USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Northfield > Puritan outpost, a history of the town and people of Northfield, Massachusetts > Part 27
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There was beginning to be too much memory in the town's life
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and not a due balance of hope and prospect. It was suffering, as every detached inland town was suffering, from the two enticements to other fields, the larger towns of commercial and industrial life and the broad prairies, which a national government's policies of internal improvements and land grants were making lures to youth and enter- prise.
Perhaps the railroad would some day help matters. Back in the late twenties, representatives like Mr. Mason and Ezekiel Webster brought home stories of such projects-first of a horse railroad from Boston to Albany, then a vivid rejection of the idea that the steam locomotive, now used in England, would ever be practical here. The reasoning in the legislative report of 1827 was that in England, where coal was cheap and oats were high, the former would be work- able fuel; while in this country with coal scarce and oats plenty, the horse would be the motive power. In 1829, Governor Lincoln, pro- gressive that he was, had advised construction of railroads by the State and his suggestion had in the course of years been followed, with the result that in 1836 and '37 the Western railroad to Worcester and headed for Springfield had received state aid. Already there was talk of sending another line to Fitchburg and along the Miller's River valley to the Connecticut, where it surely ought to turn to the north and tap Vermont. Northfield dreamed hazily that it would be on such a route.
That there should have come a halt in the town's growth, meas- ured by population, was less disturbing when comparison was made with other inland towns. Something was happening not only to stop the increase but actually to bring about a decline, and in the case of those not favorably situated, a sharp declivity. When the census of 1850 was published, it revealed that twelve of the twenty-six towns in Franklin County had a smaller population than in 1830. Northfield was not one of them. It had dropped slightly in 1840 but had recov- ered, even though the total was now but fifteen more than twenty years before-1,772 as against 1,757. It was standing still and fortu- nate in so doing as compared with towns all about it. If comparison were extended to other counties or over the state border in nearby New Hampshire and Vermont, satisfaction could be taken that it was holding its own.
In 1820, the most populous town in Franklin County was New
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Salem, distinctly a hill town, with its central village pitched on a con- spicuous hill-top. It then had 2,146 people. By 1850 it had shrunk to 1,253, a decline of nearly half. Warwick, the nearest neighbor of Northfield on the East, had declined with each decade and was twenty-five per cent smaller than in 1830. Hill towns in the western part of the county had lost in like measure : Ashfield from 1,748 to 1,394 ; Hawley from 1,089 to 881 ; Heath from 1, 122 to 803 ; Leyden from 974 to 716; Rowe from 851 to 659. New Salem had dropped from first place to ninth; Warwick from eighth to sixteenth; Leyden from seventeenth to twenty-sixth.
That in the shifting of population Northfield had been least affected was shown in the fact that alone of the twenty-six towns it had exactly held its rank, being the fifth in rank in 1820, fifth in 1830, fourth in 1840 and fifth in 1850. That in the census of 1850 it lost a point, temporarily gained in 1840, was due to the advance of certain towns, which had passed it on the way. Quite as marked as the loss by the hill towns had been the growth in others. The towns that were growing were gaining at a higher rate than the declining towns were losing. From 1820 to 1830, the eleven towns with declin- ing population lost at a rate of 7.5 per cent ; the thirteen growing towns had a gain of 12.2 per cent. The centralizing tendency was more marked in the next ten years, when fourteen towns lost at a rate of 9.5 per cent and ten towns gained 13.1 per cent ; still wider, in the years from 1840 to 1850, the losing towns declined at the rate of 7.2 per cent and the growing ones added 18.8 per cent.
The power that was operating to shift town populations was gen- erated by water wheels. The neighbor that was being sought, as a substitute for the family on the next farm, was the factory. Farm profits and wages for farm labor could not compete with the returns on investment in a mill or pay to shop-workers. The work-day in a factory was actually as low as ten hours; on the farm it was indefi- nite ; it might easily be fifteen hours, and at seasons even more than that between early milkin' and the last chores. The factory job seemed more genteel, as well as more remunerative, and there was more com- panionship in it. The smarter boys were drawn to it. Even the girls were finding it attractive, as in the woolen mill at Hinsdale, within the original Northfield territory.
