USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1800 to the year 1876 > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69
We select this period in which to gather up the scattered threads of our narrative, and to arrange them for continuation, because the year 1800 was a grand landmark in the history of the town, as well as of the country; when, with the change in
4
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
political domination, there began a more gradual, but quite as decided, change in social views and habits, a new departure in the direction of milder laws, and a lessened reverence for prescriptive absurdity and wrong entrenched behind antiquated forms. In
T
14.
134
12 5
.
=
n
14
SIMON BOWS
13
ENSIGNS POND
9
8
6
5
3 .**
9
10
12
10
6 TO ALBANY
2
3.
40
60
13
0 16
70
ENSICNA
GALTON
LUCES MILL
19
TO WASHTN
17
WHITES MILLS
SHOP
CAPT. FAIRFIELD
ELI BUSHI
FAIRFIELD
8
SHOP
TANNERYS
MAP OF PITTSFIELD
IN 1800.
YONET
NOTE INDICATES HOUSES
BARK MILL
SAW MILL
10
town-affairs a more than usual number of new men began, about that time, to become prominent ; new industries were introduced, and new interests began to develop themselves.
We shall attempt to build our description of the central village
0
7
42.
3 0
7
5
P
.
5014
12
0
5
4
= 100
24
89
O
415
BARNARD
100
20 g
21 22 23
FORCE
2.
URL _ TO LANESBORO
TO DALTON
8
D
DR. LEE
BARNS
5
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
by the aid of a map compiled from the best authorities which we have been able to consult; the description of travelers who visited the town at that time; the vivid memories of venerable citizens ; the faithful delineations in the local and advertising columns of contemporary newspapers, and the guidance of nearly contempo- rary maps and plans.
MAP OF PITTSFIELD, A. D. 1800.
REFERENCES.
Road to Lanesboro (North street).
1. Darius Larned.
2. - -, goldsmith.
3. Wilcox, shoemaker.
4. Blacksmith shop.
5. Jonathan Allen, store.
6. Hickcock, sexton.
7. Thomas Allen, Jr.
8. Jared Ingersoll, tavern.
9. Shed.
10. Joseph Allen.
11. Fothergill.
12. Colonel Easton.
13. Joseph Hale.
14. Stephen Mead.
15. Thomas Brown (negro).
Road to Albany (West street).
1. James D. Colt.
2. Slaughter-house.
3. Dr. Timothy Childs.
4. Widow Cook.
5. Azariah Root.
6. Jolın Snow.
7. George Randow.
8. Joel Dickinson, house and shop.
9. Zebediah Stiles Langworthy.
10. Siah Stiles.
11. Dr. Kitteridge.
12. Rufus Allen.
13. William Miller.
14. Dr. Timothy Childs, farm-house.
15. John U. Seymour.
Road to Lenox (South street).
1. J. & S. D. Colt's store.
2. John Stoddard's (store and post-office).
3. Hay-scales.
4. Stalham Williams.
5. Ashbel Strong.
6. William Hollister.
7. Ezekiel Root.
8. Captain Daniel Weller.
9. Major Dan. Weller, house and tannery.
10. Enoch Weller.
Road to Dalton (East street).
1. Meeting-house.
2. Town-house.
3. P. Allen's printing-office.
4. Jolın Chandler Williams.
5. Rev. Thomas Allen.
6. John Strong (Lemuel Pomeroy).
7. William Mellen.
8. Thomas Gold.
9. Joshua Danforth (store and post- office).
10. Simon Larned.
11. Perez Graves.
12. Captain Jacob Ensign.
13. Oramel Fanning.
14. -- Wadsworth.
15. Septimus Bingham.
16. Eli Maynard.
17. Tannery.
18. Ebenezer White.
19. Z. Burt.
The road upon which the residences of Dr. Lee, Eli Bush, and Captain Fairfield are laid down is Honasada street. A forge is laid down upon the map, north of the crossing of the river by West street, but it had been removed previous to the year 1800.
The village thus mapped is described by the Duke de la Roche- foucault Liancourt, a French exile who traveled through the United States in 1795-7, as " A small but neat town, containing several large and handsome houses of joiner's work." President Dwight, in his travels, speaks of it in similar terms, and we have evidence of the excellent joiner work in a considerable number of houses which were erected previous to 1800, and are still among the better class of dwellings ; some of them among the most luxu- rious mansions of the town. We will enumerate most of them,
6
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
specifying the principal changes which have been made in their exteriors, so that the reader familiar with the town as it is in 1875, may gain some idea of what it was in 1800.
