USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 5
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There was, however, in the minister's prophecy, - what was much more to the purpose than inspiration, - a clear foresight, resulting from native acumen, and thorough study of the natural advantages of the home which he loved with all the strength of his vigorous understanding as well as with all the warmth of his earnest heart. v His anticipations have been amply realized; and the streams of Pittsfield now furnish the motive power for eleven woollen manufac- tories, one large paper-mill, one cotton-factory manufacturing cloth and one making warps, and for three large flouring-mills. In addition to which, extensive manufactures of woollens, carriages, leather, looms, manufacturers' materials, iron machinery, musical instruments, and other articles, are carried on without the aid of water-power.
The aggregate extent of manufacturing operations in Pittsfield may be inferred from the following statement :-
3
34
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD.
STATISTICS OF THE WOOLLEN BUSINESS OF PITTSFIELD.
HILLS AND FIRMS.
Number of
Seta.
wd Number of
Loom8.
Annual
Production.
Kind of Goods.
Value of
Production.
Number of
Operatives .. !
J. Barker & Bros.
16
60 Narrow
$ 49 Broad
225 000
Woollen eloth and satinets,
750 000
200
L. Pomeroy's Sons
11
31 Narrow
200 000
130 000
Balmoral skirts,
Pontoosuc W. M. Co ..
10
75 Broad
35 000
yds. Meltons and Skirtings, Carriage and car blankets,
475 000
200
Pittsfield W. Co.
8
40 Broad
175 000
Yds. 6-4 fancy cassimeres,
500 000
130
Taconie Mills
8
80 Narrow 450 000
¿ faney eassimeres,
450 000
165
Stearnsville W. Co.
8
60 Narrow 450 000
Union cassimeres,
225 000
130
S. N. &. C. Russell
6
j 22 Broad
250 000
2 All wool cassimeres,
250 000
125
Tillotson & Collins.
3
10 Broad
100 000
3 Fancy cassimeres,
100 000
40
T. L. Peck ..
3
24 Narrow 350 000
Flannels,
105 000
40
E. B. Whittlesey.
2
11 Broad
100 000
6-4 Meltons,
100 000
25
Ashlar Mills
2
18 Broad
30 000 (Balmoral skirts,
45 000
23
COTTON MANUFACTORY.
J. L. Peck, 3,392 spindles, warp. Annual production, $175,000. Hands employed, 75. M. Van Sickler, 100 looms, manufacturing cotton cloth.
Around most of the manufactories named, little villages have grown up, some of them containing several hundred inhabitants. That known as Coltsville, in the north-eastern corner of the town, has a station of the North Adams Railroad, a hotel, and many resi- dences of persons not connected with the paper-mill of Hon. Thomas Colt, from which it derives its name. Pontoosuc is a con- siderable village in size, and is of marked beauty. Below this, along the highway between Lanesborough and Pittsfield, lie Taconic and Wahconah ; the boarding-houses of the Pittsfield Woollen Mill merging in the latter, which extends south to the junction of Onota Brook with the Housatonic.
Between the mouth of Onota Brook and Lake Onota lie, in the order in which they are named, Russell's, Peck's, and Peck and Kilbourn's villages. The dwellings connected with the Pittsfield Cotton Factory and Pomeroy's Woollen Mills form respectively the south-eastern and south-western verges of the central village of the town.
Upon Shaker Brook, about a mile and a quarter west of Pome- roy's, is Oceola. Upon the same stream, in the south-west corner of the town, is Barkersville; and, about half a mile farther north, Stearnsville, - both flourishing villages, containing not only the comfortable dwellings of the operatives, but the handsome resi- dences of the proprietors of the mills. In Stearnsville is Emanuel Chapel, an outpost of St. Stephen's (P. E.) Church.
...
, 24 Broad
650 000
Yards all wool and cotton warp cassimeres,
$500 000
230
5 000
/ 22 Narrow
35
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD.
West of Stearnsville lies Shaker Village, or West Pittsfield, occupied mostly by a community of the religious sect whose name it bears.
L Formerly, in some of the affairs of the town, Pittsfield was divided - as it often still is colloquially -into the East and West Parts, occasionally into the East and West Parts and the Centre ._ In ordinary conversation, the boundaries of these divisions are not very exactly defined ; but as districts in the old time, for the col- lection of taxes and like purposes, if two only were made, the separating line was North and South Streets ; if three, the Central was included between the Forks of the Housatonic. The North Woods embraced the region north-west of Lake Onota; and, al- though the woods have long since disappeared, the name is still retained.
