USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1734 to the year 1800 > Part 8
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& Col. Wendell paid to the town Boston £1,320 for its rights in the township.
CHAPTER III.
FIRST ATTEMPT TO SETTLE THE TOWNSHIP.
[1741-1749.]
Settling-lots laid out. - Description of Lots and Roads. - Philip Livingston to procure Settlers. - Efforts to introduce Dutchmen fail. - Huston induces a Company from Westfield to purchase Forty Lots. - Pioneers commence a Clear- ing. - Poontoosuck as it appeared in 1743. - Work suspended by News of War. - Col. William Williams. - The War of 1744-8. - Building of Fort Massa- chusetts. - Hardships of Settlers in the War. 2
W HIEN the township was platted by Capt. Huston in 1738, sixty-four home (or house) lots were laid out, each intended to contain one hundred acres, and, except where irregularities arose from the indentations of Onota and Silver Lakes, to be uni- formly of eighty rods front and two hundred deept Careless sur- veying, however, caused some variations from this standard; the lots in the middle tier, for instance, proving to be, in fact, two hun- dred and two rods deep.
Two roads, each seven rods wide, intersected each other near the centre of the township. One of these, now East and West Streets, ran from boundary to boundary ; 1 the other, in that part of its course which is now North Street, extended two hundred rods above the Crossing, and, on the old direct line of South Street, four hundred and six rods below it.
A third road, four rods in width, was laid out parallel to the first, and two hundred and two rods south of it. East of its inter- section with South, this is now Honasada Street. West of that point, only portions of it have been opened.
Along the first and third of these thoroughfares, or what were intended to be such, the home-lots designed for settlers and for
' Owing to obstacles in the nature of the ground, East Street has been actually opened only to the distance of half a mile from the Park.
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public purposes were ranged in three tiers, running cast and west. Of these the middle, containing twenty-seven lots, lay between East and West Streets and Honasada Street, and extended completely across the township. The northern fronted south upon East and West Streets, contained nineteen lots, and, beginning at the Han- cock line, reached to Goodrich Lake. The southern tier, facing north upon Honasada Street, numbered seventeen lots, and extend- ed from the Dalton line to where Occola Village now stands.
The territory thus set apart for the proposed plantation formed about one quarter of the whole township, and embraced its fair proportion of good arable lands. It is now far more valuable than all the rest of the township. The northern boundary of the Set- tling-lots would be indicated by an extension of Burbank Street; the southern, by a line drawn through South Mountain Street at its intersection with South, passing a little north of Melville Lake.
The numbering of the lots, which was peculiarly arbitrary and puzzling, recognized in them but two classes, -Lots North and Lots South. "No. 1, North," was the most westerly in the upper tier. From this, the regular numerical order was followed up to 13, which denoted the Ministry Lot, embracing nearly all the territory which lies between the west branch of the Housatonic and North Street.
No. 14 was found by a diagonal transit to the lot in the middle range, south of what is now the Park, whence the numerical order is preserved to 25 at the Dalton Border. No. 26 designated the Minister's Lot, north of the Park, and the next in territorial prox- imity to 13. Nos. 26 to 31, counting east, completed the survey- or's tier of " Lots North."
Lot No. 1, of the technical southern tier, was the most westerly in the middle range. Thence arithmetical regularity prevailed up to No. 15, on the corner of West and South Streets. No. 16 dropped diagonally again to the southern range, where it indicated the lot on the south-eastern corner of South and Honasada Streets, which extends across the Housatonic River. Thence the enumeration again proceeded in due order to 27, on the castern line of the town. No. 28 was found next west of 16. Thence the figures increase west- ward to Lot 33, the highest in the list, which was laid out in ad- dition to the prescribed sixty-three. In conveyances, leases, and similar instruments, the premises were generally designated as
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" Lots North, or South," as the case might be. Sometimes, how- ever, the form, "Lot No. - , North (South or Middle) tier," was used : but here the number referred to the relation of the lot to its class, north or south; the mention of the tier in which it was actually located was mere collateral description.
