USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 18
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But, besides the conservative men who were at heart and essentially Whigs, - who soon ripened into brave and decided Whigs, - there was a considerable party whom no provocation on the part of the British government could repel from their allegiance ; and nowhere did the patriotic spirit encounter, in this class, a more bitter, powerful, and subtle enemy than in Pittsfield. The influence of age, wealth, and official position was nearly united here against all the measures, except perhaps very humble remonstrance, with which the usurpations of the mother country were met.
The Williams and Stoddard families, with their numerous con- nections by blood and marriage, were, with few exceptions, at- tached to the Tory interest. Israel Stoddard, who had inherited from his father, the early proprietor, a large property in the town, was a young man, having been born in 1741; but he was major in the Berkshire regiment of militia, was appointed in 1765 one of the justices of the Quarter Sessions, and was prominent in town-affairs. He was a graduate of Yale in the class of 1758, and appears to have possessed a cultivated mind.1
1 The consideration in which Major Stoddard was held is curiously illustrated by the following article in the warrant for a town-meeting in December, 1768 : " To choose a committee to wait upon Israel Stoddard, Esq., to know of him the foundation of his resentment, and by what means he can be accommodated to his satisfaction." The town, however, resolved that it had no right to act upon the
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Moses Graves and Elisha Jones were both large landholders in the township, and both allied to the Williams and Stoddard blood But the ablest and shrewdest of the Tories was Woodbridge Little, the first lawyer who settled in the town. This gentleman was a native of Colchester, Conn., where he was born in 1741. He was graduated at Yale in 1760; studied theology with Rev. Dr. Bellamy; was licensed to preach, and officiated for two years as " a probationer " at Lanesborough.1 He then abandoned divinity for the study of the law ; and, having been admitted to the bar, established himself, in 1770, in practice at Pittsfield, where he had become a resident at least as early as 1766, in which year he was elected hog-reeve, in accordance with the waggish welcome which towns used to give young gentlemen of dignified pursuits as well as young bridegrooms. Many a worse prank was played upon the worthy lawyer in the license of war-times.
Mr. Little was a man of varied learning, and profoundly versed " in the art of putting things." Most of the political papers of his party were drawn by him ; and nothing could have been fairer than their case as he stated it. His character also was such as to give weight to his argument. Indeed, although he was far from ingenuous and although his position, until 1777, was reprehensible, there is no reason to doubt that his opinions were honestly held, and that what he did was justified by his own conscience. His associations gave rise to grave suspicions, which received con- firmation in the public mind, from acts which may have been prompted merely by natural timidity, instead of a consciousness of guilt; and it is not probable that he ever gave direct aid and comfort to the enemy after the actual breaking out of hostilities. He was regarded by the patriots of Pittsfield as their most dan- gerous opponent, not because he was the most malignant, but as the ablest and most subtle of the Tory leaders.
article. Among the customs copied from the English aristocracy, by their callow Provincial imitators, was the practice of arranging names in college catalognes, not, as now, alphabetically, but according to the social rank of the students. Thus John Adams, upon entering Harvard, found himself the twelfth man of his class in degree ; which his son thought due to the standing of his mother's family, the dignity of the house on the paternal side not entitling liim to that position .. In Yale, this practice continued until 1768; and, by its seale, Israel Stoddard ranked first, Israel Diekinson twenty-fifth, in a class of forty-three. Woodbridge Little stood tenth in a class of thirty-three.
1 Dr. Durfee's Hist. Will. Coll.
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The position of Col. Williams was peculiar. He was elected rep- resentative to the General Court in the years 1762, '64, '69, and '70,1 and preserved the friendly relations with the royal governors which he had enjoyed previous to the incorporation of the town. In 1771, Gov. Hutchinson counted him - with Israel Williams, John Worthington, and Timothy Woodbridge - among the eight gen- tlemen whom the recent elections had left in the House, who, in common times, would have had great weight on the side of the Government, but who were paralyzed by the hopelessness of the minority in which they found themselves. Williams also held, by appointment of the governor, the offices of chief-justice of the Common Pleas and judge of probate for Berkshire, - places which, given to the father of James Otis for the poorer county of Barnstable, Hutchinson thought ought to have secured both father and son for the Government party. Williams, like the elder Otis, had, moreover, been permitted "to name many of his friends for other offices ; " and enjoyed, in addition, - what to him was a great enjoyment, - the dignity of colonel in the Berkshire regiment of militia; and, still to accumulate the ties which bound him to the royalist party, he was a half-pay officer on the retired list of the British army.
