USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 17
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50
11
162
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
than could be offered or expected at Middletown, yet Providence seemed to point at his tarrying there." The circumstances which were urged by " the judicious," and which weighed upon his own mind, in favor of this determination, were " the great numbers and unity of the people of his charge, and the danger, that, if he left them, they might become divided ; and the more so, as there was a separate church and meeting which might draw away numbers from that to which he ministered if it were left for a time desti- tute. "God, in his providence, had called him to Middletown when there seemed to be no manner of reason for refusing to go ; and the longer he stayed, the more difficult it proved for him to leave, although he confessed a great liking and affection for the people of Pittsfield." Evidently a noble-hearted and conscientious Christian minister, this Mr. Huntington; true to his calling, and a man whom any people might have been glad to receive or to retain.
The next effort to supply the place with a settled minister, of which we have knowledge, was in May, 1762, when Rev. Amos Tompson was called as a probationer. We know nothing of this gentleman, except that he met a more decided opposition, as a candidate, than any of his predecessors had encountered. In September, twelve legal voters represented to the selectmen that " uneasiness subsist- ing between Mr. Amos Tompson and some of the town, who liked neither his principles nor his performance," they had mutually agreed to submit their differences to the determination of Rev. Messrs. Raynolds, Bellamy, Brinsmade, Woodbridge, and Ashley ; " the dissatisfied promising, on their part, if the council advised the settlement of the candidate, to make no further stir in the mat- ter;" Mr. Tompson, on the other hand, consenting "to quit the town" in the event of a decision adverse to him. No proper case, however, could be made up for the council without the action of the town, to obtain which a town-meeting was demanded.
The meeting was held; but it promptly refused to accede to the proposed arrangement, and proceeded unconditionally to invite Mr. Tompson "to settle in the work of the gospel-ministry among them." But, either that he considered himself bound by his agree- ment with the dissatisfied, or that he thought the place undesira- ble with so powerful a minority arrayed against him, - we hear no more of him.1
' The signers of the petition for a town-meeting, who may be presumed among the leaders of the dissatisfied, were Joseph Wright, Joseph Wright, jan., Thos.
163
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
Mr. Daniel Hopkins was then invited to preach on probation ; and, nothing coming of this, Mr. Daniel Collins preached in like manner until the first of September, 1763, when the town voted, thirty-two to three, to invite him to settle; but an adjourned meeting, four days afterwards, was so thinly attended, - and eight appear- ing against Mr. Collins, - that it was considered useless to make him any offers ; and so the minority again triumphed.1
On the 9th of December, 1763, the town decided to invite Mr. Thomas Allen of Northampton to preach as a probationer; and his ministry in that capacity was signalized by the formation of the church, - a duty which it seems had, up to this time, been sin- gularly neglected. On the 7th of February, 1764, " a number of members belonging to different churches" met at the house of Deacon Crofoot; Rev. Samuel Hopkins of Great Barrington, Rev. Stephen West of Stockbridge, and Rev. Ebenezer Martin of Becket (then No. 4), being also present. A Confession of Faith and a Covenant were drawn up, and signed by eight male members, " who then and there united so as to form a church of Christ in this place.2
The eight names signed to the covenant and articles of faith are, Stephen Crofoot, Ephraim Stiles, Daniel Hubbard, Aaron Baker, Jacob Ensign, William Phelps, Lemuel Phelps, Elnathan Phelps. Col. Williams, Capt. Goodrich, and other prominent inhab- itants, were connected with churches in other places, but did not transfer their membership until some months later.
After the proceedings at Deacon Crofoot's house, those who had
Morgan, John Waddams, Phinehas Belding, Lemuel, William, and Elnathan Phelps, Israel Dickinson, Israel Stoddard, Israel and Elisha Jones, of whom the last four, at least, were of the Williams-Stoddard connection, while William Williams was one of the Selectmen to whom the petition was addressed.
1 Mr. Collins was afterwards, for many years, the minister of Lanesborough, dying in office, at the age of eighty-four, in 1822. He was a worthy man, but was suspected of Toryism in Revolutionary times. His election as minister of Pitts- field might have somewhat changed the complexion of the town's story.