The building designated as No. 6 East street, was erected by Captain John Strong, of revolutionary fame, and was kept for many years by him, and by his son of the same name, as a tavern. In the year 1800, when it was purchased by Lemuel Pomeroy, it was a two-story, gambrel-roof house, very similar in appearance to the homestead of John Chandler Williams which stood next west of it. Mr. Pomeroy substituted a third story for the gam- brel-roof attic; and his son, Mr. Robert Pomeroy, who succeeded him, has since built a large wing on the south-east corner.
The John Chandler Williams' homestead, known to the pres- ent generation as the Edward A. Newton house, then stood on the corner of Park square and East street. It was erected by Colonel James Easton, who intended it as a residence for his son ; but, owing to his pecuniary difficulties, it was sold about the close of the revolution, and before its completion, to Mr. Williams, by whom it was finished. In order to make room for the court- house, it has been removed a little east, to the corner of Wendell avenue ; but its external appearance has been little changed.
The square mansion, No. 5 South street, was built in 1792, by Hon. Aslıbel Strong, by whose heirs it was owned until 1862, when it was purchased by George and David Campbell. It has been subjected to a few alterations, but its appearance is not essentially altered.
The Dr. John M .. Brewster homestead, No. 10 East street, built by Colonel Simon Larned, previous to 1790, remains quite unchanged. The large, square house erected by Thomas Gold,1 and designated No. S East street, is now the residence of T. F. Plunkett ; a mansard-roof has been added to it, and a more elabo- rate portico takes the place of that across which " Tall poplar trees their shadows threw; " it has otherwise been carefully protected.
1 After the death of Mr. Gold, this mansion became the summer residence of his son-in-law, Hon. Nathan Appleton. Mr. Appleton's daughter became the wife of Henry W. Longfellow, and the poet gave a new charm to her home in the ballad of " The Old Clock on the Stairs ; " the subject of which stood on the broad landing of the staircase which ascends from the spacious entrance hall. The description of the house in the poem is literally accurate, and its story is equally truthful. We may add that " the old-fashioned hos- pitality," which " used to be," still is.
7
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
The meeting-house, which faced the park, is now the gymna- sium of Maplewood Institute, where it retains, externally, all its architectural features except the belfry, for which an observatory has been substituted.
Outside the district covered by our map, the large, square flat- roofed mansion, now the residence of J. R. Morewood, was built by Henry Van Schaack, in 1781, with extraordinary care and liberal expenditure ; and was for many years much the best-built edifice in the town. The wooden walls were lined with brick, and the carpentry exhibits a perfection of skill which excites the admiration of modern workmen who are called upon to make alterations in it. Repairs are rarely needed. It is little changed except by the removal of the broad chimney and the old-fashioned balustrade which surrounded the roof.
Mr. Van Schaack removing to his native place, Kinderhook, in 1807, sold his house in Pittsfield to Elkanah Watson, a gentle- man of very similar tastes, and the founder of the Berkshire Ag- ricultural Society, who occupied it until his removal to Albany in 1816. It was then purchased by Major Thomas Melville, who resided in it until 1837, and was succeeded by his son, Rob- ert Melville. For some years previous to its purchase by Mr. Morewood, in 1851, it was kept as a boarding-house, and numbered among its guests Henry W. Longfellow, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and President John Tyler.
The Van Schaack mansion stands upon the east side of South street, a mile below the park. On the adjoining estate, upon the south-east, and about a quarter of a mile distant, stands the broad- chimneyed, hospitable-looking old dwelling, built some years pre- vious to 1800, by Captain David Bush, under whose rule, and that of his son, it was a famous inn. It faces upon Wendell street ; and now, but slightly changed in its general outline, it is the summer home of the family of the late Allan Melville. The old place had the good fortune, in 1852, to be purchased by Her- man Melville, then in the freshness of his early fame. Mr. Mel- ville named it Arrow-Head, from the Indian relics found on the estate, and made it a house of many stories ; writing in it, besides Moby Dick, and other romances of the sea, the Piazza tales, which took their name from a piazza built by the author upon the north end of the house, which commands a bold and striking view of Greylock and the intervening valley. "My Chimney and I,"
8
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
a quaintly humorous essay, of which the cumbersome old chim- ney-overbearing tyrant of the home-is the hero, was also writ- ten here, as well as "October Mountain," a sketch of mingled philosophy and word-painted landscape, which found its inspira- tion in the massy and brilliant autumnal tints presented by a prominent and thickly-wooded spur of the Hoosac mountains, as seen from the south-eastern windows, at Arrow-Head, on a fine day after the early frosts.1
Of a still earlier date than Arrow-Head or Broad Hall, was the cottage erected about the year 1767, by Woodbridge Little, Esq., and occupied by him until his death in 1813. It still stands near the crossing of the Boston and Albany railroad by Beaver street, and is little changed. It is owned by Mr. Frederic C. Peck.
