USA > Massachusetts > Franklin County > Northfield > Puritan outpost, a history of the town and people of Northfield, Massachusetts > Part 4
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A PURITAN OUTPOST
meadow Nallahamcomqon which gets the later name of Bennett's. It was not less than 10,560 acres.
The deed is drawn. Some part of the consideration is passed. The Indians solemnly affix their curious individual marks. Parsons and the rest return to Northampton with their precious transfer of title to a broad sweep of hill and valley.
Back in Northampton, bearing the deed by which the natives relinquished their shadowy, unsubstantial title to well-nigh deserted lands, the negotiators were given welcome. With as much of enthu- siasm as was possible to these sober-minded citizens of a town which at fourteen years considered itself settled and even congested, the deed was scanned and the description of the grantees followed with shrewd estimate of the purchase's value. Should they not now set out to take actual possession? And who should go? Who should enter into a share in this alluring little principality ?
Easily to the modern imagination of a New England town such as Northfield comes the scene in the primitive Northampton church, where the sturdy founders met for consideration of the project of establishing a new community up-river. The procedure was already familiar and it remains so in the town meeting of the third century later. There was prayer for the divine guidance which was always invoked for themselves and for the General Court, as the petition which was to be drawn up would show. It was offered by Elder Janes, revered teacher in the church, who could never pray more earnestly than when he was moved by the thought of a new pioneer- ing venture, in the first physical steps of which he had shared as one of the explorers. Now for the business of the gathering.
"There is yet another step to be taken in well ordered progress," said Joseph Parsons, after he had made full report of the expedition and had laid the deed with its significant Indian sign-signatures on the pulpit. "The General Court has granted its authority to the plac- ing of a plantation at Squakheag. We have here the deed of convey- ance to the lands there lying. Shall we not now present in full ex- posure of our wish a request that we be authorized to establish our- selves there ?"
There was brief questioning if more could be sought of authority than was already in hand. Had not the Connecticut towns proceeded without fuller sanction and was there the least cloud upon the hold
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SETTLEMENT
they had boldly taken in their respective settlements? Poor reasoning in a company of patriots accustomed to orderly government! There would be no presumption as against the need of support from a General Court under whose "care, government and protection" they must needs acknowledge they were.
To Parsons, aided by the youthful hand of Micah Mudge, was assigned the drafting of a petition that should declare that fealty precisely and pray the governing body to direct the course of fuller possession and government.
The petition should run to the "Right Honbl and Much Honored General Court of Massachusetts." There was no dissent from this respectful mode of address. There should be grateful acknowledgment of the peace in which the region had long rested. The need of expan- sion should be set out. The way in which, under God's providence, the place they had found had been made ready through its abandon- ment by the Indians should be strongly stated.
At this point, there was a suggestion that the occupation was not without its perils, and into the document went a parenthetical clause to the effect that the region was indeed "uncouth" and remote and its settlement attended with difficulties. With this reservation inserted, the document ran on to its statement of what was wanted. It was likely to be too ponderous if all the suggestions by members of the meeting, some of them cautious, some explanatory, some too insist- ent, were to be included. So omissions were covered in a clause, "We are loath to be tedious in multiplying arguments"; and brevity was protected by inserting a declaration that the petitioners desired to be as "compendious" as was necessary to make clear that they were in earnest and had a good case. There was a closing pious declaration of the petitioners' sense of a "bounden duty" to lift up their hearts "to the Lord Jesus the Mighty Counsellor," and that the General Court should be filled with a spirit of "wisdom, courage and fear of the Lord."
The petition carefully and prayerfully completed, the citizens of Northampton, with three from Hadley, one after another came for- ward, took the quill in hand and subscribed themselves as "humble suppliants"-thirty-three of them. These are familiar names, a roster of the patronymics of the Connecticut valley's advancing line, Lyman (thrice represented), Alexander, Wright, Dickinson, Sheldon, Jeanes
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(three times), Smead, Pumery, Root (twice), Allen, Stebbins, Montague, Webster, Bascom, Kellogg. Not all of them will reappear in Northfield's annals but they were few whose descendants do not connect with one or another of the upper settlements.