2 The designation, " The Church of Christ in Pittsfield," was assumed in accor- dance with the custom of similar bodies where but one existed in a town. It was the only form used until 1817, when after the re-union of the parish, which had been divided in 1809, the present name of "The First Congregational Church " was adopted, partly because the old style, other churches having been formed in town, savored too much of asserting an exclusive claim to the Christian name, and partly because circumstances rendered it expedient for the organization to re-assert its adherence to the Congregational form of church-government.
164
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
taken part in them repaired to the meeting-house, where Rev. Mr. Hopkins "preached a lecture," from 2 Cor. viii. 5: "And this they did, not as we hoped; but first gave themselves to the Lord, and now to us by the will of God." The new organization was then formerly " declared to be a church of Christ."
By the incorporation of the town, the concurrence of two dis- tinct bodies became requisite in settling a minister; and now, by the organization of the church, a third was added.
It was the province of the church to select the minister; of the town, if it approved, to ratify the choice, and fix the salary ; and of the Proprietors of the sixty lots, to provide the " settlement," or outfit, of the pastor elect.
The church not disappointing the hope hinted in Mr. Hopkins's text, and doubtless more fully expressed in his lecture, proved a harmonizing and not a disturbing element in the electoral triad. Meeting at the house of Deacon Crofoot, on the 5th of March, 1764, it unanimously elected Mr. Thomas Allen to the pastorate, and immediately announced its choice to the town; which on the same day, as promptly and unanimously concurring, resolved to tender Mr. Allen a salary of £60 per annum, to be increased £5 yearly, until it should reach £80, which was then to become his stated stipend.
The Proprietors also, upon the same day, voted him £90, in three annual instalments, " to enable him to settle himself among them; and appointed Col. Williams, Capt. Goodrich, James Easton, and Josiah Wright, a committee to wait upon him with the several votes ; and, if he accepted the pastorate on the proffered terms, to agree with him upon a time and council for the ordination, and make the necessary preparations.
The committee having executed their trust, Mr. Allen responded in the following letter : -
TO THE PEOPLE OF PITTSFIELD.
Dear Brethren, - Your invitation of me to settle among you in the gospel ministry, I have received by your committee chosen for that purpose; and I apprehend I have duly considered the same. In answer to this, your invita- tion, I would say, that having sought divine direction, taken the advice of the judicious, and duly consulted my own judgment, I cannot but think it my duty to accept; and, accordingly, do now declare my cordial acceptance of the same.
I take this opportunity to testify my grateful sense of your respect, shown
165
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
in that unexpected good agreement and harmony that subsisted among you in the choice of one less than the least of all saints to preach among you the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Nothing doubting but that, at your next meeting, you will freely grant forty or fifty cords of wood annually, or as much as you shall think sufficient, and some small addition to my settlement, either by grant in work, or what- ever, out of generosity, by subscription or whatever way you please, I now stand ready to be introduced to the work whereunto I am called, as soon as a convenient opportunity shall present itself.
These from your affectionate friend,
Thomas Allen
PITTSFIELD, March 20, 1764.
The addition of forty cords of wood to the proposed salary was granted ; and the mode in which it should be procured was long one of the annual items of town-business, the duty being some- times assigned to a committee, and sometimes alternating, year by year, between the East and West Parts. Finally it was commuted with Mr. Allen for an allowance of money. The Proprietors had in previous years bestowed some labor upon girdling the trees on " the minister's home-lot;" and the requested addition to the set- tlement was made by further aid in continuing the clearing.
The ordination of Mr. Allen took place on the 18th of April, the following named clergymen being present, " besides several neighboring ministers :" Jonathan Ashley of Deerfield, Timothy Woodbridge of Hatfield, John IIooker of Northampton, Samuel Hopkins of Great Barrington, Thomas Strong of New Marlborough, and Adonijah Bidwell of No. 1 (now Tyringham). The first prayer was made by Mr. Hopkins, the second by Mr. Woodbridge; Mr. Ashley gave the charge, and Mr. Bidwell the right hand of fel- fowship. Mr. Strong offered the concluding prayer. The sermon was preached by Mr. Hooker, who had been Mr. Allen's preceptor in his divinity studies ; and it was one of the only two productions of that clergyman which were ever printed. "The whole," says Mr. Allen's record, " was carried on with decency and order." " Thirty-one members were added to the church in the first year of Mr. Allen's ministry," says Dr. Field.
