USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 12
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HATFIELD, Sept. 21, 1754.
Dear Brother, - I received yours by Chandler ; have procured you ten pounds of ginger, a door-lock, and two padlocks, small, but the biggest in
1 Major Eph, Williams, the founder of Williams College COL. W. Williams
2 Col. Partridge married Col. Williams's sister, and appears to have enter- tained a warm friendship for his brother-in-law.
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town. Shall send ye hinges, staples, &c., you sent for ; also, twenty-one and half gallons of rum and six gallons of molasses. Upon advising with Col. [Israel] Williams, he let me know that rum would not be allowed soldiers, except those destined for scouting. I thought molasses would be profitable in the article of Bar. One half-pound pepper and a quire paper I also send. There is no Commissary appointed for your place, and who it will be I know not ; but I will be so free with you (and I trust I may so advise you), to be very wary and careful how you proceed in the article of billeting : else difficulties may arise. Poontoosuck inhabitants, who, I under- stand, are with you, will not be allowed billeting until they are mustered as soldiers, which probably they will alternately. What store of pork you have at Poontoosuck among your people, and at what rate it may be bought, I don't know. I would advise you not to give any extravagant price : there is enough to be had here reasonably. As to their wheat which is upon the straw, you certainly (if you want) may get at a moderate price. We have heard this morning (Sept. 22) a man was shot upon at Southampton, and we have no news from any other quarter. I hope you will use prudence as to yourself and men with you, for we know not where ye enemy lurks.
I am your brother and servant, OL. PARTRIDGE.
N. B. - I have sent eight and three-quarter pounds of sugar, though I had none to part with.
Besides superintending, and providing the means for, the erec- tion of Fort Anson, Col. Williams attended to the commissariat of both the soldiers and the returned settlers, - a department for which he seems to have had a predilection, if not an aptitude. We have his " Gentlemen's, Soldiers', and Laborers' Account Book, 1754, whilst building Fort Anson at Poontoosuck," 1 and also his Sutler's Book for the month of November. And they furnish some curi- ons recollections of life at Unkamet's Crossing. The former shows a deal of hard work, sustained by regular although not excessively frequent potations ; 2 the latter, commencing after the families of some of the settlers had repaired to the fort, is of more curious interest. Nine-tenths of its charges are for spirituous liquors, in drams of rum, bowls or half bowls of punch, and mugs of flip. But it must be considered that every potation was here recorded, and that an allowance of two or three daily, and the average did not reach the smaller number, although it was then considered moderate drinking, made a formidable show if stretched
1 Lanc. Coll. 2 T. C. C., p. 286.
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out through a month's accounts. Persons lower in rank took their drams ; their superiors revelled in punch; while the more staid, and the gentler sex, - for the ladies did not totally abstain, - were generally content with the mild beverage of flip: if "sower," then the more luxurious.
Capt. Hinman appears to have been a jolly fellow, with a relish for liquid delicacies, and in his element when Nathaniel Tyler got credit for sixty shillings by one hundred limes delivered the com- missariat. Sometimes, too, a pleasant party relieved the sombreness of the times over the social glass. On the 20th of November, the gallant Capt. Hinman is charged with a "mug of flip for Mrs. Pier- cey." On the same day we have the following startling entry : " The wife of Deacon Crofoot for a mug of flip, - a kiss." There must have been a merry party of fair women and brave men that chill November evening in the old fort. But it may be as well to mention that the good deacon's good wife was then sixty-six years old. It is not recorded that the score so deliberately set down against her was ever liquidated. The red men, too, came in for their share of the fire-water. Wanonpe is made debtor to a gill of rum. John Wawampequeenont to a mug, a gill, and a glass. John got a pound of shot as well.
The soldiers in 1754 could not have been such multitudinous letter-writers as those of 1861-6. The only charges for paper, on Col. William's book, were one sheet to Stephen Parsons, and a half sheet to Moses Alexander, -- the latter coupled with a dram. But opportunities of communication with home were then rare.
