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 31
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Onee or twice during the administration of Colonel Lee his vigor carried him to debatable lengths. It was a source of anxiety to him that the armorers spent so much of their earnings for rum, and his zeal in checking the practice precipitated quite a scene in 1816. The old Toddy road to Japhet Chapin's tavern (Cabotville) was named for obvious reasons, and Lee did not reduce the travel along this route as materially as he had hoped. He discharged two workmen, Noble and Charter, who were found wrestling in the midst of a ring of armorers. There was a liberty pole in the centre of the ground that had been erected by the subscription of the workmen, and here the friends of the discharged men gathered and passed around the bottles. " If we can't have any liberty," they said, "we won't have any liberty pole," and an axe was laid at its root. Clerk Wolcott, then the colonel himself, then Master Armorer Foot, with some out-of- town officials, hastened to the scene. The pole was saved, and the little " rum rebellion " had a good effect all round, and a better
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understanding prevailed. Toddy road did not lose its name for some years, however.
During the early years of the present century the Dwights had spread their mercantile relations in a way to command the course of trade in this region, and to their enterprise is due an important part of Springfield's commercial advancement at this time. "The Dwights rule Springfield," remarked a solicitous townsman of that day. The firm adopted the practice of setting up their clerks in business in the surrounding towns, but retaining an interest in the various stores. They established a store at Chester Village, with William Wade as man- ager ; one at Northampton, with Josiah D. Whitney as manager ; one in Enfield, Conn. (including a gin distillery, in which John Cooley, of Longmeadow, and others were interested), with James Brewer as manager ; and a store, grist and saw mills at South Hadley Canal, with Josiah Bardwell as manager. In 1815 the Boston branch bore the firm name of William HI. & J. W. Dwight. William H. Dwight was lost in the wreck of the " Albion," in May, 1822, on his way to England, and Edmund Dwight settled permanently at Boston.
J. and E. Dwight owned several coasting vessels between Hartford and Boston and New York, and were interested with John Cooley & Co. in a line of boats between Hartford and Springfield. The Dwights were also interested in banking business in Springfield, Greenfield, Geneva, Cleveland, and Detroit.
The firm of Day, Brewer, & Dwight commenced business at the corner store in 1822, after the death of James Seutt Dwight, and was composed of Benjamin Day, James Brewer, and James Sanford Dwight, with Jonathan Dwight, Jr., and Edmund Dwight as silent partners. In 1825 Mr. Day moved to Geneva, and the firm was then Dwight, Brewer, & Dwight, composed of J. S. Dwight, James Brewer, and Henry Dwight, the younger. Subsequently Mr. Brewer retired, and the remaining partners continued under the name of J. & H. Dwight. Mr. Day rejoined the firm, which was then Day & Dwight. Mr. Day and Henry Dwight sold out to James, who
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assumed the business, and on his death, in Italy, the corner store was closed forever.
The front corner room of the second story of the brick store was occupied as a law office, successively by Jonathan Dwight, Jr., Jolin Howard, William B. Calhoun, George Bliss, Jr., William Dwight, Richard Bliss, and Henry Vose. Here, also, the Springfield Fire Insurance Company was organized.
The building adjoining the corner store on the north was deeded by William Colton to " Simeon Ashley, trader ; " and on the death of Ashley, his heirs in 1801 conveyed it to Jonathan Dwight, the elder, and James Scutt Dwight. The school-ground was directly east, in the rear. A few doors north of the old Dwight store was a building also owned by Mr. Dwight, and occupied at one time by James Byers as a post-office and a commissary for supplies to goverment troops and armorers on the hill. It was afterwards rented to Sterns & Edwards.
