USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > Springfield, 1636-1886 : history of town and city, including an account of the quarter-millennial celebration at Springfield, Mass., May 25 and 26, 1886 > Part 23
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be as pure, and at the same time unburdened by coercive political machinery.
Chicopee had nearly forty voters in 1749, and entered a petition for a separate minister in January. The petition was dismissed. In the autumn the Chicopee people again agitated the question, and the First Parish committee appointed for that purpose replied : -
Its very Evident by their (Chicopee's) Shewing that their Accommodations which they have obtained by being so farr off from the Center of the Parish is more than a Compensation for their Fateagues on the Sabbath. for it is a very plain case that if the rideing on Horse Back on a Plain six miles in half a Day is more than Equall to half a Day's labour, the Petitioners upon the whole Live with much more Ease & Less Fateague than those who live in the Center of the Parish; who besides the Fateague they have in managing their business at a Dis- tance all the week, are obliged to build & maintain Three Large vessels to Transport the Produce of their Lands to ye stores.
But Chicopee persisted, and a church was organized at the north end.
The First Parish began their third meeting-house in 1749, and com- pleted it three years later. It was sixty feet by forty-six in size, and stood until the present edifice was erected.
We are inclined to think that the democratic bias of Mr. Breck's mind prepared the Springfield community for many of the changes attending the new era. It was noted during the second year of his ministry that " the age of Persons and theire Estates as they stand upon the list (Negroes Excepted) are the Principal Rule that said Comete (seating committee) are to be governed by theire proseedings and any other Dignity that any Parsons may be clothed or attended withall shall be Left Discressionary with sd Committee." The men were still seated upon one side of the house, and the women on the other. But the new building inaugurated a commendable change ; a vote being passed, before the meeting-house was finished. directing the seating committee to " seat men and women indiscriminately."
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Neither the money for a new church nor for the support of Mr. Breek was voted in town-meeting, this business, as we have before indicated, being attended to by the inhabitants of each precinct. The moment that the town broke up into precincts and parishes, the town-meeting en bloc surrendered certain functions. At the precinct meetings the schools and sundry local matters were attended to, a part of the school money being appropriated to each precinct by the general town-meeting. At the parish meetings the members were admitted or disciplined, but at the meeting of the "inhabitants of the precinct and parish " the finance and other business of church was transacted.
There was a flourishing grammar school in the centre of the village, and there were schools also at West Springfield, Longmeadow, Upper Chicopee, Lower Chicopee, Agawam. Feeding Hills, Ireland, Skipmuck, the Mountain Parish (Wilbraham), Upper Causeway (Centre), Long Hill, Paweatuek, and Taltin. The various parishes or precincts were from time to time directed by the town-meeting to do certain town work. This probably is the explanation why the First Parish con- tinued to support a fire brigade until the beginning of the present cen- tury. It may have started very much as the school duties imposed by the town on the parishes. Witness this in May, 1741 : " Voted that the committee of the first parish in Springfield be Desired to Provide School Master or Masters or School Dame or Dames for English School- ing in sª Parish as shall be needful for that End Takeing the advice & approbation of the Selectmen therein at the Charge of the Town not Exceeding five months." We take it that the income from the school lands was received by the town, and certainly at this time the ministry lands were still managed by the town, but in a way that the precinct would agree to. Thus it was voted in town-meeting in 1749 that " David Chapin be a Committee to take care of the Ministry land in the outward commons in sd Town, and consult the Several Ministers in sd Town Respecting the same." A £70 brick school-house was or- dered by the town in 1745, twenty-one by eighteen feet in size.
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It is eurions that at this time the vote for the poor was quite equal to the regular appropriation for schools, which may possibly be ae- counted for by the war then in progress with the French and Indians.
Here follows a list of members of the First Parish who lost their lives at Louisburg : Lieut. John Munn. Jonathan Warriner, Israel Warner, Abner Hancock, John Ashley, Pelatiah Jones, John Crowfoot, Gideon Warriner, Benjamin Knowlton, Jr., Samuel Chapin, Jr., Asabel Chapin, Ebenezer Warner, Ebenezer Thomas, Reuben Hitchcock, Joseph Mears, George Mygate, and Reuben Dorchester.