The Central Village, to which we shall refer when speaking simply of "The Village," covers a space of something over a square mile, lying chiefly between the two branches of the Housatonic, and a little above their junction.1 i.
& Within these bounds are comprised nearly all the public and business edifices of the town, with the exceptions of the manufac- tories dependent upon water-power, and the buildings upon the Agricultural and Berkshire-Pleasure Parks. Here, too, are most of the private dwellings, other than those attached to factories or farms and a few costly country-seats. The Village is noted for the beauty of the views which it commands, for the broad and shaded avenues which branch from the pretty little park which adorns its centre, for its excellent educational institutions, and for some fine public and private edifices.
&The Park, - hallowed of Pittsfield tradition, - which forms the central gem of the village cluster, is shaded by an elliptical grove of handsome elms, in the centre of which stood, until within a few years, a veteran of the same species, which was spared by the settlers from their sweeping destruction of the primeval forest. It early became the pride of the villager and the admiration of the stranger. Its fame went abroad. Every year added to the memories which had been clustering around it since the Old
1 This thickly-peopled section is specially incorporated as "The Fire Dis- trict; " having first been established for the support of a fire-department, but afterwards empowered to build and control water-works, sewers, sidewalks, and the like, and to maintain street-lights.
36
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD.
French and Indian Wars. But, in 1841, the lightning scored a ghastly wound down its tall, straight trunk, and began to dry up its life-blood. Limbs fell away from it from time to time ; and the thunderbolt again scathed it. But still the little vitality which it retained was carefully cherished. In its palmiest days it had risen a smooth, bare shaft of ninety feet, bearing for capital a leafy coronal of branches which carried its height to one hundred and twenty-eight feet. In its days of blight, when a few green bonghs and two or three withered and shattered limbs alone re- mained to crown it, the stranger still greeted it with admiration, and the citizen watched it with reverent love. And when, in July, 1864, it was found to be bending under its own weight, it was gently lowered from its place, literally amid the tears of the sternest men.
In the Park, the waters of Lake Ashley leap upward in a foun- tain whose spray might have washed the topmost leaves of the
KEND DEL.
MAPLEWOOD AVENUE.
Old Elm. Regard for the comfort of the neighborhood, however, dictates ordinarily a more modest display of its powers.1
1 Pittsfield is supplied with the purest water in great abundance from Lake Aslıley, which lies upon the top of one of the Hoosae summits in Washington, at a distance of seven miles from the Park, and seven hundred feet above it. The lake is fed almost exclusively from springs in its own bed. The water descends about four miles in Ashley Brook to a reservoir in the south-western corner of Dalton, whence it is carried in pipes three miles one hundred and fifty-two rods, with a fall of one hundred and thirty-six feet, to the fountain in the Park. It is conveyed to all parts of the village, the length of main and distributing pipe being about fifteen miles.
37
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD.
The streets which branch from this centre are shaded in great part by fine elms and lindens; but an unfortunate partiality for rapid growth and luxuriant foliage has given a preponderance to the maples, long ago characterized by observant Spencer as " seeldom inward sound." Arbor-like streets, spacious court-yards over- spread by patriarchal trees, and park-like grounds, almost em- bower a bird's-eye view of the village.
Of the latter, the most admired are those of Maplewood Young Ladies' Institute, whose graceful chapel, gymnasium, and half-
H.E.M.
MAPLEWOOD CHAPEL.
vine-covered dwellings gleam white through avenues and groves of famed attractiveness.
An ample park, the seat of a school of a high grade for young men, occupies, with a profusion of arborage which almost rivals Maplewood, the southern declivity of a commanding eminence north of the village, which has received the name of Springside, from the abundant springs, whose waters have been turned to excellent purpose in adorning the grounds. The overview from Springside stretches across the lower Berkshire Valley to the Connecticut hills; glimpses of which, at a distance of twenty miles, are seen through the vista formed by the grander mountains which intervene.
38
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD.
"Of the ten village churches, three are devoted to the Con- gregational form of worship; one of them being occupied by a colored parish.& Two belong to St. Joseph's Roman Catholic parish ; the sermons in one of them being alternately in the German and French languages. The Baptists, Methodists, and Epis- copalians have one each; and one belongs to the German Lutherans, who form a considerable element in the population of Pittsfield, and have service in their own tongue.