George Bliss, grandson of Moses Bliss, said in 1866 : -
The land easterly of the stores on Main street, and as far north as the alley leading east by Kirkham's store, was the old school-ground, the title of which was in the First Parish. It extended some 8 or 10 feet easterly of the present old Town Hall. , In my boyhood an old dilapidated two-story brick school-house stood near the north line of the school-ground, with the play-ground about 80 or 100 feet wide between the school-house and the causeway. On the front of this ground and adjoining the causeway stood an old engine-house, and the gun- house for the two artillery cannon. At a pretty early date the old brick school- house was taken down, and a one-story wooden building erected with two rooms. This was burned down and a two-story brick house built in its stead. About 1826 these schools were discontinued, and the front part of the lot was sold to the town for a Town Hall, and the residue to private parties, Market street being laid out between State and Sandford streets. The part of the school-ground west of Market street was sold to the owners of the adjacent stores. There is no building now standing on the east side of Main street, between the Dwight corner and Ferry street, which was standing in 1799, when the Dwight corner store was built. The building now on the north corner of Ferry street was then occupied by Zebina and Thomas Stebbins, who did a small business. In 1800 there were but few stores in town besides the Dwights'. James Byers may have
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had a small trade in connection with the post-office and commissary, with Sol- omon Hatch, as clerk, in the Edwards store. Col. William Smith then traded in a store, with Francis Sexton as clerk, where Sanderson now is; Justin Lom- bard, where Swetland's confectionery store now is. The access to it was by a plank bridge over the town brook, with two or three steps down to the store floor. Dr. William Sheldon had a druggist's store, kept by Dr. Elam Bliss, where H. & J. Brewer now are. I believe Daniel Lombard kept a small stock of goods on the corner where the Chicopee Bank now is. Mr. Lombard sue- ceeded Mr. Byers as postmaster, and kept the office in a small counting-room about 6 by 8 feet square, in which he opened all the mails and delivered letters. Ebenezer Tucker had a bakery about where Clark & Eldredge's auction store is, and he may have kept a few groceries. In my early days it was a beer store, and reputed a groggery. There was in 1800 no store east or south of the Dwight corner, on either side of Main or State streets.
The father of Mr. Bliss was a Springfield man of great importance. He was a lad of eleven at the opening of the Revolution. " Master George," as he was called, had both plebeian and aristocratic blood in his veins. His great-great-grandmother was Mary Pynchon, a daughter of the " Worshipful Major," and his grandfather was the well-known " Jeddy" Bliss, the Springfield tanner, heir to a line of tanners. Young Bliss was a junior at Yale when the last British soldier left these shores, and every circumstance of his bringing up was an appeal to patriotic and useful endeavor. Five years after his graduation he married Hannah Clark, whose grandmother was a sister of Jonathan Edwards. His habit of close application, and his fond- ness for the intricacies of common-law special pleadings, brought him rapidly to the front upon his admission to the bar. He was a mem- ber of the old Hampshire bar, and when Hampden county was formed he was, of course, entitled to practice by virtue of his position.
Mr. Bliss's name is associated with the legal troubles that accom- panied the setting off of the lower part of Hampshire as a separate county in 1812. The act of incorporation decreed that the new county of Hampden should come into existence August 1, 1812, and Gov. Elbridge Gerry and his democratic supporters were in office.
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The state elections were then held in April. The excitement through- out the State at the spring elections of 1812 was intense. In spite of everything, the federalist peace cry was sweeping the State. While in this conservative town Gerry polled two hundred and fifty votes and Caleb Strong, of Northampton, two hundred and thirty-three, the lat- ter was elected, and the resistance to the war measures against Great Britain was at once begun. Under ordinary circumstances the thing for Governor Gerry to have done was to refuse to meddle with the offices that were to come into existence in the Angust following by the incorporating act of Hampden county. But patronage then, as now, had its charms, and under great provocation he was induced, on May 20, to appoint Samnel Fowler, of Westfield, democrat, probate judge of the prospective county, and three days later he made Jona- than Smith, Jr., of Westfield, another democrat, high sheriff.