As soon as the terms of the joint proprietorship were fixed, in 1741, the whole matter of complying with the requisitions attached to the grant was intrusted to Livingston; and, either through ignorance or wilfulness, setting at naught one of the provisions of the act, he at once visited the township with seventy Dutchmen, whom he hoped to induce to purchase sixty of the lots "at a moderate lay " in money, with the further consideration that they should perform all the duties imposed by the General Court upon the entire tract of twenty-four thousand acres.1
The requirement that cach settler must take the good, bad, or in- different lands which might fall to him by lot in the confined tiers which had been set apart for that purpose, was unsatisfactory to the Dutchmen ; and perhaps the soil of Poontoosuck did not com- pare so favorably with the broad fertility of the Valley of the Hud- son as it did with that of the regions from which the eastern emi- grants came. Perhaps, also, the strangers at whom it was aimed, observing the clause in the Boston patent excluding them from its benefits, may have conceived a doubt as to the validity of the title which they were to receive. They certainly, upon hearing the terms proposed, peremptorily refused "even so much as to ac- cept the lands if they were offered as a gift, not to speak of the conditions attached to them," unless they might select each his hundred acres where it pleased him; which would have left but a barren remainder to the original proprietors.
The Dutchmen - wisely for themselves, as the event proved - returned as they came, leaving Mr. Livingston and his partners sadly broken up in their plans, and, owing to previous delays, sorely pressed for time.
Upon this Capt. Huston, who had surveyed the township and was familiar with its good points, learning how affairs stood with
1 Petitions to the Provincial Government from the settlers, in 1762-6, alleged that Wendell and Stoddard left it to Livingston to obtain settlers, with the express expectation that he would procure them from the Dutch, as the place lay near their country, whence they could bring provisions, etc., until they could raise it; " and thus they would have a Dutch town at once."
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his old employers, induced a number of his acquaintances in West- field and thereabout to visit the place. Their inspection proving satisfactory, a company was formed, which sent Capt. Huston, Joseph Root, and John Lee to Albany, " empowered to agree with Mr. Livingston for forty of the aforesaid Dutch-despised lots." Livingston was so well pleased with Huston's proceedings, that he gave him three good lots as a gratuity ; and he so successfully plied the committee, that, instead of merely making an agreement for the forty lots, - getting a bond for a deed, as was probably the expectation of the company, - they bought them outright, giving their note for the purchase-money, which was fixed at £1200, cur- rent money of the Province; " as much, within £120," the settlers were fond of boasting, as Col. Wendell paid to Boston for the whole township.1 These statements, although ex parte, are probably sub- stantially correct, as the answers of the respondents to the memo- rials do not attempt to controvert them.
The committee also bound themselves, or the settlers under them, to perform two-thirds of all the duties enjoined by the conditions of the grant upon the whole township. Certainly, taking into view all the circumstances, these Connecticut-River Yankees did not drive a shrewd bargain with the lord of the Livingston Manor. The Dutchmen were the sharper of the two parties.
The lots obtained by this purchase were Nos. 1 to 8 inclusive, in both classes ; Nos. 9 to 32 south, inclusive, except 14, 16, 17, and 27; and Nos. 16, 17, 18, and 19, north.
Most of these lands were deficient in pine timber, of which there were rich forests in the "Commons," as the lands outside the Settling-lots, held in common by the original proprietors, were called. Marble and limestone, also abundant in many localities, were not universally distributed. It was therefore provided in the deed of the forty lots that the settlers " should have free right to cut wood, dig stone, and carry away the same from any part of the township, sufficient for building, fencing, and fuel." After- wards, it was one of the grievances complained of by The Planta- tion, that Wendell's and Stoddard's heirs repudiated this portion of
1 Sce Appendix A, regarding the values of Massachusetts bills of credit. The facts concerning the dealings of Livingston are collected chiefly from two memo- rials sent by the Pittsfield settlers to the Governor and General Court, -one in 1762, now preserved in the Massachusetts archives ; the other in 1766, found among the William Williams Papers.
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their solemn indenture, on the pretence that Livingston had not been empowered to enter into any such agreement. The increas- ing value of pine-lands perhaps helped them to the conclusion.
