USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Our county and its people : A history of Hampden County, Massachusetts. Volume 2 > Part 29
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The way connecting Springfield and Westfield was laid out as a highway at an early date.
Westfield, then, at the time of its incorporation, 1669, was not so much of an out-of-the-way place as many have supposed. It was on the line of communication of all the towns in the val- ley, with Albany and places farther west. It was on a main line of communication between towns in the valley north and south of Westfield.
Mr. Judd tells us that "there is no record of goods being brought from Boston to Connecticut river by land, except small quantities on horseback, before 1767, so that for a century after the settlement of Westfield, goods from Boston came to the town, as to other towns in the valley, by water around the cape along the south shore and up the Connecticut river to Hartford and
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Windsor and then by cart to towns farther north." In the year 1767 it is recorded that one Simeon Smith of Amherst "carried down produce and brought up goods for traders and others, in the towns on both sides of the river." He made his way with a wagon, over the ungraded roads, sometimes with a load weigh- ing nearly a ton. He charged from a dollar to a dollar and a half per hundred for his freight. He did not make regular trips in winter, the roads in some places being blocked by snow drifts. Drummers would have had a sorry time of it in those days. Ped- dlers with thread, needles and other small articles on horseback were not uncommon on the bay paths running from Hadley and Springfield to Boston. The foot peddler, even in winter time, with his pack or with his two little tin trunks hung from the ends of a shoulder yoke to lessen the pull upon his arms, could make his way from house to house over the deepest snow and the high- est drifts on his snowshoes or rackets, as they were called.
Simeon Smith did not long plod his way alone over the hills and through the forests to Boston. Other teamsters began to keep company with him. We have no record of those from Westfield, but in the winter, after "hog killing," the farmers would load their pork on "pungs" drawn by horses, and, forming a train of loaded teams, move on to Boston. If they found the road drifted they could "all turn to and shovel out." Fortunately, a good share of the way forest trees protected the snow from the "pil- ing winds." If a hill was unusually steep, they could "double" their teams, and thus cheerily pull up one load after another. Having made successful sales their homeward trips with full pockets and light loads of sugar, molasses and other household supplies, and their merry and sometimes boisterous ways, led to the charge of "revylyng on the highwayes"; but there was no re- porter to put up a column concerning their performances nor a daily paper to publish it. As they neared their homes the old responsibilities again impressed them, and they entered West- field with a mien as sedate as that of their horses. The titles "Colonel," "Captain," "Ensign," etc., seemed to rest upon them as appropriately as if their boyish escapades had not oc- curred. That Boston had learned of the products of Westfield
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not many years after the incorporation of the town, is evident from the diary of Chief Justice Samuel Sewall, who has been styled "the Puritan Pepys." Writing in 1692, he says: "Our kitchen chimney fell on fire about noon, and blazed out sorely at top, appeared to be foul; the fire fell on the shingles so that they began to burn in several places, being very dry ; but by the good Providence of God, no harm was done. Mr. Fisk was with us, and we sat merrily to a dinner on the Westfield pork that was snatched from the fire on this occasion."
Town Roads .- A volume might be written describing the town roads and streets of Westfield. As early as 1667, or very soon thereafter, Main street, Union street, Meadow street and Silver street were laid out. The street that once ran from West- field river across Main street, near the Little river bridge, south to Silver street, was long ago cut off by Little river. So much of South street as runs north from Silver street to the river bank is all that remains of old South street. Little river was forded in early times above the bridge. From this ford the road took a northeasterly course into the Windsor road by the bank of the river. The present road between the bridges is comparatively new. The way to the plains (Southwick) on the south was along South street to the river ford above the present railroad, thence across the river and up the hill in a southwesterly direction.
The Early French and English Wars .- King Philip's war had ended in 1677. As the Indians no longer attacked towns nor massed their warriors for desolating expeditions, the bless- ings of peace returned. Confidence was gradually restored. Houses and barns were rebuilt, the western towns were strength- ened in numbers and in wealth by the arrival of new settlers. The areas of occupancy were widened. Forests hitherto undis- turbed by the woodman's axe began to echo with its sound and open lands untouched by the implements of tillage were subject- ed to the plough. Prosperity returned. The abundance of good land easily obtained as yet in the valley, made it compara- tively easy to reduce the indebtedness incurred by the war.