In the west part still remain, almost precisely as they stood nearly a hundred years ago-save time's mellow coloring-four houses. That built by Captain William Francis, and in which that influential citizen and ardent patriot lived and died, is still owned and occupied by his descendants. That built by Robert Francis, is now owned by Edmund French, and that of Rev. John Francis, in which the Baptist church was re-organized, and where many of its earlier services were held. That erected by Mather Wright was long occupied by the late Linus Parker.
In the same vicinity is still another interesting and well-pre- served specimen of the dwellings of the fathers; a square, flat- roofed house, the second story slightly projecting over the first. It stands on West street, south of Lake Onota, and is still known to the older residents of the town as the Jesse Goodrich tavern, although the builder, who gave it his name, has long since passed away, and the sign that used to swing before it long ago ceased to creak. Mr. Goodrich was a worthy man and a thorough builder, and his tavern is one of the best-preserved relics, being unchanged externally, and showing within the solid old-fashioned wainscoting and balusters. Even the boards which, at a much later date, divided the once-popular ball-room into smaller apart- ments, are of a breadth marvelous at this day.
Among the houses which have disappeared, there was, of course, a larger proportion of inferior dwellings than among those which remain; for the more nearly perfect the material and
1 Herman Melville, and his brother, who succeeded him in the ownership of Arrow-Head, were nephews of Major Thomas Melville.
9
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
workmanship, the greater was the probability of preservation. In 1800, however, very shabby and uncomfortable abodes were, on the main streets, extremely rare.
There was no mansion fully equal, in all respects, to Major Van Schaack's ; but some were nearly so, and many would still be called handsome and commodious, except by those who deem all the modern improvements absolutely essential to comfort.
By far the greater number of the more modest dwellings have perished, and we have neither space nor data to reconstruct them ; but we will try to recall a few of the more conspicuous.
On what is known as the "Berkshire corner" of North and West streets, was a building of considerable size, with a gambrel roof; but it had undergone, in parts, some alterations, precisely of what character there are different reports. It was occupied as an inn by Captain John Dickinson, Darius Larned, Captain Joseph Merrick, and by Solomon L. Russell and brother. In 1798, the landlord was Captain Dickinson, and his daughter, Par- thenia, afterwards Mrs. Curtis T. Fenn, was born in it at that date. In 1800, it was kept by Darius Larned. In 1810, Captain Joseph Merrick, an earnest federalist, was the host and proprie- tor, and having, as the democrats alleged, refused to provide them a Fourth of July dinner, they determined to erect, and did erect, on the opposite side of the park, a handsome hotel of three stories, one of whose glories was a spacious hall for the accommoda- tion of political meetings, public dinners, and dancing parties. Now, Captain Merrick's inn had also a hall, in its gambrel-roof, which had long been occupied by Mystic Lodge of Free Masons, and for various other purposes of such a room. Captain Merrick was determined not to be eclipsed in so important a point by his new rival ; but he kept his own counsel, and no one suspected his purpose until, one fine morning, Major Butler Goodrich, with whom he had made arrangements, appeared upon the ground with a large force of men and prepared material, and so rapidly was the work done, that before rumor could gather a curious crowd to speculate and criticise, a spacious third story had taken the place of the gambrel-roof. Captain Merrick, his brother Masons, and the federal public generally, had a hall of which they were proud, and which came in excellent good play when the Washington Benevolent Society was shortly after organized.
The Messrs. Russell having succeeded Captain Merrick in the
2
£
10
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
proprietorship of the inn, it was accidentally burned in 1826, and gave place to the still more favorite Berkshire House, which they erected the next year.
On the opposite corner, formed by South and West streets, was the two-story, gambrel-roof building-a mate, when it was built, to the inn-which was occupied, in 1800, as a dwelling-house by James D. Colt, Jr. One or two years afterwards, Mr. Colt erected the residence south of his store, now owned and occupied by George W. Campbell, and was succeeded in his previous home by Hon. John W. Hulbert.
