USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Stockbridge > Stockbridge, 1739-1939; a chronicle > Part 12
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Stockbridge had other things besides the Indians to think about. By March 17, 1775, its patriotism had been well established, for in voting measures of national autonomy, the
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votes were forty-two for, one against. Town meetings were kept busy steadily voting men, money and supplies. The system of enlistments for three months, six months, and three years meant the continual outflow of men-299 in all. Those whose enlistments had expired came home and doffed the glory of war to return again to their fields. Not all came back, however, and extra work fell upon the women who stepped into their husbands' shoes, getting in the crops, cutting the firewood, and even taking the plough. In addition, they learned to make wartime substitutes, to use the juice of the cornstalks and pumpkins, instead of molasses, and to weave cloth for their men's uniforms. For the eight years of war they welcomed the veterans home and sent recruits out again, as if they were only another kind of crop.
For Stockbridge as for Berkshire, however, the immediate source of excitement lay not so much in the battles of the war as in the unrest at home. The county was in a ferment. When the call came for every fifth man to go to Ticonderoga, there was general reluctance to obey "until the Tories are taken care of as they are something insolent." New forces had been let loose. The old, closely-knit social and political system was cracking under the weight of the popular thrust. Conservative Berkshire had become radical.
In 1775, the ballroom of the Red Lion Inn opened its doors to another convention-a convention which voiced the growing popular resistance to the Provincial Congress. Parson Allen stumped the length and breadth of the county, preaching against the new charter it had proposed, a charter which he felt put altogether too much power in the hands of the governing body. Their only security lay in demanding a constitution chosen by the people, in whose hands all power ought ultimately to rest.
Before the days of Hamilton and Jefferson, the local strug- gle foreshadowed the future national one. A paper signed by
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John Ashley, Samuel Brown, Mark Hopkins, Theodore Sedgwick, Jahleel Woodbridge and others, denied all traffic with the recent convention, contending that it savored of anarchy, and testified their allegiance to the existing government.
Times were hard for the conservatives. Hysteria, not unlike the witch hysteria in Salem, seized upon the com- munity. Timothy Edwards's patriotism was beyond question. He had exchanged his good money for £1,000 of worthless Continental currency to provide the American army with some hard cash and had parted, too, with much of his good flour in the same way. Yet even he was set upon while riding back from Lanesboro-whither he had gone to answer the summons of "two very respectable gentlemen" in an effort to curb the rampant radicalism there-and severely beaten by five men who called him a Tory. Theodore Sedgwick, who served as aide to General Thomas, preferred the discomforts of a military life to the tender mercies of a "Berkshire mob." Early in the war, Henry Van Schaack had written that Berk- shire patriotism was insatiable and, in Pittsfield, Israel Stoddard, among other misdemeanors, had been heard to say that he thanked God he was not a Whig, and had had to run away afterwards. A royalist was strung up in Lenox and barely escaped death, while the one man in Stockbridge who had voted against national autonomy had been chased into the mountains, where his family fed him until the worst of the excitement had died down. "Our Tories," wrote Thomas Allen, "are the worst in the province . .. They are mute and pensive and secretly wish for more prosperous days to Toryism." In Egremont, Whigs and Tories volleyed shots at each other in a miniature war of their own.
It is not surprising that Elijah Williams should have come under the ban. During the war he was always in trouble. Called into court to face a charge of treachery at one time, he
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was held to be sent to General Gates for trial. At another, he was sentenced to be put into jail "till he give and full and sufficient satisfaction . . . that he would join his country-men in their opposition to the present measures of administra- tion." Elijah must somehow have satisfied his accusers, for upon the back of the paper arraigning him are the following words: "We the subscribers have at the request of . . . Colonel Williams heard his declaration and being satisfied therewith respecting his political sentiments are of opinion that he ought to be released from his present confine- ment and . . . restored to the charge of all good people." Although Elijah carried this paper around with him until the end of the war, he was again accused of treachery and ordered to be sent to the jail at Northampton as the one in Berkshire County was "too weak and insecure." A big man, his just wrath might have shaken out the iron bars! Again, quite without warning, he was clapped into the "common gaol at Boston." Used to the comforts of life, to homespuns from England, and gold vellum lace, Elijah considered the whole affair an outrage-"the apartment to which I am confined being very loathsome and uncomfortable." What is more, his saddlebags had been taken away, by which means he was "deprived of necessaries to keep himself decent and comfort- able." Elijah maintained that he could not imagine what the whole thing was about. He asked the Committee of Inspec- tion in Stockbridge for a hearing, demanding that his detractors appear before him in public. He announced that he was about to be tried by the Superior Court and asked that evidence be produced against him. Again his blustering innocence must have carried the day, for he was acquitted, and returned, perfectly furious, to West Stockbridge.
