USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield (Berkshire County), Massachusetts, from the year 1800 to the year 1876 > Part 9
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John Burgoyne Root, born in 1778, was the son of Ezekiel Root, and afforded the rare instance of a son of a royalist espous- ing warmly the democratic cause ; resenting, perhaps, in this way the unpatriotic name which had been inflicted upon him. We shall find Mr. Root enterprising and active in business, quick to take part in the improvement of American wools, and the intro- duction of new manufactures. His manners were eminently pleasing and his temperament genial and kindly. Elected town- clerk in 1806, he was re-elected in 1811, and every year from that date until his death in 1838; a longer time than this office has been held consecutively by any other person.
Another citizen of influence, and one never willingly incon- spicuous in public matters, was Joseph Shearer, who had married Hannah, widow of Col. Wm. Williams. Her first husband died in 1785, leaving, to satify the demands of his creditors, barely £175, of which £75 were absorbed in the charges of administra- tion. His widow, however, proved to be wealthy, holding all his real estate by some previous transfer or settlement. This wealth,
1 Capt. James Denison Colt, who had been a man of property and infinence in Pittsfield almost from its first settlement, lived until 1809. The Colt fam- ily date back to Thomas Colt of Carlisle in the English county of Cumberland, whose son Thomas was chancellor of the Exchequer, and held other honorable places under Edward IV. This second Thomas died in 1476. The family traits of respect for law and established institutions, and a rigid faithfulness to public and private trusts, which distinguish the Berkshire branch of the fam- ily to this day, characterized its progenitors in the earliest record we have of them. One of its members lost an estate by adhering to the fallen fortunes of Charles I., and another refused to retain the favor of Charles II. at the sacri- fice of his parliamentary duties, or to surrender to him, for any bribe, the charter of the city of Leominster, which had been committed to his charge.
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of course, attracted many suitors, but she maintained her inde- pendent widowhood,-a state to which she seems to have been better adapted than any other,-until she was wooed by Joseph Shearer, who, if tradition does not belie him, won the widow and her lands by the venerable equivoque of asserting that " he loved the very ground she trod on." There remains, however, the fact that Mr. Shearer had a remarkably fine person, pleasing man- ners, and much adroitness ; which may have made an impression upon Mrs. Williams, although she was twenty-six years his sen- ior. But, be that as it may, their union was an unhappy one. The bride does not appear, under any circumstances, to have been exactly an angel in the household,1 and had she been so, with the great disparity in age between the parties, the result would have been doubtful. As it was, Mr. Shearer's polite disclaimers of im- patience to be rid of his wife, sounded like irony, and she openly aceused him of plotting her death by leaving an open well into which she stepped, by mounting her upon an unbroken colt, and by other such ingenious marital devices, Once he was brought to trial before Justice John Chandler Williams, but the evidence failed to sustain the charge. She lived, however, until 1821, when she died of old age at ninety-one. Mr. Shearer died in 1838 at the age of eighty-two. He was a thrifty and shrewd business man. An earnest and decided democrat, he was highly esteemed by his party as well for his subtle counsels as for his liberal con- tributions. In public matters he was generous-to confess the truth, ostentatiously so-and the town to this day enjoys the bene- fits of some of his gifts, while that which he bequeathed to rela- tives, when he died childless, long since passed away from those to whom he gave it, and who had little good from it.
About the year 1800, the " old hive" in the Connecticut val- ley, to which Pittsfield already owed so much, sent out a new migration, in which, among other worthy citizens, were three young men, who built up, each, a prosperous business, and became . prominent in the affairs of the town. They were Lemuel Pome -- roy, Phinehas Allen and Jason Clapp.
Lemuel Pomeroy was born at Southampton, August 18, 1778.
1 Of Col. Williams's three wives, his friend Col. Stoddard said : " He mar- ried first, Miriam Tyler, for good sense, and got it; second, Miss Wells, for love and beauty, and had it ; third, Aunt Hannah Dickinson, and got cheated like the devil."
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His family claim descent from Sir Ralph de Pomeroy, a favorite knight of William, the Conqueror, upon whom that monarch con- ferred extensive domains in the counties of Devon and Somerset, in the former of which the superb ruins of his castle of Berri- Pomeroy still attract the admiration of the tourist. Some of Sir Ralph's descendants had a less favorable experience of royal rule ; and in 1636, Eltweed and Eldred Pomeroy, brothers, and repre- sented to have been "men of liberal and independent minds," flying from the persecutions of Archbishop Laud, emigrated from Devonshire to Dorchester in Massachusetts. In 1637, following a line of migration then common, the brothers removed to Wind- sor in Connecticut. When Eltweed was ninety years old, he removed to Southampton with his son, Eldad, who received a grant of one thousand acres in that town, on condition that he should there establish himself as a gunsmith and blacksmith ; a tract still known as "the Grant," and still in the possession of one branch of the family.
