USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Longmeadow > Proceedings at the centennial celebration of the incorporation of the town of Longmeadow, October 17th, 1883 > Part 2
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Not for themselves they bravely wrought, In honest labor's glow ; God's blessing for their heirs, they sought, One hundred years ago.
Their steadfast trust in things unseen, Devotion, calm and strong, Their courage dauntless and serene,- These all to us belong.
The gospel they so dearly prized, Is still our precious trust ; And grace to guard what they devised, We seek above their dust.
O'er us and ours, O God, preside. In paths our fathers trod ; O Love Divine, our footsteps guide, To rest with them in God.
The President of the day, Professor R. S. Storrs of Long- meadow and Hartford, then happily indicated the keynote of his chairmanship throughout the day, as being simply the represen- tative of Mother Longmeadow herself, by reading from the Circular of Invitation,-a fac simile of which is here given,-its opening paragraph; both to suggest more vividly to the minds of all the gracious presence of Her whose call had gathered them, and also as fitly introductory to the Address of Wel- come delivered by him, in her name, immediately thereafter.
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The . Longmeadow · Centennial. 1783-Oct. 17 .- 1883
To all the Sons and Daughters of Longmeadow, our Common Mother sendeth loving Greeting:
Cordially inviting you her well-beloved Children, with every friend to you or to herself allied, joyously to gather your- selves upon the seventeenth day of the tenth month, under the ancestral Elms of the Olden Green, To Celebrate with her, in song and thanksgiving and historic reminiscence, and with all fitting fellowships of heart and of hand,
Her One Hundredth Birthday.
And this, her cordial invitation, our venerable and beloved Mother sendeth, in especial remembrance, to you whose name is hereupon inscribed, by the hand of her Centennial Committee thereunto appointed and commissioned.
To ..
JOHN W. HARDING. RICHARD S. STORRS. OLIVER WOLCOTT. EDWARD INDICOTT. JOHN McFETIIRIES. JOHN C. PORTER. HENRY HALL. JOHN A. MCKINSTRY.
Longmeadow, Aug. 20, 1883.
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THE ADDRESS OF WELCOME.
BY PROF. R. S. STORRS.
Sons and Daughters of our Beloved Mother Longmeadow :- Her own invitation it was, dictated merely to me her willing scribe, which has gathered you here to-day; her welcome, too, it is, which now, by her command, I speak.
And I would that, as I try to translate into human speech the myriad voices of welcome which the dear mother has been whispering to me all these autumn days, in leafy lane and on sunny slope-I would that I could revive in your minds some- thing of that fresh nature-faith of men when the world itself was young, by which they so easily and so beautifully personified in tenderest human relationships old Mother Earth herself, and all the manifold forces and forms of nature around them.
Then, indeed, to you, as to the Nile worshiper of old, yonder silver stream which washes your beautiful meadows would be no longer simply a stream, but rather some bounteous and benignant. Father of floods, reclining himself among New England vales, and pouring from his lavish urn affluent tides of blessing along your borders ; and you would seem to hear in every murmuring ripple that kisses its banks, sweet syllables of welcome home to you, the children of his beloved meadow bride.
Then, too, for you, as for the ancient Greek, the hill-side groves which skirt your meadows and the laughing brooklets which intersect them, would be populous with nymph and naiad, and vocal with their welcome to each returning child; while every ancestral tree about us would seem to bend in loving recognition, and to whisper in every breeze almost articulate words of welcome home.
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Thus to us, as to all those childlike races of an earlier and a clearer vision than ours, it would be given to discern in this round planet of our star-eyed science, the dear old Earth Mother herself, bearing upon her bosom her innumerable tribes of child- ren, and gladly yielding for their support her own generous life.
And then would these words of your invitation hither, "Vener- able and Beloved Mother," be to you no mere figure of speech ; but rather would they call up before you a glad and gracious matron, of fairest form and feature, whose rich variety of beauty "age cannot wither," standing with outstretched hands, waiting to gather us all within her ample arms, and to breathe upon us her warm maternal blessing.
To me, then, thus imagining, and thus lovingly listening to the myriad whispering of the dear Mother in stream, and grove, and rustling field, she has seemed to be saying, again and again : "BID WELCOME FOR ME,-WARMEST WELCOME,-to all my Saxon children,-latest and best beloved of all my offspring. For they are not my only children, as they may have thought. My real years date not from any human enactment of even Puritan ,antiquity ; but from the far earlier decree of Him whose omnip- otent hand upraised New England's hills and hollowed out her vales, spread my carpet of verdure beside yonder stream, and Himself baptised me from its font with my own liquid name- most musical-most meet.
