USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 43
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Even if the General Sessions manifested any great alaerity, which is not apparent, in complying with the act of the legislature in establishing the shire-town, the state of the county precluded an immediate provision to carry it out. The year 1786, it will be
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remembered, was that of the Shays Rebellion, and was certainly an unhappy one for raising taxes in Berkshire for any purpose, and most of all for the erection of court-houses and jails.
The court of General Sessions held at Pittsfield in May, 1786, nevertheless directed Eli Root, John C. Williams, and Simon Larned, all of that town, to prepare a plan for the public buildings to be built at Lenox, and report what materials would be required. Eli Root was also appointed to fill a vacancy caused by the resig- nation of Theodore Sedgwick on a commission previously named to select a proper site.
The succeeding terms of the court being obstructed by the Shays men, the committees had no opportunity to report until May, 1787, even if they desired to do so. But, early in that year, to have the Berkshire courts settled, the legislature, rendered impatient by the exciting events which had just transpired in the county, made a peremptory order that the Court of Common Pleas should be held at Lenox in the ensuing February, and the Supreme Court in May. The first term of the Common Pleas recorded to have been held there opened Sept. 11, 1787.
In the mean time, the Court of General Sessions, at the May term held at Great Barrington, selected Theodore Sedgwick and John Bacon of Stockbridge, and Major Azariah Eggleston of Lenox, to determine upon a site and contract for the erection of the buildings, which David Rossiter, Nathaniel Bishop of Rich- mond, and Benjamin Pierce were directed to superintend, and have finished as soon as possible. The county buildings were actually commenced in the spring of 1788. The jail was finished, and the prisoners were removed to it from Great Barrington, in the latter part of 1790; the court-house was completed in 1791 or 1792: the cost of the two buildings being £3,441. 5s., 3d., towards which, according to Dr. Field, " individuals in Lenox advanced, in building materials, £800." The court-house, a wooden building, now the Lenox town-hall, stood a few rods south of that now about to be abandoned by the courts, which was erected in 1815, and has been several times remodelled. The first jail was built upon a hill about half a mile south of the village, on the old Stockbridge Road.
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CHAPTER XXIV.
THE MEETING-HOUSE OF 1790.
[1789-1793.]
Accommodations for Religious Worship in 1790. - Plans for a New Meeting-House. - Items from the Assessment of 1791. - Sale of Continental Money. - Mate- rials for the New Meeting-House. - Location of the House. - Salvation of the Elm, and Creation of the Park. - Building of the House. - Disputes about Pews. - The First Bell. - Destruction of the Old Meeting-House. - Ball- Playing forbidden on the Common. - Town Ilouse and Academy erected. - Protection for the Burial-Ground. - John Chandler Williams. - Madam Williams.
M ESSRS. Oliver Partridge and Moses Graves, in 1762, ex- pressed to the General Court their opinion, that the little meeting-house then building, with perplexed and prolonged effort, by the poor proprietors of settling-lots at Poontoosuck, would be insufficient to contain the inhabitants when sixty families should be in town.
It was, however, made to answer, with no loud complaints of inconvenience, until, after thirty troubled years, Pittsfield, in 1790, had attained a population of two thousand, of which about two hundred were Baptists, Episcopalians, and Shakers.
The Baptists had a meeting-house, unfinished, in the West Part ; the Shakers, another in the south-west ; and the Episcopalians held divine service, with lay reading, oftenest in the spacious parlors of the Van Schaack mansion. But the attendance upon all these places of worship could not have sensibly diminished the congre- gation at the old meeting-house where Mr. Allen ministered to the " standing order."
Irreligious habits, contracted in years of war or popular tumult, contributed more sadly to lessen the number of constant worship- pers; and the unattractive edifice drew within its narrow walls
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4
few whom the spirit of devotion, habit, or public opinion, did not compel thither.
But it appears from one of the resolutions quoted in the last chapter, that the growing necessity for a larger building was admitted, and that its location was one of the points in dispute among the people. Perhaps the existing dissensions had hindered the earlier undertaking of the work. Certainly the erection of a commodious and creditable house of worship was a task of no small magnitude as the town was then situated, and one for whose successful accomplishment united and amicable effort was so essen- tial that it furnished a powerful inducement to that spirit of mutual forbearance which prevailed in the June meeting of 1788.