The capture of Fort Massachusetts (Adams, Berkshire county) by the French and Indians in 1746, and another bloody Indian attack upon Deerfield, renewed the fears of the people of the valley. Two years later a fight on the New Hampshire border is of more immediate interest to Springfield. In 1748 Capt. Humphrey Hobbs, of Springfield, and Lieutenant Alexander, of Northfield, left Fort Charlestown for the fort in Heath. They had many Springfield soldiers with them, and were attacked while at dinner by Sackett, a half-breed, descended of a Westfield captive, it is supposed, and three hundred savages. It was a four hours' sharp-shooting affray behind trees, during which Hobbs and Sackett, who were old acquaint- ances, interchanged dreadful threats and commands for surrender. Hobbs finally charged and won easily.
In 1755, when the Hampshire regiment under Col. Ephraim Will- iams accompanied the expedition to Crown Point, there was another season of anxiety. Lient. Nathaniel Burt, who accompanied Williams, fell with that hero (the virtual founder of Williams College), Septem- ber 8, 1755. Burt served in Capt. Luke Hitchcock's company. It may be interesting to give Burt's outfit at the time of his death: A great-coat, a camlet scarlet double-breasted jack-coat, a German serge waist-coat, a striped Holland shirt, a pair of leather breeches, a felt hat, brass shoe-buckles, a hatchet, etc.
The French and the Indians assaulted the northern settlements of the Connecticut valley in 1756. Fear of the victorious Montcalm drove
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Governor Pownal in 1757 to mass a large force of cavalry and infantry at Springfield to check his advance from Lake George. But the move was unnecessary, and in 1760 Canada became a British province.
There are a multitude of smaller matters that one might linger over with curions but time-consuming interest. We find the town direct- ing (1739) William Pynchon to oppose the Brookfield petition before the General Court for liberty to make a "Passageway through severall Barrs in Chicenppi River for Shad to Pass ; " we find orders for three or more " good Handsome Hew'd stones to be placed before the front door of the town-house; " for the selectmen to lease out (1737) all town lands " together with the Land and Bury- ing yard at the Middle of the Town for the term of five years to the best advantage ; " for a workhouse (1742) on the prison lot, and for the payment of all appropriations in " old Tener bills."
Agawam was granted its desire to be set off as a separate district in 1754. The Governor of Massachusetts had been warned by the king in 1753 against the multiplication of towns with representatives in General Court, and so the expedient of setting up districts unrep- resented was resorted to. These districts became towns by an act passed in 1777. During the year 1753 a proposition to bridge the Agawam river by a lottery scheme had been voted down. The total town expenses in 1746 were £600, which showed how Springfield was growing, as the church expenses were not included in the general tax. In 1741 rewards were offered for the destruction of the fol- lowing pests : Woodchucks or ground raccoons, 9d. ; old black- birds, 2d. ; young blackbirds, 1d. ; crows, 6d. : blackbirds' eggs, per doz., 4d.
The seleetmen of 1737 were William Pynchon, Capt. John Day, John Burt, Luke Hitchcock, Jr., and Thomas Colton. Ten years later the officers were : Moderator, Capt. Thomas Stebbins ; clerk and treasurer, Edward Pynchon ; selectmen, James Warriner, Francis Ball, William Stebbins, Joseph Pynchon, Luke Hitchcock, Jr., Ebenezer Hitchcock, Jonathan Church. At the end of still another
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decade (1757) we find Josiah Dwight being called to the moderator- ship, and figuring as one of the foremost citizens.
We have to record the death, in 1741, of Col. William Pynchon, justice of the Court of Common Pleas. His wife was Katharine Brewer, daughter of Rev. Daniel Brewer and sister of Eunice Brewer, who had become the wife of Rev. Robert Breck. Other deaths were Col. John Pynchon, clerk of courts, in 1742; Dea. Henry Burt, in 1748 ; and of Dea. Nathaniel Church, in 1761. Colonel Pynchon's wife was the daughter of Rev. Mr. Taylor, of Westfield.
CHAPTER XIII.
1761-1783.
Col. John Worthington. - Josiah Dwight. - Benjamin Day. - Prominent Doctors. - The Small-pox. - Hanging of Shaw. - The Wait Mounment. - Parish Matters. - Jedediah Bliss. - Springfield Mountains. - Stony Hill. - West Springfield attempts to rule the Town. - Is set off as a Separate Town. - John Worthington's Tory Senti- ment. - Other Springfield Tories. - Town Officers for 1775. - Lexington. - Spring- field Minute-Men. - Letter from a Springfield Soldier. - Revolutionary Soldiers from Springfield. - Moses Bliss. - The Pynchon Family again. - Town Acts and Resolves. - The March to Ticonderoga. - More Revolutionary Soldiers. - The State Constitu- tion. - John Worthington in Growing Favor. - Financial Distress. - Depreciation of Currency. - An Inter-State Convention at Springfield. - Fluctuations in Values. - Warrants of Distress.