The growth of factory towns, the depletion of the farm villages
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and the swift decline of the hill populations was bringing about great and swift changes all over New England. It was apparent within the bounds of this county which had been solely agricultural up to the first quarter of the century. In 1820, the town of Orange was twenty- second in rank of population, with 829 people; in 1850, it was sixth, with 1,701, more than doubled. Miller's River, a smart stream with the least variability of almost any New England river, had been har- nessed there. Greenfield, the county seat, much smaller than North- field in 1820, had doubled in population and advanced from seventh to first place, not because it was the county capital but because of Green River. Deerfield, always till now smaller than Northfield, had nearly doubled in the three decades and in population was next to Greenfield solely because it was next to it geographically and the industry that made Greenfield grow was actually within Deerfield territory ; its growth was in Cheapside. The only farm towns to hold their own were those on the rivers, having broad meadows, and even these were showing no gain. The hill towns were clearly under a doom.
Now it was realized that the several streams which found the Con- necticut at Northfield, beautiful as they were and swift as they were, had no considerable possibilities for power. None of them was more than some five miles long, flowing from springs in the town's own hills, draining no watershed, as did the Ashuelot, lost to the town' when the New Hampshire line was run, or Miller's River, which might have been Northfield's southern boundary if only the early surveyor, Dwight, had been a little more grasping than he was. The streams within the town served for local industries but could not compete with the real rivers of New England. On the other hand, the Connecticut was too big, as it seemed, to be harnessed, even at the rapids of the French King, where it both invited and defied being put to service.
Upon agriculture must the town depend. In this reliance, it had ample prospects, was deriving substantial profits and was enterpris- ing. It was on the alert for new crops and could just now claim the profitable distinction of being the hop town of the valley. In 1840, it produced 13,847 pounds of hops, all the other towns in the county yielding 6,200 pounds. It had 993 neat cattle, 1,686 sheep, 556 swine. It produced in the year 7,649 bushels of oats; 5,736 of rye;
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866 of wheat ; 326 buckwheat ; 9,130 of Indian corn; 14,785 of pota- toes ; 1,800 tons of hay. Its dairy products were insignificant as com- pared with Vermont towns, having a value of only $5,149, and its orchards were made to yield to the trifling value of $813; both items suggested greater future development. The lumber production was only $1,937 and the granite in its hills was disturbed only to the value of $300, even though a little earlier it had supplied the walls of the new county gaol at Greenfield. It remained for the prospec- tors for the railroad, a few years later, to discover that the town had "a large quantity of plumbago of excellent quality, iron ore in great abundance and a surplus of pine, oak, and other timber, particularly chestnut," only waiting for rail transportation.
The centripetal force towards certain towns in New England was not expended solely on population ; it drew commercial and business interests towards the centres and even reached the professions, par- ticularly the law. The country squire, in the sense that term was used in New England, was disappearing. The lawyers were clustering about the county seat. Northfield, which could not long hold a Cur- tis or a Woodward, could little hope to attract other ambitious young attorneys. After Olmstead left, General Nevers would have been left alone in his practice but for two rather temporary exceptions.
One native youth and of an old family, Charles Mattoon, had studied law with William G. Woodward and was admitted to the bar in 1839, the year his mentor left town. He was a son of Col. Elijah Mattoon, a grandson, on his mother's side, of Dr. Samuel Mattoon and, on his father's side, a great grandson of Seth Field. There could be no better Northfield ancestry than that. He was but twenty-three when he began practice.
The other addition to the legal group came with the arrival, in 1841, of a young man from Boston, Charles Devens, Jr. He was but twenty-one and just now admitted to the bar. He was born in Charlestown April 4, 1820, the son of Charles and Mary Lithgow Devens, and had been graduated from Harvard at the age of eighteen and from the law school at twenty. In the law school he had become the intimate friend of a Greenfield youth, Wendell Thornton Davis, whose older brother, George T. Davis, was the partner of Daniel Wells, in the leading law firm of the county seat. Upon graduation the two joined in practice, with Davis maintaining the office in Green-
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field and Devens coming to Northfield. This arrangement ran for three years when, in 1844, Daniel Wells was appointed chief justice of the court of common pleas and removed to Cambridge. Thereupon the Davis brothers and Devens combined in the Greenfield law firm of Davis, Devens and Davis, which forthwith took the leading place at the county's bar.
