USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 14
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M ANY evils arose from the peculiar system adopted in the settlement of Poontoosuck ; and among others, less easy of remedy, was the limitation of corporate powers and duties, under the plantation, to the proprietors of the sixty settling-lots. In reference to the difficulties springing from this cause, it was repre- sented to the General Court, in 1761, that incorporation as a town would greatly contribute to the growth of the place, and remedy many inconveniences to which the inhabitants and proprietors might otherwise be subjected.
The movement was made by Col. Williams, who was then at Boston urging the erection of the county of Berkshire; and an act of incorporation was introduced in the Council, read three times, passed to be engrossed, sent to the House and there read once, all upon the 10th of April. It passed the House on the 13th, was enacted on the 16th, and approved by the governor (Sir Francis Bernard) on the 26th. James Otis, as speaker, attested the passage of the bill by the House.
The act of incorporation conferred the usual powers, but with the provision, that "no inhabitant or proprietor, excepting the
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original sixty settling-proprietors, or those holding under them, should be obliged to pay any part of the charges towards building a meeting-house, settling the first minister, or the other charges which the said original settling-proprietors were obliged to per- form, either according to the tenor of their grant, or by any agree- ment made by or among themselves."
A further provision was made by amendment, adopted after the passage of the bill by the Council, excluding the new town from representation until the year 1763.
The privilege of conferring names upon towns at their incorpo- ration belonged, under the Provincial régime, to the royal gover- nor, who generally, in selecting them, consulted the wishes of the parties interested. In cases, however, where these differed among themselves, the contestants most in favor at Province House pre- vailed; and, where no satisfactory name was proposed by any party, his Excellency availed himself of the opportunity to indulge his own taste, - and that of Sir Francis Bernard was not to be questioned, - or to compliment some personal friend or patron : a fact which may aid some towns in finding a godfather responsible for their unaccountable names.1
Three plantations were made towns on the same day with Poontoosuck; and in each instance a space, which has never been filled, was left blank in the records of the Court, for the name of the place. In the copy, among the rolls of the commonwealth, of the act regarding Poontoosuck, the word " Pittsfield" is inserted in a different handwriting, and with different ink, from those
1 The following letter - Hon. Thomas Colt's Collection, pp. 335 - affords a curious illustration of this statement, in connection with the incorporation of the Plantation of Queensborough, in 1771. Queensborough was made the town of West Stockbridge in 1774.
SIR,- We have now a petition in the General Court to have the west part of Stockbridge set off, and made into a district ; which I suppose will meet with no opposition. We now call the place Queensborough : should be glad to have it retain that name if it is agreeable to his Excellency. I forgot to desire 'Squire Woodbridge to mention it to the governor ; and, had I have thought of it, I suppose he would have been too negligent to have done any thing about it. I would therefore now beg the favor of you, sir, to request of his Excellency to call the place Queensborough if it is agreeable to him.
I am, with respect, sir, your very humble servant, ELIJAH WILLIAMS.
QUEENSBOROUGH, June 4, 1771.
The letter was addressed to Col. William Williams, then Representative from Pittsfield, and high in Gov. Hutchinson's favor.
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used in the body of the document. By whom, or upon whose suggestion, the name was selected does not appear. In the act another blank left for the name of the magistrate authorized to call the first town-meeting was filled by that of Col. Williams; and in June, writing to a friend in London, that gentleman remarked, " The name of Pitt is most agreeable to me ; and, as the plantation in which I dwell grew numerous, the government, last spring, saw cause to incorporate it into a town, which Gov. Bernard was pleased to call Pittsfield." Doubtless the writer had some voice in securing for his home the name which was so agreeable to him.
But William Pitt, by his vigorous conduct of the war against France, had made himself the idol of all parties in New England; and, however modern sentiment may regret aboriginal "Poontoo- suck," it was not without reason that the men of 1761 thought it seemly to commemorate the British minister who had in troublous time manifested the most earnest solicitude for the defence of the western frontier of Massachusetts, in the name of the first town incorporated in that section after the triumphant close of the war: and it was incidentally fortunate that this town also occupied the site of one of the most exposed military outposts, and was one of those whose safety most closely depended upon the conquest of Canada. And thus, while happily the name of Pitt grew more and more endeared to the whole American people, until the last great statesman who bore it ceased to live, it had, when applied to Pittsfield, an earlier and a local fitness which should not be for- gotten.
