USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Stockbridge > Stockbridge, 1739-1939; a chronicle > Part 6
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When Colonel John Stoddard, Edwards's uncle and his supporter, died in 1747, Northampton turned against Edwards. Colonel Israel Williams of Hatfield, who had never been in sympathy with Edwards, succeeded to Stoddard's authority as unofficially-crowned king of Hampshire County, and the powerful Williams clan gathered behind him. In Wethersfield, Elisha Williams rose up and denounced him. In Lebanon, Solomon Williams, Israel's brother, joined the hue and cry, while uncle Ephraim, far away in Stockbridge, heartily endorsed the sentiments of his relatives. They and their cohorts were all in at the death when, in 1750, the culmination was reached in the dismissal of Edwards from the Northampton church.
It must have been with a sense of relief that he looked forward to the life in Stockbridge, the boarding school
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attended by fifty eager Mohawks instructed by the capable Captain Kellog, and the day school for the Housatonic Indians and white children in the hands of Timothy Wood- bridge, and the whole mission financially well-oiled. There would surely be many hours free from the practical adminis- tration of his duties that he could spend in study and contemplation.
During his first visit to Stockbridge in the winter of 1751, he picked out Sergeant's original little house on the Plain. Here his wife, the saintly and capable Sarah Pierpont, would stow away the eleven children and pinch and contrive to make both ends meet. The salary from The Society for the Prop- agation of the Gospel would be eked out by £6.135.4d. from the English congregation, and Indians and whites together engaged to supply him with 100 sleigh-loads of wood, not half enough for the big family. He was badly in debt but by rigid economies they could get along. Mrs. Edwards and the daughters would continue to paint landscapes on fans and send them to Boston for sale, and Edwards would write his sermons on discarded patterns of ladies' caps to save paper.
It was, however, with grave misgivings that the Williams faction saw the austere and unyielding figure of Jonathan Edwards approach Stockbridge. They were beginning to
consider it entirely their private game preserve. The management of the mission funds would not square with the rigid Edwards code of ethics, besides which they were sincere believers in the easier way to salvation represented by the Halfway Covenant. Had it not been endorsed by their own John Sergeant? On the other hand the Woodbridge group was eager to have Edwards, the Commissioners at Boston stood behind him, and unexpectedly the support of the Brigadier General tipped the scales in his favor, for Dwight had long been an admirer and friend of Edwards. It was hoped that he would not stoop to such mundane affairs as the manage-
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ment of the mission funds, but would be content to leave business where it belonged, in Williams's hands. They counted heavily upon his reputed vagueness. He did not even know how many head of cattle he owned, they told each other. Absent-minded professor stories went the rounds. It was said that one day, as he was riding through a pasture, he met a boy who civilly doffed his cap and opened the gate for his horse. Edwards courteously thanked him and asked whose boy he was. "Cooper's boy," laconically came the answer. Edwards, returning home through the same pasture a little later, found the child still there. Again he lifted the gate, doffed his cap, again Edwards responded with thanks, and again asked the same question. "Why, sir," the boy said in bewilderment, "I'm the same man's boy I was fifteen minutes ago."
Young Captain Ephraim, believing it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good, expressed his opinion in a letter to the Reverend Jonathan Ashley of Deerfield with admirable frankness:
. . Mr. Edwards has lately wrote to Mr. Woodbridge of Stockbridge, who informs him he has not heard from them dont know whether they desire he should come among them, and that he hears I have done all I can to prevent his coming. I am sorry that a head so full of Divinity should be so empty of Politics. I would not have him fail of going for 500 pounds, since they are so set for him, not that I think he will ever do so much more good than an other, but on acct. of raising the price of my land. Its true when they first talkd of settling him I was against it gave my reasons, & sent them to him like an honest fellow . . .
1. That he was not sociable, the consequence of which was he was not apt to teach.
2. He was a very great Bigot, for he would not admit any person into heaven, but those that agreed fully to his sentiments, a Doctrine deeply tingd with that of the Romish church.