.
166
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
The young clergyman who was so auspiciously introduced to the stage upon which he was to be conspicuous for nearly half a century was descended from an honorable ancestry of industrious, virtuous, pious men. Ilis earliest ancestor in this country was Samuel Allen, a native of England, probably of Essex, who died at Windsor, Conn., in 1648; whose son, Samuel, was one of the first settlers of Northampton in 1657. The third of the name was a deacon in the Northampton church when Jonathan Edwards was its pastor, and died in 1739. Next came Joseph Allen, the father of the Pittsfield minister, -a neighbor of Mr. Edwards, and his steadfast friend in the difficulties which drove that great man from Northampton. The wife of Joseph, and the mother of Thomas Allen, was Elizabeth Parsons, a descendant of Joseph Parsons, an eminently pious early settler. She died in 1800, more than eighty years old.
Thomas Allen was born at Northampton, Jan. 17, 1743, - the same year in which the abortive attempt to settle Poontoosuck was made. Through the bequest of a grand-uncle, whose name he bore, ample provision was made for his education at Harvard University, where he was graduated in 1762, with a very high reputation for scholarship, especially in the classics. He studied theology under the direction of his pastor, Rev. Mr. Hooker.
His son, Rev. William Allen, D.D., in a sketch of his life printed in Sprague's American Annals, portrays the character of the first minister of Pittsfield so vividly, and so entirely in accord with all the evidence within our reach, as well as with the report of those who knew Mr. Allen in his last years, that we transcribe it with the full conviction that it owes little to the partiality of a filial pen.1
" My father was of middle height, and slender, vigorous, and active; of venerable gray hairs in his age; of a mild, pleasant, affectionate counte- nance ; hospitable to all visitors, and always the glad welcomer of his friends. As he was very honest and frank, and had a keen sense of right and wrong, and as he lived when high questions were debated, it is not strange that those whom he felt called upon to oppose should have sometimes charged him with indiscreet zeal; but he cherished no malice, and his heart was always kind and tender. Simple and courteous in his manners, sincere in his communications, and just in his dealings, he set his parishioners an
1 We are also indebted to the same source for the ancestral record of Mr. Allen.
167
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
example of Christian morals. The atonement of the Divine Redeemer, the evangelical doetrines of grace, and their application to the practical duties of life in the various relations of society, were the favorite subjects of his public sermons and private conversations. He explained them without the formality of logic, but with a happy perspicuity of style, and recommended and enforeed them with apostolic zeal. As he wrote out most of his sermons in Weston's shorthand, he usually, in his preaching, read them from his notes ; but he threw into them, with but little action, great fervor of spirit. Sometimes, in his extemporary addresses at the Communion-table, his trem- bling voiee and kindling eye and animated countenance were quite irresist- ible.
Nothing need be added to this as a portrait. But popular tra- dition - which always preserves that in a man's character which in the popular comprehension seems odd, to the neglect of what is intrinsic and sterling - gives prominence in its memories of Mr. Allen, not to his deep religious sentiment, nor even to the purity of his patriotism and his advanced ideas of political rights, but to the mode in which his earnest and straightforward nature led him to manifest those great qualities. It remembers him as a politician devoted to his party, - as a Whig of the Revolution, whose zeal led him to take up arms in an emergency ; but it forgets the rea- soning, which, in Mr. Allen's conscience, justified a departure from ordinary clerical etiquette at the crisis in which he was placed.
History is not likely to fall into this error, as regards the secular principles upon which he acted; but as he did not obtrude the inner springs by which he was governed when occasion did not require their display, and as that which it falls within our province to record of him is chiefly of a secular character, justice to his reputation as a minister of religion demands that we should bear testimony in advance to what cannot well be connected with the thread of the story, -that his political was an outgrowth of his religious life. The memoranda - mostly intended only for his own eye- show, that in the commonest, as well as in the most con- spicuous of his secular acts, he was moved by a religious spirit.