The first town action toward a new meeting-house was on the 13th of April, 1789, when the following committee was appointed to report a plan, with the estimated cost: Woodbridge Little, Daniel Hubbard, Timothy Childs, Joel Stevens, Simon Larned, Ebenezer White, Oswald Williams, David Bush,1 and John Chandler Williams.
On the 23d of November, the committee reported, that, in their opinion, it was necessary to build a meeting-house seventy feet long, exclusive of porch and balcony, and fifty-one feet wide; that it was expedient to raise and cover the frame, paint, and glaze, in one year, of which the cost would be ££701. 78. 2d .; and that this would be about two-thirds of the entire expense. The question of finishing the interior they left to future consideration, with the design of postponing as long as possible the differences of opinion which were sure to arise regarding the mode of "seating the house."
The report was accepted, and the following committee was appointed to collect material : David Bush, Joel Stevens, John Chandler Williams, Simon Larned, John Partridge, Oliver Root, Josiah Moseley, Dan Cadwell, and Joel Dickinson.
This committee were instructed to give every person, as far as convenient, a chance to pay his proportion of the cost in material and labor, and to contract with the town debtors for payment in the same manner as far as they thought advantageous. The " Book of Credits" does not distinguish between the receipts on
1 There were at this time two citizens of the name of David Bush in active life, father and son ; and the records rarely distinguish which is intended.
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account of taxes and those in payment of debt; but otherwise they are very minute, and show from whose contribution almost every constituent of the building came, - from Dr. Timothy Child's eighty-feet stick of timber to the laborer's day's work or few bushels of lime. Thus, Stephen Fowler, who lies buried in the Pilgrim's Rest at the new cemetery, brought the ridgepole ; Capt. Charles Goodrich, two sills; William Partridge, Josiah and Isaac Ward, a large stick ; Col. Oliver Root, fifty feet of oak posts and forty-six feet of oak plates ; Mrs. Stoddard and Mrs. Dickinson, widows of old friends, but leaders in opposing parties during the Revolution, united in contributing a pillar twenty feet long and a pine beam seventy feet ; Zebulon Stiles, one of the earliest settlers, and now a slumberer in the Pilgrim's Rest, brought a sill fifty feet long; and Capt. Jared Ingersoll contributed, from his timber-land in Lenox, one of the pillars of the belfry : and thus through all the townsmen, or at least the Congregational portion of them.1
There is no intimation of any voluntary contributions, and there probably were none, as Joshua Danforth was in 1793 directed by a vote of the town to purchase a pulpit-cushion, - the article most likely to have been a gift. The only subscription-paper extant, connected with the building, is one to be paid in grain; and it expressly provides that the amounts contributed were to be deducted from the giver's next tax. A small portion of the taxes were paid in coin ; and some who did not find it convenient to make payment either in this way or in the supply of material tendered neat cattle or grain, - a species of property which long afterwards continued, as it had been long before, the most convenient circulating medium within ordinary reach.
Some items of interest may be gathered from the assessor's books; and we take at random that of 1791, when £700 were assessed for " finishing the meeting-house."
The polls that year numbered 411 ; the real and personal estate and " faculty " 2 were valued at &3,626. 4s. 6d. The sum assessed for ordinary town charges was £297,- a little more than one-third of the expense of finishing the meeting-house. The poll-tax for town purposes was four shillings, two pence, the amount assessed
1 It should be understood that the articles specified were only a portion of the contributions of most of the persons named.
2 The faculty to obtain an income from skill in the learned professions, the arts, in mercantile business, or the like.
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upon estates and faculty, one shilling, two pence, in the pound. The State tax of the town was £132; and that for the support of the minister, part of whose salary came from other sources, £58.
To raise the sum of £700 voted for finishing the meeting-house, a poll-tax of ten shillings, four pence, was assessed ; which, if all had paid, - from Charles Goodrich down to Hazle-Blossom, negro, - would have produced £212. 7s. From estates and faculty, 2s. 9d. in the pound was levied; producing £496. 12s. 2d.