The years of peace, however, were few. £ In 1688 William and Mary became the sovereigns of England. The war known
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as King William's war between the French and English in- volved the colonists in fresh difficulties. This was the first of four conflicts, which, as Francis Parkman remarks, "ended in giving Great Britain a maritime and colonial preponder- ance over France and Spain." "So far as concerns the colo- nies and the sea," he adds, "these several wars may be re- garded as a single and protracted one, broken by inter- vals of truce." Like the solitary oaks upon the moun- tainside, that come to full strength and maturity exposed to the sunlight and the storms, so each New England settlement during many years experienced its vicissitudes of peace and war, of plenty and want, of joy and sorrow, through all, growing in strength and in wisdom. At length the character and culture of the people of New England have come to determine the character of a nation.
During King William's war, Deerfield, being the northern settlement in the valley, Northfield not yet being resettled, suf- fered the loss of several inhabitants at the hands of skulking In- dians; but Westfield suffered little. During Queen Anne's war the sack of Deerfield on the last day of February, 1704, thrilled with horror the people of Westfield. The French and Indians, after much slaughter and house burning, started over the snow for Canada with one hundred and eleven prisoners. Who could tell when the next town in the valley would be overpowered ?
May 14, as soon as the condition of the ground was favor- able to repairing the stockade, "it was voted unanimously that all persons shall work both with themselves and theire teames att repairing of the fort aboute Mr. Taylor's house forthwith & who- soever shall neglect to doe his share shall pay theire equal pro- portion to others according to what work is done att sd fort or worke at some other public workes of ye towne."
At a town meeting June 30, 1704, "it was voted unani- mously by ye inhabitants that ye severall houses in the town that are forted, hereafter named shall stand and be defended and have there severall proportions of men posted to them (by ye committy appoynted) as may be accounted convenient under theire circumstances for theire defense viz. Mr. Taylor's Stephen
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Kellog's Consider Maudsley's, John Sacket's John Noble's, Thomas Root's."
At the same meeting "it was unanimously voted that ye sev- erall housen and garrisons above mentioned shall be free (as well for the proper owners,) for all families and good (accord- ing to their proportions) who shall be appoynted to the severall garrisons by the committy of malisha."
Trumbull says: "Constant rumors of an approaching ene- my kept the country in a continued state of alarm. At no time since Philip's war, twenty-eight years previous, had there been so many soldiers in the county. They were quartered in every town, and there were marchings and countermarchings in every direction. Indians, spies and scouts of the approaching army, filled the forests. Parties of English, many of them citizens of the river towns, incessantly ranged the woods. None of the in- habitants dared venture far beyond the fortifications without an efficient guard, and the occupations of the farming community were greatly interfered with, if not wholly suspended." In spite of the vigilance of the English, during this and several years following, Indian murders were not infrequent. In 1708, Haver- hill was attacked, about forty persons killed and many taken captive. The various expeditions fitted out by the colonists against the French in Canada, not meeting with the needed aid from England, failed of decisive results.
During the ten years of the war one hundred and nineteen persons were killed in Hampshire county, twenty-five wounded, while the captives numbered one hundred and twenty-five.
The burden of taxes which the war imposed upon Massa- chusetts was enormous, and the means of paying them were scanty. An average tax of more than a million a year was levied upon the people of Massachusetts. The treaty of Utrecht, in March, 1713, establishing peace, was hailed with joy and thanksgiving.
Though England and France were at peace, the Indians hov- ering near the towns were still ready to plunder whenever it seemed to them safe to do so, and, like hounds that have tasted blood, they were prone to take life.
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In 1744, the terrors of King George's war darkened the land. At a legal town meeting April 27, 1747, "it was voted that the Commission Officers and the Selectmen and Doctor Ashley shall be the Committy to see what measures and what houses should be forted and to make Report to the town what is best to be done : att the same meeting it was voted to pay a scout that may be sent by the Commission officers out after the discovery of the enemy if the province will not pay them: this meeting was voted to be continued by adjournment untill Monday next the 4. day of May : the town met at the time adjourned to and the Committy Reported to the town that they were determined it was best to make a fort Round Stephen Kelloggs house and Lieut Consider Mosleys and Doct. Ashley house and one over the Little River and one over the great River and two watch boxes and to be done by the town."