There was no gainsaying the fact that the liberal party was growing stronger every day. The upshot of Thomas Allen's policy was to be that for six years Berkshire allowed
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no interference in its internal affairs. It contributed men and military supplies, paid its taxes, sent a representative to the General Court and conformed as part of Massachusetts in its relations to the outside world, yet it permitted no interfer- ence within its borders. No courts were held until a new state constitution had been adopted.
Though this course characterized the county, Stockbridge itself was fairly conservative. When, in 1778, a general vote was cast as to whether or not the courts should be held, Stockbridge voted twenty-six for and thirty-six against. Great Barrington came out definitely for, but Pittsfield, under Allen's dominion, carried the day with a sweeping negative majority of fifty to twelve.
Meanwhile the current of national changes was sweeping smaller eddies out into its broad stream. In 1776, the town, in voting for a representative, stated that "it is the mind of this meeting that should the great and important question of the independency of the United Colonies of Great Britain be discussed in the great and general court and assembly that he give his vote in the affirmative."
The state, also, was not idle. Orders were passed to raise clothes, blankets, and shoes, to be paid for in the paper money so fast depreciating in value. Sometimes the committees of correspondence would go into each house, count how many articles there were, and pay for them. Even the blankets were stripped off the beds in order to meet the state order to collect 4,000. Unnecessary traveling was frowned upon and such was the fear of disloyalty that watchful com- mittees had to vouch for new citizens. Thus an old Stock- bridge paper endorses the respectability of yet another Williams:
"these Lines may Certify to houme they may concern that Capt. Daniel Williams of this town is a Good inhabbi- tant and has ben a towns man for a number of years &
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a Capt. of the Melishey & a Deacon of a Church and (and a true Sun of libbity) now is about to move this famerly to the town of Stockbrigg in the Massachusetts bay and I hope all persons Will Sho Him (& his family) Respek as Cristins frinds and he and I Was Born and Broght up Ny Nabers.
aTest William Morgan Justice of ye Peace
and a Commity of in Spection"
Lesser aggravations rubbed daily life the wrong way. There was an embargo on tea and, the story goes, a local divine craved a forbidden cup before leaving for the wilds of New York State, where he was missionary to the Oneida Indians. He invited his friend Dr. West to share it with him. The blinds were carefully drawn and the two, sitting opposite each other, stirring their spoons, felt terribly wicked-but how pleasant it was to relax occasionally in this matter of patriotism! A knock was heard at the door. In sudden terror Dr. Kirkland jumped up, caught the urn in his sleeve and spilled the boiling water over his lap. Afterwards he could never explain to the waiting Oneidas just why he had been so delayed in reaching them.
Events at last were shaping to a conclusion in which Stock- bridge, as well as the rest of Berkshire, was to be involved. The British plan for cutting New England off from the other colonies was now in full force. Burgoyne, coming down from Canada, planned to lay siege to Ticonderoga-that strategic point whence hostile armies could descend upon Berkshire, and proceed down the Hudson to Albany-while Sir William Howe, from New York, was to sail up the river to meet him. The war was dragging and General Philip Schuyler complained that he had to let his men go back to their fields for harvest, or they would leave of their own accord. He wrote to Stockbridge saying that the enemy was advancing on Ticonderoga and that it was very important to call out the militia, "each man being provided with as much
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arms and ammunition as possible." It must have been hard for Philip Schuyler to send out this request. Disciplined soldier that he was, the nonchalant and ungoverned ways of the Berkshire men exasperated him. They were always either complaining that they did not see enough action or else begging to be sent home. His dislike was cordially returned. His dignified old-school formality rubbed frontier democracy the wrong way. Berkshire rang with rumors of his treachery. He was said to be in league with Howe, and his friendship with Benedict Arnold, whose scurvy treatment of John Brown was now well known, counted heavily against him. In spite of prejudice, however, Stockbridge responded instantly to his request. "The militia of this county are on their march," announced Erastus Sergeant and Asa Bement and, a little patronizingly, advised the towns of Hampshire to follow suit.