The larder of the fort was occasionally replenished with venison at five pence a pound, and wild turkey at a shilling. An ox weighing six hundred and forty pounds was bought of Sylvanus Piercey for twelve pence a pound, making £32; and a yoke was sold for £60 by Hezekiah Jones. The rations of thirty men for a month were estimated at twenty bushels of flour, four hundred and twenty pounds of pork, five hundred and twenty-five pounds of beef, four and a half bushels of pease, and twenty-four gallons of rum. No mention is made in the book of tobacco in any form.
There seems to have been much flitting to and from the fort, and the quartermaster entertained all comers. On the 14th Novem- ber, "Capt. Hinman and Somers" came before dinner, and five more before supper. Sarah Williams, " Sylvanus Piercey, his wife and four children, and his three men," are registered on the same
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day. Nov. 16, "an Indian scout and two of Capt. Hinman's men before supper." "Clerk Stone and Tyler ante prandem " on the 19th, &c.
We are grateful for the light thrown by these little book; upon life in Poontoosuck while it was held as a military outposts for documentary accounts become scant after January, 1755, when Col. Williams, who had before been acting as a half-pay officer under special orders, accepted a captaincy in the regiment which his old commander, Sir William Pepperell, was raising for the Canada expedition of Gen. Shirley.
From the archives of the Commonwealth, however, we gather, that, between the opening of the war and the year 1759, the set- tlers of Poontoosuck, were maintained by the Province in a sort of semi-military capacity. The supposition of Col. Partridge, that they would be "mustered in alternately," proved substantially correct, and was doubtless in accordance with custom. In order that they might live, and hold their post as "a protection to the towns within ;" pay, for garrisons of a limited number of men, was allowed to the forts which were built from time to time; and this was shared by as many of those who most needed it as could agree upon a division of service and remuneration. Thus a fort which was allowed a garrison of eight men, really had more than twice that number, who eked out their subsistence by agricultural and other work in common, or otherwise.
Nor were individual interests altogether forgotten. In 1756, Charles Goodrich represented to the General Court that the Fort [Anson ] was located so far from his clearing as to afford no pro- tection to it - a fact which shows how close to its walls the enemy were supposed to lurk, and how great was the terror which they inspired. Goodrich received the promise of support for a garrison of eight men, provided he would build " a fortified place at his own expense." He accordingly erected - on an eminence south- east of Wendell Square, and about two miles south of Fort Anson -a stout block-house, which went by the name of Good- rich Fort, of which he was appointed commander, with the rank of sergeant. Goodrich, owning much land in the vicinity of his fort, made it profitable to lease or sell small sections of it to less favored settlers, who were glad to be "mustered in alternately " as soldiers of the garrison, and to cultivate little patches of carth so near the fort that they could take refuge in it in case of danger.
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In November, 1757, a petition similar to that of Goodrich was sent to the General Court by Stephen Crofoot, Solomon Deming, Ebenezer Holman, Nathaniel Fairfield, Jesse Sackett, Abner Dewey, Ephraim Stiles, Simeon Crofoot, Hezekiah Jones, Eli Root, Israel Dewey, Benedict Dewey, and David Bush.
The petitioners stated, that, before the war, they had made con- siderable improvements on their lands; but, having no place of defence to secure their families, were obliged to remove them "on the first mischief by the Indians;" that the men sent by the Con- necticut Committee of War were employed by Col. Williams to gar- rison his own house, which stood about two miles from their im- provements ; 1 that some of the petitioners had been at said fort [Anson ] in the pay and subsistence of the Province, in the hope of a re-settlement of the town: but, as it was situated, it was of no advantage to the settlers ; and they could not improve their lands unless they were protected by works properly located for that pur- pose. These they stated their willingness to build, and only asked that a suitable number of themselves and others, -of which there were about eighteen, - who wished to re-settle the township, might be put under the pay and subsistence of the Province, and some disinterested person appointed to the command.
In January, the same parties, together with Moses Miller, Ezekiel Phelps, Benjamin Goodrich, Abner and Israel Dewey, and Jacob Ensign, informed the Court that they had built "a good defensible garrison, eighty feet in length and sixty in breadth, with mounts at the opposite corners, with comfortable and convenient housing within, and suitably situated for the settlement." This work stood between Honasada Street and the river, near the bridge, and upon the land of Nathaniel Fairfield, whose name it took. This was not far from the four corners, now Wendell Square; and the expressions of the memorialists sustain the tradition that that was then considered " The Centre."