The trade of the smith, as we have before stated, embraced in colonial times many branches now transferred to special manufac- tories ; and they were all pursued with skill and profit by succes- sive generations of the Pomeroys, who had a knack of always being as their ancestor was represented at the first in Dorchester, "men in good circumstances and respectable standing." From Eldad in the first Massachusetts generation to Edward in the sey- enth, it is the boast of the family that it has never lacked a man to stand at the anvil. Eldad was called to Hampshire county for his great repute as a gunsmith. General Seth employed many men in the various branches of his art, and was as skillful in making muskets as in using them. His firearms were not only celebrated throughout the English colonies, but were held in the highest estimation by the French and Indian foe, who spared no effort to obtain them by fair means or foul.
Lemuel came to Pittsfield in 1799, bringing with him the same anvil which his ancestor had carried up the narrow Bay Path along the banks of the Connecticut, from Windsor to Southamp- ton, and which his descendants still preserve among the most precious of their heir-looms.1
1Lemuel Pomeroy was sixth in descent from Eldad, viz. : First generation in Massachusetts, Eldad ; second, Medad, a lawyer at Northampton ; third, Ebenezer, who was one of the commissioners for the settlement of Sheffield,
THE HOMESTEAD. RESIDENCE OF ROBERT POMEROY, EsQ.
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In 1800 he married Miss Hart Lester of Griswold, Connecticut. In the same year he purchased the present Pomeroy homestead on East street.1
The homestead-lands extended to Pomeroy avenue, and in a shop on the south-eastern corner, Mr. Pomeroy laid the founda- tion of his fortune ; his business being, as it seems, somewhat extensive and varied, for between 1800 and 1804 we find him advertising, in addition to general blacksmithing, pleasure-sleighs, wagons and plows all of his own manufacture and in consider- able quantity ; and in 1804 " a large number of wooden and iron axletree wagons, and two hundred good plows, complete for use." In 1805 his shop was burned; but, although the loss was great enough to be sensibly felt by him in that stage of his affairs it did not impede his progress, and he immediately erected in its place a larger and better building, which being soon devoted chiefly to the finishing of muskets, was known in its later days as " the old musket-shop."
In character Mr. Pomeroy was one of the most remarkable of the business-men who have flourished in Pittsfield. Clear-headed, of rare judgment, bold and far-seeing in enterprise, and of inflex- ible purpose, his career as a manufacturer was one of almost uniform success. In town-affairs, he was generous and public- spirited, although apt to be imperious and self-asserting ; resolute to have the controlling voice in such matters as interested him ; which were many .? In politics being a federalist, he could not be otherwise than a very decided and ardent one. What he believed firmly, he always defended warmly. A large-hearted and large-minded man, of commanding mien and dignified pres- ence, he was for many years among the most conspicuous figures in the history of the town. There is perhaps none to which it is more deeply indebted for its material prosperity. A very well defined specimen of the class of men sent by the Connecticut valley to Pittsfield, was Lemuel Pomeroy.
and for establishing the Indian mission at Stockbridge; an influential and active man in the public affairs of western Massachusetts; fourth, Seth, a noted officer in the French and Indian wars, and in the revolution ; fifth, Lemuel, who lived and died on " the Grant" at Southampton ; sixth, Lem- uel of Pittsfield.
1See chapter 1.
2 It was one of the acute remarks of his friend, Hon. E. R. Colt, that " there would be no living with Mr. Pomeroy, if he were not almost always right."
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In the year 1800, came also, Phinehas Allen, as firm and fiery in his adherence to Jeffersonian democracy, as Mr. Pomeroy was in his abhorrence of it. His father, Solomon Allen, was a brother of the Pittsfield minister, and had been an officer of merit in the war of the revolution and in the militia-campaigns against the Shays rebellion.1 Late in life he became a minister of the gos- pel, and although lacking in theological science, succeeded in founding four churches, with an aggregate membership of two hundred, in previously waste places in Hampshire county and western New York. In 1820, having retired from the ministry, at the age of seventy, he visited Pittsfield, called at every house, and in each, after reading a portion of scripture, and exhorting all the members of the family to serve the Lord, he prayed fer- vently for the salvation of their souls.