By now the military focus had changed from east to west. Many of the men who had first volunteered were ready, after a season at home with their crops, to start out again. Jahleel Woodbridge was commander of the band. Patriotism even stirred in the breast of Agrippa Hull, the negro servant whom formal Stockbridge employed to serve at banquets. He volunteered under Kosciusko, the noble Polish adventurer, upon whose fall Freedom had "shrieked aloud."
With a shift in locale the struggle had taken on a different meaning. No longer was Stockbridge being merely requi- sitioned by a Provincial Congress in the eastern part of the state; no longer was it voting to support a government in far away Philadelphia. It was, quite simply, defending its own homes.
About eight o'clock of a Sunday morning the village was wakened by a cry "To arms!" Jahleel Woodbridge and Deacon Nash appeared at the corner beside Timothy Edwards's store and each solemnly fired a gun. The Sabbath
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peace was shattered. People rushed to their windows to see what was going on, and the square filled with soldiers. Dr. West, called upon to officiate in military matters, climbed the porch steps of Timothy's house, prayed and counseled, and blessed the young farmers who were going to war.
The booming of distant cannon, coming over the hills from Bennington fifty miles away, brought the seriousness of the situation home to everyone. Burgoyne's march was no longer merely a thing to read about in the papers, like Trenton and Brandywine. His recent recapture of Ticon- deroga struck at the very heart of Berkshire's safety as well as its pride. For had not Berkshire men rallied to its defense? From Pittsfield, the now thoroughly patriotic William Wil- liams had sent off an indignant letter to the General Court,
exclaiming against the disgrace of its surrender. As soon as General John Stark, sulking under the weight of his griev- ances against Congress, heard of the march upon Bennington, he offered to serve, solely under the sovereignty, however, of New Hampshire-insubordination which history has canon- ized. His countrymen rallied around him.
Thomas Allen was among the volunteers. "We, the people of Berkshire," he told John Stark, "have been frequently called upon to fight, but have never been led against the enemy. We have now resolved, if you do not let us fight, never to turn out again." "Do you wish to march when it is dark and rainy?" asked the General. "Not just this minute," was the answer. "Then if the Lord should once more give us sunshine, and I do not give you fighting enough, I will never ask you to come again."
A little later, "There's Parson Allen; let's pop him," said a Tory on the English side, and the Battle of Bennington had begun.
Stark was as good as his word, but the Stockbridge men again arrived too late. Elnathan Curtis, however, who had
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left his wife shortly before childbirth, was there, and Dr. Partridge is said to have dressed the wounds of the German Colonel Baum. As for Thomas Allen, after vigorous fighting, he tended the wounded and then went home, changed his clothes and preached a sermon.
The American victory at Bennington was complete. Fear of invasion was permanently lifted off village shoulders. Stockbridge kept on conscientiously voting supplies for the army. £80 was voted to the families of soldiers who had served in the war. In 1780, £4,500 was assessed to buy horses and £50 raised to pay volunteers for the militia for three months, over and above the state wages. £3,000 was voted for the clothing of the army and, in October of 1780, £7,000 was granted to purchase beef, and Thomas Sedgwick, back from military service, was appointed com- missioner for procuring it. A little later £18,000 was again assessed for the purchase of beef, this amount being payable in money or in rye at $54, corn at $45 or oats at $27 per bushel.