Mr. Devens entered fully into the life of Northfield and formed close friendships among its young men, who in the later years of the decade followed with interest his advance in public affairs, including his election to the state senate of 1848 and 1849. His activity as a Whig in support of Taylor and Fillmore in 1848 led to his appoint- ment by President Fillmore in 1849 as United States marshal, an office that took him to Boston. All of this had happened before he became thirty and it was common prediction among his Northfield friends that he was headed for greater distinctions. He was a strikingly handsome young man, courteous and even courtly, a social favorite, but escaped from Franklin county a bachelor.
Even though at a standstill in population the town was making progress in other ways, and improving. New houses were being built and generally of a more pretentious sort. Two carpenters, Calvin and Samuel Spring Stearns, brothers, had moved down from the Warwick hills early in the century, had built a number of the town's better houses and were now being succeeded in the craft by the sons of the former, George, Charles, Albert and Edward. They were as much the architects as the builders of the houses, which were distinctly different style from the square hip-roof fashion set years ago by Dr. Pomeroy and having the best recent examples in the houses of the Duttons, now the home of Silas Field, and of Obadiah Dickinson, standing next each other, well up the street.
The vogue now was for pillared fronts. The Stearns builders were pillar-makers and several houses had rather massive fluted pillars rising two stories to the support of the projecting gable-end, while others had porches at the front with pillared support. The fine ex- ample of the former was the house built for Captain Samuel Lane, a retired sea-captain, who had married in 1845, Charlotte Stearns, a sister of the carpenters. Nearly across the street from it was one of the houses with the pillared porch, on the old Mattoon lot, now the home of Oliver Smith Mattoon, a descendant, by the way, of
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the first of the Northfield Mattoons and of the original Preserved Smith.
Quite another style of house, an oddity, admired but not suffi- ciently to be copied, had been built for the school which in time had succeeded to the academy and was now owned by Dr. Philip Hall, a cottage with high gothic windows. Another variation was the cottage built by George Stearns for himself, near the site of the first fort, a story-and-a-half, elevated from the street and with a row of pillars across its front. Late in this period it had been sold to Joseph S. Beach, of a Connecticut family which had transplanted to Northfield around 1800, whose father had married Sophia, daughter of Col. Elisha Alexander. This Joseph had been for some years in the South, had married in Charleston, South Carolina, Susan Ellen Lane, a native of Alabama and of the Virginia Lane family. He died soon after the purchase of the cottage, leaving his widow with a family of eight children.
Farther down the street was an imposing house built by Daniel Callender, with the high pillars, which in this instance were only three instead of the usual four, a modification which was commonly spoken of as a monument of Callender thriftiness. Just now it was the home of Francis Sumner Bemis, a Boston man who gained his claim to Northfield recognition by marrying into the Field family, a daughter of Captain Elisha of Boston who had commanded a com- pany in the war of 1812 and later was United States consul at Cape de Verde Islands.
After such fashion, the Main street had taken on a fine, even though varied, appearance. Such of the houses as were set back from the street had front yards, shaded by ornamental trees or adorned with shrubbery. The old fences had given way to more or less orna- mental ones with posts and pickets, uniformly painted white, the universal white of the houses themselves. The elms that had been set out under the leadership of Thomas Power were now towering trees and their branches were arching over the roadway. The roads lead- ing from the street were gradually being set with elms or maples.
It was still, in the main, a town of old families. But there had been accessions and the newcomers gave speed to social activities. These largely centered about the First Parish Church but were not restrained by the old religious standards. There was the weekly sociable, run-
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ning through the winter months. If there was music and literature in their program, there was more of fashionable games-whist, blind man's buff, twenty questions, turn the cover and just now a novelty in the string game. This diversion was introduced by Rufus Minot, a recent arrival from Boston, who was setting an example in fashion- able dress that marked him as the town's dandy.