The General Court granted the pay and subsistence of ten men to the garrison of Fort Fairfield, from the 1st of March to the 1st of November next ensuing ; and provision was afterwards made for it, from time to time, in the establishment for the western frontier. Hezekiah Jones was appointed commandant, with the
1 The centre of the lands owned by the petitioners was about where Honasada Street crosses the Housatonic River.
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rank of sergeant. A fourth place of defence was afterwards built upon the eminence on the south-west shore of Lake Onota,1 which had been recommended for that purpose by Col. Israel Williams in 1754. At what date it was actually occupied does not appear. In 1755, Gen. Dwight reported to Gov. Shirley the arrival of sixty-five Connecticut soldiers at Stockbridge, of whom twenty- five were destined for Poontoosuck, to take the place of those who had refused to work at fortifying. And he suggested that some of the new comers were " specially enjoined " for work of that kind ; and as Massachusetts - contrary to the expectation both of him- self and Gov. Shirley - was required to furnish them subsist- ence, he recommended that they should be employed in erecting a good fortress in the western part of Poontoosuck.2
Col. Israel Williams had, in 1754, urgently pressed the building of works on Ashley's Hill, which he pronounced " situated best for a garrison for ye protection of Stockbridge and for scouting from ;" and -Gen. Dwight giving his earnest opinion, in Feb- ruary, 1756, that "a fort there, if kept well-manned, would be of the greatest service"-it was probably built in the following summer. When finished, it was the especial Province fort of this portion of the valley; looking more to the general defence, while the others, although affording great protection to the towns and places within, were located, as we have seen, with primary reference to the defence of the settlers in their agricultural labors.
All these forts were mere block-houses; and there is no intima- tion that any of them mounted so much as a swivel in the way of cannon : but they were of much more skilful and elaborate construc- tion than is commonly supposed, as will appear from the minute de- scription we are able to give of Fort Anson and the more scanty outlines of Forts Fairfield and Massachusetts.
The "establishment on the western frontier, " as the garrisons of the forts in that quarter were officially styled, fluctuated in numbers, as fear and the spirit of economy alternately prevailed among the legislators ; but often a new alarm reversed an order to reduce the establishment before it could be carried into
1 Then called Ashley Pond, from the residence of one Ashley, afterwards a noted Tory, upon the site of the fort.
2 Mass. Ar. v. 54, pp. 380-1.
8
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effect. The forces were divided between headquarters at Fort Massachusetts, and some half-dozen smaller works. Probably five hundred men could have been rallied to defend a given point; and so perfect a scout was kept up through the woods, that it was impossible for any considerable body of the enemy to approach without timely discovery. In this service, the men found con- stant and active employment when not otherwise engaged in garrison duty or in erecting new fortifications.
The largest garrison was usually stationed at Fort Massachusetts; and another, of from thirty to fifty men, at West Hoosack, now Williamstown. At Lanesborough, the inhabitants held their own, by the erection of a fort, or block-house, in the southern part of the township, in which their plantation was organized in 1759. Poon- toosuck was usually allowed a garrison of about thirty men; to which Connecticut sometimes added a detachment of the troops which she maintained in Massachusetts for the defence of her own frontier. The settlers, mustered in alternately as soldiers, were occasionally employed upon detached service at Fort Massachusetts, Stockbridge, and probably at other points : once, at least, at Bland- ford, for a few weeks in 1755. With the exceptions mentioned, the country northward from Poontoosuck to Canada was an unbroken wilderness; and although the few posts above diminished in some degree the perils of those who guarded the lower passes, yet, in scouting their own wild neighborhood, the soldiery at Poontoosuck must have been subject to no small danger, as well as to privation and fatigue. It was at the risk of his scalp that the hunter from Fort Anson singly chased the deer to the foot of the Hoosacks; and, if he sought his venison along the bases of the Taconics, it became an interesting question whether he might not himself furnish mate- rial for the roast. Luckily, the trout leaped by thousands in the rivers and lakes; for the mountain brooks dashed through tabooed ground, and Lulu Cascade might have proved as fatal as a foun- tain in the desert to the adventurous sportsman who was tempted by its pool.