"The 1-o-n-g meadow of the red deer, in truth I was, as he bounded o'er me to slake his thirst at yonder river's side; and the 1-o-n-g meadow of the red man, as well, pursuing the deer through glen, and glade, and .grove. Upon my bosom have dwelt, upon my bounty have fed, and from me have finally departed to return no more, successive generations of these, my elder children. While they were with me I loved them, I nursed them, I cared for them; but they made me no large return of filial service or love, and I mourned not their final departure.
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"Then came the pale face,-stern of feature, strong of sinew, and stout of heart,-nigh two hundred and fifty years ago. My Centennial is it, that ye call this latest birthday of mine? Nay, not that alone,-for twice one hundred years, and more, have come and gone, since the pioneer pale face builded here his home, and first syllabled my liquid name. Ah, well do I remem- ber them! and brave and loyal men they were, and tender and true women, who crossed the stormy seas from their distant isle, looked lovingly upon my fair expanse, and chose me, from all · this broad land, for their future home. And .my heart warmed to them at once; and I gladly gave them of my choicest and my best; - my golden corn,-my waving grass and grain,-the luscious yield of orchard and of garden.
"And they were not ungrateful children of a loving mother. My brow and my bosom they smoothed and glossed with kind- liest culture, dotted with hospitable homes, and adorned with over-arching trees till my beauty became a proverb beyond the seas. Then, in my heart of hearts they reared the school of culture, and the sanctuary of faith,-the symbols and the expo- nents of all that was highest and holiest in their own lives, and most honorable and ennobling to me. And thus for seven successive generations-and more-these noble men and women, and their children's children, lived, and loved, and labored, and rested. God bless them-every one-whether they sleep in my embrace within yonder churchyard fold, or in distant lands, or in the vast and wandering grave of the fathomless sea.
"And now, do you wonder that my heart goes out in warmest greeting to the living descendants of those brave men and true- hearted women, who have gone out from my sheltering arms, and have builded for themselves other homes, and so have carried my dear name and fame far and wide among men? And that I bid you give them my choicest welcome as they come
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back to-day at my call, 'To Celebrate with me under the ancestral Elms of the Olden Green, with song and thanksgiving and historic reminiscence, and with all fitting fellowships of heart and of hand,' this gladdest day of all my years?"
Thus far the Mother herself, to every child that hath ears to hear. But the days have long since gone by, when such simple faiths as these had power to sway the imaginations of men. For the race, as for the individual,
It is not now as it hath been of yore. Turn whereso'er we may, By night or day,
The things which we have seen we now can see no more. Full well we know, where'er we go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth.
But if the Christian revelation and the Christian science which have superseded that elder nature-faith, have taken from us something of that mysterious charm which invested the mythologic world, they have, in their place, given us something far higher and nobler ; and other welcomes than these there are, which I am still privileged to speak to this Christian congregation.
From the all-embracing and all-sustaining Earth Mother of pagan and poetic fancy, beautiful though it be, we turn reverently and gladly to the Christian conception of the infinite All Father. He it is who setteth the solitary in families, who gathereth fami- lies into communities, who leadeth forth and planteth the nations of the earth, and who allots to every human being his birthplace and his home. His voice it is which speaks to every human heart in those sacred affections of kindred and of home, almost the deepest and dearest, almost the highest and holiest, that the human heart can know. And He, above all others, it surely is, who this day lovingly leads you back, and welcomes you, to these fields and forests where your fathers so long ago "found " what here they chiefly sought, "freedom to worship Him."
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And if the naiads and the dryads are departed, and the leafy groves are voiceless for you now ; if
From haunted spring and dale The parting genius is with sighing sent,
that faith and hope which have brought life and immortality to light, have, in their place, peopled this upper air with a vast cloud of witnesses, all unknown to pagan faith.
More than is of man's degree Must be with us, watching here, At this, our glad festivity. Whom we see not, we revere ;
and subtly, o'er our inmost souls there steals a sense of welcome warm, like dew distilling from the skies, as from their heights of glorified vision, they, our dear departed ones, bend above us, rejoicing to meet and mingle with us in this day's happy, and even holy, festivities.