In ten days the General Court had received the petition, consid- ered it in committee and made formal report to the house of deputies. It favored the grant asked for. The petitioners may have the tract. They are at liberty to purchase of the Indians (ex post facto consent in the main), and to apportion the lands among those who are ready to settle thereon. Seven miles square was the only definition of bounds for the taking. The general conditions were but two-that twenty families be settled on the place within four years and that they pro- cure "a godly and orthodox minister."
Requirement was made that a mile square be laid out for the General Court or Country use. Here was the familiar provision, to what end is none too clear-whether the colony's perpetual presence as a partner in the venture, the return in future values for its protec- tion and favor, or a holding as reward in later years to those patriots who should have made contribution to the plantation's or the com- monwealth's benefit in ways not to be foreseen.
The committee so reporting were John Pynchon, founder of Springfield and presiding genius of the valley's progress in settlement, Henry Bartholomew, and Joshua Hobart. The committee named to manage the business, receiving inhabitants, granting lands and "order- ing all the prudentials" consisted of Lieutenant William Clarke, Lieutenant Samuel Smith and Cornet William Allys.
The deputies approved. The magistrates consented not. What now the difficulty? The magistrates gave no hint of their reasoning. Suspicion fixes upon them that they had eye to personal gain. There was omission of the clause which in the Hatfield precedent had recog- nized the members of the higher legislative body, the senate of that period, by personal grants of land within the new domain. Where now was Gookin, discoverer, first advocate of settlement? Owner of estates in Virginia and Delaware and at Cambridge, was he holding out for new favor? Being so, was his advice to his fellow magis- trates in the direction of delay that would bring them recognition of a substantial sort, consistently with their services to the colony?
Northampton's spirit seems not to have quailed before the rebuff
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SETTLEMENT
of the higher branch of the colony's legislature. The petition was re- newed. The magistrates yielded, granted all that was asked, under- took to compensate for the loss of a year's time by shortening the period for actual settlement to eighteen months, and somewhat con- firmed the notion, if it existed, that there should be definite reserva- tion for the members of the granting body by requiring that a farm of 300 acres be reserved "for the country." The reserved tract was not to be set aside wherever the settlers might elect but where a com- mittee of the General Court should determine was "fit and con- venient." The consent of the magistrates is recorded as of May 15, 1672.
In the charter of Northfield, as the document bearing the deferred approval of the magistrates may be regarded as being, the stipulation was that twenty able and honest persons shall "enroll" with Major Pynchon to settle upon the granted lands. Their qualifications in honesty and ability and whatever other respects might be exacted in the final acceptance were to be determined by the General Court.
Major Pynchon's responsibility by this stipulation sinks to the level of a clerical duty. His list submitted within the required year bears twenty-three names. Here again are the assured names-Alex- ander, Lyman, Jeanes, Pumery, Dickinson, Bascom and most of the others of lasting significance, with at least one other new to the list, that of Cornelius Merry, the one Irishman of the settlement's begin- nings. Missed from the new list are the two Allens and the one Webster, forecasting the absence of these family names in the earliest settlers, even though identified in later generations with the life of the town. The Allens were to figure in the affairs of Deerfield and the daughter town, Greenfield; the Webster who was a petitioner of 1671, but not an "intender" on the Pynchon list, is to be more of Hadley than of Northfield of the succeeding years.
Legislation now proceeded with an approach to swiftness. The Northampton men were in earnest. Pynchon was prompt and active. By October the Springfield major had filed his list and on the eleventh the General Court ratified its action of May 15 and, adding two names to the committee to manage affairs, confirmed the grant. This time, however, there is a closer definition of the territory. It is to be a village "at Squakeke upon Connecticut river above Hadley." The tract of land shall "amount to the content of six miles square."