The indenture was made in November, 1742 : and it was agreed · that each of the grantees should begin a settlement upon his home- lot during the next spring or summer, and continue it, unless in the mean time war should ensue between France and England; in which case the settlement was to be commenced within one year after the declaration of peace. "Accordingly, in the spring of 1743, their lands having been distributed to them by lot, the pioneers of Pittsfield promptly took possession of the spot where they hoped soon to welcome their young wives to homes, which, if not free from danger and discomfort, were such as those in which their mothers, through much love and high resolve, had braved the terrors of the old frontier. Most of the forty were young men; and, with many, the marriage-day waited only the promised home in the wilderness." We may imagine with what forms the fancy of the stout-hearted pioneers peopled the changing scene, as, with strong arm and ringing axe, they attacked the
fastnesses of the forest in that half-hopeful summer of 1743. . Half hopeful : for anxious forebodings must have continually op- pressed the workers; knowing, as they did, the disturbed state of Europe, and that the intrigues of the Stuarts (name of ill omen to Massachusetts, even though those who bore it no longer ruled), favored by circumstances, were likely at any moment to embroil France and England. In the fall, came closer fore- shadowing of evil. Word was sent by Col. Stoddard that hos- tilities were immediately imminent ; and, taught by the sad experience of former wars that the first intimation of their actual existence might come from the war-whoop of Canadian savages surrounding their clearing at midnight, the pioneers abandoned their labors, not to resume them for five tedious years. It was the old story, - the ambitions of corrupt courts and powerful capi- tals working woe in the most insignificant and remote corners of their vast empires.
There is no absolute certainty as to the names of those who took part in this first attempt to plant a settlement at Poontoosuck ; although it seems clear that a majority of those who engaged in the second essay also took part in the first. But, between 1744 and 1748, many of the pioneers doubtless enlisted in the military
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expeditions to which Massachusetts contributed so liberally ; and, in those peculiarly exhausting eampaigns, some must have fallen by disease or in battle. Others relinquished their purpose of settling at Poontoosuck in the five years which elapsed before another effort could be made to carry it out.
Only a few of the deeds from Huston, Lee, and Root can now be found either in the original copies, or in the registry at Spring- field. One of these conveys to Samuel Root, jun., of Westfield, Lot No. 5, South, to which his son Oliver - the major of Revolu- tionary fame -succeeded, Mr. Root dying before he could carry out his intention of removing to Poontoosuck. David Mosely, " gentleman," got Lot No. 7; Aaron Dewey, 8; Hezekiah Jones, 19; John Tremain, 29, - all in class South -the consideration in cach ease being £30. The grantees also severally bound them- selves each to perform his proportionate part of the obligations which had been assumed by the grantors, and, specifically, to begin settlements upon their respective lots in the spring or summer of 1743, - with the war proviso, as in the Livingston in- denture; to continue the same in such manner, that, at the end of two years, there should be a dwelling-house, and family living in it, upon cach lot, and to keep possession by similar occupancy for at least the two years next succeeding.
The half-forgotten story of the first brief intrusion of civilized life into the red man's Poontoosuck is peculiarly alluring to the pen of the chronicler. Nor will it be uninstructive, if, in the best light which we can get, we seek to portray the township as it appeared to those who, before "the old French wars," were striving with busy axe, and musket near at hand, to prepare in its wilds a home for those scarcely less hardy - certainly not less brave - than themselves."
If, from some neighboring mountain-top, the pioneer, as he approached, gained a view of the amphitheatre which lay below, the scene was one to enchant even the most prosaic heart. All the minor irregularities, all the sharper angles, were softened and rounded by an enamel of forest, in which were embossed the rolling outlines of hill and valley. The landscape, stretching through a range of fifty miles, presented, until all other hues were lost in the blue of distance, the unbroken green of waving tree- tops, - save where, through a few chance openings, the Housatonic flashed back the sunlight, or some shimmering glimpse of lakelet
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revealed its lonely surface, upon which, perhaps, still lingered the graceful bark of a wandering Mohegan. At intervals, in the sea of green, a spot of darker verdure, where the boughs stirred more stiffly to the breeze, betrayed the lurking-places of the gloomy and frequent hemlock-swamps. Around the southern borders of Lake Shoonkeekmoonkeek, and on some of the Taconic hills, glowed those noble groves of pine whose fame, attested by a few not unworthy relics, remains to this day. Elsewhere the practised eye of the woodsman recognized the maple, the elm, the beech, the birch, the linden, the hickory, the chestnut, the red (and infre- quently the white) oak, the cherry, the ash, the larch, the fir, the spruce, and every tribe of New-England forestry except the cedar, whose spicy aroma never mingles with the odors of our groves.