3. That he was an old man, & that it was not possible for him to learn the Indian tongues therefore it was not
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likely he could be serviceable to the Indians as a young man that would learn the tongue
4. His principles were such, If I had rightly been in- formed, I could by no means agree to, that I had taken pains to read his Book, but could not understand it, that I had heard almost every gentleman in the county say the same, & that upon the whole I believd he did not know them himself.
The above reasons I sent to him by Lt Brown, who has since told me he deliverd to him verbatim, which I believe did not suit him.
I am Sir your most Humble Sert
Eph Williams Jun"
Besides the Captain's shrewd guess that the presence of such a celebrity in the town would raise the value of his land, there was truth in his catalogue of Edwards's defects for a position of missionary. He lacked the common touch, the ready smile, the hearty handshake of the successful missionary. He was out of scale with his parishioners, dwarfing the fussy pretentiousness of Colonel Williams, the elegance of Dwight, and even the square dependability of Timothy Woodbridge. Only with Monument Mountain, thrusting its baldpate above the passing scene, was he on neighborly terms.
The scholarly quiet of which Edwards had dreamed was not to be his. In the month of June, before he had even settled his family, it became apparent that the Mohawks, who were the pivot of the government's interest in the mission, were leaving in large numbers. Hendrik, the chief, in disgust at the filth and disorder of the boarding school, had already gone, and every day saw the departure of another disgruntled family over the Albany trail. The representatives of the Massachusetts government passed through Stockbridge on their way to Albany, where they were to meet with representatives of the Connecticut and New York govern- ments, and the chiefs of the Six Nations, for the purpose of arranging a treaty. They persuaded Edwards to accompany
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them and to try his hand at coaxing the Indians back to Stockbridge. Something in his calm eye seemed to reassure them, for Hendrik consented to give the mission one more chance. His people would like to be educated, he said, but they were tired of Mr. Kellog and his broken promises. He asked the commissioners to promise nothing this time but what they would certainly perform. The incompetency of Mr. Kellog was agreed upon by all concerned, and the Com- missioners appointed a new schoolmaster with every qualifi- cation to spread a satisfactory veneer of English culture and piety upon the little savages. So confident was Hendrik of a new deal in the mission that he persuaded his brothers, the Oneidas, and also a few Tuscaroras, to return with him. Full of hope they all trailed back to Stockbridge.
A new instructor was duly installed, a Mr. Gideon Hawley, guaranteed for his virtue and learning, and Edwards sat down at his desk and composed an elaborate plan for the education of the Indians, which he sent off in a letter to his friend, Sir William Pepperell. His ideas on methods of teaching have a modern emphasis. "In the common method of teaching," he wrote, " ... children, when they are taught to read, are so much accustomed to reading, without any kind of knowledge of the meaning of what they read, that they continue reading without understanding, even a long time after they are capable of understanding, were it not for the habit of making such and such sounds, on the sight of such and such letters, with a perfect inattentiveness to any mean- ing." But his notions of geography and history show him to have conceived of a world safely bounded by the Old and New Testaments. "Thus," he suggested, "they might be taught how long it was from the Creation of the world to the Coming of Christ, how long from the Creation to the Flood; how long from the Flood to the calling of Abraham . .. And with like ease, and with equal benefit, they might be taught some of the
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main things in Geography: which way the land of Canaan lies from this; how far it is; which way Egypt lay from Canaan; which way Babylon lay from Jerusalem, and how far; which way Padan-Aram was from Canaan; where Rome lay from Jerusalem; where Antioch "
The new master, Mr. Hawley, reported Edwards to be a very plain and practical preacher to the Indians. "His sentences were concise and full of meaning and his delivery grave and natural." "Upon no occasion," Mr. Hawley insisted, "did he display any metaphysical knowledge in the pulpit."
Disconcertingly it dawned upon the Williamses and Dwight that Edwards had no intention of remaining a massive figurehead, safely lost in clouds of speculation. If the Lord called him to run a Sunday school for savages in the wilderness, at least its morals would be measured by the same rigorous yardstick that he had used at Northampton.
It soon became evident that, although the Mohawks were delighted with Mr. Hawley and were eagerly availing them- selves of his instruction, Williams and Dwight refused to acknowledge his existence. Kellog was the master of the boarding school, they persisted in claiming, and daily they dispatched him to interfere busily in every possible way with Mr. Hawley. The result was confusing to the simple minds of the savages.