THE period opens with John Worthington and Josiah Dwight in the General Court, and Worthington, Capt. Ebenezer Hitchcock, Maj. Benjamin Day, Aaron Colton, and Edward Pynchon, selectmen of the town. Major Day was the most prominent man on the west side of the river.
Before the Revolution Phineas Lyman, of Suffield, was the brightest light of the Hampshire bar so long as he remained a practitioner here. But his name comes down to us as the law instructor of two notable men, - Joseph Hawley, of Northampton, the Otis of western Massachusetts, and Col. John Worthington, of Springfield. These two attorneys rose to be about equal sharers of the law practice of the county. One was conscientious, slow, profound; the other lighter in temperament and quicker in mental processes, but by no means equal to that kind of agility of thought that can surrender the traditions of the fathers when the opportunity for a righteous revolution offers itself. Worthington was a good deal of a social
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light, withal, and tory to the core. Hawley was much better equipped to put his stalwart shoulder to the wheel of democracy that was des- tined to be rolled across the century.
Among Worthington's co-practitioners in Springfield was one Cor- nelius Jones, who had risen from a tailor's bench ; also Moses Bliss and Jonathan Bliss. Colonel Worthington received his military title by his command of the western Hampshire regiment of militia. He figures on a committee of the Legislature which recommended a con- gress at New York in October, 1765, which promulgated the " Dec- laration of Rights and Grievances." It is pretty evident that he did not dominate the committee, for he declined to attend that congress as delegate. Colonel Worthington was not alone in this devotion to the law and the government of Great Britain ; some of the best men in the village, socially considered, shrank from the ordeal of a conflict with the mother-country, even upon so vital a point as taxation with- out representation.
The medical profession, as well as the legal, was well represented at Springfield at this period, among the doctors being Charles Pyn- chon, Edward Chapin, JJohn Vanhorn, and Timothy Cooper. The necessity of garrison soldiers, no doubt, was a means of spreading disease, and the records show that deaths from small-pox became frequent in 1758, and appropriations as high as £150, for stricken soldiers alone, were made by the town. The question of inoculation gave rise to spirited debates, and a motion for an inoculation hos- pital was voted down, and the practice prohibited " in any manner or shape whatever." To avoid misunderstanding the selectmen were expressly directed to desire " Doc' Pynchon to Desist from Innocu- lating any Person or persons in this Town." A pest-house was, however, built, and Dr. John Dickinson, who had been summoned from Middletown, Conn., seems to have had the burden of the medical care ; but his bill - over £100 - was contested, and he was com- pelled to collect it by due process of law.
Springfield witnessed a hanging in November, 1770, when Shaw
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suffered death for the killing of Earl, a fellow-prisoner. People came from all parts of the county, and, before his taking off, Rev. Mr. Baldwin, of Palmer, preached a sermon, and Rev. Robert Breck of- fered a prayer.
The Wait monument, on Armory hill, one of Springfield's cherished landmarks, belongs to this early period. It now stands some twenty feet east of its original site, and was erected in 1763, by Joseph Wait, of Brookfield, to mark the road to Boston, he presumably having lost his way. Tradition says that he nearly lost his life in a snow-storm, having by mistake taken the Skipmuck road. Joseph Wait, it may be added, was a descendant of Richard Wayte, of Watertown, who was the ancestor of the late Chief Justice Waite of the United States Supreme Court.
The incorporation of the common lands was cansing some trouble. In 1772 the outer commons committee reported in reference to the " several pretended Grants & Divisions " of land made since 1713 by those calling themselves proprietors, that they were " arbitrary, un- legal & unjust & in Regard to their power of Disposing of e'm was altogether illegal." The town, however, in order to save trouble, confirmed all these grants except where roads were required, as well as stone quarries and river-banks containing stone. The same year John Worthington headed a committee to consider the " doings & pro- ceedings of the proprietors of the Inward Commons." The same meeting refused to surrender to the proprietors the right to ent timber in the outward commons of Springfield and Wilbraham. The town annually appointed a special committee to protect the town's interests in the common lands.
