad rivers and streams," and whose people Jeremiah represents as "gathering themselves together and appointing to themselves one head ; a people whose nobles shall be of themselves and whose governors shall proceed from the midst of them ? " Thus has God gathered this people of whom he spake aforetime by his prophets, in this " glorious land which blooms between the seas," from the northern borders of it, where God's perpetual bow of peace glorifies Niagara's cliffs, to the sea-girt southern line, where God's gifts make the earth almost an Eden of fragrance and beauty, and from the rock-bound Atlantic, where the eastern song of the sea begins its morning music, to the far off Pacific, where the western waters mur- mur their benedictions to our land, as the tide goes out through the
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Golden Gate beneath the setting sun : here for an hundred years, has this nation, holding in trust the largest hopes for freedom and human- ity, endured and prospered. From an area of less than one million square miles, we have increased our territory to nearly four millions, and from 3,000,000 of people we have increased by our own growth and our ingathering from the nations, till we are more than 40,000,000.
A GENUINE SOCIAL PROGRESS.
In all this material increase the moral and intellectual growth of our town and of our nation has not lagged behind, and whatever may be said of creeds and of man-made formulas of faith, there has never been in this country so much of practical Christianity as there is to-day ; never so high a sense of man's stewardship in the disposal of his wealth (notwithstanding occasional and notorious exceptions) ; never so high a recognition of the rights and dignity of labor; never was man as man and woman as woman of such worth as to-day. In all our history, there has not been a period when the brain of the whole peo- ple has teemed with such fertility as in the last twenty-five years. As it has been in Lee, so has it been (perhaps in higher average, for you are a conservative people) throughout our country. The brain and moral nature of the people have been subsoiled by anti-slavery and temperance discussions ; by discussions of human rights and the powers of the government; and by the red-hot ploughshare of civil war, which, driven by steam and the telegraph, has furrowed our land in all its length and breadth, burning out by its terrible fires, the mortal leprosy of slavery, and educating the people to a higher patriot- ism, and creating a nation in which central power may be harmonized with local independence ; and the largest personal liberty may co-exist with perfect submission to imperative and controlling law. We have come forth from the terrible contest, our flag still floating in its beauty, with no star erased, and our good ship of state is floating upon the bosom of a new century.
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CONCLUSION.
And now, God of our Fathers, if darkness and the tempest are still before us, give us honest and fearless pilots who can weather the storm, and when kings and emperors and their crowns and scepters shall have passed away, or shall be retained (as now in our mother-land), only as the convenient and time-honored forms and pageantries, by which the peoples of the earth shall conduct their public national af- fairs, grant that our republic may still endure, purified and lifted to higher life by the buffetings of adversity, strengthened by time, and
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by the reverent affection of a grateful and united nation, loving and exemplifying liberty under law ; and may the dear old flag still wave on land and on sea, fit emblem of a people, who by the example of a regulated, rational and enduring constitutional liberty, shall have earned yet higher right to be represented by admiring Frenchmen in the harbor of New York, by the statue about to be erected of "Liberty enlightening the world."
" As it floated long before us, Be it ever floating o'er us, O'er our land from shore to shore ; There are freemen yet to wave it, Millions who would die to save it, Wave it, save it, ever more."
Mr. Chamberlin held the large audience in close atten- tion during the delivery of his long address, and at its close the band played an exquisitely rendered piece.
William Pitt Palmer, Esq., of New York, the poet of the day, was next introduced as Lee-born but Stockbridge- bred. Mr. Palmer prefaced the reading of his poem with the following remarks.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen :
When the Continental March of sylvan destruction, which began at Plymouth in 1620, reached this far inland valley, it must have pre- sented a scene unsurpassed for beauty in the whole Temperate Zone. It was formed on just the right scale to satisfy the taste of a lover of nature, to whom the sublime in scenery is not an indispensable requi- site to its perfect enjoyment. If to the simple inhabitants, the leafy world around them ever suggested any artificial change in its confor- mation, they were destitute of all mechanical appliances for effecting it. The landscape, therefore, remained, year after year, just as it had existed for untold ages. Spring and Summer draped it, as of old, in their green mantle; Autumn, in vesture more gorgeous than ever adorned the tiring-chamber of Kings; and Winter folded in its gra- cious ermine the feeble life in death, so soon to rejoice in another vernal resurrection. From lateral ridge to ridge, all was one un- broken forest, save where the benignant river had blessed its dusky children with treeless intervales, to which even their impotence of the proper instrumental means, could give the semblance of agricultural life.
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Into this primitive solitude, came our hardy ancestors some seven score years ago, bringing with them the wants and habits of civilized society ; and if perchance they also brought a taste for natural beauty, it must have been smothered or quite extinguished, by the hard neces- sities of their surroundings. For, to the pioneer, bread is the staff of life also and most especially, and to win it from the wilderness, his axe must first dispel its " boundless contiguity of shade," and let rain and sunshine find free access to the dark, dank soil, never yet glorified by the golden footprints of Ceres. So the primitive beauty of the Berk- shire Hills had to give place to the stern necessities of the sturdy pio- neers, who established in the heart of the Housatonic Valley the famous Indian Mission, of which Old Stockbridge became the central point.