Woodbridge had warned Edwards of the Williams clique from the first, but his confidence in Dwight was such that he was slow to suspect him and his relations by marriage of being involved in such a shady affair. By February, they had fairly laid their cards on the table. Dwight was in full charge of the boarding school, and in the fullness of time Mr. Kellog would retire from his duties, and Dwight's own son would become master. A store had been built in the village with government funds, and there the Indians bought
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liquor while the proprietor, Colonel Williams, looked the other way. A new schoolhouse was to be built for the girls, the land for which was part of the Sergeant property. It was to be sold to the government at a high price by Abigail, thus netting the Dwights a neat profit. Abigail herself would be mistress for the girls. Four of their children were receiving their education at the boarding school, and their servants' wages were paid out of the mission funds.
The feeble protests of Woodbridge and the other white settlers on the Plain, and the resentful backs of the Mohawks, huddled in their blankets, and obviously contemplating another removal in the spring, had no effect upon these questionable methods. Edwards in his wrath was another matter. He had met the Williams tribe before on the field of battle in Northampton, and had gone down to defeat, and it is supposing him to be utterly devoid of human nature to imagine that he did not sniff the air of combat with some degree of satisfaction. He decided to make an issue of the appointment of Abigail as mistress of the girls' school. There he would put his foot down. In a letter to the - Commissioners in Boston he explained that Abigail was an unsuitable choice, for she was the mother of three growing families-the Sergeant children, Dwight's children by his first marriage, and a new Dwight family on the way. More- over, she would be accountable for her actions solely to her husband, who wrote the annual report of the school for the Legislature. He further disclosed the state of affairs in the mission, the iniquity of Colonel Williams, and the unac- countable change that had come over Dwight since his marriage. He urged the Commissioners to come to Stock- bridge and judge for themselves. "I have been slow to speak," he wrote. "My disposition has been, entirely to suppress what I knew, that would be to the disadvantage of any of the people here. But I dare not hold my peace any longer."
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With the first thaw of the snow-clad hills and the appear- ance of the early pussy willows, the Mohawks turned their faces definitely westward again, leaving a scene which was degenerating into opera-bouffe. The elaborate machinery of the charity school now housed four of the faithful Housa- tonic Indians and one reluctant Mohawk under the unpopular Kellog, while in another building Mr. Hawley still continued the instruction of a group of Oneidas. One of the Williams faction, during a visit to Hawley's school, lost his temper and struck the son of the chief sachem of the Oneidas on the head. A terrible tumult ensued, which Dwight as trustee was called upon to settle. He adroitly fastened the blame for the incident on Mr. Hawley, but when the Oneidas to a man said that they would leave if Hawley did, Dwight was obliged to change his tune. He ended by paying the outraged sachem a large sum of money to keep his child in the school. One night, a little later, Hawley's school was mysteriously burned to the ground. Hawley escaped with his pupils, but lost all his books and furniture.
These events were proving too much for the aged nerves of Ephraim Williams. He was beginning to find Stockbridge extremely uncomfortable. In his fortress on the Hill he was securely buttressed by the properties of his own loyal family, but when he descended to the Plain on business or pleasure bent, he was met with dark looks and his greetings were scarcely returned. The white settlers and the Indians were a solid bloc of unfriendly opposition and Williams decided on desperate measures. If Edwards went, then Hawley would automatically go with him, and Dwight was bending every effort, as he knew, to concoct a report that would completely discredit Edwards. But what was needed was an even more thorough housecleaning. If all the disgruntled settlers who sympathized with Edwards and
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Woodbridge could be bodily removed, and their places filled with settlers friendly to Williams, all might yet be well. It was a bold plan, and early one morning before the break of day he proceeded to the Plain to put it into execution.