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Was there fear that the settlers would appropriate long stretches of the rich meadows to the neglect of the back lands? It was guarded against by the proviso that the lay-out be not more than eight miles in length by the river sides. Again the reservation of 300 acres "for the use of the Country" appears with the new specification that it shall consist of upland and meadow and shall be near the town. The legislators were alive to real estate values. No remote waste land would answer for "the Country." The Committee-Lieutenant William Clarke, William Holton, Lieutenant Samuel Smith, Cornet William Allys and Isaac Graves.
Autumn had come. The maples of the Connecticut valley were aglow in red and yellow. Their leaves were carpeting the trails along the river. Legislatures might delay; but the pioneer promoters of a new town were not to contribute to delay. The month of the General Court's action had not passed before Lieutenant Clarke, Cornet Allys and Isaac Graves were on the territory and laying out the town. The little brook Natanis was "appointed and ordered" the southerly bound- ary on the west side of the river. Fittingly so, inasmuch as here they were on the edge of the Pacomptock domain, no part of which had been purchased. Thence they would go along the river to the limit of the river-front they were permitted to take; it brings them to the "little river," which in time would be far beyond Northfield's terri- tory, miles within the state of Vermont. On the easterly side of the Great River, the lower end is the "three little meadows" below the town's plot and again up the river eight miles.
The region had been studied and the sharply rising hills to the west of the Connecticut were seen to have slight promise of value, while to the east were the great meadows, the broad plateau above them and the gentler slopes of the easterly hills. Three-quarters of a mile was all the width of any use to the west, while to the east three and three-quarters was little enough but must be the limit to keep within the "six miles square," which could only mean that the takings should be held within 36 square miles.
Here then was the future township, eight miles on the river, four miles wide, its boundaries were in straight line only at north and south while those at east and west were in curves that would parallel the
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windings of the big stream. Shrewd plotters were the Clarke com- mitteemen. They had appropriated from nature the utmost of good tillage and home-sites that could be brought within the limits of appropriation their charter had set.
The Committee proceeded to formulate the rules and regulations for settlement. First-All those who have land granted shall be there with their families within the time fixed by the General Court. This could be not later than April 11, 1674. Second-Mere formal occu- pation should not suffice. Some might "tarry so little as may frus- trate the settling of a Plantation." All who take up land shall build upon it and continue there with their families for four years or forfeit their title, exception being only made in case of death or other "inevi- table Providence." The "inevitable Providence" of destruction of the homes by Indians and abandonment was provided against, with slight apprehension of such disaster after the years of peaceful occu- pation in the lower settlements-with no defeat of title under such dis- possession. Third-The takers shall bear all charges according to the number of their acres. Fourth-Fences shall be made. Fifth-There shall be home-lot and meadow for the minister. Sixth-No inhabi- tant shall be received without the approbation of at least three of the committee and a majority of the company.
Upon such command of the situation by the proprietors of the New England town was grounded the refusal to admit the improvi- dent, the prospective pauper and the irreligious, taking its form, as time proceeds, in the cheerful practice of "warning out" for any who might have come mistakenly into the fold.
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CHAPTER IV ARRIVAL
A New Land Occupied as if Made Ready
THE LONG PROCESS of "settling" was already familiar to those who had come to know the depth of possible mud in these alluvial lands. It was to remain so in the years to come before road construc- tion broke away from the dependence on the native material. For the Northampton people who were now in agreement to take pos- session of the Squakheag domain, there was only to wait through the long winter and the months when the Great River was in flood and the sun and spring rains were making possible the northward march. The waiting time served for study of the committee's plans and the assignment of definite lots to the first settlers.
Following the fashion of all the inland town settlements, the plan marked out a long, wide street. The lay of the land determined where the street should run ; it was to be on the plateau whose front was the steep bank rising from the meadows and far enough from this terraced line to give ample room for the spacious homesteads that should line on the street's westerly side. To the east there was no such limit, short of the hills.