And we, too, the happy inheritors of all this wealth of beauty and of blessing ; we, whose privilege it is still to dwell beneath the same skies which smiled upon our fathers and yours, to breathe the same air, to till the same soil, to gather around the same hearth- stone, and to worship in the same sanctuary,-we, too, welcome you, our brothers and sisters, back to your home and to ours.
Most gladly do we acknowledge your common heirship with us in all the rich heritage of the past,-its sweet and sacred memories, -- its holy and heroic inspirations ;- and we welcome you to an equal participation with ourselves in all the glad fellow- ships of this Centennial Day. Together let us retrace the historic past, with one who "more than a brother is to us ;" together let us raise the song of grateful praise ; together let us lift the prayer of reverent thanksgiving ; and together let us pledge ourselves, in His strength, to lives worthy of such a history, and such an ancestry.
And may a gracious God bless and keep, for many and many a century yet to come, in ever brightening beauty and in ever broadening bounty, OUR DEAR OLD MOTHER LONGMEADOW !
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The Address of Welcome was followed by the singing of the following Centennial Hymn, written by Professor Storrs for the occasion, to the familiar tune of the Missionary Chant, with the omission of the refrain line of each stanza.
CENTENNIAL HYMN. BY PROF. R. S. STORRS.
Bend low-in brightest beauty bend,
Ye skies, that o'er our fathers smiled :
Sweetest, selectest influence lend,
To bless the heart of every child, On this dear Natal Day.
Blow soft-ye balmy breezes, blow,
That winged our fathers o'er the sea, These meadows, fresh and fair, to sow
With sacred seeds of Liberty, For this free Natal Day.
Flow gently, flow-thou silver stream,
That washed those meadows fresh and fair ; Let gladness glow in every gleam
That flashes on th'illumined air, Of this bright Natal Day.
Ye mountains, meadows, woods, and plains, Ye skies, and streams, and glades, and groves, EXULT-that still to you remains This village of our fathers' loves, To this glad Natal Day.
God grant that while the sun shall shine, And human hearts and homes endure, Around these homes fond hearts shall twine, In love and homage deep and pure, As on this Natal Day.
The President then introduced the Orator of the Day, Rev. John Wheeler Harding, under the perhaps pardonable pseudonym of "Rev. John Williams Harding, a lineal descendant, if there ever was one,-in spirit at least-of the Rev. John Williams of Deerfield."
Mr. Harding, after a pleasant acknowledgment of the relation- ship thus unexpectedly attributed to him, proceeded to deliver the following Historical Address.
T
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HA TODDLE DISTANCE.
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THE HISTORICAL ADDRESS, BY REV. JOHN W. HARDING,
PASTOR OF
THE FIRST CHURCH OF CHRIST
IN LONGMEADOW.
This centennial anniversary seizes upon the land-mark of our town incorporation only as the starting place for a review, not of one hundred years alone, but of the two hundred and forty years that have poured their treasures into our Longmeadow history. It is quite impossible to compress such a history into a historical address. Avoiding, therefore, the tedium of chro- nological and genealogical precisions, I shall simply attempt, within the hour allotted me, a series of photographic glances ; not, however, at random, but with the connecting purpose of illustrating what Alexis de Tocqueville, that acute observer of our American institutions, said of the New England township. "It was the nucleus round which the local interests, rights, and duties so collected and clung, that it gave scope to the activities of a thoroughly democratic and republican life. Its local assem- blies of freemen-the town-meetings-were to liberty what primary schools are to science; they brought it within the people's reach ; they taught men how to use and enjoy it; and even while the American colonies still recognized the supremacy of the mother country, the republic was already established in every township."
My illustrations will cover, though all too rapidly and suc- cinctly, three periods,-the Meadow or Springfield period, the
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Precinct, and the Town period, the latter specially marked by our centennial,-one hundred years,-the former two about seventy years each.
Our Longmeadow founders, the Coltons, Burts, Cooleys, Blisses, Keeps, Elys, Fields, Hales, and Stebbinses, were not exiles or separatists, like the Plymouth pilgrims They belonged to the company of some 20,000 Puritan emigrants, whose sails whitened the Atlantic sea between 1630 and 1640; Englishmen of the adventurous and thrifty sort, who came with their cattle and household goods, many of them with considerable substance, not simply for w ler religious freedom, but to better their worldly condition.