By the charter of William - as it was then in force - all civil and military officers of the province were appointed by the gov- ernor, and confirmed by the council : but the former had no power of removal in civil cases ; and opportunities to make new appoint- ments could only occur by the death or resignation of incumbents, or upon the demise of the king, which vacated all commissions. Col. Williams, therefore, if he had wished to support the popular cause, had little to fear from the resentment of the appointing power, or from any other quarter, so long as he refrained from treasons which would have forfeited his half-pay. The obligations of gratitude and old association were, however, strong, and the family influences which surrounded him were mostly Tory : al- though his consin, Major Hawley of Northampton, was one of the ablest of the Whig leaders; and his favorite brother-in-law, Col. Partridge, finally arrayed himself upon the same side. But Hawley was always a timid councillor, and Partridge was alarmed
1 By some means, the exclusion of Pittsfield from representation until 1763 appears to have been done away.
4
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and disgusted by what he deemed the unjustifiable excesses at Boston.
All through the ante-Revolutionary troubles we are called upon to remark the extreme sensitiveness of "the River-Gods of the Connecticut," and their no less magnificent kindred among the Berkshire Hills, to the slightest infractions of law, order, and public decorum, on the part of the Sons of Liberty, - a fastidiousness which, creditable enough within certain limits, when carried to extremes made some very worthy men Tories, and rendered others very lukewarm Whigs. They seem to have belonged to the class of moralists who consider political rascality the exclusive privilege of eminent respectability. Col. Partridge gave expression to this feeling with no exceptional force in the following extract from a letter, dated " Hatfield, March 21, 1768," referring to the refusal of the House of Representatives to notice a severe attack by Dr. Joseph Warren upon Gov. Bernard, which was published in "The Boston Gazette " on the 29th of the preceding month.
" The Green-villain spirit against America rather increases ; 1 and the late wretched doings at Boston, about the beginning of this month, will increase that spirit in England. I mean the scurrilous libel against ye Governor, not much, if any, short of a blasphemy, and the disregard with which the House treated it. I am settled in my opinion, that the late conduct of ye House will bring on a demolition of our charter, unless we are treated by King and Parliament as a people insane, and so not to be punished until we come to our wits." 2
Few men in the Province had stronger or more numerous bonds of attachment to the Government party than Col. Williams; and surely such inspiration from his Whig friends as that to be derived from the above quotation was not likely to weaken them.
But, however pleasant his relations had been with the royal authorities of Massachusetts, his experience of the English com- manders in the army had been galling in the extreme; and the remembrance must have been bitter. His desire, also, to stand well with the people was strong; and it is evident that he had a secret understanding with the local Whig leaders. The tradition is, that when partisan jealousy ran high, as the outbreak of hostil-
Col. Partridge had just received some " prints " from Boston, with news from Eng- land of the change in the ministry and the state of public feeling there.
2 T. C. C., p. 226.
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ities approached, or perhaps immediately after they had actually occurred, he was summoned before the Committee of Inspection, in order to explain his position, and that he succeeded in convincing that rather exacting conclave of his loyalty to the popular cause ; and moreover, that, being too old for military service, it was for the public interest that he should avoid any overt act that would for- feit the half-pay which he received in gold, and spent among his neighbors. It soon, however, became impossible to serve two masters, and we find him filling positions inconsistent with alle- giance to the King.