Each of the lots was to be twenty rods wide on the street and those on the westerly side were to run back to the brow of the meadow's boundary hill. Here was equality in estate among all the engagers, quite in disregard to their somewhat varying wealth. With each of these was to go an allotment of the meadow land, the mine from which was to be drawn the dividends of the venture. These were not to be so evenly divided. Moreover not all the meadow lands promised equal productiveness. This uncertainty of value must be met and the device proposed was to divide the Great Meadow, with its 385 acres, and Pauchaug, with its 130, into sections-three in the larger and two in the smaller. Each holder was to have a tract in each of these sections. What his holdings should be was determined
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by the amount of his investment, but whatever the total, the division assured him against inferiority in the productiveness of his land.
When at last the clay and the loam had yielded their frost and the river flood had left the lowlands, the procession moved up the valley, along the trail which was no more than a bridle path. Horses and oxen carried their weight of household belongings and of the clapboards for the new houses. Northampton had a saw-mill; there would be none at Squakheag. Some of the women rode but more of them shared with the men the thirty miles of marching. At the end of the line were the cows, held to their place and pace by the boys with their hickory whipstocks and lashes of deerskin. The final halt was on the open land where in a gentle rise it reached the height thenceforth to be the site of the protecting fort, near to the council rock where the Indians had signed the deed of the second summer before.
It was deserted country now. Providence had made it ready for the new possession. One sturdy oak stood at what was the southern bound of the first cluster of houses and here and there a maple had been spared. For the rest it was treeless. Should the houses be placed on the broad lots allowed each of these pioneers? A caution born of recollection of the fate of Connecticut settlements forbade such sepa- ration. About the gentle hill, in a space of thirty by forty rods, was marked the location of each of the closely set little houses. Around them should be built a stockade of stout posts for protection against wild animals and human enemy.
Sound of axe and adze and hammer gave the charm of new enter- prise in these spring days. Quickly framed were these houses of the adventurers, stoutly built with hand-hewn timbers, covered with clap- boards and roofed with thatch gathered from the virgin fields, where the rank grass grew breast-high. Turned loose upon the plains in ample pasturage, held in common, were the cattle of the little herd.
When the sun dropped behind the hills on the first Saturday night after the little colony had taken possession of the knoll which was the centre of their new village, only the barest shelter had been provided. But the tools that had been kept hot in action were laid aside. Now each family separated itself and the little groups entered upon the solemnity of the Sabbath. The children, such of the numer-
1128726
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ous flock of them as were too young to share in the pressing work of home-building, had wearied themselves on new and unbounded play- grounds. They sleepily listened to the prayers of their fathers and were stowed away at candle-light with little between them and the stars of a solemnly quiet May night.
The Lord's day found a pious people without the meeting-house which they were to place just outside the stockade, the first timbers already lying there as the testimony of their holy intent. They were not without the minister, good and orthodox, required in their charter. He had selected the place for his first service and early in the first day of worship the procession moved down the slope to where, on another lesser knoll, the big oak tree lent its branches for the roof of the primal church of God.
Here the learned William Janes, schooled in the scripture, prac- ticed in pious teaching, read the Old Testament story of another pil- grimage into a promised land and discoursed more than an hour long on the blessings and the sacred duties of the people who were now in full freedom of their faith. There was a modest meal at mid- day and then another service under the oak tree. Then came the feast, already traditional as the amplest of the week-venison and samp and dandelion greens, corn-bread and tea. The setting of the sun this day was signal to children who had been held to quiet through that small eternity of a Puritan sabbath to romp and roll and chase through the long twilight.
Time for building had to yield some of its hours for planting. It was community farming this first year-the season was too late to allow for dividing the meadows into privately owned lots. Acres of corn, with pumpkins later to trail between the rows, fields of wheat and other fields of flax, were planted and sown. Richer soil never yielded to wooden plow.
There was a glorious sense of boundless possession, with just one qualification. As the men worked at their first furrows in the great meadow they looked across the river to land still held by the natives. It gave the one obvious bound to their domain, and it vexed.