In the private exercises of devotion he was constant; and, how- ever he may have at times thrown off the etiquette of his sacred profession, there is abundant evidence that its essential spirit was preserved and its essential duties were performed in the most trying moments of military and political excitement, as the reader will have opportunity to note in one or two remarkable instances.
1
108
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
Nor does even tradition hint a single word or deed of Mr. Allen inconsistent with the purest Christian morals. His peculiarity - which was the joint result of his temperament and of the epoch in which he lived - was, that he held in small respect any religious faith which did not manifest itself in outward acts, and especially in those done for the common good, and that he esteemed resist- ance to every form of oppression, and devotion to the political principles best adapted to the preservation of equal rights, to be among the most sacred duties. In the Revolution, moreover, while his ardent temperament, without any other inspiration, would have made him as fervid a patriot as his kinsmen of Ticon- deroga fame, he had the additional incitement, that, with the major- ity of New-England clergymen, he believed that the cause of pure and unfettered religious worship was bound up, as it really was, in that of the colonies, and that that cause was therefore holy.
This view of Mr. Allen's character, which accords strictly with the evidence, is also necessary in order to its consistency, and to explain facts which could not be made clear by any theory of eccentricity, - a solution of biographical problems which is oftener due to the laziness of the investigator than to any idiosyncrasy of his subject.
H
VIEW OF TIIE PARSONAGE.
In 1768, the three annual instalments of Mr. Allen's outfit having come due, and been paid, and his house having probably been built, he married Elizabeth, daughter of Jonathan Lee of Salisbury, Conn., a descendant of William Bradford, the Pilgrim Governor of Plymouth Colony, and one of the most illus- trious of the leaders who came over in the May Flower. Mr. Allen brought his bride home to Pittsfield, through the narrow wood-roads, mounted on a pillion behind him.
CHAPTER IX. ANTE-REVOLUTIONARY POLITICS.
[1761-JUNE, 1774.]
Public Sentiment. - Its Leaders in Pittsfield. - Israel Stoddard. - Woodbridge Little. - William Williams. - Rev. Thomas Allen. - Elder Valentine Rathbun. -James Easton. - William Francis. - Josiah Wright. - Oliver Root. - Da- vid Noble. - John Strong. - Charles Goodrich. - Israel Dickinson. - Dr. Timothy Childs. - John Brown. - Eli Root. - Daniel Hubbard. - Census of 1772. - Censorship of the Town Records. - Revolutionary Measures. - In- structions to Representatives. - Action regarding the Boston Tea-party.
W HILE home-affairs were taking shape under the town- organization of Pittsfield, the storm of revolution was gathering over the Province. Writs of Assistance, the Stamp Act, the Townsend Revenue Acts, the British garrison in Boston with its consequences, followed each other in evil procession, and were met by resistance in the courts of law, by legislative protest in the General Court, by the spirited action of Boston and other towns, and by the more or less tumultuous outbreaks of the metropolis. In the contests and divisions which arose among the people concerning the wisdom and the rightfulness of these several modes of resistance to the royal and parliamentary will, Berkshire, although isolated upon the extreme verge of the Province, intense- ly sympathized. Few, perhaps none, of her citizens wished the parliamentary schemes to be persisted in; but many hoped for. redress from a returning sense of justice in Great Britian, and believed that a portion, at least, of the measures adopted at Bos- ton hindered that result. It was hardly to be expected that they could comprehend how deeply considered was the ministerial policy, and how perfectly it coincided with the popular feeling of the kingdom. Even the most advanced Whigs owed their posi- tion to long contemplation of the radical evils which the substitu-
169
170
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
tion of the Provincial for the Colonial charter had introduced into the Constitution of Massachusetts; from which they regarded the new encroachments of the home-government to be a natural and inevitable outgrowth. While they found it expedient to direct popular opposition, for the time, exclusively against im- mediate and palpable wrongs, they -if they did not from the first look forward to absolute independence - anticipated no per- manent security for their political rights from any measure short of a substantial restoration of the charter of 1628. And the tenacity with which the Revolutionary leaders in Berkshire -more firmly than those in other sections of the Province - clung to this idea afterwards led to consequences of great importance to the county.