That he was early reluctant to come in conflict with the popular feeling was shown in the convenient illness which prevented him . from holding a Probate Court while the Stamp Act was in force.1
Still, in that momentous period, when the patriots who early comprehended the conspiracy of the royal closet against the liber- ties of the colonics were painfully moulding a public sentiment which should have boldness, determination, strength, and unity sufficient to meet and thwart that conspiracy, -in the doubtful years of that great moral struggle which preceded the appeal to arms, - William Williams, holding the chief offices of the county, and possessed of far more personal consideration than any other man, in Pittsfield at least, gave the weight of his influence to the party of submission. While the patriot leaders were establishing the people in the principles of constitutional liberty, animating them with the warmth of a righteous indignation, and instilling into them its confidence in their military strength, - calling, in fine, from chaotic elements that mighty power which we name " The Spirit of '76," - Williams was uniting his voice with those who palliated, if they did not justify, the encroachments of Great Britain ; who forbade every hope of redress except from the grace of king and parliament ; whose perpetual theme was the inability
1 In a letter to the Registrar, Hon. Elijah Dwight, of Great Barrington, now in the possession of Henry W. Taft, Esq., Col. Williams says, "My state of ill- health has prevented my attention to almost any sort of business ; but, the Stamp Act being repealed, and being some better, desire you, as soon as may be, to disperse the following advertisement among the several towns." The advertisement announced Probate Courts in Stockbridge, at the house of Mr. Benjamin Willard, Innholder, on the last Tuesdays of April, June, August and October ; in Pitts- field at the house of Deacon James Easton, Innholder, on the last Tuesdays of December and February. The letter is dated Pittsfield, June 14, 1766.
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of the colonies to cope in arms with the mother country ; and who carped at every display of spirit by the people, the towns, or the Provincial legislature.
Thus on the side of the submissionists in Pittsfield were the strong conservative sentiment of the Williams-Stoddard connec- tion, the wealth of Israel Stoddard, Moses Graves, the Jones brothers, the Ashley's, and others, the subtlety and legal learning of Woodbridge Little, and the personal and official influence of Col. Williams. In meeting this array, the Whig cause had gained, previous to 1774, several able champions, who gave in their adher- ence to it, from time to time, as party-lines were more and more sharply drawn by the progress of events.
With the first to declare themselves was Rev. Mr. Allen, who, from zealous non-conformist ancestors, had inherited thie purest principles of the English commonwealth, and believed in a church without a bishop hardly more implicitly than he did in a state without a king : so that, while he meditated no treasons for the sake of abstract theories of government, the princely name had for him no sanctity to deter from resistance to royal iniquity. An innate hatred of oppression and injustice, a zealous devotion to any cause to which his sense of right attached him, a personal character which carried weight with the people, and a happy facul- ty for enforcing his opinions both with the tongue and the pen, com- pleted the qualities which eminently fitted him to be a leader in times of revolution. Placable towards his own enemies, he was an excellent hater of the foes of his country, chief among which he classed the Tories and George the Third. He charged - and modern investigation proves him to have been correct in so doing - upon the monarch, personally and primarily, rather than upon his ministry, the wrongs which his government inflicted upon America. An entry in his diary, so long after the conclusion of the war as 1799, shows how lasting and intense was his resentment for these wrongs. Being in that year at London, and having seen King George pass in state from the palace to Parliament House, he re- corded the incident with the following comment : -
" This is he who desolated my country; who ravaged the American coasts ; annihilated our trade ; burned our towns ; plundered our cities ; sent forth his Indian allies to scalp our wives and children; starved our youth in his prison-ships ; and caused the expenditure of millions of money, and a 12
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hundred thousand precious lives. Instead of being the father of his people, he has been their destroyer. May God forgive him so great guilt !"
The evil deeds thus denounced, of course occurred after the era which we are now considering ; but their place as an incitement to feeling was then supplied by political wrongs and the immediate presence of the conflict : and we have introduced the incident, out of the order of time, as showing something of the manner and spirit of the minister who made the Pittsfield pulpit one of the foremost of those which, throughout New England, rang with de- nunciations of the oppressor and the invader, and preached the gospel of liberty to apt listeners.
Elder Valentine Rathbun, the pastor of the Baptist church, organized in 1772, was no less ardent in his patriotism than his Congregational brother. A clothier by trade, he had - without abandoning that pursuit, and without the advantages of a classical or theological education -formed the church to which he ministered from proselytes made by his own preaching in his own house. The results of his public speaking indicate that its style was ef- fective : the temperament of the man suggests that it was fiery, vehement, and nervous. His fellow-citizens manifested their esteem for his character and his talents by electing him to important county " Congresses," - over which he often presided, - and, at interesting crises, to the General Court : although his extremely radical prin- ciples, and passion for ultra, not to say violent, measures, may have had something to do with his popularity when the blood of the people was heated even beyond Revolutionary fervor, as it often was when Valentine Rathbun was a successful candidate.
