USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 15
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Notwithstanding Deacon Crofoot's ill success in obtaining encouragement from the Proprietors, we infer from a letter of Col. Partridge that, before the Indian disturbances, he built some sort
1 It is related of Mrs. Seth Janes, whom some of the oldest citizens of Pitts- field remember as a kind-hearted and genial old lady, whose fine, erect form, clad in a satin pelisse, made an impression upon their youthful imaginations, as her amiable and gentle manners did upon their hearts, -it is related of this ladylike old person that once, when a young wife, alone in her home at the West Part, she heard the sheep rushing wildly against her cabin-door, and, looking out in alarm, saw a huge, gaunt, and hungry wolf in eager pursuit; whereupon she quietly took down her husband's loaded gun, and shot the intruder dead. - Hist. Janes Family.
The Pittsfield ladies at that time were, many of them, familiar with the use of firearms. Mrs. Judith Fairfield was reputed an excellent shot.
SHEEP MARKS.
Eli Root.
J. Ensign.
Oliver Root.
Daniel Hubbard.
Josiah Wright.
.James Easton.
Eph. Little.
.John Dickinson.
Sol. Allen.
N. Robbins.
1 1
Ezek. Root.
Wm. Francis.
Charles Goodrich.
Jno. Kingsley.
E. Tracy.
D. Ashley.
A
Aaron Blinn.
Joshna Robbins.
James Hubbard.
James Noble.
Oswald Williams.
Benj. Kcilar.
J. Keilar.
J. Goodrich.
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
of a grist-mill, upon a dam which he erected near the site of the present Elm-street bridge. But it was of insufficient capacity ; and the first plantation and town meetings after the war were agitated with propositions "to see whether Deacon Crofoot will come into such measures that the Proprietors may be well accomo- dated with good grinding and bolting; and if not, then to let the dam to those that will." Finally, after a world of tribulation, the Deacon, under the award of arbitrators, obtained a lease of the dam for fifteen years. But his mills were never popular ; and after his death, which occurred before the expiration of his lease, his heirs were relieved from their obligation to keep the mills in repair. In 1778, the mill-privilege and neighboring land passed into the hands of Ebenezer White, under a lease for 999 years. In 1767, Jacob Ensign, having previously agreed with Deacon Crofoot, obtained from the town a grant of the west end of the mill-dam for fifteen years; conditioned that "he should, within one year, begin and exercise the feat of a clothier, and attend to said service, and do the business of a clothier at such place, during said term ;" the town reserving the right to remove the dam farther down the stream, if it saw fit, at the expiration of Crofoot's lease : in which case Ensign's rights to be transferred to the new location.
In 1768, Valentine Rathbun, from Stonington, Conn., built simi- lar works on the outlet of the pond which then lay between Rich- mond Lake and Barkersville. Fulling-mills had for many years a place in the business of Pittsfield not unlike that which the woollen manufactures, of which they were the germ, now occupy ; although in the last quarter of the eighteenth century they were over-shad- owed by the production of iron, and still earlier by the manufacture of lumber. In answer to the pressing demands of the settlement, saw-mills - often associated with grist-mills - began, soon after the peace, to spring up in all quarters. In 1762, Joseph Keeler pur- chased two hundred and forty acres of Col. Williams's great pine tract, on the south shore of Poontoosuck Lake, and extending forty rods down the outlet, upon which he built a saw and grist mill. About the same time a saw-mill was built at Coltsville. About 1767, saw and grist mills were erected near the present site of the Pomeroy Lower Factories, by Ezra Strong and others. A saw- mill was early built where the Pontoosuc Factory stands ; and, pre- vious to 1776, another at Wahconah, in connection with a fulling- mill owned by Deacon Matthew Barber.
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
While the new town was taking form, as we have seen it, under its municipal organization, and introducing the necessities and con- veniences of village-life, its inhabitants were exchanging the log- huts of former days for comfortable and comely dwellings.
When the first partition of the township was annulled, Charles Goodrich and Col. Williams abandoned their intention of creating a business-centre near Unkamet Street, and transferred their interests to Wendell Square, with regard to which they entered upon a similar design in connection with Elisha Jones, Nathaniel Fairfield, and Eli Root. It was arranged that Fairfield, Root, Goodrich, and Jones should erect handsome frame-houses on the four corners of their respective settling-lots, which met at the Square; while Williams was to build a little farther to the east, on Honasada Street.