This greatly irritated the federalists, and they attempted to throw out of court one of the first cases in which Smith's deputy served a warrant. The suit was Fowler vs. Beebe, George Bliss appearing for the defendants. He argued that at the time of Smith's commission as sheriff no such office existed. It was possible that such an office would exist in the autumn of the year, and that Smith would be a proper person to fill such a possible office. "This last, however," added Mr. Bliss, with emphasis made cutting by political bias, "in the opinion of many, is a potentia remotissima." Mr. Bliss then con- tinued : "This appointment is also void, as it is a flagrant infringe- ment of the rights and authorities of the succeeding executive officers of the government who were in a few days to enter upon the duties of their appointment, and would be in the exercise of their offices more than two months before the county of Hampden would com- mence its existence. If an appointment had been ever so neces- sary or convenient before the operation of the act, there can be no pretence that such necessity or convenience existed on the 23d of May. But it is a sufficient answer to the argument from the inconven- ience of a county being withont officers that the consideration of that
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subject belonged to the Legislature. They might have provided for the case. Not having thought proper to do it, the executive had no authority to substitute itself ; nor will it be expected of the judiciary to support and countenance such an usurpation, even if similar ones may have been practised." Judge Parsons decided that, however it might be determined as to the question whether Smith was sheriff de jure, he was sheriff de facto, and the plea in abatement was accord- ingly overruled.
The federalists returned to the contest at the April term of the Supreme Judicial Court, held at Northampton in 1813, by assailing Samuel Fowler's commission as probate judge by quo warranto pro- ceedings. Mr. Bliss and Eli P. Ashmun were pitted against each other, Mr. Bliss taking the place of the solicitor-general, who was absent. In reply to many citations of precedents, Mr. Bliss said : " It is, however, to be hoped that executive precedents are not all of them to be established by law. If they should be, our government would be emphatically a government of men, and not of laws. One governor divides, and another unites, the militia. One orders detachments from it, and another declares the measure unconstitutional. One waits until there is an office before an officer is appointed, and another makes appointments before the law has created an office." This time, to the unbounded delight of a majority of the county, the fed- eralists won ; all of the Gerry appointments fell to the ground. When Hampden county was formed, the practising attorneys included George Bliss, William Ely, Jonathan Dwight, Jr., Oliver B. Morris, Samuel Orne, and Edmund Bliss. Mr. Morris became county attor- ney, Edward Pynchon register of deeds, and John Ingersoll, of Westfield, clerk of the courts. In 1813 John Hooker was made judge of probate, and Oliver B. Morris register of probate. Edward Pyn- chon was the first county treasurer, and held the office, as well as that of register of deeds, for eighteen years.
We find that as early as 1808 embargo troubles and danger of war with England had set the town-meeting discussing high matters of
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state. A memorial to Congress was proposed in April. This me- morial was adopted in September. In mid-winter (1809) the embargo was denounced as " disgraceful in its origin, oppressive in its opera- tion, destructive in its consequences, and fatal to the Interest and honour of our Country ; " the act of Congress giving the President power to enforce the embargo is called a violation of civil liberty, as it " prostrates the sovereignty of the States at the foot of the Federal executive ; " and finally the town looked with distrust at the massing of troops by the United States. On March 12, 1812, the town-meet- ing gathered in the town-house, but adjourned to the meeting-house in the afternoon. The old selectmen, Thomas Dwight, George Bliss, John Hooker, and Lieut. George Blake, retired, after many years' faithful service, and new men were called to the front. They were Joshua Frost, Judah Chapin, and Lieut. Eleazer Wright. It was not until three weeks had passed that the matter was settled by the addition of Edward Pynchon, Jonas Coolidge, Daniel Lombard, Phineas Chapin, and Asher Bartlett to the select board. Moses C'hapin, of the old board, was reelected. The representatives for 1812 were William Sheldon, Moses Chapin, and Edmund Dwight.
In July, 1812, the town protested against war, Chauncey Brewer being in the chair. The government was declared a " trust for the good of the people," and public officers " the Agents of the People and at all times accountable to them." The war was called a " war of aggression and conquest, and when viewed in connection with our relations to France as threatening the extinction of the Liberties of the people of the United States." It was also " Resolved, that we hold in utter abhorrence an Alliance with France, the destroyer of all Republies and the common Enemy of every free and independent state." A regretful glance was cast back to " that high ground of real and impartial neutrality " in the " days of Washington, when Peace with all Nations and entangling Alliance with none was the motto."