Only once more was Berkshire to have a taste of war. Bennington had been but the beginning of Burgoyne's final debacle. He had proceeded down the Hudson and made his way with difficulty through the woods and over the bad roads, but his meeting with Lord Howe had been unaccount- ably delayed. At Saratoga he met Gates's army, and after two fierce battles surrendered, or, as he preferred to say, "signed a convention." His men stacked their arms and were ordered to march to Boston and to set sail for England without fighting again. Their dreary way led them through Claverack, Hillsdale (Nobletown), and Egremont, and at Great Barrington they stopped to get supplies. Here little children amused themselves by putting their heads into the cannon which had been surrendered at Saratoga. Burgoyne himself, feeling ill and discouraged, took refuge at Elijah
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Dwight's. The many wigs, the various pairs of military boots and the spinnet he carried in his train were of little use to him now. For once these reminders of the sophisticated life he had left behind had lost their comfort, and turned daggers on him instead, presaging his home-coming and the storm of criticism which awaited him.
But Burgoyne could not dawdle, and presently his army left Great Barrington, and took the road across the mountains to Tyringham and Westfield. Tradition has it that they passed through a cleft of Bear Mountain immediately to the southeast of Stockbridge, between the mountain's main ridges and the peak known as Laura's Tower. This trail is still called Burgoyne's Pass, but it is difficult to understand just why the General should have gone out of his way to try a rough hill-path when the regular road was the shortest route, nor has any definite evidence beyond hearsay been advanced in favor of the idea.
In spite of the barrels of liquor offered them at Sandisfield and the ox roasted at East Otis, the Hessian soldiers in Bur- goyne's army did not like the countryside. "A rougher and more spiteful people I never saw," wrote one of them. "Our patience was often stretched to its highest tension . . . Most of our officers were not allowed to cross their thresholds, but . .. had to take up their quarters in filthy stables and barns . . . At first we swore at the abominable roads, but ceased when we found they became worse, as cursing would not do them justice." The weather was so terrible that two men died on the way.
Several customs of the inhabitants troubled the Germans a great deal. They were shocked, as foreigners are today, by the domination of American women over their men, who would work out their lifeblood buying their wives articles of personal adornment. Nevertheless, the girls had a way of frizzing their hair, and gathering it up in a puff at the front,
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which was very attractive and, despite their strictures, some of the Hessians were so beguiled as to forget their grievances and marry and settle down, which accounts for the number of German names throughout the county.
The war ended on the old, appropriately sentimental note. In recognition of the services of the Stockbridge Indians, Washington ordered an ox and rations of whisky to be given them for a barbecue, which was held on Laurel Hill, with John Sergeant presiding. An effigy of Benedict Arnold was shot, scalped and burned, and a war hatchet was buried.
The Revolution was over. Along the Tyringham road from the east, up the Great Barrington road from the south, slowly the village veterans dribbled back, returning to sow and reap unmolested in their own fields.
Chapter VII
SHAYS' REBELLION
T HE glow of the Indian barbecue on Laurel Hill, symbolizing the triumph of the war, died down in the cold dawn of peace. America, the infant Hercules, was wobbly on its new-found legs. The next difficult years were to teach it to walk alone.
Stockbridge was no longer an outpost of empire but part of the new State of Massachusetts, which in its turn had become part of the Union, held loosely together by the Articles of Confederation. In 1780, the state had been accorded the new Constitution and Bill of Rights, which Berkshire had been so vociferous in claiming, but its govern- ment was as yet untried. Berkshire County was growing and if, during the controversy over the courts, Pittsfield's voice had been louder and more insistent, Stockbridge as a com- munity was still upon its upward curve.
For one thing, the Plain was becoming fashionable. Square, amply proportioned houses gave a sense of stability and tradition to the village street. Henry W. Dwight, back from the war, was county treasurer and tax collector, and had built Old Place at the western end, overlooking wide meadows and the curving river beyond. In the middle of the Plain, Theodore Sedgwick had built himself a large square house of the simple colonial type. His law practice had prospered in Sheffield and he had married Pamela Dwight and come to Stockbridge to live. Right under Laurel
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Hill, Senator Jahleel Woodbridge, Judge of Probate and the Court of Common Pleas, ruled over his farm and household with the just benevolence of a patriarch. Only Abigail Dwight maintained the old tradition. After General Dwight's death, she moved back to the Hill, to the same house she had lived in as John Sergeant's young wife.