On the 1st of October, 1760, the proprietors of New Framing- ham (Lanesborough), fifty-one being present, voted, " That, as the westerly towns of the county of Hampshire are about petitioning the Great and General Court that said county may be divided . .. by the west line of the town of Blandford, . . . we do heartily join with them in their request, and now appoint Wm. Williams, Esq., our agent to solicit the same . . . at their next session, or at any time hereafter, when the other towns, by their agents, shall move in the matter." 1
There is no record of the action which Poontoosuck undoubtedly took, similar to that of her sister plantations ; but, on the same 13th of April on which the act to incorporate the town of Pittsfield
1 T. C. C., p. 196.
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passed in concurrence to be engrossed, Col. Williams - having, as the agent of several towns, petitioned for the division of Hampshire county - had leave to bring in a bill for that purpose; and, on the same day that the act to incorporate the town passed to enact- ment, that to erect the county of Berkshire passed to be engrossed.1
The name "Berkshire" was given to the new county by Gov. Bernard, and was probably suggested by his personal connections with the shire of that name in England.
The towns of Sheffield, Stockbridge, Egremont, and New Marlborough, the plantations of Poontoosuck, New Framingham, and West Hoosuck, and the Districts Nos. 1, 3, and 4, were enumerated in the act; while the rest of the territory of the county was lumped as "all lands within " certain described limits. There were, however, settlements, and some of them considerably advanced, in all the present towns of Southern Berkshire, except West Stockbridge.
Sheffield was declared to be, "for the present, the shire or county town ;" and it was enacted that courts of the General Sessions of the Peace and inferior courts of Common Pleas, should be held in the North Parish of that town, on the last Tuesday of April and the first Tuesday of September ; and at Poontoosuck on the first Tuesday of December and the first Tuesday of March.
A court-house and jail were built at Sheffield, North Parish, which was, in June, 1761, incorporated as the town of Great Barrington. The courts at Pittsfield were held in a large room set apart for that purpose in Fort Anson, which was dismantled, and, a little after that time, became the property and residence of Lieut. Moses Graves, one of the more wealthy settlers. The terms of the Superior Court of Judicature (corresponding to the present Supreme Judicial Court) were directed to be held at Northampton, in connection with those for Hampshire; and they were so held . until 1783.
In 1770, the General Court having submitted certain proposed changes in the times of holding the Berkshire courts to the con- sideration of the towns of the county, Pittsfield voted that the term held at Great Barrington on the first Tuesday in September had been found inconvenient, as that was the season of the year when every experienced farmer chose to sow his wheat, and because it
1 Rec. Gen. Court, Lib. copy, vol. xxiii.
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gave the clerk so little time that he was perplexed to make out his copies for the Superior Court; and recommended a change to the third Tuesday in August, " as that was a time when all had done reaping, and none began to sow." It was further recommended that the courts held at Pittsfield should, on account of the travel- ling, sit on the third instead of the last Tuesday of February. And, generally, the town advised that courts should be held at Great Barrington on the last Tuesdays of May and August, and at Pittsfield on the third Tuesdays of November and February. The proposition as to the Great-Barrington September term was adopted by the Legislature; the others rejected. But it will be observed, by the wording of the Pittsfield vote, that changes had already taken place between the erection of the county in 1761 and the · meeting of 1770. The agricultural reader will note the promi- nence given to the farming-interest ; and particularly to the culture of wheat, which has since become an insignificant item in the prod- uce of town and county.
Pittsfield having been made a town, and established as one of the two seats of the county courts, entered upon a new era of her history ; of which the first few years were marked by organization and formation, when the affairs of the place - social, personal, municipal, and religious -assumed the characteristics which they bore at the opening of the Revolution, and some of which out- lasted that convulsion.