In 1771 Thomas Stebbins headed a committee to build a new brick school-house in the first parish ; cost, £117. That year, also, the selectmen, consisting of Col. John Worthington, Edward Pynchon, Maj. Benjamin Day, Nathaniel Ely, Jr., John Leonard, Moses Bliss, and Daniel Harris, stood up and "took the oath Respicting Bills of the neighbouring Governments."
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The course of the First Parish was for many years unbroken by any theological combat, and the ministry, begun in unseemly contention, progressed in almost prosaic prosperity. The nearest approach to trouble was an episode of the year 1766. It was at the close of March. The congregation were joining in the usual hymn, when Jedediah Bliss, a tanner, began reading aloud, to the great scandal of the whole church. After the service Edward Pynchon held a long conference with Mr. Bliss, and attempted to disabuse his mind of sundry vicious and irreverend notions. Bliss was an eccentric man, and honest, but lacking in judgment, and rather coarse-fibred withal. He was familiarly known as " Jeddy Bliss." Any man or woman who was a "leetle queer " was locally characterized as " Jeddy." Edward Pynchon, a brother of Dr. Charles Pynchon, with all the prestige of family, official prominence, and Christian character, could make no lasting impression upon Jedediah Bliss ; and two other men- bers of the congregation were brought in, but with no better success. Accordingly Mr. Bliss was debarred from Christian privileges " till gospel satisfaction is made for s' offense." Some months later (Sept., 1767), Mr. Bliss told the people gathered at lecture that he would like to make a confession of his offence of disturbing public worship by reading during the singing : but it was promptly voted to adhere " to the antient Practice of receiving confessions of Publick offences only before the Congregation." A year later Mr. Bliss car- ried his point so far as to secure an agreement that Mr. Breck should read his confession to the congregation, and so the wanderer was " restored to charity."
In 1762 the petition of the Fourth Parish for a township was first denied, then re-considered, and re-denied with some feeling. In less than a year Worthington and Dwight were commissioned to oppose the petition of Hardwiek, Greenwich, and other towns for a new county out of eastern Hampshire. In this year, however, little Wil- braham obtained its incorporation in spite of the Centre ; and it may be said, by way of bringing the thread of that history down to this
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period, that the " Outward Commons " were settled about 1731, and were known also as " Springfield Mountains," which, in 1741, became the Fourth Parish, or precinct, and in June, 1763, joined the family of Massachusetts towns, although, technically, it was simply a district under Springfield's wing for some years. This was due, as we have explained, to the royal jealousy at the multiplication of townships. In 1767 Springfield and the district of Wilbraham met and chose John Worthington as their common representative to the General Court. In 1770 the Stony Hill people (Ludlow) applied for the privilege of a district ; but Springfield, as usual, opposed this. A more favorable answer was received in 1771, and in 1774 Ludlow was duly incorporated by the Legislature, under circumstances soon to be related.
Then there was Longmeadow, which wanted more than precinct prerogatives, and on March 17, 1772, Springfield granted the request, and undertook in vain to reconsider the vote. A subsequent town- meeting reversed the action, and the date of its incorporation is 1783.
West Springfield was the favorite child of Springfield, and, as usual in such cases, the one that caused the most trouble in the family. It is evident that, even at that early day, there was in the breasts of the west-siders a feeling of paramount local importance, although they had secured a separate minister, by expressly disavowing any ambi- tion for township. They gathered in town-meeting in 1770 in full force, and came within a few votes of carrying a motion to hold half of the town-meetings on the west side (except the annual May meet- ing), and the next year they tried to have the grammar school trans- ferred there for one year. There was an untoward feeling afloat. The Centre was resolved to hold to its possessions, especially as the " great and general field " was on the west side ; but the inhabitants of the " Twenty-rod Road " were equally resolved upon ruling the town. The inconvenience of crossing the great river for town-meetings, grammar school, etc., was of course a great drawback to the west side.