We find, also, that Springfield considered that the State militia was
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not bound to march in obedience to any authority outside the State, nor could it be sent by the State outside the Territories of the United States. George Bliss headed the committee which drew up this peti- tion to the President. In May, 1813, the representatives were directed to use their influence in favor of a restoration of peace, as the " people of the Commercial States have no Interest in contending for the principle that our Flag shall protect British subjects to the exclusion and injury of our native seamen."
Springfield thus had thrown her lot against the war party, and when Gov. Caleb Strong and the Legislature were looking over the field of western Massachusetts for the best men to represent this section at the famous Hartford convention, George Bliss, of Spring- field, was immediately selected. The record of the Blisses upon this question was all that a federalist governor could have wished. In August, 1814, when a British fleet was discovered off the New England coast, and a call for troops had immediately followed, Gen. Jacob Bliss, of Springfield, started with the old Hampshire militia brigade, having upon his staff Master George's son George, who served with the rank of captain. Governor Strong and Lawyer Bliss had been often pitted against each other at the bar, and they were both, of course, stalwart federalists.
We have not to do here with the proceedings of the secret conven- tion held in the council chamber of the State-house at Hartford at the close of the year 1814. We know that " Master " George's son, having returned from Boston with the troops, drove his father from Springfield down to Hartford in a chaise to that convention. Mr. Bliss served upon several important committees, and in a volume printed some years later by Theodore Dwight, secretary of the con- vention, the author took occasion to refer to George Bliss as a lawyer of extensive learning and " most unshaken independence, both of principle and conduct." He also said: "No man ever passed through life with a fairer reputation for integrity, or in a more entire possession of the confidence of the community in which he resided."
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Springfield was not such a terrible sufferer as in the Shays's re- bellion times. Money was light, business unsettled, and anxiety great. In 1816 the town appropriations were : Highways and bridges, $550; poor, $1,250; schools, $750; contingencies, etc., $1,819. The town had to borrow $1,000 to meet its floating debt.
We can linger a moment over the career of George Bliss, who, in these struggles, had shown a devotion to self-government which his father and Jolin Worthington in the previous generation had shown for their tory principles. Mr. Bliss's knowledge of the law was most profound, and the zeal with which he conducted the studies of young men and engaged in examinations for their benefit might easily have led to the establishment of a law school in Springfield, if there had been a college to which it could be attached. Indeed, he did prepare a course of lectures, and had quite a law class started here. He was considered a great oracle on all knotty questions. When once a young lawyer came to him for counsel he said, with mingled annoy- ance and pride (for he fully understood the advantages and disad- vantages of fame) : " That is just the way ! If a lawyer has got a complicated case that nobody can understand, then it is all ' Master George !' ' Master George !' But if it is a plain matter, then off he goes to Oliver, or George, or Willard." William G. Bates used to tell a capital story as to Mr. Bliss's penchant for severe technicalities. Bliss had entered a successful plea in abatement over a slight inac- curacy in terms, and the opposing lawyer, when subsequently reading a writ, confounded the conrt with the words : " For that the said de- fendant, in the year of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ -" " What is the occasion of that profanity?" asked the judge. " Why, I thought that if I did not allege what Lord it was, my cousin George would plead in abatement !"
The mastery of technicalities of the law, for which Mr. Bliss was noted, caused him to look with suspicion upon the tendency of younger lawyers for simpler modes of practice. When special pleading was being pushed aside, he said that he would not favor its revival ; but he
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added : " The tendency of our practice in permitting every deviation from established forms to pass unnoticed is to introduce uncertainty and confusion into our judicial proceedings. It cannot fail to induce a habit of carelessness and indifference, and eventually great ignorance of correct practice.". .