The first town-meeting was held in the forenoon of the 11th of May, 1761, at the house of Deacon Stephen Crofoot, which stood near the western end of Elm Street. The business centre was already, it seems, creeping westward. The only business transacted was the election of the following officers : Moderator, David Bush ; Clerk, Wm. Williams; Treasurer, David Bush ; Selectmen and Assessors, David Bush, William Williams, and Josiah Wright; Constable, Jacob Ensign; Highway-Surveyors, Gideon Goodrich, David Bush, and Eli Root; Fence-viewers, Nath'l Fairfield, Wm. Francis; Sealer of Leather and of Weights and Measures, Simeon Crofoot; Wardens, Solomon Deming and David Noble; Deer- reeves, John Remington and Reuben Gunn.
The Deer-reeves were elected annually to enforce the law which forbade the killing of deer in certain seasons.1
1 By the law of 1698, between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1. Afterwards the dates were slightly changed. In 1763, prohibition began on the 21st December. - Hist. · Hadley, p. 356.
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The meeting was held under a precept from the magistrate named in the act, directed to " Charles Goodrich, one of the prin- cipal inhabitants, &c," requiring him to "notify and warn the free- holders and other inhabitants qualified to vote in town-meeting." Various modes were adopted in warning subsequent meetings, as the town, from time to time, gave directions. The custom of the Province - by posting up copies of the warrant at certain pre- scribed places - was generally followed ; but sometimes, when the necessity of calling meetings in sudden and important emergencies was anticipated, the constables were required to serve personal notice upon every voter. To facilitate the performance of this duty, and also the collection of taxes, the inhabitants were classed as belonging to either the East or West Part; and separate consta- bles and collectors were assigned to the two sections.
The right of voting in town-meeting belonged only to such as "had a ratable estate in the town, besides the poll, amounting to the value of twenty pounds, by the following method of estima- tion, viz .: real estate to be set at so much only as the rents or income thereof for the space of six years would amount to, were it let at a reasonable rate ; and personal estate and faculty to be estimated according to the rule of valuation prescribed in the acts from time to time made for assessing and apportioning public taxes."'
A practice prevailed, for which no good reason appears, of bestowing a plurality of offices upon a single individual when there was no lack of others, equally qualified, from whom to choose.
As in plantation, so in town meetings, highways and bridges occupied a large share of attention : but it would be impossible, without the aid of a practical engineer, to follow in detail the changes which were made; and, even with such aid, the labor would be difficult and the result voluminous. The roads reserved in the division of the township were laid out at uniform distances and at right angles; so that the changes which were required by the fre- quent streams, lakes, swamps, and hills, which the right lines encountered, were innumerable, - the discussion of them intermin- able.
The first appropriation for schools was of £22. 8s., in March, 1762, to be equally divided between the East and West Parts. Sixteen
1 Act of 1743.
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pounds only were voted in 1764; and a proposition to build two school-houses, once passed, was reconsidered and defeated. But, the next year, the town was divided into the east, west, and centre districts, and a school-house voted for each. William Brattle engaged to build the eastern; James Easton, the middle; Caleb Wadhams and David Noble, the western.
These engagements were not kept; and, in 1766, a committee was appointed to select sites for three school-houses, to be built by James Easton for £36; one to be twenty-two feet square, the others seventeen, and all "to be well shingled, doors made and hung, with floors and good chimneys, and glazed with four windows, and twelve squares in each window." The largest stood north of the eastern end of the park, in what is now the travelled street of Park Place. Deacon Easton was finally allowed £25. 8s. 7d. for building it.
In 1764, the appropriation for schooling rose to £30, to be divided among the districts, as nearly as might be, in proportion to population. In 1771, two new districts having been created, £60 were divided, -£15 each to the east, centre, and middle districts ; £7.10s. apiece to the others. In 1773, a new interest in schools was inspired by the exertions of Rev. Mr. Allen, who offered to give six pounds yearly, for five years, towards their support. The town accepted the offer with thanks, increased its appropriation for schooling to £100, and ordered new houses to be built in the north-east and south-west districts ; so that, before the Revolution, Pittsfield had five school-houses.
The selectmen - acting as the superintending school-committee - had in hand £100 from the appropriation, £6 from Mr. Allen, and £6 from the rent of the school-lot, -£112 : of which each of the larger schools received £28; each of the smaller, £14.