Thus the scene must have burst upon the pioneer, as, with hope's elastic step, he approached it in leafy June. How much more glowingly it lay outstretched, as, sick at heart with hope's deferment, he turned away from it in many-colored October !
As he descended the mountain-side by Unkamet's Road, or such other rude path as might offer, it would have been strange had his ear not been greeted by the growl of the bear, the howl of the wolf, or the cries of the lynx 1 and the loup-cervier; 2 for all these had their dens among the tumbled rocks of the neighboring ravines.
As he proceeded, he might have caught a vanishing glimpse of a fox's brush, or the bristling quills of a porcupine. He was pretty sure to startle a brace of rabbits, and send a woodchuck burrowing to his hole ; while squirrels -red, black, gray, and striped - gambolled by scores up and down the shaggy sides of the great trees. The skunk made his presence known ; and perhaps a raccoon, on some fallen mossy trunk, challenged a shot from the ever-ready firelock. But that, no doubt, the marksman would have reserved for the moose which might presently peer at him from the recesses of the forest, the deer that was almost sure to dash across his path, or the wild turkey stalking among the ferns. Above him, the eagle and the hawk swept in dizzy circles. From the dank borders of the lake, the shrill scream of the loon and the harsh note of the heron saluted him. The black duck swung upon the still waters; and possibly a sea-gull, which had wandered inland with the mist of the
1 The Bay-lynx, or American wildcat.
2 The Canadian lynx.
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Sound, dipped its white wing along their surface. All the feathered host which, with bright hues or melodious song, make glad New- England woods, fluttered among the overhanging branches.1
On every side resounded the drumming and the whirr of the grouse,2 to be succeeded at nightfall by the complainings of the whip-poor-will, the solemn to-whoo of the great white owl, and the dismal screech of his ill-omened cousin, prophetic of St. François war-whoops.
But while some harmless striped or green snake may have glided across his path, or the black (now long since extermi- nated) have lain coiled near by, or perhaps the milk-adder lurked in the under-brush, the wayfarer listened in vain for the warning rattle of the dread of New-England fields, against which the soil of Northern Berkshire is charmed, by the prevailing virtues of the ash-tree, as the popular faith avers.
All the denizens of the Green-Mountain forests, save the rattle- snake, might thus have come to salute or dismay the stranger, who, in a little while, was to usurp their ancient domain. His reception, however, was likely to be less tumultuous. The more conspicuous members of the forest-guild may, indeed, have absented themselves entirely from the assemblage; for sometimes, although the wood was populous with game, even the skilled Indian hunter, familiar with all its haunts, sought it in vain, and went supperless to his bed of turf, which perhaps might nevertheless, at the very moment, be indented with the foot-prints of a hundred deer. The scout found his only trusted commissariat in a bag of pounded corn; and the commanders of outposts in deer-forests, acknowl- edging gratefully the receipt of a dried codfish, complained that it was impossible to obtain meat in their vicinity. When one reads of " a country swarming with game," it is necessary to remember that nevertheless it may oftentimes be hard to come at, and that hunting is always a precarious mnode of subsistence, even for a savage.
Still, all that we have suggested might have occurred to the pioneer, as, descending from the Hoosac Mountains, he trudged to
1 Mr. James HI. Butler, in 1867, made a collection embracing more than one hundred varieties of the smaller birds which inhabit the woods and fields of Pitts- field, - some of them of brilliant plumage, and others of exquisite grace of form.
2 The ruffed grouse, invariably but erroneously called by New-Englanders the partridge, the name of a species of pheasant not native to this region.
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his claim, perhaps beyond Lake Onota; and doubtless, in his camp of logs, he often welcomed to a savory meal of game the Dutch fur-trader, the Eastern surveyor, or the messenger who bore, between Boston and Albany, intelligence of French and Spanish movements, and propositions for mutual defence in the fore- shadowed troubles. News of wars and rumors of wars were eagerly discussed over plentiful viands supplied by the neighboring hunt- ing-grounds.