No. 3 East street, assigned on the map to Allen's printing- office, was a gambrel-roof cottage, which had been built by Rev. Thomas Allen, as a store for his son Jonathan, who commenced his business life in it. It had been the printing-office of three newspapers previous to the Sun. In 1809, it was removed to North street. It will often re-appear in our story. Next south of it, the parsonage of which a description and view were given in our first volume, was still the home of the village pastor.
On Honasada street, the Long House, built by Colonel William Williams, and which has been previously described,1 continued in good preservation, and it was owned and occupied by Joseph Shearer, a thrifty citizen, who had thriftily married the colonel's widow.
Of the same model was the Ingersoll tavern, famous as a bar- rack and a depot for prisoners in the Shays rebellion. This noted hostelry stood in the rear of the present south corner of North and Depot streets, facing east, with an ample court-yard in front. In much later years, when it had been abandoned by the Ingersoll family, it was known popularly as "Fort Necessity," partly from the tradition of its warlike uses, and partly because families removing to Pittsfield, in days when there were no su- perfluous dwellings, were compelled to pass their novitiate in this crazy edifice until a better home could be built or provided for them. The well, whose water is sadly deteriorated by impure surroundings, is still known as the "Fort Well."
Dr. Timothy Childs, in 1800, lived in the square flat-roof dwelling, which still stands, on the hill opposite the present Bos- ton and Albany railroad depot, a part of the ministry-lot bought
1 This description erroneously gave it a gambrel-roof. It was angular.
11
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
by him of the town in 1774. Attached to it as an L, is the gambrel-roof cottage which he built soon after the purchase.
In the year 1800, the dwelling-houses of Pittsfield were divided in abont equal proportions between the gambrel, angular, and flat-roofed. Of those which first succeeded to the log huts of the earliest settlers, the greater number had the gambrel-roof, and were of one story, although the meeting-house, the school-house, the parsonage, the "Long House " of Colonel Williams, the residence of Colonel Oliver Root on West street, and some others were angular.
The flat-roofs began to come in fashion about the close of the revolution, and in 1800 were still the modern style. They were often surrounded by a railing of ornamental balusters, the posts of which were surmounted by urns or globes. Fences of a simi- lar style enclosed the ample court-yards of the square mansions which generally sustained this class of roof. About the date of the incoming of this style of domestic architecture, Henry Van Schaack brought from Hartford, in his saddle-bags, the slips from which grew the Lombardy poplars introduced into Berkshire county ; and this soon became a favorite shade-tree,-if a bundle of twigs, so stiff, so straight, so tall and slender, and so little um- brageous, could properly be styled a shade-tree. The Lombardy poplar is inseparably associated with our ideal of the statelier homesteads in the era we are endeavoring to depict. Before the year 1800, they had found a place in many of the court-yards of Pittsfield, and we may safely introduce them, in all their youth- ful freshness, keeping guard, like so many grenadiers, over the residences of Henry Van Schaack, Rev. Mr. Allen, John Chan- dler Williams, Dr. Timothy Childs, Ezekiel Root, and the first James D. Colt, as well as, doubtless, over many other homes which have kept no memory of their faithful service.
They had, however,-especially around the tasteful homes of Thomas Gold and Henry Van Schaack -their newly-planted rivals, in the more broad-leaved and generous button-woods, destined, not like the poplar to outlive the popular favor, but to perish of premature blight when their venerable and ample shade was most dearly prized.
A taste for the cultivation of flowers and ornamental shrubs had already manifested itself, although far from universally or even commonly. In the very first interval of rest after the
12
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
French and Indian wars, we found the garden of Colonel William Williams adorned with, at least, the pink, the carnation and the gilly-flower. In 1800, the flower-beds of Pittsfield, which were generally placed conspicuously in the front court-yards, exhibited, in addition to the noble old favorites of Colonel Williams's gar- den, the hollyhock, the sun-flower, the morning-glory, the sweet pea, the marigold, and others upon whose petals there still linger, in many memories, the roseate glow, the balmy aroma, and the dewy freshness of life's morning; and which are, therefore, held in the heart's esteem above all the wealth of the conservatory.
Of the flowering shrubs, the principal were the rose and pur- ple lilac ; of flowering climbers, now and then, a honeysuckle; of non-flowering climbers, the woodbine and the native grape.