During the post-war period industrial possibilities also were being realized. Elnathan Curtis had been quick to avail himself of the water power in the northwestern part of the town and by 1782 the outlets of the Stockbridge Bowl were punctuated by saw and grist mills. The Curtises became captains of industry and prospered in the settlement known as Curtis Mills and later on as Curtisville. Others followed in their wake, the Dressers, the Fairchilds, and the Churchills. In 1813, a woolen mill with an annual output of 40,000 yards, employed eighteen men. It was soon rivaled by another which turned out 14,000 yards of satinet a year. A trip-hammer shop and a clothier's works did thriving busi- ness, while the Churchills embarked on a chair factory large enough by 1813 to employ thirty men and manufacture 8,000 chairs annually. By 1828, one cotton mill alone employed forty-two hands and had twenty-four power looms turning out 150,000 yards of cotton sheeting. In the section of the Stockbridge township known as Mill Hollow, and later on as Glendale, a woolen factory was opened in 1813, which ran for a time under the direction of Lester Avery, while the Stockbridge Cotten and Woollen Company and the Stock- bridge Cotton Manufacturing Company were both incorpor- ated in 1815.
With all this prosperity people could afford to be chari- table, and care of the town poor became a frequent item among the selectmen's duties. In one year the town appropriated $233.67 for "boarding, nursing, clothing and doctoring" a pathetic list of names ending with Miss Carswell.
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She had evidently seen better days, since hers was the only name to which Miss was attached, and she was cared for to her death, "including funeral expence." Not only civic respon- sibility but private philanthropy played a part in the lives of such shrewd business people as Abigail Dwight and her son, Elijah, for more than once they contributed the sum of six shillings and eight pence to the Humane Society.
Although Stockbridge might preen itself upon its civic growth, there was one respect in which it was outdistanced by its northern neighbor. After 1780, when Berkshire once more allowed the courts to function within its borders, the question arose as to where they should be held. The Supreme Judicial Court (formerly the Superior Court of Judicature) , which had tried Berkshire cases in Springfield until 1783, was to meet in the county itself. Until now the lower courts had been held in Great Barrington, but in 1782 some gentlemen from Berkshire, disliking this arrangement, petitioned the Legislature to decide upon the future county seat.
It may have been at the Red Lion Inn, then owned by the Widow Bingham, that the urbane committee from Boston, prepared to listen to countless grievances, met the representa- tives of twenty Berkshire towns. After great deliberation, they decided in favor of Lenox, which was in the center of the county and most easily reached from every side. It was one thing, however, for an impartial committee to decide such a matter upon grounds of geographical justice and another to carry out its plans. Numerous petitions voiced numerous protests. For instance, it was obvious that the county could not afford the new buildings which would be required. Besides, why should Lenox, so small and so new, be favored? Couldn't the Court of Common Pleas be held alternately at Stockbridge and Pittsfield? Finally-an ambitious question-couldn't the Supreme Court be held at Stockbridge?
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Perhaps Boston had had too much of Berkshire obstinacy. Perhaps it had not forgotten the long years when no courts had been held there at all, and wished to avoid possible future controversy. At any rate, in 1787, an order was issued that the Court of Common Pleas and the Supreme Court were both to be held in Lenox in February, and there was no gainsaying its authority. Yet even then, although Lenox functioned as the county seat, the matter could not rest in peace, and the disturbing question remained at simmering point for many years to come.
When the judicial controversy was not to the fore other matters pressed upon village attention. For one thing, the practice of medicine was sadly antiquated. Doctor Sergeant's pupils, whom he taught at home as Dr. West taught theology and Theodore Sedgwick law, had hitherto learned their profession merely by holding their master's basins, grinding his powders, making up his pills, and running errands for him upon the Plain. In order to remedy this state of affairs, to stimulate interest in medical matters and "encourage a spirit of union and make the faculty more respectable," the Massachusetts Medical Society appointed a committee con- sisting of Dr. Sergeant and Dr. Partridge to form the Berkshire Medical Association. In 1787, it met at the Widow Bingham's for the first time, and drew up a set of rules which could upon occasion be severe. Any doctor who refused to belong to this association was to be treated "with entire neglect." Medical education was fixed at three years and no man could become a pupil until he had a good knowledge of mathematics and could construe and parse the Latin language accurately.
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