In 1867-8, The Berkshire Life Insurance Company erected a large and costly building, one of the most perfect business structures in the country, upon the corner of North and West streets, long known as the site of the " Old Berkshire Hotel." In it is the central office of the proprietory corporation whose busi- ness ramifies into every portion of the northern section of the con- tinent. It also affords spacious rooms for the post-office, luxurious banking-houses for the Pittsfield and Agricultural National Banks and the Berkshire County Savings Institution ; halls for several Masonic bodies ; the office of the Assessor of Internal Revenue for the Tenth Massachusetts District ; many other offices, and several stores.
By law, the various railroads which intersect at Pittsfield are re- quired to unite, previous to the year 1869, in a common passenger station : and a location has been selected for that purpose upon West street, about eighty rods west of the Park; and upon that site large and handsome buildings are about to be erected.
The Legislature of 1868 made Pittsfield the shire town of Berkshire County, requiring the town to furnish sites for the erec- tion of the court-house and jail. For the former building, the beautiful elm-shaded grounds on East Street, between Park Square and Williams Avenue, have been purchased at the price of thirty- five thousand dollars; for the latter, ten acres of land are pro- vided on North First Street, at a cost of five thousand dollars. The buildings will be commenced while this work is in press.
By the highway, the distance of Pittsfield from Boston is one hundred and thirty miles ; from Albany, thirty-three. The wind- ings of the railroad increase these distances to one hundred and fifty from the former city, and to fifty from the latter; requiring, respectively, six and two hours for the journey. New York is reached in about six hours.
PITTSFIELD NATIONAL BANK
BERKSHIREFIRE IN STRANI EQUAL
BERKSHIRE LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY BUILDING.
39
TOPOGRAPHY OF PITTSFIELD.
Pittsfield has now a population of about eleven thousand, and is rated in the assessment of 1868 at a valuation of $3,473,061 in personal estate; $4,693,173, in real estate: a total valuation of $8,166,234. The number of polls returned was two thousand two hundred and ninety-three; the number of dwellings, fifteen hun- dred and four.
HISTORY.
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
CHAPTER I.
ABORIGINAL OCCUPATION.
The Natives as found by the Pioneers. - Relics. - Villages and Burial Grounds in Pittsfield. - Scantiness of Native Population to be accounted for. - Mohegan Traditional History. - Wars of the Mohegans and Iroquois. - Changes in the Condition of the Mohegans of Berkshire .- Hunting-System of the Mohegans .- Berkshire a Hunting-Ground. - The Part of the Settlers of Pittsfield in various Indian Wars. - Remarkable Incidents.
W HEN, in the early part of the eighteenth century, the English of Massachusetts first became intimately ac- quainted with the mountainous district of its Far West, they found it teeming with the various species of game and fur-bearing ani- mals then common in New England ; which attracted occasional hunting-parties of the Mohegans and Schaghticokes, who, by ten- ures which will presently appear, held a sort of confused joint occupancy of the hunting-grounds.
The permanent native inhabitants were, however, sparse, even beyond the ordinary meagreness of Indian populations. The petty villages of a few insignificant squads, mostly of the Mohegan race, scattered at wide intervals, alone broke the solitude of the mountain wilderness. And of these little huddles of savage wig- wams, too highly dignified by the title of village, one lay between Sheffield and Great Barrington; and the smoke of others curled up among the woods where Pittsfield, Stockbridge, New Marlborough, Dalton, and perhaps other towns, now stand.
The sites of those in Pittsfield are vaguely pointed out by tradi- tion, with a somewhat less vague confirmation by the discovery
43
44
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
of relies, as at Unkamet's Crossing, around the Canoe Meadows, and upon Indian Hill (the eminence immediately west of the Gov- ernor Briggs Homestead, and a little south-east of Lake Onota). It is altogether probable, however, that, in accordance with the uni- versal practice of the aborigines, their lodges were removed from point to point, or, rather, that the costless things were aban- doned for new, as often as convenience dictated, or a chance fire in the woods at once cleared and enriched new fields for their lazy husbandry.
Tradition speaks confidently of household implements of stone found abundantly in the olden time, especially near the Canoe Meadows, whose rich soil and neighboring river made them attrac- tive; but such discoveries are rare now, although, in some fields, arrow-heads are not unfrequently found, -
" The pointed flints that left his fatal bow,
.Chipped with rough art and slow barbarian toil, Last of his wrecks that strew the alien soil." - HOLMES.