As yet, native shade-trees received little attention from the gardener, and wild flowers none at all; but, as nature planted them, they served well the place of all others with the mass of the people. Few, if any of the hundred-acre home-lots, which stretched across the center of the township, from east to west, were, as yet, entirely denuded of their groves. On many, con- siderable relics of the original forests still flourished. Within a few rods of the park, on West and South streets, were thickly- wooded hemlock-swamps.1
Beyond the settling-lots, a large, perhaps the greater, portion of the "squares" into which the " commons " were divided in 1759-60, were still uncleared. With the elms, oak, pine, maples, chestnut, and other trees of these woods, were thickly intermin- gled the sweet-brier, the azalea, the mountain-ash, the sumach, the wild cherry, the moose-wood, and the white thorn, so close to every house that although their beauty must have often held the rapt gazer in charmed admiration, none thought of transplanting them.
It would be most unjust, indeed, to censure, as without appre- ciation of the beautiful in nature, or even as without a keen sense
1 Mrs. C. T. Fenn remembers, when a young girl, parting often with a favorite companion-the latter being compelled to pass through the "swamp- road," on South street, on her way home-that she waited, calling to her by way of encouragement, until she reached the opening on the other side, now the head of Church street. Report located wolves in the wooded recesses, afterwards the garden of Rev. Dr. Todd, from which fearful cries were heard at night. A tangled swamp extended from near the west side of South street to the present line of the Housatonic railroad, and from West street nearly to the present West Housatonic street.
13
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
of her charms, all those who thought it but a vain labor to bring together exotics from the ends of the earth, when not only the fair, wild, flowering shrubs, which we have named, were scattered in profusion close around their homes, but the gorgeous laurel, with its glossy foliage, the trailing arbutus, luxuriously delicate of hue and fragrance, the fairy-tinted and quaintly-shaped lady's slipper, the columbine in her harlequin garb of red and yellow, the gentian with her fringed ruff of deepest blue, the asters, white, blue, purple and orange, the violets and houstonia cerulea clouding the earth, the clustering anemone, the adder's-tongue, the wake-robin, the wild pink, and other forms of floral loveli- ness, peeped from every thicket and spangled every field; when the myriad plumes of the purple orchis, and the pickerel-weed, in- vaded the waters of every stream ; and, higher up their banks, the scarlet splendor of the cardinal-flower dazzled the eye; and, most beautiful of all, on the bosom of every lake floated the pure white lily of the waters.
In painting the homes of the fathers, we must surround them with a thousand forms of native grace and beauty which have withdrawn from our own; and it would be a libel upon the blood we inherit, to declare that they in whose veins it ran seventy- five years ago, because they did not seek to augment the charms with which untutored nature sought to delight them, were there- fore insensible to their influence. No less would it be a libel upon history, when we remember how the early discoverers exhausted hyperbole in their description of the new world's glories, to say that the children of these same men, when they came to dwell among these same glories, were struck with an inane blindness which prevented their enjoyment of them. Not even the priva- tions, unintermitted toil, and frequent suffering of pioneer life could have effected that transformation.
No, we may depend upon it, that the descendants of the genera- tion to which belonged Drake and Raleigh, Hudson, the Cabots and the other voyagers of glowing story; and the ancestors of the race who claim Bryant and Longfellow and Lowell, did, with tender and true appreciation, enjoy the splendors of field and forest which the voyagers who went before them, and the poets who came after, celebrated with like fervor. And that appre- ciation was none the less genuine because it was casual, un- studied, and not often eloquently expressed; the golden thread
14
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
interwoven by nature with a life otherwise of somewhat rude and somber texture, not that inwrought by culture with warp and woof of silken leisure.
In making these natural flower-gardens and their sheltering grove thus prominent in our picture, we do not, then, unduly magnify what the men and women of 1800 regarded- lightly ; but give its just place to a feature which went far to satisfy their craving for the beautiful, and contributed much to relieve the barren aspect of a town of generally-unshaded streets, and court- yards for the most part unadorned by shrub, or vine, or flower; even if, as was most likely to happen, they were not deformed by unsightly objects.
Nor must we forget another source which brought its aid to the same end; the apple orchards, which, planted near almost every house, afforded, all summer, a fair and cheerful sight; but in the season of blossoming, thick flecked the scene with clouds of splendor rivaling the most fleecy that float in the skies of June. Such, and with such surroundings of trees, shrubbery and flowers, were the abodes of the people of Pittsfield, about the beginning of the nineteenth century. Their places of mercantile business were few and unpretending, but respectable, and such as were usually found in flourishing market-villages.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.