The districts managed their affairs independently : and, on the settlement of their annual accounts, some were usually found to have overdrawn their allowance, while some left a "balance" in the town treasury ; both, of course, to be adjusted in the coming year.
As to the character of the instruction afforded, we have no means of judging, except from the facts here stated. There was, however, a good omen in the liberal interest taken in the schools by the clergyman of the place, engrossed as he was in the troubled politics of the times.
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We have the names of only three of the teachers, - Mr. John Strong ; Mrs. Phineas Parker, who taught in the west district; and a son of Col. Partridge, probably the same who afterwards set- tled on the lands, in the north-eastern part of the town, which his descendants still cultivate.1
Young as the town was, helpless poverty and vagabond pauper- ism soon made their way to it. There were frequent votes of money for the relief of the former class; and aid was also other- wise extended to needy persons, as for instance, by permission granted to a widow for building a house in the highway. Ten pounds were appropriated, in 1764, for a workhouse. Itinerant pauperism was prevalent to a degree which betrayed the imperfec- tion of the laws designed for its prevention. But the town instructed its selectmen to enforce them by "warning out in general all persons who shall hereafter come into town ; " or, as the warrant expressed it, " all, without discrimination, not possessed of a freehold." Of course this instruction is to be understood with more limitation than can be found in the language, literally inter- preted ; but, at the best, it had a severity of meaning, upon which we shall have occasion to remark hereafter.
Chattel slavery existed under the Province laws ; and not only was property in human beings recognized by that code, but manu- mission was trammelled by the requirement of a bond from the master that the freedman should never become a public charge " by reason of sickness, lameness, or any other incapacity." 2
Many of the early citizens of Pittsfield held slaves. Col. Williams owned several. It appears from bills of sale still extant,3 that, in 1761, he purchased, for fifty pounds, " a negro girl named Pendar," whom he sold a few years later for seventy-five, - a very pretty speculation in human muscles. Pendar afterwards married Simon Bow, and joined the First Congregational Church in 1795, under the "half-way covenant." As late as the Revolution, adver-
1 HATFIELD, March 21, 1768.
Dear Brother, - I hear my son lives with you, taking care of a little school. I desire your fatherly care of him, and advice to him. He is now in the forming age for future usefulness. I know not that he is addicted to any vice ; but you are sensible how our hearts are concerned for the good of our offspring. - Col. Par- tridge to Col. Williams, March, 1768, T. C. C., p. 226.
2 Province Laws, ed. 1815, p. 745.
3 T. C. C. Lanc. col., and one in possession of Hon. H. Chickering.
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tisements of runaway slaves were inserted in "The Hartford Courant," by Pittsfield masters. Slavery in Berkshire differed in no essential particular from the same institution, when of a house- hold character, in other sections. The incident which led to the judicial recognition of its abolition by the Bill of Rights was an act of gross - although, perhaps, suddenly-provoked - cruelty, perpetrated in the kitchen of a prominent citizen of Berkshire upon the slave-widow of a Revolutionary soldier killed in the service.
Rev. Thomas Allen wrote in 1810, " Perhaps the whole of sixty roll, original settlers, did not contain a single vicious person." 1 These, however, did not comprise the whole of even the permanent population of the place : while from thirty to forty transient agricul- tural laborers were annually hired; 2 and among this class, and the tramps who were largely recruited from it, an amount of vice existed, which, at the present day, would seem alarming in a country town of no greater population than Pittsfield then had.3 Crimes of incontinence crowded the records of the Quarter Ses- sions of the Peace; and, when committed by those of the lower class, were treated as venial offences, incident, perhaps, to their condition in life. The first indictment tried in the county was for fornication, which the offender confessed, and expiated by a fine of thirteen shillings. In 1762, Sarah Pratt, a married woman, con- victed of adultery, was fined fifteen shillings and costs of court. A hundred years before, the penalty was death. Misdemeanors, with which the magistrate now rarely meddles, then often occu- pied the attention of the criminal courts. John Williams, charged in 1764 with "prophaning the name of God," was returned non est inventus. The probable penalty of his blasphemy was severe enough to scare John into ignominious flight. Another John - by surname Pell - travelled upon the Lord's day, and was mulcted
1 Hist. Sketch, p. 12.
2 " Every spring we hire in this town between thirty and forty laborers, gener- ally for the term of six months; and, as the late law obliges us to take our lists on the Ist of September, it enables us to recover the small pittance their polls are set at, when, in a month or two later, they carry away from us between £300 and £400. - Town-Committee's letter, May, 1767, Lanc. Coll.