It was for the chase or on the war-path, that the savage oftenest sought the wilds of the Winterberge. But the few memorials which he left of his presence on the soil of Pittsfield must be the more carefully recorded for their rarity.
On Indian Hill, in 1815, Capt. Joseph Merrick turned up with his plough a Jewish frontlet, which, being opened, displayed the usual sentences of Hebrew scripture, beautifully inscribed upon parchment, which had been kept in perfect preservation by leathern casings. The theory that the American Indians are the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel had then many ardent supporters, who, of course, hailed Capt. Merrick's waif as confir- mation of their faith, in a double sense "strong as IIoly Writ." Deposited with the Antiquarian Society at Worcester, it was learnedly discussed ; and we still find it occasionally mentioned in books.1
' Memoir of Elkanah Watson, Hist. Stock., etc. Other like discoveries have since occurred. Dr. Lykin obtained the loan of a similar amulet which is still held in great repute by the Potawatamies of Kansas River; and the writer has scen one which was found about twenty-five years ago among the Penobscot (Tar- atine) tribe in Maine. One cannot account with perfect confidence for the dispersion of these sacred mementoes so widely among a people ignorant of their significance ; but it is less difficult to assume a Ilebrew shipwreck, than to inject the blood of Israel into Algonquin veins. The aboriginal superstition of ascribing .
45
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
In 1850, a deep cutting was made in a peat-bed a few rods north- east of Indian Hill; and a number of poles, sharpened by the aid of fire, as if for the construction of wigwams, were found so far be- neath the surface that they must have been deposited there long before Jacob Elkins's bold explorers could have penetrated the valley.
Indian Point is the name - handed down from the old time - of a projection into Lake Onota upon the west, where the red hun- ter delighted to lie perdue behind the singular rocky screen de- scribed in a previous chapter, and shoot the deer who took refuge in the delicious waters from the torments of the summer-heat and the swarming mosquitoes. And, doubtless, in the course of ages, erring marksmen left an armory of flint arrow-heads on the grav- elly bed of the lake.
Along the Housatonic, east of the former residence of Dr. O. W. Holmes, stretch what the early settlers always called the Canoe Meadows; and from their level surface, upon the eastern bank of the river, rises a knoll which was once used as a burial-place by the Mohegans, who, after they were collected in one community at Stockbridge, were accustomed to make pious pilgrimages to this spot, leaving the birch-canoes, in which they had ascended the river, in the Meadows to which they thus gave name.1
Lake Shoonkeekmoonkeek, with its prolific waters, must have been a frequent resort for the guiders of the birch-canoe; and by its shores they buried their dead. Some of their skeletons were, a few years ago, exhumed from the eastern bank of its outlet, where they had been interred in the usual sitting posture.
The graves of the vanished race of which so many wild tales were told, of whom so many wild deeds were personally remem- bered, always had a strange fascination for the pioneers; and those of Pittsfield pointed out several in different parts of the town to their children. But these were wayside resting-places, to which their tenants seem to have been consigned without that reverential
the power of a " medicine," or charm, to whatever in civilized nse was incomprehen- sible by savage simplicity, is well-known ; and surely nothing would more probably acquire this mystic character than the curious frontlets which perchance some shipwrecked children of Abraham, miraculously preserved from the waves, may have been, by the wondering natives, observed to hold in religious veneration.
1 Mr. William G. Backus, who, when a boy, assisted in clearing this burial- knoll for cultivation, states that the graves could then be distinctly traced.
46
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
care which the men of the woods were wont to bestow upon their dead.
Such are the scant memorials by which we are able to trace the aboriginal occupation of the soil of Pittsfield before its history as the home of civilized man commenced. But slender as these me- morials are, and slight as may have been the red man's attachment to the spot as a permanent home, there can be no doubt that it was his choicest hunting-ground. That he has left recorded in the name he bestowed upon it; and, although another appellation has usurped the place of that which the Mohegan so significantly gave it, we still love to remember that this was the Indian's abundant Poontoosuck, his favorite chase for deer. 'The names the red men called them by still cling to mountain, lake, and stream, forbidding us to forget the race, which, a little more than a hundred years ago, imparted to this glorious landscape all of human interest that per- tained to it. He must be dull of sentiment indeed, who does not feel that without the old Indian story, dim though it may be, the region of the Taconies and the Hoosacs, of Poontoosuck and the Housatonic, of Unkamet and Honwee, would lack a charm we should not willingly spare.