He hurried from one house to another, calling the farmers from their beds. He offered to buy their farms himself, at large prices, cash down, if they would leave town immediately. One sleep-befogged landowner actually closed with him, and before noon he had visited every house on the Plain. By this time the astonished farmers were thoroughly awake to Williams's nefarious plot, and they indignantly repudiated his offers. Was the old man really mad to think he could buy up the whole town? Even his own family admitted that it was very peculiar and, as Edwards said, "were glad to lay this conduct to distraction." Ephraim then started coursing about the countryside in a way that alarmed Abigail, for she wrote in a letter to her brother in Deerfield: "He went away from us about three weeks past for Wethersfield. Promised us he would go nowhere Else. But ye first News we had from him was that He Rid all one Day in a bad Storm, got to Wethersfd late at Night. Sett out Next morning for Newhaven, rid all ye Day in a hard South westerly wind, there he got in ye Notion of meeting with their General Assembly Day after Day on Indian affairs, then returns to Newington, there writes us He is going to Stonington, then to Deerfield, then to Boston . . . it will vastly disserve our Public affairs & I know not but intirely ruin us . . . by one wile or other ... I beg you Do all in your Power to get him in ye mind of Coming Home as Soon as may Be, if you have any love for him or us."
Home was none too wholesome a place for the old gentle- man and it was at last decided that the wisest plan would be for him to uproot himself from the homestead on the Hill and move to the safe distance of Deerfield. This he did,
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selling the house and all his property rights in and about Stockbridge-a lordly demesne of 1,505 acres all told-for the sum of £1,000, to his son Ephraim. For good measure he threw in "my negro servant Moni, my negro boy London, also my Negro Girl Chloe-the latter not to be for his use or service until after my own & my wife's death."
Letters, an admixture of shrewdness and homesickness, found their way back to the sons who were to uphold the family banner in Stockbridge. "If I shod not come back to live at Stockbridge," he wrote to Elijah, who had leased the farm in Ephraim's absence, "he is to Remember I must have an Equivalent for all my Privelidges. (viz) . the House Room, a Horse allways kept, firewood fitted at the door; and allso Two acres of land at the door: all which will undoubtdly be worth one Hundred Pounds pr year old tenor I would now tell you if it be possible gett buck wheat Straw of the Indians . .. and lay a good Cock Round each Tree; but dont lett the Straw come within two foot of the body of the trees lest the mice bark the trees . . . you Cant Conceive the benefitt of it, you never need to plow up your orchard any more in case you practice doing so The prudent farmer ends upon a nostalgic note: " .. . I am more sencible of the want of aples than perhaps you may be aware of . . . " It was cold in Deerfield, "I want the Red Jackit & blue millatary Britchis & the Green old winter Jackit some good chease & the shrubb . . . also the thing I put over my head to keep my Ears warm which I button under my chin ... "
With the indiscretions of the old man out of the way, the younger generation fell upon Edwards tooth and nail. Cousin Elisha Williams, arriving opportunely from London, hurried to Stockbridge, and asserted his authority over Edwards, as one of the directors of the Society in London. He would be sorry, he said, in the tone of a schoolmaster to a
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refractory pupil, to hand in an unfavorable report of the missionary to the Society, but this he would do, if Edwards did not at once approve the appointment of Abigail as mistress of the female boarding school. Edwards refused to be bullied and referred him to the Commissioners of the Society in Boston, to whom he had explicitly stated his reasons for disapproving of this plan.
Dwight then launched a broadside in the form of a report to the Legislature, attacking Edwards, and accusing him of "intermeddling with what was none of his business." He claimed that Edwards had taken advantage of his absence to introduce Hawley into the school, that Edwards was wholly incompetent and too old to learn the Indian language. He also wrote a letter to his old commander at Louisburg, Sir William Pepperell, asking for the immediate removal of Edwards. In Boston, young Ephraim busily whispered insinuations and accusations against the minister.
However, virtue was to prove its own reward. The integrity of Edwards towered easily above this petty intrigue. In a letter to Sir William Pepperell he rested his case, he said, with "every man, woman and child in Stockbridge, that had any understanding, both English and Indians, except the families of the opponent of Mr. Woodbridge and of the author of the Report."