Tradition is garrulous of encounters in the township, both before and after the breaking out of the war, between the white man and the red, with fatal results to the latter ; but these stories are happily discredited by the fact, that no mention of them is made in contemporary reports, in which every indication of the presence of the enemy on the border was scrupulously noted, and
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whose writers were well informed of every incident which happened at Poontoosuck. Two Indians were, however, killed near the Fort at Lanesborough; 1 and the universal belief that the woods, up to the very walls of the forts, were full of hostile savages, must have had some foundation in fact.
During the war, several of the regiments destined for the various expeditions against Crown Point, Ticonderoga, and Canada, passed through Poontoosuck ; among them, in 1755, that of Sir William Pepperell, in which William Williams served as captain, and, in 1758, that which the latter officer commanded as colonel. Most of these bodies halted for rest at Poontoosuck; and Williams showed his interest in the plantation by persuading Gen. Pepperell to leave twenty-six men for its protection, - a detail which was disapproved by the General Court, who requested Gov. Shirley to order its discontinuance. Relics of the presence of the troops of the Province in Poontoosuck during this war are still occasionally found. Very recently buttons bearing the inscription, " Massachu- setts 8th Reg.," were dug up near Lake Onota. It is said, that, some forty years ago, a veteran passing this way, declared that he had belonged to one of the regiments which halted here in the the second French and Indian war, and related that the colonel, finding that his men suffered from the lack of exercise, marched them to a spot where stood three gigantic white oak-trees, one of which they cut down. On being put to the test, he pointed out the spot ; and the stumps of the trees, which are of a kind rare in this vicinity, were found as he had described them.
It was on these marches that some who were subsequently citi- zens of Pittsfield first became acquainted, perhaps more inti- mately than was agreeable, with its soil. Names afterwards familiar to its history are found on the muster-rolls of the towns of West- field, Springfield, and Northampton. Among those from West- field were David Noble, who organized and led the company of minute-men which marched from Pittsfied on the news of Lexing- ton fight; and Oliver Root, a noted officer of the Revolution. The latter was the son of Samuel Root, one of the forty pioneers, who had died before completing his plans of removal to Poontoosuck. Oliver was born at Westfield, Nov. 24, 1741, and, when of a proper age, was apprenticed to a worthy shoemaker of that town. When the war of 1754 broke out, he was, of course, a mere child; but he
1 Holland's Hist. West. Mass.
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soon grew a stout youth, and, taking advantage of the law which permitted apprentices to enlist, he joined a company raised in his native place, and marched to Albany by the road cut in 1753, along the Westfield River and through Poontoosuck.
This road was but a narrow path for pack-horses; and Col. Root described that portion of it which lay in Poontoosuck as in horrible condition. No less than five hemlock swamps, some of them most formidable bogs, lay between the Hoosacs and the Taconics. In these the horses were constantly mired ; and the men were com- pelled to carry the poor beasts through, with their burthens upon them, by main strength. This was effected by a file of soldiers on each side, who passed the bands by which their muskets were commonly slung, under the bellies of the animals, and so went marching along. Perhaps it was in consequence of this same shocking state of the road, that Capt. Edward Ward, in his account with the Province, still preserved in the State archives, has an extra charge of " £1. 10s. to cash paid for transporting my baggage through Poontoosuck."
Reaching the seat of war, Oliver Root had the good fortune, as the brave and adventurous young soldier esteemed it, to be as- signed to the famous Corps of Rangers organized by Major Robert Rogers. Into this corps, the strictest care was taken to admit none but men of the hardiest constitution, accustomed to hunt and travel in the woods, and in whose courage and fidelity the utmost confi- dence could be placed. Among its officers were John Stark and Israel Putnam, with others of the same character, and a rank and file of similar material; who, together, made up the most splendid Corps of Rangers known in history.
Besides their arms, their only accoutrements were a tin cup and a single blanket for each man ; their simple rations a little parched corn pounded to a coarse meal.