But aside from what may be considered mere sentimental inter- est, - although that, too, has its intrinsic worth, - a question of more material importance arises, and finds its answer in a consecu- tive, although not very minute, history of the Mohegan nation. The paucity of the native population found in Berkshire demands an explanation, and did, in fact, early attract the attention of the local historians, who, although in some respects favored, labored under great difficulties from the want of those archives to which later writers have access.
The native traditions declared, and with entire truth, that for- merly a thousand warriors had answered to the Mohegan battle- cry, and distant tribes had sought and received the protection of their arms; but the first European explorers of their country, or certainly the first English surveyors, found but a few scant hun- dreds -men, women, and children included - remaining to tenant all the ancient empire of the tribe. And a patriotic shame forbade the native chroniclers to relate to the stranger the unvarnished story of their humiliation.
Those among the early settlers who interested themselves in such questions, - thus left to their own resources, if not actually
47
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
misled, - in accounting for the decadence of the population which preceded them, adopted a theory utterly untenable. They fancied, that, when the remnants of the Pequots and Narragansetts, spared from fire and sword, were driven out of New England, the terror- stricken fugitives, passing through Western Massachusetts, so spread the fear of the white man's prowess and cruelty that the mass of the people joined in the flight to safer regions in the West.
By a strange negligence, the fact was overlooked, that the territory in question was inhabited by Mohegans, the inveterate enemies of both Pequots and Narragansetts, between whom and the New-Englanders they had been the chief instruments in stir- ing up strife. At the very moment when they are represented as joining the exiles in panic flight, they were pursuing them with a vindictiveness which their white allies were, for the sake of humanity, obliged to temper. It will be recollected that when, in 1676, the renowned Major Talcot overtook a fugitive band of two hundred wretched Narragansetts at Stockbridge, and visited them with great slaughter, he was guided in the pursuit by a Mohegan, and that the only man he lost in the affair was of the same race. It was with good reason that the Mohegans loved, and were faithful to, the white man; for by him they had been preserved from utter extermination, and, in the Valley of the Connecticut at least, restored to something of their old prestige as warriors. The sheep might as well have herded with the wolves flying from the shepherd, as the Mohegans have joined the Pequots and Narragansetts escaping from the New-Englanders.
So far from dwindling in these old wars, the population of Mohe- ganland must have been swelled by the captives who, in accordance with their custom, were adopted into the victorious tribe; and, owing to the humane influence of the colonial officers, the number thus saved from death was greater than in most Indian wars. It does not, however, appear that the villages west of the Hoosacs received immediately much augmentation from this source. But the Iroquois, who had become the feudal lords of the old Mohegan empire, granted a refuge, in what is now the northern part of Rensselaer county, to a band of exiled Narragansetts, which grew to be the Schaghticoke tribe, and sent out little colonies to the Valley of the Housatonie.1
1 The principal Indian village in Sheffield was styled Scatecook; and the presence of individuals of that race in the county was the cause of the only blood-
48
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
These accessions to the native population were, to be sure, not large; but they serve to strengthen our conception of the extreme desolation which must have prevailed anterior to them; and, even if they were altogether inconsiderable, the fact would still be plain, that such desolation was not the result of the New-England wars.
The error in solving the problem arose from the mistake of seeking the key -if, indeed, it was sought in any documentary evidence -among the records of Massachusetts ; while the Mohe- gans were, especially at the period of their decadence, essentially a New-York tribe.&
Turning to the historical collections of the latter State, we find that destruction came to the aborigines of Berkshire from the west, and not from the east, - from the red man, and not from the white » in what manner, we shall endeavor to show.
The Mohegan - one of the most prominent in the history of the Algonquin races - was, like the others, divided into tribes or nations, bearing distinctive names; which, again, were sub- divided into bands, -a political organization into whose constitu- tion we do not purpose to inquire. The great tribe to which the appellation of Mohegan is commonly applied, and who may hence be held to represent the parent stock, occupied in 1609, when they were first visited by the Dutch under Hendrick Hudson, the whole territory now the counties of Berkshire, Columbia, and Rensselaer; having their chief village, or " castle," at Schodac (more musically pronounced by themselves Eskwatak, -- the place of fires ; i.e., council-fires), on the Hudson. And they had also, at what is now Greenbush, a strongly fortified post - according to their notions of engineering - against their hered- itary enemies, the Mohawks, whose territory came down to the opposite bank of the Hudson.
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