"It seemeth to me," said Hutchinson to the others as they walked up the meadow bank to their homes on one of the first sun-downs of their occupation, "that the favor of our brother Joseph (he did not need to add 'Parsons' to the designation) should be sought to
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make purchase of the land of the Pacomptocks, so far as it confronts our grant."
"Is not our burthen of debt full irksome now?" It was the thrift and caution of the Scot in the person of George Alexander that raised the question. "Consider we ha'e not yet full paid for that whereon we stand."
"But it is the clear and visible design of the Good Lord that this region shall be turned from the possession of the heathen and become a part of His servants, and He will scarce bless our timidity in the face of His need. These fruitful fields by our diligence shall recompense in full measure for all we do and all we venture." Thus the reverent but courageous counsel of Elder Janes silenced the doubts as to fur- ther venture.
The taking of more land was the chief point of discussion through the summer months. Perhaps it took the plenteousness of the crops with its assurance of ample means to close the argument. It was late summer when the younger men were sent to Northampton to ask Parsons and Clarke to negotiate for the lands on the westerly side of the Connecticut. These master traders responded, raised the money and hunted out the Pacomptock proprietors, if that is the word to be used for the nebulous ownership the Indians had.
"This deed made the 9th 7th 1673 between Joseph Parsons and William Clarke . . . of the one party" so began the second deed to land for the future Northfield. The grantors-first of all a woman. She was the daughter of Souanett, the princely owner of all this region, whose proud wigwam had stood out in full command on the slopes that some day should be the site of one of the white men's famous schools. Asogoa was the name of the daughter, the owner now of the lands Nallahamcomgon, sometimes spoken of with the name Natanis. With her will join Mashepetot, who claimed the upper section, and Kisquando, whose interest was even less defined, and further to make clear the title there shall be the consent of Pampate- kemo, she "which is Mashepetot's daughter."
Two hundred fathoms of wampumpek-resolve that considera- tion into modern dollars and the cost is found of 3,000 acres, facing the Connecticut and rising from meadows up steep banks and away to rolling hills-a "great ledge of hills"-six miles away to the west. There was a southern boundary on a brook which later gets the name
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of one of these men who inhabit the country across the river, Bennett, and for the northern one to the land, wherever it was, only described here as Massemet's.
The four Indians signed the deed, had their wampumpek put in their hands, and when Timothy Baker and Sarah Clarke, daughter of William, the grantee-introduced to the scene perhaps to show white men also had some regard for woman's right to share in trans- actions-had signed as witnesses, the matter was closed and done. Could this bargaining and deeding have been carried out on old Souanett's estate, the ride of the buyers up the valley being under- taken by Sarah with her father as well as by Timothy Baker, simply to be witnesses? Did our Princess Asagoa and her sachem friend and the other grantors deign to go down the valley to Northampton? Quite likely the latter, for there was a familiar trail, worn by the native traders in furs and skins, to Northampton. The deed in time reached Squakheag, with its assignment by Clarke to the inhabitants there under date of June 15, 1675. And the confidence of Elder Janes that the lands would yield their own purchase price was justi- fied within two years.
CHAPTER V INSECURITY
Peaceful Possession Disturbed by Threats of Attack
SUMMER AND WINTER. Again summer and winter. Once again summer-great fields of corn and wheat and flax, holding out prom- ise of added wealth to the fortune of New England's outpost. Undis- turbed possession through the two years now well on the way to the third. No molestation by Indians. In Pacomptock country, across the river, wigwams renewed summer by summer, corn planted by the natives with the settlers' unspoken but ungrudged consent. Some trafficking in pelts, vastly profitable to the white buyers, a trinket for a beaver skin-a kettle for a man's burden of muskrat and marten and weasel-a gun or two for an uncounted pile of dressed deerskins. Debts discharged. Houses, stouter and better than at first, venturing farther from the stockade. Children born, new intermarriages of already interwoven families, health and contentment, unity in faith and worldly effort. Above and over all, peace. And a deepening sense of permanence and security.
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