The "Doctor Ashley house," spoken of in the above note, was situated in Silver street at the south end of Noble street, on the site of William Atkins's house. The building has been razed within a few years, to make room for a modern structure. The base of the second story projected over the top of the first story, and the walls were fortified against musket-balls. The fort-houses were situated in positions convenient for the refuge of the in- habitants, in case of a hostile attack. The old Ingersoll house, not long ago standing over Little river, is said to have been the one which was fortified, or "forted."
The peace of Aix-la-Chapelle brought a respite to the col- onists of only a few years. In 1754 began the tremendous strug- gle of the French and English for the dominant power in North America. The cost to the towns in the valley, both in men and in money, was large; but in the campaigns of this last and wide- spread French and Indian war, the English of the colonies were trained in the art of organized warfare and rendered effective service in many terrible battles. In the four hours' fight near the shore of Lake George, in the expedition against Crown Point, in 1755, victory was won largely by the stubborn valor of the Hampshire regiment. Nearly one-fourth of all the killed and wounded belonged to this regiment. Major Noah
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Ashley, Capt. Jonathan Ingersoll and Richard Campbell, from Westfield, are reported among the dead. It is impossible to give a complete list of those from Westfield who helped, in this and in the previous wars, to destroy the domination of the French and to put an end to the depredations of their savage allies. The following are recorded from Westfield as soldiers for Canada in 1757: William Shepard (afterwards General), Thomas Campbell, Eli Noble, John Larrabee, Seth Root, Simeon Root, William Hitchcock, Richard Falley, Israel Noble, Elisha Martindale, Daniel Hubbard, James Wilson, Gideon Gunn, Shem Kellogg and William Kerr. The two last named were killed and Falley was taken prisoner. It is said that Oliver Root and Ozam Sacket were also in the war and "put up a vote of thanks upon the meeting house door in 1760." Zenas Noble, Aaron Ashley, Peleg Combs, Stephen Ward, Moses Root, A. Jones, Samuel Johnson, Enos Loomis, Nathaniel Church, Joseph Baker, Stephen Saxton, William Patterson and Benjamin Pike enlisted in 1761-2, probably for the expedition against Pontiac. There is no record of the individual sufferings of thousands be- cause of the French and Indian wars. At length, after a series of wars extending over the larger part of a century, in 1760, the French surrendered the province of Canada.
Speaking of this period, Holland, referring to this valley, says :
"Children had been born, had grown up to manhood, and descended to old age, knowing little or nothing of peace and tranquillity. Hundreds had been killed, and large numbers car- ried into captivity. Men, women and children had been butch- ered by scores. There is hardly a square acre, certainly not a square mile, in the Connecticut valley, that has not been tracked by the flying feet of fear, resounded with the groans of the dying, drunk the blood of the dead, or served as the scene of toils made doubly toilsome by an apprehension of danger that never slept. It was among such scenes and such trials as these that the settle- ments of Western Massachusetts were planted. It was by these scenes and trials that their sinews were knit to that degree of strength that, when the incubus of war and fear were lifted, they
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sprang to those enterprises of peace, which in less than one cen- tury have transformed the valley and the Berkshire hills into a garden of beauty, a home of luxury and refinement, an abode of plenty, and a seat of free education and free religion. The joy of victory that spread everywhere over the colonies was great, but the joy of peace was greater. The relief felt on every hand can hardly be imagined now. The long clogged wheels of en- terprise moved again, and settlements that had been forsaken were reclaimed, while new ones were commenced. The axe re- sounded in the forests, and smiling harvests returned once more to be gathered rejoicingly beneath the reign of peace."