But an unlooked-for obstacle presented itself in the nature of the land, whose soil was so completely underlaid with ledges of solid rock, that no wells could be sunk which would afford any but surface-water. In this dilemma, Charles Goodrich displayed his wonted energy and determination by building the first water- works of Pittsfield, - an aqueduct some two miles long, extending from his farm to the hills at the east. It was constructed of huge logs divided into quarters, bored, bevelled at the ends, and bound together at the connecting joints with heavy iron bands. The enterprise failed, according to one account, in consequence of a fault in construction, which caused the logs to erack. Another tradition has it that an unpleasant person, through whose lands the pipes passed, soothed his temper and proclaimed his territorial lordship by tearing them up.
The lack of water thus proving irremediable, the owners of the Four Corners were compelled, in building their new houses, to withdraw from the companionable neighborhood for which they had anticipated so much distinction; but it was long before the ambitious project was altogether abandoned, although the build- ing of the meeting-house, the parsonage, and mills soon began to attract the business centre, so far as the business of the town was then capable of centralization, towards its present position.
Col. Williams built on Honasada Street, about a mile east of Wendell, the eurious mansion known for many years throughout Western Massachusetts as "The Long House," - a rather showy structure for those days, being eighty feet in length, and two
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
stories high, with a gambrel roof. A broad hall ran through the centre from front to rear; on one side of which was "The Long Room," in which the owner held his Justice's, and sometimes his Probate Courts, and where, if tradition is correct, the county courts also, at one time, sat. On the other side of the hall, were " two smaller rooms, besides a buttery and bedroom."
The whole house was adorned with a profusion of carving, panelling, and other ornamental work; and the grounds were not neglected. The decorations were especially elaborate in the hall and The Long Room, which were entered from without by twin doors of twenty-six panels each, through which a negro slave ushered the visitor into one apartment or the other, as his visit was one of courtesy or business. The whole establishment betokened the owner's proverbial magnificence of spirit, and accorded with his portly person, and that dignity of demeanor which distinguished him at home; however certain peculiarities may have tempted his friends on the Connecticut to style him irreverently, in familiar letters, " Colonel Billy."
Col. Williams's schedule of the cost of his house is preserved in the Collection of Hon. Thomas Colt, p. 271, and is here given: -
COST OF MY HOUSE.
Glass, £15; Nails, 19; Brads, 2; Paint, 9,12; Oyl, 6; Locks, Hinges, etc., 11 .- £62,12.
Boards, £40,10; Clapboards, 10,16; Shingles, 10,4 ; Laths, 3; Slitwork, 18; Carpenters' bill, 26,16,6 ; Carpenters' board, 9; Joyners' bill, 64,4 ; Joyners' board, 21,12 .- £204,2,6.
Cellar digging, £6,6; Masons' bill, 23; Masons' board, 4,10; "Masons' attendance, 31,16; Masons' attendants' board, 9; Stone carryers' bill, 34 ; Stone carryers' board, 2,2 .- £110,14.
Paper, £6; Lime, 18,15; Clay, 1,4; Loom, 1,10; Sand, 0,10; Lead, 2,10 ; Hair, 1,2 .- £31,9.
House, £408,17,6 ; West lot, 430; East lot, 305; Laid out in labor, 140. Total, £1373,17,6.
The reader may form some idea of the vegetables to be found in a Pittsfield gentleman's garden of that period, by the following list of seeds minuted by Col. Williams for purchase in Boston : -
" Cabbages and Cauliflowers, Yorkshire, Early Dutch, Savoy, and Com- mon ; Lettuce, Goss and Cabbage; Carrots, Orange, Yellow and Purple ; Turnips, English and French; Onions; Dedham Squash ; Cucumber ;
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
Squashpepper ; Peas, Dwarf, Hotspur, Marrowfat, and round gopher ; Radish ; Double parsley ; Stow and pole beans; Sage; Balm; Fennil ; Dill ; July flower (Gilliflower) ; Pink ; Stertion (Nasturtium) ; Crounations (Carnations) ; Hyssop; Thyme; Sweet Marjoram; Summer - Savory ; Parsnip and Asparagus."
A goodly catalogue.