On the other hand, the opinions of many were warped by the possession or the hope of the offices which the Provincial charter placed mostly at the disposal of the royal governor. The sympa- thy of others was conciliated to the party of the Government by sentiments a little more generous : by the ties of long and friendly association, gratitude for past favors, family tradition, lessons of loyalty and reverence for the king's representative learned in childhood. The sweet influences which Province House so well knew how to throw out had a peculiar charm for the secluded magnates of Western Massachusetts, upon whom they had long been sedulously brought to bear, and not unfrequently with success.
But here, as elsewhere, while principle, temperament, or interest arrayed some classes at once and decidedly upon one side or the other of the rising strife, the great body of the people were slow in uniting upon the measures rightful and proper to be adopted, in regard to parliamentary acts, by which, as few ventured to deny, their liberties were invaded. In the minds of individuals, the issues of the day hung balanced; and the inelination of the scale was often determined by a very slight preponderance. Every fact, every principle, all precedents of history at all pertinent to the dis- cussion, were brought into it by the pamphleteers, the newspaper writers, the orators, and the preachers, upon one side or the other, and gravely and anxiously scanned, as well by those who finally adhered to the king, as by those who decided for the colonies. And, after all, the sentiments of men ranged through all shades of feeling, from the loyalty of the most obstinate Tory, to the fervor of the Revolutionist, who, from the beginning, foresaw and rejoiced in the end.
171
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
The letters which passed between confidential friends showed how undetermined some of the most upright men long remained, how well they discerned the difficulties of the situation, and how thoroughly they appreciated the responsibilities which pressed upon themselves. This responsibility lay heavily upon the leaders of public sentiment in towns, - a class of men even more power- ful then than now : and few took their stand without long and severe thought, a profound consideration of consequences, and pro- tracted consultation with those, in the phrase of that day, so signif- icantly styled "the judicious; " not many without trustful and earnest prayer.
In reading their letters, we, of course, discover the writers to have been influenced by their several natural temperaments, habits of thought, associations in life, and, whether consciously or not, biassed by private interests; but, in a vast majority of instances, nobler considerations dominated.
These municipal magnates were, almost without exception, men of some property, which must needs be endangered in such a conflict as resistance to the king's authority was sure to provoke. Many were rising and ambitious men, and well aware, that, as they chose their sides now, their aspirations would be brought to bloom or blight. Some, as officers under the royal commission in the old wars, had been trained to habits of military subordination and submission to royal authority which it was hard to throw off, and none the less so when it happened that there was half-pay on the British peace-establishment to be forfeited in so doing. Some, in subscribing the oaths prescribed to be taken by those appointed to civil and military office, had assumed obligations whose repudiation they found it difficult to reconcile with their consciences.1
1 The oath included the following clause : "And I do swear that I will bear faith and true allegiance to his Majesty King George, and him will defend to the utmost of my power against all traitorous conspiracies and attempts whatsoever which shall be made against his Person, Crown, or Dignity. And I will do my ut- most endeavor to disclose and make known to his Majesty and his successors all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which I shall know to be against him or any of them. . . . And all these things I do plainly and sincerely acknowledge and swear according to the express words by me spoken, and according to the plain common sense and understanding of the same words, without any equivocation, mental evasion, or secret reservation whatever." The latter clause was framed with special reference to the Jesuitical interpretation of the oath by the Jacobites ; but it bore hard upon the position of the Massachusetts office-holders, as many of them thought. .
172
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
There is matter for wonder in the bold, far-seeing wisdom and unselfish patriotism which finally prevailed with so large a majority of those who were required to stake large personal in- terests upon the doubtful issue : there is none that many, even of those afterwards among the truest and most uncompromising, were not at once ready to unite with their more ardent and im- pulsive compatriots, or with those whom close observation had enabled early to detect the fatal canker in the Provincial Con- stitution.
The event proved that wisdom accorded with the impetuosity of youth and the ardor of radicalism; but even then Massachusetts councils needed a retarding power, lest, by too rapid strides, she might dangerously disconnect herself from colonies whose patriotism, although not less sincere, had not been spurred by the same sharp contact with tyranny, and whose loyal traditions were not so obliterated from the popular heart.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.