Singly, or in parties, they lay down to rest wherever inclination and opportunity found them, with no shelter but their blankets. Their strength was sustained, and their unpampered appetites satis- fied, with a little corn stirred in their cups with water dipped from the wayside brook or spring; although they did not forbear to forage for choicer viands when circumstances favored, nor disdain the game with which the forest abounded, when prudence did not forbid the noise necessary for its capture, or the smoke which would arise in cooking it.
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-
Throughout the war, the Rangers performed the most perilous services ; and their exploits were as important to the expeditionary forces as they were dashing in their gallantry and thrilling in their hairbreadth adventures. The fate of Braddock had taught the British commanders a lesson not easily forgotten ; and the Rangers, in every battle of the armies to which they were attached, were placed in the van. In all marches, they piloted the way, and, scouting along the edges of the columns, rendered surprise or an- buscade impossible. Always on the alert, they patrolled the forests in all directions ; making prisoners of unwary enemies, skirmishing with exposed outposts, rescuing captured friends, and giving warn- ing to those in danger, until they surpassed the red man in his own craft, and became the terror of Frenchman and hostile Indian. For the dangers and privations inseparable from such a life, the Rangers found compensation, not in the slight superiority of their pay to that of the soldiers of the line, but amply in the wild and adventurous life which they led, and in the privileges and exemp- tion from military routine which their corps enjoyed, although held to the severest discipline in their own line of duty.
In such warfare as this, the future Col. Root, like many other officers of the Revolution, found his military school, and became familiar with hardship and danger, as well in the recesses of the forest as on the ensanguined ground before Ticonderoga.
With the advent of peace in 1760, he returned to Westfield. The law freed enlisted apprentices from all claim by their masters upon their earnings : but our young Oliver did not find it consist- ent with his notions of integrity to avail himself of'its provisions ; and, upon his return home, he brought his bounty-money, and as much of his pay as by careful economy he had been able to save, and delivered them to his master, saying, in substance, "This money I might legally retain, but justly and rightfully it is yours : take it." 1
It is pleasant to know, that, when his apprenticeship was com- pleted, Oliver was taken by his master to Pittsfield, and there established by him upon the farm inherited from his father.
I The same simple-minded integrity characterized Col. Root throughout life : and, in his old age, he refused to apply for the pension to which he was en- titled as an officer of the Continental army ; maintaining that the act of Congress could only have been intended for the benefit of those veterans who had no other means of support, while he, although not wealthy, was comfortably well off.
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An inspection of the rolls, in connection with corroborating cir- cumstances, leads to the belief that nearly all the settlers of Pitts- field who were of a suitable age served in the last French and Indian war, either in the marching regiments or in the resident garrisons.
The services of Col. Williams were conspicuous. In January, 1755, he received a letter from his old friend and commander, Sir William Pepperell (Lanc. Col.), which, after some moderately- bitter complaint of the ill requital of their services at Louisburg, expressed his intention to overlook past ingratitude, and raise a regi- ment for the first expedition against Canada in the new war, in which he offered Lieut .- Col. Williams a captaincy, regretting that he could at the time do no better by him, but promising him his influence for future promotion. Col. Williams accepted the prop- osition, and served for three campaigns without advance of rank. This deferment of promotion arose from a difficulty into which Capt. Williams fell with Sir William Johnson; whose pets, the Iroquois, he had grossly insulted and enraged, by charging them with treachery to the English cause, disarming them, and threaten- ing extreme measures if they were in his power. For this he was imprisoned by Johnson at Albany, but seems to have de- fended or excused himself to the satisfaction of the Massachusetts authorities ; for, in the spring of 1758, he received a colonel's com- mission from Gov. Pownal, and raised a regiment which, in camp at Poontoosuck, June 5, 1758, numbered 906 men.1 With this corps he took part in Abercrombie's unsuccessful expedition against Ticonderoga, and was in the memorable and sanguinary attack upon that post, July 5, 1758; of which he wrote a most thrilling and interesting account. With this campaign ended his active career as a military man.
1 In August, William Williams, son of the colonel, who had been surgeon's mate in Col. Ephraim Williams's regiment at the time that gallant officer was slain, and had behaved very ereditably in that affair, was appointed surgeon in his father's regiment. He died a few years later of small-pox.
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