We are not so precisely informed as to the building-up of other parts of the town; but houses of some pretension were soon scattered over the various sections. Israel Dickinson built upon the grounds now attached to the summer residence of Hon. B. R. Curtis ; Israel Stoddard, the youngest son of Col. John, selected the eminence about a mile north of that estate. James D. Colt bought a thousand acres in the south-west corner of the township, and made his residence there. Rev. Mr. Allen's house was built in 1764, on the site on East Street now occupied by the residence of his grandson and namesake. Woodbridge Little, the first lawyer to settle in the town, built the cottage, which still stands, north of the crossing of the Western Railroad by Beaver Street.
It is impossible to give with accuracy the years in which individuals became residents of the town, except in a few instan- ces ; but the appearance of names upon the record makes us sure of dates previous to which those who bore them became citizens, and, to some extent, indicates their prominence in town affairs. Most of the leading settlers have already been mentioned in con- nection with events in which they took part; but we eite a few other entries from the town and provincial archives.
The persons who affixed the following signatures to a petition to the General Court, in 1766, assumed to represent the forty pur- chasers from Livingston; but the interest of some of them had been acquired by transfers of various kinds : William Wright, John Remington, Charles Goodrich, Josiah Wright, Charles Miller, John Waddams, Elizur Deming, David Ashley, William Francis, Oliver Ashley, Joshua Robbins, James Lord, Erastus Sackett, David Bush, Daniel Hubbard, Amos Root, Eli Root, Dan Cadwell, Hezekiah Jones, Gideon Gunn, William Brattle, Abner Dewey, Nathaniel Fairfield, Zebediah Stiles.
The following names, not previously mentioned in any other connection, appear on the first list of jurymen, reported Aug. 18, 1761: Lemuel Phelps, Wm. Phelps, David Noble, Jesse Sackett, Thomas Morgan. John Morse was a fence-viewer in 1762.
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
Israel Stoddard, Israel Diekinson, Phinehas Belding, Joseph Wright, and Joseph Wright, jun., signed a petition in 1762. Caleb Wadhams was deer-reeve in 1763; James Easton, school-com- mitteeman in 1764.1
The influx of new citizens brought with it a good deal of wealth, as well as of business capacity and enterprise, which soon, in a · measure, relieved the depression bequeathed from less happy days. A growing sense of the natural advantages of the place contributed, also, not a little to that local pride, and confidence in the future of their home, which has always characterized the most thoughtful and intelligent people of Pittsfield. A notable and amusingly exaggerated expression of this sentiment and faith appears in a letter from Col. Williams to his brothers-in-law,2 in which he endeavors to persuade them to remove from Deerfield to Pitts- field. We quote a portion : -
PITTSFIELD, March 28, 1767.
DEAR BRETHREN, -
These wait on you by Mrs. Williams, with my hearty sympathy on the poor state of health I understand you at present enjoy. Languor, sickness, and excruciating pain were my portion, while I chose, or rather was obliged, to tabernacle in the narrows between the west and east mountains of Deerfield.
Since my removal to this place, I challenge any man in the govern- ment, that has not had half the fatigue, to compare with me for health, or freedom from pain. All my doctor's bill has been a gallipot or two of unguent for the itch. And never have I but two half-days been absent from public worship for fourteen years; and then 'twas not because I wasn't well. But what may in a more general way convince you of the temperature and goodness of our air may be demonstrated by the records of the probate- office, the avails of which, in near about six years, has not amounted to ten pounds to the judge. And another indisputable proof of the goodness of the country is the prolific behavior of the female sex among us. Barren women beget (if not bring forth) sons. Women that have left off for 5, 6, 7, and 9 years, begin anew, and now and then bring one, but as many two, at a birth, after residing a suitable time among us. And, to mention but one thing (though I might many more), no man or woman of but common understand- ing, that ever came and got settled among us, wished themselves baek.
1 Rev. Dr. Field made inquiry into the dates of the settlements of the early families at a time when the means of information were more abundant than they now are. See Appendix.
2 H. C. C.
10
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
The air suited them, they felt frisk and alert, or a something endeared their situation to them : this with regard to the women. The men perceived soon the difference of the soil ; and, put what you would upon it, it would yield be- yond what they were acquainted with. This prompted them to labor ; and when they came in, either by day or night, their wives would give them a kind, hearty welcome, so that they chose to stay where they were, - and they chose well. If your patience would suffer me, I would fill this paper with instances of growth in estates in a few years. And, as you go along, take this with you; viz., that the oldest town in the county is but a few years above thirty.