It is the summer of 1630. From one of Boston's hills we view the sea. Westward ho! A sail! Another sail! Seventeen ships that summer come from Albion's shore-1600 passengers, and of the best that ever came. Among them, John Winthrop and his friend, William Pynchon, bringing the charter of the province of Massachusetts Bay, both patentees, Winthrop gover- nor, Pynchon assistant. They reinforce the notable company already there and rapidly increasing ; bold, hardy, resolute men ; brave, gentle, patient women ; their ministers such as Cotton, Hooker, Stone, Warham, scholars of renown from Oxford, Cam- bridge, from the best pulpits, whom the Church of England could ill spare, and yet with too much of non-conformity in their bones; they must go-they must breathe freer air. They settle in Roxbury, Newtown, Dorchester, Watertown. And again, westward ho! These hives must swarm. Pynchon has lived in Roxbury scarce a year, when three Indian Sachems come from fair Connecticut. They bring rich furs-beaver, otter, fox, and wolf, and mink. They tell of their great river, fertile meadows, the salmon, bass, and shad, and sturgeon. John Cable and John Woodcock go to explore. They bring back a good report.
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William Pynchon himself explores; the western fever grows, and while the people of the bay protest, the boldest spirits, most enterprising, the very elect, prepare to go. The Watertown people with Henry Smith, Pynchon's son-in-law, to Wethersfield; the Newtown or Cambridge people, with Thomas Hooker, to Hartford; the Dorchester people with John Warham, to Wind- sor. The Roxbury people will soon follow Pynchon to Agawam. There is romance in those paths. The leave-takings with old neighbors, the Indian trail through dim old woods and boggy marshes, the river fords, the ringing axes, the camp-fires under lofty pines or by some gurgling brook, the feebler women borne on litters, the little children lulled to sleep upon their hemlock beds by the soughing in the tree-tops, frightened by the screech owl, the baying wolf, or painted Indian; the processions of lowing cattle, and the shouting boys, the pack horses, armed men with trusty match-locks ; at morn and night the prayers and psalms when each pastor, with his own church about him, invokes the Almighty care :-
" And they shook the depths of the forest gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer."
It is the Ist of May, 1636. William Pynchon starts with his Roxbury neighbors by the old bay path to Agawam. Their bulkier goods have already gone round by water in John Winthrop's shallop, the "Blessing of the Bay." Learned, gifted, wealthy, devout, every way qualified for leadership, Pynchon becomes the father of Springfield, as he had been the father of Roxbury. Already his eye had taken in the choice localities. Hear the sixth article of agreement between Pynchon and his associates : "The Long meddowe called Massacksick, lying in the way to Dorchester [now Windsor] shall be distributed to every man as we shall think meete." A few days after he purchases the "Long meddowe" from those ancient Indians of Agawam, Com-
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muck, and Matanchan; and in particular with the consent of Machetuhood, Wenepawin, and Mohemoos, "for 4 fathom of wampum, 4 coates, 4 hatchets, 4 howes, and 4 knifes." "And the said Pynchon doth further condition with the said Indians that they shall have and enjoy all the ground which is now planted; and have liberty to take fish and deer, ground-nuts, walnuts, acorns, and peas. And also if any cattle spoil their corn, to pay as it is worth."
These Indians were not cheated. It was "value received." They attached little value to the land they sold that they did not still retain. They had repeatedly and urgently invited Pynchon and his friends. They saw the great advantage of their coming, in a ready market for their furs, in the tools, the cloth, the many equivalents and increments of their welfare. For forty years they lived in perfect unity with our fathers, and they had con- tinued so but for outside influences of distant tribes and the wily machinations of King Philip. They were not numerous enough, they were too idle and roving to really possess the land. Fearfully decimated by the small-pox before our fathers came, thinned again by intestine wars, sometimes for miles not a single wigwam, it was a vacant domain, although they gathered more numerously about the great river where fish abounded and the beavers built their dams. There was a village on Pecowsic brook, a palisaded fort on Long hill, a burial-ground on yonder river bank, its skeletons revealed from time to time by the prying river. Their scattered arrow-heads and pottery, and rude implements of tillage often remind us of them, but never to condemn our fathers.