EARLY HABITS AND CUSTOMS
The first dwellings of the settlers were very rude-log houses or bank houses, facing the south, so that the bank on the north would protect from cold and allow of underground rooms behind the sunny front rooms. These ground dwellings were sometimes called cellars. The banks that bound the lowlands on the north side of the Westfield river and the meadow terraces are well adapted to such dwellings. Here several seem to have been made, for this side was sometimes known as the north or cellar side. These cellars were not uncommon in other parts of the town. At a town meeting February 4, 1678, during the stress of Philip's war, "there is granted liberty to John Ponder to set a house or celler within the gate by Lieut. Moseley for a while in case he is thrust from his own by reason of troublous times."
As sawmills were built and the increasing means of the settlers made it possible to provide better buildings, log houses gave place to more commodious dwellings. Those of simpler form were one-story houses, having rooms of good size, while the unfinished attic furnished a generous chamber for children, with abundant opportunity for the storage of corn and other grains, for the drying of nuts and for the safekeeping of manifold house- hold goods. The huge stone chimney, built with clay instead of mortar, occupying a large portion of the cellar, and claiming a good share of the house as its right, that it might present in every room a large fireplace, and rising above the
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Homestead of Eli Ashley,
Formerly situated on the east side of Elm street, Westfield, Mass., opposite the corner of Elm and Franklin streets. This was the first house erected on Elm street.
OUR COUNTY AND ITS PEOPLE
ridge of the house with a top square and large as if defying the fiercest storms, was one of the most distinctive features of the earlier colonial houses. The front door opened into a small en- try, on the right and on the left of which was a door opening into a front room, one the parlor occasionally used, the other the sitting room. Back of these rooms was the long kitchen, or liv-
Corner cupboard in the house built by Captain William Moseley in 1786
Now owned by his grandsons, Edward and Thomas B. Moseley, Westfield, Mass.
ing room, running the whole length of the house save as it was shortened by "mother's bedroom," a pantry and a closed stair- way leading from the kitchen to the attic. The kitchen by doors communicated with all the other rooms of the house and with the woodshed. A side door, in many houses, opening on to the
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yard, gave an unhindered view of the fields, and added to the good cheer of the room in summer time.
Larger houses, though of the same general plan, were two stories in height and had four front rooms. The chimney held so large an area that the space for the front hall and angular stairs was often quite limited. The kitchen with its concomitants was usually provided for under a lean-to roof. The Moseley homestead, on Union street, which long ago passed its centennial, is a stately example of this sort of house, though it has a rear ell instead of the lean-to roof.
Another plan, more aristocratic, was that of a two-story house having eight rooms nearly square in the main house, with a generous hall on each floor, running from front to rear. The kitchen was in an ell projecting from one-half of the rear of the main house. As provision was made for heating all the rooms by fireplaces, two chimneys were required in the main house and one in the ell. Such a house when standing on rising ground in an ample yard bordered with Lombardy poplars, originally im- ported from over the sea, was indeed a stately reminder of the manor houses of old England and of ancestral rank. The mould- ings and carvings of the front entrances of these old houses, the chaste mantels, the panelled wainscot and the corner cup- boards of the front rooms are much admired.
The finish of the front entrance of the large gambrel-roofed house on Main street, near Noble street, is yet well preserved. This house was long known as Landlord Fowler's house, and later as Harrison tavern.
Burgoyne, with some of his companions, after his defeat at Saratoga, is said, under the convoy of American soldiers, to have slept here one night while on his way from Albany to Boston, hence the house is often called the "Burgoyne house."
The kitchen in these colonial houses, with its long mantel spanning the huge fireplace and oven and with its high-backed settle, that, in zero weather, attempted to wall off the frigid cold in the rear of the room from the torrid heat of the fire, well nourished by wood from four to eight feet in length, was the center of the home life of the household.
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Whittier has well described the winter evening fire, as it lighted up the kitchen :
"As night drew on, and, from the crest
Of wooded knolls that ridged the west,
The sun, a snow-blown traveller, sank
From sight beneath the smothering bank,-
We piled, with care, our nightly stack Of wood against the chimney-back,-
The oaken log, green, huge, and thick,
And on its top the stout back-stick ;
The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art, The ragged brush; then, hovering near,
We watched the first red blaze appear,
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam,
Until the old rude-furnished room
Burst, flower like, into rosy bloom."