. If Unkamet's Road passed - where the favorable nature of the ground invited it -along the northern verges of Goodrich, Silver, and Onota Lakes, and directly from base to base of the opposing mountains, it afforded a path, which, although narrow, was free from any serious obstacles. But if the pioneer bent his course south of the lakes, by the road -now East and West Streets - laid ont by the surveyor, traversing the whole range of the settling- lots, he would have been obliged to struggle through no less than five swamps, which, uninviting as they appeared from the mountain- top, were still more repulsive upon nearer acquaintance. But, fre- quent and inconveniently located as these sloughs were, they did not cover a very large portion of the surface ; and some of them after- wards became valuable meadow-land. The pioneer, if he were for- tunate in his guidance, was able to avoid them by winding paths of no very violent détour ; and, in doing so, he came upon rich, loamy uplands inviting the plough ; lawnlike openings, suggestive of cot- tage homes ; and meadows weary of waiting for the English grass prescribed by The Great and General Court. The richer soils were found covered with massive maples, huge oaks, and spreading beeches; the thinner, with gigantic pines, enormous trunks, fit to intimidate even the sturdiest logger. Except in the case of the pine, or where individual trees of other species were specially adapted to, or convenient for, the purposes of building or fencing, the settlers were, indeed, not accustomed to attempt these monsters of the forest by fellage with the axe, but by the slower process of girdling and burning. 1 The pioneers at Poontoosuck in 1743 spent the summer
1 Removing a circlet of bark around the tree, so as to interrupt the ascent of the sap. The tree thus became dry and ready for the fire, which was generally applied to it at the end of twelve months. This process was only less laborious than fellage with the axe ; it being necessary to collect the fragments of the fallen trunks in piles, heap brushwood and other lighter fuel about them, and repeat the burning until all was consumed, - leaving, however, a ghastly array of stumps, to be dis- posed of by time.
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in the preliminary labor of girdling; but, for six dreary years fol- lowing, the dead trees spread their leafless limbs above the young, green boles, and no man came to apply the torch.
The interval was, however, not without events of interest to the embryo plantation. In 1746, the enemy pressed, more cruelly than in any other year of the war, upon the frontiers of the Province ; but, in that year, Capt. Huston sold the three lots given him by Livingston -viz., No. 12, North, called the " mill-lot," between what is now Onota Street and the river-to Zebediah Stiles, for £40; No. 16, South, to Eldad Taylor, gentleman, for £57; No. 2, South, to Thomas Noble, saddler, for £49, - the purchasers all being described as of Westfield, and the conveyancer in each case contriving to spell the name of the plantation, Puntusick. The apparent advance in prices must be attributed, not to an increase in the market value of the lands, but to the depreciation of the currency.
« But the event, among these early movements towards a settle- ment, of the most moment to the after-fortunes of the plantation, was the connection with them of William Williams, who, from that time until the Revolution, was the most prominent personage in the place, holding the most important offices in town and county ; sometimes being at once chief justice of the common pleas, judge of probate, colonel of militia, representative, selectman, assessor, moderator of town-meeting, clerk, and hog-reeve, besides serving upon several committees. He was the son of William Williams, a successful pastor at Weston, and grandson of the eminent divine of the same name who was ordained at Hatfield in 1685. Robert Williams, the founder. of the family upon this continent, was admitted a freeman at Roxbury in 1638, where he maintained a respectable position, and became the ancestor of the long array of politicians, soldiers, and divines bearing the name of Williams, who flourished especially in the Colonial and Revolutionary periods of our history. His son Isaac, the father of the Hatfield minister, was of some local prominence, and represented Newton in the General Conrt. William of Hatfield first married a daugh- ter of the distinguished theologian, Dr. Cotton, from whom the Pittsfield settler thus traced his descent. For his second spouse, the gallant old divine succeeded in winning the younger sister of his son's (the Weston minister) wife, who was the daughter of another noted theological controversalist, Rev. Solomon Stoddard,
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and sister of the colonel of multitudinous public service. Wil- liam, of Pittsfield, who thus piqued himself upon a very reverend and honorable ancestry, was born at Weston in 1711, and gradn- ated at Harvard College in 1729, as his father before him had done in 1705, and his grandfather in 1683. In college, from a liberal spirit and a meagre allowance of means, he formed a habit of anticipating his income, which clung to and cruelly embarrassed him through life. After graduation, he applied himself to the study of medicine ; but, having commenced practice, he abandoned it " as by no means consonant with his genius." 1
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