The heaviest real-estate tax-payers were as follows : Charles Goodrich, who owned more than a thousand acres in the east part, £10.10s.2d .; James D. Colt, who owned one thousand acres in the south-west, £9. 15s. 6d .; Henry Van Schaack, an Episcopalian, who was also assessed about £4. on personal property, £6. 15s. 6d. ; Daniel Hubbard, £5. 7s. 11d .; Hannah, widow of Col. William Williams, £5. 6s. 10d. ; Nathaniel Robbins, £5. 58. 6d.
The well-to-do farmers paid from one pound to four ; but by far the greater portion of the assessments were reckoned in shillings. Oliver Wendell, Margaret Phillips (grandmother of Mr. Wendell Phillips), Catharine Wendell, and other heirs of the first pur- chaser of the town, paid about £4 upon one thousand two hundred and sixty-eight acres still retained by them ; and the non-resident heirs of Col. Stoddard paid a proportionate tax upon about eight hundred acres. John Chandler Williams was assessed £3. 17s. 8d. on real estate, 18s. personal, and £1. 4s. 9d. on faculty. This was the highest tax on faculty ; the next being paid by Col. Danforth, who was postmaster, held other public offices, and was also in mercantile business. Col. Danforth also was honored with the largest assessment on personal property, - £7. On faculty, Daniel Weller, a tanner, paid £1. 2s .; Dr. Timothy Childs, 16s. 6d .; Thomas Gold, a lawyer, 13s. 6d .; Joel Dickinson, the master- builder of the meeting-house, 13s. 9d. Ministers of the gospel were exempt from taxation.
The sum of £600 thus assessed proved to be about one-third the whole cost of building; and as nearly one-third of that expense was defrayed by the application of the debts due the town, and from the sale of other property, a fair idea of the whole taxation for meeting-house purposes can be gained by doubling the items given.
The town in March, 1791, ordered the building committee to sell the "old Continental money and paper securities in the treasury for solid coin," and apply the proceeds to the purchase of lead for
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the meeting-house. The paper securities consisted of loan-office certificates, whose " specie value, by the scale," was $93.40, and " Hardy's indents" to the amount of $48. The Continental money amounted to £3,097 ; which had been handed down in sealed packages from treasurer to treasurer, awaiting the revival of the national credit. The whole was now sold for the pittance of £40. 10s., as appears from the record ; although - owing to the nse of that last resort of a lazy pen, an " et cetera " - the accounts do not show with absolute certainty whether the certificates were included in the sale.
The expenditure for lead was £39. 17s. 6d., and the freight upon it to Kinderhook was 12d. ; so that this item seems to have been kept strictly within the appropriation.
From such various sources, means were obtained to meet the expenditures until they reached the sum of £2,188. 19s. 6d .; which proved to be the final cost of the structure.
This increase to double the original estimate was perhaps attribut- able in part to the natural proclivity of architects to under-estimates of cost, but was chiefly due to the increased size of the building over that of the plan accepted by the town, to the purchase of a bell, and probably to the addition, in the enthusiasm elicited by the progress of the work, of some luxuries which were not at first contemplated. The house, without any authority so far as appears from the record, was built ninety feet long, exclusive of the pro- jecting porch, and fifty-five feet wide.
Although we find no intimation of any voluntary contributions, such as would now be made for a similar purpose, yet the whole assessment was only the equitable distribution of a burden which the community, with the eager consent of almost all its members, had imposed upon itself; and doubtless the great majority were more liberal in responding to the requisitions of the committee than they would have been in private bargaining. Tradition is, indeed, full of the zeal with which the fathers of the town sought out the choicest products of their forests, - for Berkshire woods were forests then, - and the glee with which they brought them to the appointed spot.
Certainly the material contributed for the new temple, which was to be the pride and the pet of the town, was not only abun- dant in quantity, but of the best quality which the rich forests of the neighborhood could afford. The spring of 1790 found the open
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space now occupied by the Park piled high with a still accumu- lating mass of stone, and such lumber as the valley has now not seen for many a long year.