The scene changes. It is the 5th of October, 1675, at dead of night. Listen! On the river road in yonder meadow, the clatter of flying hoofs. Why this headlong haste? A messenger from Windsor. King Philip the night before has led by winding
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ways and noiseless stealth, three hundred of his Indians into Long hill fort. He waits a day before the sack of Springfield for his scouts to go to Hartford and effect the escape of certain hostages the Springfield people have in durance there. On their way they have let out their dreadful secret to Toto, a Windsor Indian in Mr. Wolcott's family. He betrays it in his looks-they wrest it from him, and their messenger speeds the warning. When our Longmeadow settlers hear the war-whoop from Long hill and see the smoke of Springfield they look well to their powder and their bullets. Each house becomes a fort. They fetch their harvests in with one wary eye toward the river and the other toward the hill-side; they keep their muskets primed.
The mild winter merges into spring. Skulking Indians are about, but thus far they are unmolested. On the 26th of March they muster courage to go to church. They are eighteen-men, women, and children. They have just passed through the Long- meadow gate, and are descending Pecowsic hill ; the war-whoop halts them ; the arrows fly ; John Keep falls dead ; his wife and two children receive mortal wounds; some of the rest are taken captive. Before this, in the sunny meadow, peace, tranquil indus- tries, the growing thrift of happy homes. But now to the hard discipline of work joins the tougher discipline of war-the con- stant watch for ambushed foes. Every boy over 15 is counted a soldier ; there is a training day every month; the "Worshipful Major" John Pynchon is in chief command. Good soldiers in those days, as well as good farmers and good Christians. En- signs Cooley, Keep, Stebbins, Quartermaster George Colton, and best officer of them all, our Miles Standish,-Captain Thomas Colton. How the Indians feared him. One of them aims at him as he is plowing in the cornfield from behind a bush, but his hand trembles, and he dares not fire, so sure, he said, that if
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he should miss the captain, the captain would make an end of him.
The meadow period draws to its close. It is December, 1695. A mighty flood. All day long the river rises. The long meadow is a sea. Night draws on. The relentless flood swashes into the cellars, above the floors, puts out the fires; and still it rises. The Cooleys, dwelling northward, flee to Springfield ; the Blisses, Burts, and Stebbinses of the central settlement, row for the hill-side and spend the night in the woods; the Keeps and Coltons, dwelling southward, row past the deserted houses to one near Cooley brook, and there venture to spend the night. They will risk no more floods. The removal to the hill begins. This spacious street is located; the new home lots apportioned, and our present village grows apace. In 1709 was born the last child of the meadow settlement, Simon Colton, grandson of the quartermaster.
Here endeth the Meadow or Springfield period. Our fathers have been selectmen of Springfield long enough to know how to set up for themselves. The Precinct period begins. "Although not fully up to the. number of forty families," their petition to Great and General Court maintains that they "are of good and sufficient ability to maintain a minister." The petition is granted. A separate precinct for the gospel ministry. That is the crystalizing thought. At the second precinct meeting " Honorable Colonel" Pynchon, moderator, the first vote is to raise, shingle, and clapboard a meeting-house by January Ist ensuing, 32 by 38 feet, place left to the prudential committee ; another committee raised "to provide workmen and materials to carry on the work to that maturity and by the time as aforesaid." It was further voted " to call a learned orthodox minister to dispense the word of God to us this winter, and that the com- mittee take care to provide such a minister as speedy as may be,
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and first to take advice of the Reverend Elders in order to pro- vide one suitable for us." It was further voted " to git or have a school-master to teach or learn our children to read and write."
Here is your republic already established-your independent nation-in rapid process of equipment. The elders advise, and the "learned and orthodox," that is the correctly learned minister, comes-Stephen Williams, a youth of twenty-one, a graduate of Harvard, of that remarkable family ninety and more of whom are enrolled as alumni of Harvard, more than eighty alumni of Yale, and a like proportion on other catalogues ; one of them founder of Williams College ; another signer of the Declaration of Inde- pendence ; eminent in all professions, adorning every rank. No aristocratic child of ease, however, is the youthful candidate. Taken captive by the Indians at ten years of age, he has early borne the yoke of fearful sorrows and unusual hardships. A brother and sister killed on that dreadful night at the sack of Deerfield, his gentle mother slain upon the wintry march, he has been schooled in Indian wigwams, in all the arts of woodcraft, among the Jesuits of Quebec, as well as in college cloisters. He knows already much of men and their affairs, and he is to lay the life-long impress of a rare social culture and a wide acquaintance on the Longmeadow parish.
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