And now to come to instances, and only of such persons as you have known: Capt. Brewer came to Tyrringham with £2,200 Old Ten. He lived but seventeen years there, and had, when he died, upwards of £19,000 upon interest ; and his lands, appraised at little more than one-half their value, swelled his estate to £50,000. His son-in-law came into the same town years after, and was not worth £5; is now judged to be worth as much as his father was: I mean Capt. Chadwick. Col. Ashley came to Sheffield with less money than your minister carried to Deerfield : he is now worth more than any man in your county. And, since I have mentioned a minister, I will mention another ; viz., Mr. Hubbard of Sheffield.1 He came as poor as church mouse, to a people poorer than himself: he died the other day ; has left sufficient to support his widow, and settle his five sons well. Come to Stockbridge, and see the advance that Col. Williams, Mr. Jo Woodbridge, and Deacon Brown have made in their estates. Come to this town and see Goodrich, Brattle, Bush, IIubbard, Wright, Crowfoot, and Ensign, who, strictly speaking, were in debt when they came. . . . But I suppose I have tired you. I have confined myself to such as I supposed you knew. Come and see, and then I will say and convince into the bargain.
But delays are dangerous : we have had five wholesome families come in this winter ; and last week Coult of Hadley bought, and is coming directly. Unele Benjamin Dickinson told me, not a month ago, that it was his fixed determination to be here with his brood before the year was out if he liked the land. And I can assure you our land grows in repute faster than any around us.
Col. Williams, in committee with James Easton and Wood- bridge Little, pleading for a remission of the Province tax, managed to tone down a good deal the prosperity so glowingly depicted. The inhabitants of Pittsfield were compelled, owing to their great distance from Massachusetts markets, to carry to
1 Rev. Jonathan Hubbard of Sheffield, the first minister of Berkshire County, and grandfather of Hon. Henry Hubbard, for many years a prominent citizen of Pittsfield.
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smaller,1 which were already glutted, what little surplus produce they raised : "and moreover," say the committee, "although our lands in the valuation are esteemed to be of considerable value, yet the labor we are compelled to bestow upon them in cutting off the old [girdled] trees blown down, picking up the fallen limbs, burning, etc., amounts to a large tax on our best farms ;" and as to uncleared lands, " the expense is prodigious which we must be at before they can be rendered in any degree profitable, by reason that there is such a growth of such sort of timber upon them, that, unless we cut it all off, - which costs £4 per acre, - we can't improve them, at the shortest, under three years." 2 Rather a graphic delineation this of the difficulties in early Pitts- field farming.
In the lights and shades of these two representations, colored to suit opposite purposes, the reader will form for himself a concep- tion of the town in the first decade after its incorporation, as a community struggling under many embarrassments and against many impediments, but with a large preponderance of favoring circumstances, and towards an assured prosperity.
A more intimate acquaintance with its people and their affairs would reveal to him a greater inequality of pecuniary condition than was usual in newly-settled places, and that the wealthiest men were exempt from the heaviest burdens of taxation.
The duties assumed by the proprietors of the sixty settling- lots, as part of the consideration in their purchase, would have been cheerfully performed, had the state of the country immediately permitted it. But as year after year rolled on, and the proprietors were compelled to hold their lands, so far as they could hold them at all, by military occupation, foregoing any profitable enjoyment of them, and as the expenditure of £170 which they had made previous to 1762 upon the highways had much increased the value of the commons, they conceived that " the great service they had been to the gentlemen proprietors - not to mention any benefit they may have been to the Province" - entitled them, in equity, to some mitigation in the severity of their contract; although its rigid enforcement had been carefully provided for in the act incor- porating the town. And this the more, since Livingston's grant,
1 Hartford, Kinderhook, and Albany.
2 Committee's Letter, May, 1767.
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HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
in his deed to the agents of The Forty Pioneers, of " the right to dig stone and cut timber on any land in the township not within fence," had been repudiated.
For these reasons, the sixty settling-proprietors, through a committee,1 sought relief from some of the consequences of their ill-considered bargain, at the hands of the General Court ; applying for an act to subject the lands not alienated by Cols. Wendell and Stoddard, and not included in the hundred-acre lots, to a tax - to be limited in duration and amount by the Court-for the support of preaching, and making highways.