James Easton was a builder, and also kept a store and a tavern, a little south of the present corner of Bank Row and South Street, the latter of which became historical in connection with the Ethan Allen capture of Ticonderoga. He was a native of Hartford, but removed from Litchfield, Conn., to Pittsfield, in the year 1763. He joined the church by letter in May, 1764, and was chosen deacon the next September. He was, from the first, a prominent citizen ; and his letters show sound sense well expressed, great promptness and energy of character, and a remarkable com- bination of zeal and judgment. We know him best as an officer in the early years of the war; but he was among the first to range himself with Mr. Allen upon the Whig side.
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Among the other prominent men who early committed them- selves to the party of liberty were Oliver Root, William Francis, Deacon Josiah Wright, David Noble, and John Strong. Our infor- mation concerning these patriots - except Col. Root, whose early life has already been sketched - is slight. William Francis was a native of Wethersfield, and was among the first settlers of Poon- toosuck. Not only before the Revolution, but for many years afterwards, he was held by his townsmen in extraordinary esteem for his discretion and integrity. "Governor Francis," the soubri- quet by which he was known in his later years, is still remembered with reverential respect by persons now living. Of somewhat similar character was Deacon Wright, afterwards one of the earliest Methodists in Pittsfield. He had served as a sergeant in the French and Indian Wars.
David Noble - than whom no Pittsfield patriot has left a bright- er record - was a native of Westfield, from which town he was a volunteer in 1755. He was a farmer, trader, and tavern-keeper, living in the eastern part of the town, and had accumulated con- siderable property, most of which he sacrificed for his country. John Strong was also a tavern-keeper, living where the Pomeroy Homestead now stands. He is remembered as a genial and popu- lar landlord, but, at the time of which we write, was often chosen to places of civil, as well as military trust, which required more than a common share of intellectual ability; and he seems to have been quite competent to fill them.
Charles Goodrich, - who continued a prosperous citizen, and had attained the rank of captain in the militia, - although he owned large tracts of what had been the commons lands, had allied himself closely in town-affairs with the party of the settling proprietors, and was, in 1764, 1769, and 1770, chosen to represent the town at Boston. Naturally averse, as a man of large property, to danger- ous agitation, his sympathies were, nevertheless, sincerely with the people, and not altogether, or chiefly, because his political hopes,. which were active, rested upon them. Prompt, even to a prone- ness to litigation, in maintaining his personal rights, the same quality roused him equally when the chartered privileges and immunities which he shared with his countrymen were attacked. A man of independent thought, and of discriminating as well as decided opinions, while adhering firmly to the principles which commended themselves to his judgment, he was disposed occasion-
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ally to differ in detail from those with whom he agreed in essen- tials ; and he may have maintained a peculiar position, as regarded the Pittsfield patriots -in the formative period of Revolutionary sentiment, as he did afterwards upon the question of civil govern- ment in the new commonwealth. But we find him in full favor with the Whigs as soon as they came into power; and it is to be presumed that his influence had previously been exercised in harmony with them. Such men as he are more apt to break with their party in the hour of victory than while the struggle is on.
The only person in Pittsfield, at all connected with the Williams and Stoddard families, who is known to have sided with the patriots before hostilities actually commenced, was Israel Dickin- son. This gentleman was born at Hatfield in 1735, and gradu- ated at Yale College in 1758; afterwards receiving his master's degree as well from the College of New Jersey, of which his kinsman, Dr. Jonathan Dickinson, had been the first president, as from his own Alma Mater. In college, he was the class-mate and chum of Israel Stoddard; and both were the friends of Wood- bridge Little, who was two classes below them. This carly college intimacy led to the settlement of the chums, and, soon after, of Little, upon three adjoining estates in a pleasant section of Pitts- field. And there the ante-revolutionary troubles found them, in the enjoyment of cultivated and harmonious intercourse, inter- changing reminiscences of college-life, and, as the books preserved by their descendants prove, indulging and cherishing their taste for intellectual pleasures. Nothing remains to show when this delight- ful union was interrupted by the political differences which estranged the friends, if they were estranged; but immediately after the Lexington fight, when Stoddard and Little were taking refuge in New York from the rage of the people, we find Israel Dickinson prominent in the military operations of the pa- triots.