But, before use could be made of it, a preliminary of no little difficulty remained to be settled. The vote, that the location of the new meeting-house should be determined by disinterested non-residents, seems to have been disregarded ; for on the 5th of April, 1790, David Bush, jun., in behalf of a committee, reported that in their opinion " the meeting-house front door should face the south ; that it should stand on the same ground that the old meeting-house covered ; that the front sill should be on the north line of the highway; that the west side of the house should be about three feet west of the west side of the old meeting-house; and that the committee would have been willing to have carried it still farther west could it have been done withont incommoding the monument of the late Col. William Williams."1
The meeting-house was located within a few feet of his monn- ment, and, if it had not been in the way, would doubtless have been placed with only a small court-yard between it and North Street. The monument now stands south-west of St. John's Lake, in the new cemetery.
The report was adopted ; but the location thus fixed was dis- tasteful to a portion of the citizens, for a reason which curiously illustrates the delight which was anticipated in gazing upon the new building. Placed upon the proposed site, it would not be visible from the greater portion of West Street, while, if carried southward into the highway, the more ornamental portions would delight the eye of the traveller from the west on his way to church or to market; nay, some of the more favored denizens of that region could daily, in their homes, revel in the contemplation of its graces, perhaps -who could tell ?- be made better Christians by this constant reminder of sacred things.
Twenty-three voters - principally those personally interested - accordingly requested a town-meeting, and were able to carry a vote to place the meeting-house seven feet further south than had been previously determined.
But for this it was necessary to fell the tall and graceful elm - fairer than any work of man's hand - which had been spared by the first settlers for its conspicuous beauty.
1 Col. Williams died in 1785.
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It must have even then entwined itself in the affections of many of the people ; but its destruction seemed inevitable, and the first strokes of the axe had already wounded its devoted trunk, when it was saved by the spirited opposition of a noble woman.
It happened, by a fortunate chance, that, at the close of the Revolution, the handsome mansion on the site now between Park
HEMCAD
JOHN CHANDLER WILLIAMS'S HOUSE.
Square and Williams Avenue had been purchased by John Chan- dler Williams, a gentleman of culture and refined tastes, who was also blest with an equally gifted wife.
It may well be imagined with what feelings they watched the impending destruction of the splendid old relic of the forest, which formed so unique an ornament of their neighborhood. So intense was the excitement of Mrs. Williams in view of the intended sac- rilege, that she appeared upon the scene, and, finding the most passionate entreaties vain, threw herself between the tree and the axe, and at last procured a postponement of the work of destruc- tion until the matter could again be considered by the town. The elm treasured the kindly act in its heart; and when it fell, full of years and honors, the tradition of its romantic salvation was found corroborated by the scars of three axe-strokes embedded in its an- nal of 1790.
The immediate danger past, Mr. Williams completed the good work which his wife had begun, by proposing to give to the town,
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for a common, so much of his land south of The Elm as they would leave of space between that point and the meeting-house. The generous offer was accepted; and thus Pittsfield acquired the ground for the beautiful little park now so attractive by its grace- ful cirelet of elms and its sparkling fountain, and so hallowed by patriotic memories.
The first entry in the construction account for the meeting- house -it was a charge for the inevitable rum - was made on the same 10th of May, when the site was finally determined; and thenceforward the work went briskly on under the direction of Col. Joshua Danforth, John Chandler Williams,1 and Daniel Wel- ler, who in March had been elected a building-committee.
Col. Bulfinch of Boston, an architect of repute, furnished the designs, in accordance with which the new building became one of the finest specimens of those well-proportioned, cheery, wooden structures, with Grecian ornamentation, which, very similar in their general character, were about that time scattered through the more thrifty villages of New England; the contemporaries of those homes of stately comfort, the square, flat-roofed, and balus- traded mansions, of broad halls and spacions parlors, like those erected in Pittsfield by Henry Van Schaack and Ashbell Strong.
Capt. Joel Dickinson, a skilful mechanic, was selected as master- builder, and took charge on the 18th of April.
The site selected was upon a ledge of hard, light-gray limestone, or marble, with a silicious intermixture ingrained ; and the cellar, even under the costly edifice which now occupies the spot, is a very rude affair, excavated by enlarging the crevices of the rocks. So thin was the overlaying soil, that few graves had been made in it.