The kitchen was in its best array in late autumn, when strings of quartered apples, clusters of red peppers, braids of popcorn vied with crook-necked squashes, bacon, ham, dried beef and sheaves of herbs in adorning the walls.
The straight backed chairs seemed to say, "This is no place for lounging," while the tall clock, with its deliberate and sol- emn tick, seemed to remind of those lines of Young:
"We take no note of time,
But from its loss ; to give it then a tongue, Is wise in man."
The kitchen was indeed a place where these suggestions were heeded. Time was improved. In addition to the usual cooking and cleaning there was soap-making, brewing and dyeing, the making of cloth for the family and the cutting and making of . garments. At one end of the long room stood the spinning wheel and the loom. The whir of the one and the rattle and thud of the other made music in the ear of the thrifty housewife. Here the flax which the men had raised, threshed, retted and broken, the women with distaff and spindle wrought into thread to be
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woven into linen-some of which woven more than a century ago is among the heirlooms of Westfield homesteads to day-or to be woven with woolen yarn into linsey-woolsey.
Over the mantel hung the gun proved in many a hunt and relied upon as a staunch weapon of defense. On the mantel the little hoard of books, well read because without competitors. There also was the box containing the flint and steel, the tinder and lint wherewith to start a fire, if the fire on the hearth should
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Old "Landlord Fowler House," Westfield
go out. When other sources of fire failed, a tramp to some neigh- bor's house must be taken with tin lantern to bring home the lighted candle.
The kitchen was at times the workshop of the men and boys as well as of the women. During the long evenings shingles were shaved, yokes and other farm implements were fashioned.
Glancing at the table and cupboard, we should notice that pewter and woodenware were in common use. Crockery was
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sparingly used by settlers in the seventeenth century. The table was supplied with articles of food from the farm and house gar- den. The smoke-house and the meat barrels in the cellar fur- nished a continual supply of meat, alternated with fowl, game, fish and the snow-preserved fresh meats of winter. Boiled din- ner, with Indian pudding, was a frequent midday meal and was served cold at supper to workingmen. Wheat bread seems to have been more common in the seventeenth than in the eighteenth century. Rye and corn came to be the common ingredients of bread. Brown bread, composed of two parts Indian meal and one part rye, was largely used. Prof. Shaler of Harvard has well set forth the value of Indian corn to the settlers. He says :
"The success of the first settlements in America was also greatly aided by the fact that the continent afforded them a new and cheaper source of bread in the maize or Indian corn, which was everywhere used by the aborigines of America. It is diffi- cult to convey an adequate impression of the importance of this grain in the early history of America. In the first place, it yields not less than twice the amount of food per acre of tilled land, with much less labor ( ?) than is required for an acre of small grains ; is far less dependent on the changes of the seasons ; the yield is much more uniform than that of the old European grains ; the harvest need not be made at such a particular sea- son ; the crop may with little loss be allowed to remain ungath- ered for weeks after the grain is ripe ; the stalks of the grain need not be touched in the harvesting, the ears alone being gathered ; these stalks are of greater value for forage than is the straw of wheat and other similar grains. Probably the greatest advan- tage of all that this beneficent plant afforded to the early set- tlers was the way in which it could be planted without plough- ing, amid the standing forest trees which had been only deadened by having their bark stripped away by the axe. Its strong roots readily penetrated deep into the soil, and the strong tops fought their way to the light with a vigor which few plants possess. The grain was ready for domestic use within three months from the time of planting, and in four months it was ready for the harvest."
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Tea and coffee were long considered rare luxuries in most families. Fortunately, they have taken the place of cider, so long considered needful. Orchards are now reared for better pur- poses than for the filling of cider barrels for home consumption. In early times, before the settlers had planted orchards or built cider mills, home-brewed beer was a common drink. For many decades, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a supply of cider was considered as important as other articles of diet. Charles Francis Adams tells us that "to the end of his life, a large tankard of hard cider was John Adams's morning draught before breakfast; and in sending directions from Philadelphia to Quincy to her agent, in 1799, Mrs. Adams takes care to men- tion that the 'President hopes you will not omit to have eight or nine barrels of good late made cider put up in the cellar for his own particular use.' "
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