In 1771, the Whigs received a valuable accession in the person of Dr. Timothy Childs. This noted patriot was born at Deerfield in 1748; entered Harvard College in 1764, but did not graduate; studied medicine in his native town with Dr. Thomas Williams, and established himself in practice at Pittsfield in 1771. The young physician soon won popularity and influence; proved him-
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self an effective speaker,1 and by these qualities, as well as by the contagion of his youthful zeal, gave a new impulse to the cause which he espoused.
About three years after Dr. Childs had planted himself at Pittsfield, a similar acquisition was made by the removal to the place of John Brown, a young lawyer of commanding talents, of noble personal appearance, well connected, and, withal, a true man, - one destined to win fame, but not such as equalled the promise of his youth, or was commensurate with the deserts which ap- peared even in his brief career. His father, Daniel Brown, a native of Haverhill, settled at Sandisfield in 1752; and his prosperity there was remarked by Col. Williams in a letter already quoted. His respectable position among the gentlemen of the county was attested by the commission of the peace which he received in 1765. His son, in 1777, spoke of himself as having "had a birth and education of some consequence." John, the youngest of five brothers, was born at Haverhill, Oct. 19, 1744; was graduated at Yale in 1771; studied law at Providence with his sister's husband, Hon. Oliver Arnold, and commenced practice at Caghnawaga, now Johnstown, N.Y., where he held the place of king's attorney. After a brief stay there, early in 1773 he transferred his residence to Pittsfield, where Woodbridge Little had previously been the only man of law. His radicalism at this time does not appear to have been quite up to the Boston standard ; but his principles were fixed, and, proving bold as well as prudent, he soon received from the people the most distinguished marks of their confidence, and never gave them reason for one moment to repent their trust.
Among those, who, from the positions in which we soon find them, are presumed to have been early adherents to the Whig cause, are Deacon Daniel Hubbard, a wealthy citizen of The West Part, and Eli Root, one of the richer residents near Wendell Square, and after the Revolution a worthy magistrate : both men
1 It is related that Dr. Childs's manner, on town-meeting days, was to halt on his professional rounds, enter the meeting-house, stand patiently waiting until the subject which specially interested him eame up for action, when he presented his views quietly but with precision and force, after which, without waiting for reply or result, he left the house, and resumed his ealls. But, doubtless, when subjects momentous as those which in Revolutionary times claimed the attention of towns were under discussion, this nonchalant manner was greatly modified, if it did not entirely disappear.
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of sterling character, whose determination, energy, and place in the community, made them of eminent service to their party.
By the nearly perfect census of the population, which is pre- served,1 the number of families living in Pittsfield in 1772 was 138; of inhabitants, about 828. The leadership which swayed the two parties in this little community, shut up, with a few others of like composition, among the hills, shows a remarkable pro- portion of liberally-educated mnen as well as others of decided intellectual character and ability. That they should, in some greater measure than towns at the east, work out their own political problems by their own processes was natural. That while reaching the same result with their compatriots at Boston, while sympathizing with their struggles in defence of invaded rights, and according to them the respect and influence which was due their vanship in the conflict, they should not always adopt the prevailing color of metropolitan sentiment, nor always applaud the measures which that sentiment dictated, was inevitable. Aside from the diverse habits of thought which ordinarily pre- vailed in the two sections, and setting aside for the moment the absence in Berkshire of immediate incitements to feeling, the lack of those means of intimate, and in some degree secret, communication with the masses, which the Boston leaders possessed at home, would alone have secured this result. Thus the reason- ing whichi made clear to the Boston clubs the essential difference between the sacking of Hutchinson's house and the swamping of the Honorable East India Company's tea was not so apparent to the comprehension of secluded farm-houses in Pittsfield. It was otherwise with fundamental maxims of government, concern- ing which public discussion, in the press and upon the rostrum, was able to effect unity both of assent and application. And it was otherwise, also, with regard to parliamentary and executive acts, obnoxious functionaries, and Tory statesmen, - objects against which it was quite possible for the central revolutionists to con- centrate the unbroken opposition of their party, and finally to bring that party to comprise so large a majority, that it, not without good right, assumed to be The People.
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