To this application, Oliver Partridge and Moses Graves objected that it was an attempt to re-impose upon the original proprietors duties which the petitioners had, for a valuable consideration, covenanted to perform; and, moreover, that the tax asked for was " surprisingly partial," as the lands upon which it was proposed to assess it did not include several thousand acres, some of them cultivated, which had been " alienated " by the original proprietors to Charles Goodrich and others, - the petition being so framed as not to cover the commons lands of those who were also proprietors of settling-lots.
These objections proved fatal to the petition; but the contro- versy between the tax-paying and the exempt proprietors long continued, and was imbittered in 1765 by the heirs of Col. Stod- dard, who brought an action of ejectment against one of the settlers, on the ground of non-compliance with the tenure by which he held his home-lot. This was intended as a test-case by which to try the titles of the whole sixty : and they again appealed to the General Court, and again recited their story and its hard- ships; declaring, in conclusion, that the man against whom the action was brought had "done more than ten times the duty which was required by the General Court of any one lot ; " and begging that the petitioners, at their own expense, might have a committee of the Court "to view their settlements and improve- ments," and, "if these were found not to answer the expectations of the Honorable Court, then that they would be good enough to let them know it, - otherwise, to confirm them in the quiet and peaceable enjoyment of their possessions."
1 Consisting of Stephen Crofoot, David Hubbard, Jesse Sackett, David Bush, and Josiah Wright.
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD. · 149
The title which the settlers had so dearly earned was finally confirmed in them; whether by the General Court in compliance with their reasonable request, by a judicial decision, or by agree- ment of the parties, it is impossible to say. By whatever methods this and other specific controversies between the settling-proprie- tors and the representatives of Stoddard and Livingston were terminated, the feuds which they engendered did not end with them, but had their influence afterwards in the division of parties at the Revolution, when the great majority of the settlers proved ardent Whigs, - their adversaries still more unanimously arraying themselves with the Tories. And it is to be noted that the heirs of Col. Wendell, who are not recorded ever to have pressed their legal and perhaps just rights against the settlers, afterwards sym- pathized with them in the ardor of their patriotism, and maintained a place in the good-will of the town, which is retained by their descendants.
CHAPTER VIII. FIRST MEETING-HOUSE AND MINISTER.
[1760-1768.]
Massachusetts Laws for the Support of Public Worship. - Their inharmonious Operation in Pittsfield. - Differences between Resident and Non-resident Pro- prietors. - The Meeting-house raised. - Difficulties in finishing it. - First Sale of Pews. - Dignifying the Seats. - Description of the Meeting-house. - Burial-Ground. - First Attempts to settle a Minister. - Ebenezer Garnsey. - Enoch Huntington. - Amos Tomson, Daniel Collins, Thomas Allen, called and settled. - Church formed. - Sketch of Rev. Mr. Allen.
T THE obligations imposed by Massachusetts upon those who settled her townships, to provide out of the lands which they received a decent and honorable establishment of public worship, were prompted, not so much by a desire to compel the reluctant and therefore perfunctory performance of sacred duties, as to repel from her Israel those to whom such duties were unwelcome. It was a policy which, well-suited to the times of its founders, has left a rich legacy of happy results to our own. The political prin- ciples and religious dogmas transplanted from the church, which was the nursery of two commonwealths, grew together, insepar- able until after the red harvest of the Revolution; and, till then at least, whatever harmed the one was hurtful to the other.
Whatever evils attended the compulsory support of religious worship, perpetuated under circumstances to which it was not applicable, it worked little but good to those upon whom its requirements rested while it was essential to the future of Massa- chusetts, that her Puritanism should be preserved incontaminate. Not to dwell upon its direct and palpable influence in preventing that deterioration of morals and manners incident to all frontier life, the attention to religious institutions, which Massachusetts
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plantations were forbidden to postpone, was of unbounded benefit in securing rapidity and unity of municipal organization, in elevat- ing the tone of local sentiment, and by investing the new abode, however rude its cabins, with the sanctity of home.
Nor was the inharmonious action in building the Pittsfield meeting-house the fruit of these laws. The mischief there arose, not from the obligations imposed upon the township by the General Court, but because, after the assumption of those obligations by the settling-proprietors solely, so long an interval elapsed before they could be fulfilled, that events transpired, which, in the opinion of the covenanting party, destroyed the equity of the contract. And to this view the non-resident proprietors, at least partially, assented, as will appear by the following paper : 1 -
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