The demands of public and professional life, and a succession of three wives, increased the austerities of family discipline. Bliss was a thorough orthodox Congregationalist. Strong Master George of the law was the stern Deacon Bliss of the First Church. George Bliss, the son, in an unpublished account of his own life, draws the following interesting picture of his early training : " I attended the common district school kept by a female until eight years old (1801), and then was transferred to the school kept by a man. Out of school I wandered about the streets or engaged in play with every boy I could find. My father when at home was very rigid in his family government and discipline, controlling me more by fear than by affec- tion, as was the wont in those days. Afterward I was sent to the district school, and my most ardent recollections there are of the master's ferule or rod, with which I made close acquaintance almost daily. I do not recollect that anybody at home inquired about my proficiency at school or aided in my instruction, except occasion- ally an examination into my ability to repeat the assembly's catechism, which in those days was taught us by Rev. Bezaleel Howard." A member of the family of the present day says that he has the impres- sion from the family tradition that Master George was " cold, learned, dry, just, hard, unlovable ; but even this is only an impression, and may do him injustice." But it need not be to his prejudice, we may remark, if one remembers the age in which he lived.
George Bliss lived at a time when his profession, and in fact society at large, was undergoing a change. He saw and recognized its force, but he still lived in perpetual protest to many innovations. He grieved to see a favorite son of his join the Unitarian church, and he looked with solicitude at the number of young men admitted to the
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bar who were strangers to the staid traditions of the profession. We talk nowadays of our rapid progress ; but the revolutions in society in New England from 1700 to 1776, or during George Bliss's lifetime (1764-1830), were more marked, all things considered, than anything we have since witnessed. Mr. Bliss had heard his father deliver a plea dressed in a gown, wig, silk stockings, shining shoe-buckles, and he lived to see his son confront a bench of judges in a gray business suit.
The town acts were unimportant during this period. Measures were taken in 1800 to dispose of the ministry and school lands still in its possession on the west side of the river. The money realized therefrom was devoted to a poor-house, which was the building occu- pied then by Ebenezer Hitchcock, being a part of the Worthington estate. It was secured for $666. All " Idle or Strolling Negroes " were subsequently sent to the work-house, and the expenses for the poor show that this institution was not a lonely and vacant place. The First Parish in 1806 sold the old ministry lot, which had been occupied for that purpose since the days of Rev. George Moxon.
The distillery was partly burned out in 1808, and the town abated a portion of its taxes. The last appearance of pounds, shillings, and pence in the town records is November, 1795. In 1806 the tax rate voted was " two thousand and ninety-eight Dollars twenty-five cents and four mills." In 1814 the practice of voting the annual appro- priations in November was abandoned, and from this time on, for many years, both the election of officers and the financial concerns of the town were attended to in the spring. The Baptists wanted to hold meetings in the town-house in 1809, but were refused. The time for a broader religious toleration was fast coming, however. Prej- ndices were being pushed to the wall by a national process of devel- opment. In medicine we see a marked change. "Inoculation of the Kine pock," for example, was now regularly practised, under the supervision of a town committee.
The appearance of the village had improved since the shabby post-
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revolutionary days. In 1800 the town brook, which was also known as Garden brook, had become filled up with rubbish. This over- flowed the meadows to the east, and caused sickness. The bed of the stream was accordingly deepened. There was a raised sidewalk in 1810 on the west side of Main street, running from the gate which still led into the "plain field " to Zebina Stebbins's place, and from Samuel Lyman's place, then deceased, on the opposite corner, to the " Bridge lane," from the lane to Meeting-house lane, and from Meeting-house lane to the home lot of Samuel Burt, deceased. There was also a sidewalk on the south side of Meeting-house lane.
Among the new men that had come to the front was William Ely, who is supposed to have lived on Main street, just south of the old jail tavern. Thus, in 1804 the representative vote, stood : William Ely, 59; William Smith, 13; George Bliss, 8; James Byers, 4. This was a light vote, for in November of the same year Ely polled 136 votes as congressman against 84 for Samuel Fowler. Jonathan Dwight, Jr., succeeded Ely as representative in 1805. William Ely was a Yale graduate, and was a federalist member of Congress from 1805 to 1815, which was within two years of his death. Mr. Ely advocated in Congress, in December, 1806, the death penalty for those importing slaves to the United States, and in January, 1813, he made quite an extended speech in the House against the classifi- cation of the militia of the United States, which was urged by the Southern members. Mr. Ely seems to have been very direct and business-like in his methods, choice of his words, and not given to bitter sentiments, although his convictions ran deep during these troublons times.
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