The Indians' backs were up. If the boarding school was to be a place of "contention & confusion" they would like their land back. In a lengthy petition they gave vent to their grievances: " . . so long as the persons that are upon [the land] retain their dispositions, which are we apprehend to deprive us of our liberty and privileges, as free Subjects of the government, and rather than not bow and buckle us to their schemes, would overturn & bring to an end, all the designs of promoting Christian Knowledge among us . we waited on Coll Dwight soon after his return from Boston,
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desired him to give us his reasons for engaging so zealously to remove the minister . . . but he treated us with contempt and told us we came in an odd manner ,and upon an errand as odd, and that he was not obliged to give us his reasons . . . and we have great & just reason to complain to the Honor- able court of the conduct of these Gentlemen whose restless, haughty, and selfish conduct, we veryly think to be the foundation of all our difference, and the calamity we suffer thereby . .. "
To the practical legislators in Boston, this was the point: The final contest for the prize of North America was approaching, and the rumors of war that had rumbled for five years beneath the patched-up Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle were about to break out into actual hostilities. The legis- lators had poured money since 1750 into the Stockbridge mission solely in the hope of adhering the Six Nations to the English cause. If the Indians had confidence in Edwards and Woodbridge, and distrusted Dwight and the Williamses, there was no more to be said. Edwards was put in undis- puted charge of the mission funds from the Legislature and The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Even benign Mr. Hollis, when he was given proof that his draft of £160-the money for an entire year-had been pocketed outright by Kellog, wrote that his money must be hereafter administered solely by Edwards. Kellog withdrew to his native Connecticut, able to retire, it is to be assumed, in comfortable circumstances. Abigail immersed herself in domesticity, and Dwight, remembering that he was, after all, a Brigadier General, directed his not inconsiderable talents to the approaching conflict.
Israel Williams wrote to him that it was imperative that the Stockbridge Indians should not be in collusion with the enemy or even neutral, but must declare themselves defi- nitely on the English side. Dwight wrote back that it was
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difficult to raise in them much enthusiasm for the English cause, because of the insults and abuses they had suffered at the hands of the soldiers. He did not mention certain other abuses which would have struck nearer home. However, by February he had persuaded most of them to enlist, and wrote to Governor Shirley that, as there had been no formal break between them and the Canadian Indians, they would be useful as spies. He dispatched three of them to Crown Point to learn the movements of the enemy. Dwight also had other irons in the fire. Only a year before, as Chief Justice of the Courts of Hampshire County, he had been instrumental in obtaining from the General Court an act incorporating the township of Pontoosuc, so-called until 1761, when it was rechristened Pittsfield. To a man of such active interests the unfortunate mission incident must soon have been lost in the shuffle of larger affairs.
Edwards had been left to pick up the pieces of the mission. He discovered to his amazement that young Ephraim's famous charm had been exercised upon the Mohawk chief, Hendrik, with great success, and that, despite the antipathy that existed between Williamses and Mohawks in general, Hendrik was in the habit of slipping into town when Williams was there, to swap army stories with the genial captain. This was a valuable connection, and perhaps contributed to the fact that the winter of 1754 saw a small number of Mohawks, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras return to Stockbridge. There were also a few of the Schaghticoke tribe lurking upon the outskirts of the village. And thereby hangs another tale.
Chapter IV
JONATHAN EDWARDS
T HE peace that was so soon to be shattered on the national stage was broken almost simultaneously in Stockbridge. As George Washington engaged in the first skirmish of the war at Great Meadows in Virginia that spring, and the colonies under the leadership of Benjamin Franklin were preparing to meet in an attempt to present a united front to the enemy, a small but angry gun went off right under Jonathan Edwards's nose. It was at the height of the spring sugar season when an incident occurred which threatened to have far-reaching consequences. Two Schagh- ticoke Indians, father Waumpaumcorse and his son, were gathering sap in the vicinity of Tyringham. It was the same spot where John Sergeant had camped out with the Indians so many years before. Hearing a crackling of branches, they looked up to see two white men rapidly making off with some horses. As these had no saddles and wore bark halters, they supposed them to be Indian horses and started in pursuit. The white men, turning on the Indians, shot Waumpaum- corse dead. Deep was the wrath of the Indians over the murder, for such they felt it to be. An elaborate, ritualistic and purely Schaghticoke funeral took place and Indians of every persuasion defiantly attended. The two white men were brought to justice in Springfield, but one received only a slight punishment for manslaughter, while the other was
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