May was spent in preparing the foundation; the principal ex- penditures noted being for rum, powder, wedges, and fixing sheds. Rum, from the laying of the foundation to the dedication, was a large item in the construction accounts. One charge, a fair speci- men of many, was "£4. 8s. for three hundred and fifty-two rations of rum in five weeks." The house was raised and covered, and probably painted and glazed, in 1790. Allusion is made to the raising in the record of a meeting in October in that year, which voted three shillings a day extra pay to David Ashley and Butler Goodrich for extraordinary services.
1 See note at the end of this chapter.
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The frame being extremely large and cumbrous, and the mechan- ical appliances for managing large timbers being very imperfect, it was necessary that workmen should go, at risk of life and limb, upon elevated or exposed portions of the unfixed roof and tower. This essential service was performed by Goodrich and Ashley, then young men of great activity, strength, and courage; and it was in this that they executed those feats which were rewarded by the town, and have been remembered by tradition. Ashley soon after- wards removed to the West; but his compeer lived to tell the story to his grandchildren, as the venerable " Deacon Goodrich."
The meeting of Oct. 4 also appointed a committee - John Chandler Williams, Daniel Hubbard, and Joshua Danforth - to provide material for finishing the house ; and the following spring found the Common again cumbered with the contributions of tax- payers and town debtors.
But another of the local differences inevitable at every stage in the public works of the village arose; and a committee was ap- pointed to consider in what form the pews should be made.
The committee was of the unusual number of eleven, attesting - as did also the character of the gentlemen composing it - the estimate which the town fixed upon the importance of its duties. It consisted of Daniel Hubbard, Oliver Root, David Bush, sen., Joseph Fairfield, Joshua Robbins, Eli Root, James D. Colt, J. C. Williams, Timothy Childs, and Daniel Sackett, - all men of weight in community, and most of them of advanced years.
This committee reported that it would be most convenient to finish the side-galleries with a set of pews on the sides, three feet and a half wide, and eleven feet and eight inches long; an alley of convenient width; and then two seats along the " breastworks," and two cross-alleys intersecting the whole at proper intervals.
Thus far the committee - eight being present - were unanimous. But, with regard to the arrangement of the lower part of the house, they divided ; a majority recommending that the wall-pews should be made " of the length and width of a pattern which had been prepared," and that the body-pews should be seven and three inches long, five feet ten inches wide." This report was accepted by a small majority ; but a petition was at once presented " to the gentlemen selectmen," for a new meeting, to see whether the town would reconsider its action, and adopt a more uniform plan for the lower part of the house ; so that all the body-pews might be six
.
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feet three inches long, and five feet ten inches wide, and that the side wall-pews might be eleven feet eight inches long, and six feet wide, or that all the pews in the lower part of the meeting-house might be square, or as nearly so as the ground would admit."
In those days, habits of thought, social customs, and laws were slowly and reluctantly conforming themselves to the spirit of equality which the Revolution had infused into the Commonwealth ; and there was often more in the apparently trivial village con- tentions than would appear from a casual inspection of the records. To use a Yankee illustration for a Yankee fact, the bird of freedom had burst its shell, but was still busily and sometimes testily engaged in peeking its young plumage to get rid of the adhering fragments. The present instance was a skirmish in the struggle to abolish that strange relie of the stiff old Puritan aris- toeracy, - the seating a congregation according to the estimate which a parish committee might happen to form of the relative " dignities " of the individuals composing it.
The signers of the petition for a more uniform style of pews, unlike the majority of the committee of eleven, although persons. of respectable property and social position, were, with perhaps two exceptions, not those to whom the highest places in the synagogue would be likely to fall.
And as they could hardly hope to do away entirely with the unchristian distinctions which had crept into the temple of that worship whose Founder, when on earth, had not where to lay his head, they sought to render them less galling by making them less conspicuous. Although no record is found of the disposition which was made of the matter, it appears, from a plan of the house after its completion, that the first of the arrangements suggested by the petitioners was actually substituted for that recommended by the committee of eleven.
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