8 What is said of the state of morals must not be understood as peculiar to Pitts- field, whose record in the Quarter Sessions was no worse, at least, than that of other towns.
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therefor in the sum of ten shillings. A party of young men, belonging to respectable families, engaged one night at a tavern in " the unlawful game of cards," escaped out of the window on the approach of the officers, but were indicted and fined for their offence "and evil example." And so in numerous instances of a similar character.
As a matter of economy to the county and of convenience to all parties, - including the offender, - a large proportion of the com- plaints for misdemeanor were summarily disposed of by a single magistrate,1 who either imposed a fine, or sentenced the prisoner to the stocks or the whipping-post. The punishment of minor of- fences by stripes or exposure in the stocks, which universally pre- vailed, was attended by many evils ; but, under the circumstances which then existed, - and especially the brutalizing system of prison discipline, - it was not without some plausibility of reason that magistrates inflicted it in preference to incarceration in the miserable jails. It is questionable, however, whether many of those worthies thought further in the matter than to follow the precedents which similar tribunals had kept unbroken from the time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.
In 1764, James Easton and Josiah Wright were allowed by the town nine shillings and sixpence for building the stocks and whipping-post in Pittsfield ; but whether these indispensable aux- iliaries in the teaching of morals and the administration of justice were set up on the meeting-house common, - as was the prevailing custom - or near some of the places where the courts were com- monly held, is not of record or tradition. Rev. Mr. Allen was no great friend to the penal system then in vogue for the repression of vicious naughtiness ; and perhaps its ugly servants found a more congenial location out of sight of his windows.
Owing, probably, to the imperfection of enclosures, the least
1 The justices of the peace in the county, who together constituted the Court of General Sessions, had jurisdiction singly in complaints for misdemeanor, and in civil cases where the value in dispute did not exceed forty shillings. Four justices were commissioned for Berkshire in 1761, - Joseph Dwight of Stockbridge, William Williams of Pittsfield, Jolın Ashley of Sheffield, and Timo. Woodbridge of Stock- bridge. Perez Marsh of Dalton was added in 176 -; John Chadwick of Tyring- ham, and Daniel Brown of Sandisfield, in 1764; Elijah Dwight of Great Barring- ton, and Israel Stoddard of Pittsfield, in 1765 ; Mark Hopkins of Great Barrington, in 1766 ; and David Ingersol of Great Barrington, in 1767.
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possible liberty was allowed to wandering cattle and hogs. That the latter " should not run at large," was one of the town regula- tions most frequently and carnestly re-enacted. To restrain the foriner, forty shillings were voted in 1761 for a pound forty feet square, " to be built and kept by Zebediah Stiles, near his house," on West Street. Other votes, from time to time, directed the build- ing of pounds in other places. But the cattle and sheep of differ- ent owners were so herded together, or so liable to become inter- mixed, that special means for their identification were provided ; the inhabitants being required annually " to bring into the clerk's office the artificial marks which they put upon their creatures, that they may be recorded." A volume of these curious " earmarks" remains in the clerk's office, of which representations are given.
Wolves abounded to such a degree that unprotected pasturage was resorted to at great risk; and, indeed, few folds were safe from their ravages.1 The town offered bounties in some years for wolf- sealps.
It was the custom among newly-settled places to encourage the introduction of mechanical arts by the grant of special privileges; and three instances of the kind are recorded of Pittsfield. In 1763, William Brattle was privileged to "set up lengthwise in the road against his house, a malt-house eighteen feet wide, and keep it there as long as he made good malt." The inhabitants were accustomed to brew a mild ale, of sufficient strength to preserve the brewage healthful and palatable for the week's time which it was intended to last ; and Willam Brattle was expected to furnish good malt for it.
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