In the verses I shall have the honor to read, I have sought to sketch merely the three local aspects above indicated-the aboriginal sylvan beauty; the blotches and blemishes, the rawness, roughness, and gen- eral disfigurement of what I venture to call the Stump Age; and lastly, the loveliness that now smiles upon us from every side, as if our Alma Mater were complacently conscious of her peerless charms. How much these may be heightened, and what new ones added, during the lapse of another century of continued improvement under the fostering care of " Laurel Hill," " Fern Cliff," and like associations throughout the County, the eye of imagination only can now dimly discern. When village, and hamlet, and isolated farm-house, shall all have been touched by the wand of refined taste, our Berkshire will be so charming, that the mere thought of its beauty makes one feel that he was born too soon, and wish, with Franklin, that he might be per- mitted to revisit his native land, after each hundred years' slumber in her maternal bosom.
MR. PALMER'S POEM.
THE MODEL VALE.
Kind friends, if idle fame has raised The pleasing expectation, That rhymes of mine were like to lend One charm to this occasion ; Pray do not blame the simple bard For his compliant ditty,
But charge the disappointment all To your insane Committee !
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They feared no lack of racy " prose," Both joyous and pathetic ; But even that would please the more, If pranked with foil poetic ; And, therefore, have I greatly dared To face your focal glances, While my decrepit lyre intones A tale of rhythmic fancies :-
The scene was Nature's model vale, Where, after long reflection, Like Zeuxis, she had grouped and posed Each borrowed charm's perfection- The fairest hills, the gayest meads, The clearest lakes and fountains- And set the living picture in A frame of graceful mountains.
But sons of that first woeful pair Who brought the curse of toiling, Descried the wonder, and began Their round of Eden-spoiling ; They felled the warbling groves, and gashed The mountain's sylvan towers ; And with the mattock, scythe and share, Laid low the friendless flowers.
The Wood-nymphs and the Oreads, shocked At such dire desecration, Caught up their blackened skirts and fled Their ancient habitation ; And left the spoilers to pursue Their chopping and their charring- Complete, in short, their perfect work Of universal marring !
But, by and by, when things were grown Almost beyond enduring ; And Nature's wounds seemed past all hope Of stanching, much less, curing ; There came a Fairy to the Vale, Of most enchanting presence, And softly stole a gracious spell Upon the artless peasants.
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Her smile was like the purple sheen That plays on lake and river, When laughing ripples glance the shafts From Morning's rosy quiver ; Her voice as sweet as sweetest harp's, The Summer wind just kisses ; And witching as the lays that charmed The comrades of Ulysses.
She taught them that the moiling swain May find sufficient leisure To nurse a sense of outward grace To thrill with inward pleasure ; And, that in all the walks of life, It is our bounden duty, So far as in us lies, to veil A blemish with a beauty.
They heard and heeded well the words That clearest truth reflected, Whose simple logic rarely fails To make her laws respected ; And soon the outraged vale began To show a smart improvement ; For manly vigor followed up, As woman led the movement.
To blots and blemishes anon The change proved comi-tragic- Old eye-sores vanished from the scene, As if by force of magic ; The barn no longer with the home Stood elbowing for precedence ; But meekly showed its sense of right, By complaisant recedence.
The stable stole behind the barn, Remoter still, the swine-yard ; The door-yard spurned its farther use Of chopping-place and kine-yard : While cart, sled, buggy, kennel, coop, Decorum's hardened scorners, Turned tail, and hid themselves away In proper holes and corners.
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At last the Old House rubbed its eyes, And blushed to see how shabby It needs must look in gabardine So threadbare, torn, and drabby ; And thereupon it set to work With earnest perseverance, Like tattered beau resolved to show A downright spruce appearance.
Old clapboard lesions straight were healed, Old shingles sloughed their mosses ; New panes, instead of scarecrow hats, Made good the window's losses ; And where the sun's rude eye till then, Had glared it's bold intrusion, Green blinds their welcome shadows drop Upon the dear seclusion.
And vines were planted by the door, The woodbine or clematis, To curtain in the rustic porch And drape the airy lattice ; And trees of graceful form and leaf Soon waved along all highways, And sent their verdant juniors forth To farthest lanes and by-ways :
So well, that e'en at highest noon, When June's keen solstice blazes, And not a Sylph in all the sky Her silvery sun shade raises ; From end to end of that fair vale, Where'er one's promenadings, He threads long arbors fresh and cool With elm and maple shadings.
Yon stream that makes our native vales A rival land of Goshen, Erst gathered in its myriad rills And bore them back to ocean, Unused in all its willowy course By groves of pines and beeches, Save where the Indian's birch canoe Went idling down the reaches.
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But now, where near-confronting hills Oppose their jutting shoulders, Or rended crags have lined the shore With dam-inviting boulders ; Behold, the valemen's cunning hands, The struggling Samson binding, Bend his blind strength to countless tasks Of spinning, forging, grinding.
And what a nobler triumph still, When from the full-urned mountains They won for garden, park and lawn, The flash and plash of fountains ; And bade the boon, for rich and poor, Exhaustlessly upwelling, A pure and sure Bethesda bide In every village dwelling !
And whereas, erst, no careless soul In all those mangled bowers, E'er waked to give one kindly thought To Eden's exiled flowers ; There's scarce a cotter now, but will, By dint of harder toiling, Find time to cherish these dear waifs Of Adam's garden spoiling.
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