Three Boston men, understood to have been old cronies in the city, had settled as near neighbors in the centre of the town, Jonathan Minot in William Pomeroy's recent spacious home; Joel Fay in the Isaac Prior house, and Phineas Wright in the imposing new pillar- fronted house on the site of the Munsell house and plow factory. Rufus Minot was of this group, a popular beau, to be captured pres- ently by Captain Henry Alexander's youngest daughter, whose brother, Edwin, the year before had married Rufus' sister, Helen. In the introduction of the string game he was ardently supported by Dr. Holland, another of the town beaux, whom it was confessed in a certainly maiden letter of 1847 all the girls were "smut with," and John Mudge, a young fellow from Winchester who was living with an uncle, Walter Field, on the Farms Road. All hands held a rope, circling around the room, and the leader, within the circle, undertook to slap a hand and escape before being overtaken by its owner, the penalty for failure being a kiss. It was a welcome variant in the list of osculatory games that were much in vogue with the young set, includ- ing the youthful matrons. The evenings ended with dancing, begun at 10 o'clock and ending at 12.
Feminine beauty was frankly admired. Dr. Holland had married "the lovely Louisa Field," in the church on Christmas day of 1846. The most striking, although a rather retiring and modest beauty of the town, was Martha Belcher, the second daughter of Col. Jonathan, the hatter, who was soon to marry a Hartford man, Gardner Morse. Had she not inherited the charm of the Norton belles of an earlier day? Then there was the girl with the unrestrainable blonde curls, Anna Greene, the daughter of a princely gentleman, Hugh W. Greene, who had recently come to town.
From outside the town there came an occasional entertainer. Premier among these was Professor Harrington, making his first ap- pearance in 1850, whose tricks in ventriloquism and legerdemain were wonderingly admired. Again there was Comical Brown, whose
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announced "coming to town" was sure of response. There was ample home talent to fill the entertainment needs between the visits of these itinerants. On the more serious side, the lyceum, established in the days of Hosmer and Dr. Jarvis, was maintained and home debates on serious themes were frequent, with lectures by men of the Boston literary and scientific circles.
Feminine dress had taken on new elegance as well as expansive- ness under the crinoline vogue. The local stores, particularly Mur- dock's, undertook to supply the materials but were none too pros- perous in the enterprise, this principal one just now being on the verge of financial collapse. There was a particular competitor in the showy team that was driven into town from Brattleboro by James Fisk. It was loaded with the most enticing fabrics and gowns and made a welcome door-to-door appeal. It is anticipating but slightly to find this vendor succeeded by his much more dashing son, known all about as "Jim" Fisk and headed for a spectacular career in the financial and military world.
Male attire had its showy styles as well. Knee breeches and brass buttons had largely gone out, but the ruffled shirt and the high stock were retained. The tall hat was worn on all occasions. Beards were coming into fashion. In 1850, Franklin Field persuaded his rather aged father, Silas, to join him in a trip to Washington. It might extend to Georgia, where the son was to go at all events, it being only two and a half days' journey beyond the capital. In the items of the old gentleman's attire for the journey were, first of all a sur- tout, an expansive outer coat, and a varied array of waistcoats, the prime feature of male decoration. The journey was to be broken by a short stay at the Astor House in New York, a prospect that de- manded the best in the day's fashion.
Frivolity of the sort that the young folks of the town were gen- erally sharing in was outrightly disapproved by the heads of some of the households. Playing cards were a device of the devil. Dancing was worse. In certain families the boy who indulged in either would have felt the rod of parental rebuke. Stories were current of severe punishment falling upon certain violators of the rules by sly indul- gence in either of these vices. The cleavage between the two churches was less doctrinal than social. The North church people were stand- ing stoutly for the Puritan ideas. Their young people did not share
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in the fashionable sociables. Their church vestry was used on Sun- days for the Sunday school and once a week for the prayer-meeting. It was abhorrent that the older church permitted its vestry to be used for worldly pleasures, for game-playing and for the performances of itinerant entertainers like "Professor" Harrington.