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Matters had now (1773) come to such a pass that the west-siders were determined to have their own way, or go their own way. The usual course had been for the town-meeting to organize with Colonel Worthington as moderator, and to appoint Edward Pynchon clerk and treasurer, and then to put both on the board of selectmen. The March meeting of 1773 challenged all the elements of discord into activity. After Colonel Worthington had been made moderator, Benjamin Day, clerk, and Edward Pynchon, treasurer, great excite- ment prevailed, the election of Day showing that the revolt was for- midable. The victory was made complete by a motion to adjourn for two days, and to reassemble at the meeting-house in West Spring- field. There the town-meeting was actually held. Imagine the feel- ings of mortification and exasperation in the bosoms of the aristo- cratic Blisses, Worthingtons, Brewers, Stebbinses, and Pynchons, as they crossed the river to attend a Springfield town-meeting in the comparative wilderness of the west side ! The old board of select- men (1772) were : Col. JJohn Worthington, Edward Pynchon, Dea. Nathaniel Ely, Dea. John Leonard, Dea. Daniel Harris, Dea. Jona- than White, and Moses Bliss. Moses Bliss, the son of our Jedediah Bliss, was at this time becoming a prominent person. He was des- tined to become the ancestor of three George Blisses, - son, grand- son, and great-grandson, - whose careers are interwoven in our local annals.
The first move of what may be called the new party (because the revolt was not confined to West Springfield, but was favored by some at the Centre) was to make up a list of nine selectmen. Pynchon, Harris, and Bliss were stricken from the old board, and Col. Benjamin Day, Dr. Charles Pynchon, Lieut. Benjamin Leonard, Aaron Colton, and Benjamin Ely were chosen to fill out the list. Whereupon the astute moderator, Colonel Worthington, declined to serve as select- man, and John Hale was promptly put in his place. Thus was the flower of the Centre plucked and rudely dragged, so to speak, through the streets of West Springfield ! The friends of Worthington at
.
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once began to obstruct the proceedings and to call for the polling of the house upon every motion, and it was agreed to suspend the elec- tion of town officers for five days ( March 30, 1773), pending a con- ference as to what should be done in the emergency. The next meeting was in the court-house on the east side ; but that temple of justice had no better effect upon the spirits of men, and still again the meeting adjourned for one day in ill-temper to the West Spring- field side. A remarkable scene followed. A prominent man, pre- sumably Colonel Worthington, as he was chairman of a conference committee chosen to consider the deplorable state of the town, read the following report : -
That the said town is in a most Unhappy & Melancholy state that considering the situation & Circumstances of the town & the Inclinations and tempers of the Inhabitants there is no prospect they Can Longer Manage their public Affairs to Mntnal & General advantage in one intire corporate Body but that it is quite necessary that there should be some Division thereof,
That no mode or terms of Division can be devised which the Generality of the Inhabitants in the several parts of the town would accede to and acquiesse in,
That it is Consequently Absolutely Necessary for the Peace and Happiness of the whole that the Mode & terms of their Divition should be referr'd and sub- mitted to the Determination of Judicious & Disinterested persons from abroad.
The report contained other peace-fostering recommendations, and seems to have been unanimously adopted. A better feeling existed, as appears from the adjournment to the Springfield court-house two days later, when the work of electing town officers proceeded smoothly. The arbitrators contemplated in the report of the con- ference above quoted were William Williams, Erastus Wolcott, and Joseph Root. This committee made an elaborate report, which was submitted to a special town-meeting held in May. The board of arbitrators took occasion to say that they considered it " a Great Unhappiness that the most Antiant and Respectable town in the County of Hampshire, the wise and peaceable Conduct of whose
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public affairs has ever to this Day Done much Honour to the Inhabitants and established a just Veneration for their leading men should by Means only of the supposed or Real Indiscretion and Mistakes of a few persons be Reduced to the necessity of a Divi- sion." The committee then proceeded to make a separation more difficult by deciding that while the Connecticut river should be the dividing line, the lands on the west side in the "' Great and General Field " should be taxed in the town where the owners thereof live; that the public buildings should belong to the town in which they fell by the division ; that no other division should be made, but if, on further consideration, the new arrangement did not prove satisfactory, that the Third and Fifth Parishes should be erected into districts.
This report was rejected with great alacrity, and the kettle simmered until November 2, when the west side made a vain attempt to get the grammar school transferred over the river for the winter. Motions to hold the town-meetings on the west side, and to set up Longmeadow as a district, were also voted down. At the January town-meeting (1774) the new party put through a motion giving the west parish a share of the town-meetings. A committee, headed by Benjamin Day, was chosen to explain to the General Court the nature of the several petitions praying for divisions of the town. The Third Parish was voted a district, and the meeting adjourned for three days to the west side. We will let the records tell the rest of the narrative : -
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