Some respect to the old proprieties was indeed paid by the more liberal church in that dancing was not permitted within its walls, dancing after the church sociable was at one or another of the homes. The difference in standards was, however, respected on both sides and in all the other relations of life the town was a unit. The dea- cons of the two churches served amicably on the same board of selectmen or school committee.
CHAPTER XXXIII CHANGING STANDARDS AND MANNERS
The Railroad Period Brings Stouter State Regulations of Towns
CHURCH SUPPORT had now come to be entirely voluntary. It was still based on taxation but only of those who were willing to be taxed. An amendment to the state constitution in 1833 had removed the last vestige of the obligation upon the people to maintain Christian preaching. In 1848, a committee of the First Parish, which was di- rected to examine the effect of this change, made a comparison between the situation in 1825, when all male persons were required to contribute to the support of the gospel in some society, and the present one. There had been a breaking up of the common obliga- tion to the one church as a result of dissatisfaction with the minister, Rev. Thomas Mason, and the Orthodox Congregational society had remained separate. In 1830, after the return of the Second Unitarian Society, the number taxed for the support of the old church was 240. Under the practice of "signing off," by which people who wished to escape contribution could freely do so, the number of male adherents to the parish had fallen in 1847 to 78, less than a third of the num- ber under the old regime. Church attendance had not been similarly reduced and the committee found that the decline was due "to no dissatisfaction but that the taxes were burthensome."
The committee concluded that from its observation there was not "that interest felt for moral and religious instruction in this place which Christians ought to feel and exert." But in answer to the ques- tion submitted to it, it answered that it was unable to decide whether that interest was increasing or diminishing. The fact was that actual interest in religion did not suffer decline when support of the churches passed from compulsion to choice. Church views might be more lib- eral and social life gayer as they were, but that the town was less religious was, at least, not discoverable.
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If Northfield were non-conformist in religion, as it always had been, it was equally so in politics, as again it had always been. It had been anti-Federalist, when all about were towns that followed Boston's lead the other way. It had been Jeffersonian, when to be so was to refuse to agree to Boston's proposals-and to thank God in its town records that it had a different opinion. It had voted for Jackson, when to do so was heretical in Massachusetts, and for Van Buren even when Daniel Webster was carrying his state for the presi- dency. It had voted against its own Samuel C. Allen when he was a candidate for the State Senate. It was generally with the minority candidate for governor. It kept its minister, Mason, in the legisla- ture for years, even after it had put him out of the pulpit, and in so doing had an individual and not a party representative.
When the Whig party came into being in the election of 1840 on no particular issue but as an aggregation of all the opponents of Jack- sonian policies, it was a divided town. The old Democrats were hold- ing fast to the Van Buren succession but there was a resolute group of young men who were hot for "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too" and to whom "Van, Van's a used-up man." They paraded with log cabins, drank hard cider, and travelled the hills up to Barre to hear Daniel Webster make a disappointing speech. In 1844 and 1845 the town was represented in the General Court by Charles Osgood, a constant and unyielding Democrat.
The anti-slavery cause which had taken on fire and fury in the 'thirties had its outright adherents here and when it became a distinct political issue in 1848 there was a considerable group of Free Soilers in the town, which was represented by Albert C. Parsons in the county convention of the new party whose main plank was that "the soil we till must be a free soil." The Free-Soil party was actually an out- come of division into factions of the Democratic party but it was the vehicle for the expression of abolition sentiment. Hence it attracted to the support of Van Buren men with anti-slavery convictions, who had been excitedly opposed to him in 1840. Thenceforward for a few years the town went steadily Democratic and in the national elec- tion of 1852 the Whig ticket had 110 votes and the Democratic, 134. The election of the Democratic President, Franklin Pierce, had its local result in the appointment of Charles Osgood as postmaster.
Just before the end of the half-century, the railroad, long hoped
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