Phinehas, his oldest son, was born at Northampton, August 11, 1776. Having served his apprenticeship in the Hampshire Gazette printing-office, and worked one year as a journeyman in Springfield, he removed to Pittsfield in the year 1800, upon the invitation of Rev. Mr. Allen, and established the Sun newspaper. The four papers previously printed in the gambrel-roofed cottage, owned by Mr. Allen had been of federal politics ; but had prob- ably been favored by him for their beneficial influence in other directions. But the Gazette had been bitterly anti-federal, and little else. With the presidential canvass then pending, politics had become the absorbing interest of the day; and it seemed to the democrats of Pittsfield essential that the town-newspaper should be of their own faith. To none of them could this have seemed more desirable than to Rev. Mr. Allen; and he invited his young nephew to occupy the office, which the federal Gazette had just vacated, or been ejected from. The first number of the Sun was issued September 16, 1800, and was printed on a sheet thirteen inches long by eleven wide, beginning on a scale smaller than any of its predecessors, except the Chronicle, which was enlarged with its thirty-first number, while the Sun remained as at first for twelve years.
The first number was adorned with a rude cut of a rising sun, and bore the motto,
" Here all may scribble with unbounded sway,
If they will do it in a decent way."
1See vol. I., page 403.
Phinehay Allen.
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1
But the motto disappeared after two numbers. In his prospectus the editor gave a glowing ideal picture of what a newspaper should be, which, although widely different from that of Dr. Rush, was excellent in its way. Politics were the predominant element ; but they were to be discussed with candor, fairness and impartiality. The Sun would defend the republican party ; but would eschew calumny, slander and falsehood. The editor seems to have thought that his pledges would be best sustained by the most ardent, undeviating and unqualified support of the republi- can-or as it began about this time to be called-the democratie party. For sixty long years, he never admitted that there was fault or mistake in any portion of its policy. Whatever it attacked he assailed; whatever it defended, he championed. He advocated the tariff, when Judge Bacon wore homespun clothes in congress, and free trade when George N. Briggs manifested his devotion to American manufactures in the same seat in the same way. He joined with Jefferson in his denunciation of slavery, and with Buchanan, in his warnings against the evil tendencies of anti-slavery politics. But it is only just to him to say that, in following the standard of party wherever, it led, his changes of opinion appear to have been sincere, and seemed to him to be called for by altered circumstances. All matters of mere policy, he subordinated to regard for the constitution ; and that, as interpreted by the " resolutions of '98." Whatever con- troverted the extreme doctrines of state-rights, he considered heretical and dangerous. This was his polar star, and by this he steered, let the world go round as it would.
In town-affairs, Mr. Allen took a more zealous and active part than the columns of his paper would indicate. In the earlier efforts to restore the county-seat to Pittsfield, in particular he took an earnest and conspicuous part. Being a member of the state-legislature when this question once came up, he drew upon himself, by his ardent advocacy of the removal, the whole fire of the opposition wit, concerning which a characteristic anecdote is preserved. Discussing the question one day at the hotel-table, he was asked which he really thought was the larger, Pittsfield or London. "Pittsfield, by Heaven !" was the sturdy reply ; which pleased his constituents, for it was one of the well- worn witticisms of the neighboring villagers to nickname Pitts-
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field for the great metropolis, and the representative's way of meeting it seemed happy.
In business Mr. Allen was punctual, methodical and exact, to a proverb ; and he would have been more distinguished for integrity and industry, had those qualities been less universal in the community of which he formed a part. In person rather below the medium stature, but lithe, symmetrical and well-knit, no one ever associated with him any idea of weakness or want of dignity.
The influence of such a man laboring persistently in one local journal, in one direction, for over half a century, we need not say, was powerful. In many families the young received almost their whole political education from the Sun, and many of them clung to it through life against all the more modern attractions of rival journals. It was the one unchanged thing which reminded them of the past. Itself, as a newspaper, necessarily dealing with ceaseless and often startling mutations in men and nations, it viewed them all from the democratic stand-point of the year 1800, and however essentially they actually varied, gave them color, superficially at least, from the democratic atmosphere of that era.
Jason Clapp, the remaining member of this Hampshire county triad, was born at Northampton in 1783, being the son of Ebenezer Clapp. He removed to Pittsfield in 1802, upon the invitation« of his friend Lemuel Pomeroy, by whom he was employed as master- wheelwright until 1809. In that year he purchased the land now included in Clapp avenue and the building-lots adjoining that street upon the west, where he built a shop, around which afterwards grew up Clapp's carriage-factory. Of his business life and character Rev. Dr. Todd thus spoke in his funeral sermon :
He began life by serving a regular apprenticeship; receiving the almost incredibly small pay of eight dollars per year. But, so econom- ical were his habits that, during the four years of his apprenticeship he expended only ninety-three dollars. On reaching his majority, he immediately paid off the debt of sixty dollars, thus unavoidably incurred, and at once began to assist in the support of his parents. I have seldom known a man, whom I could hold up with more confi- dence as a model for our young men to study and copy. IIe began on a small-scale; never asking a man or a bank to loan him a dollar; . never asked a note discounted, never asked a man to endorse for him ; I doubt whether he was ever sued at law. Slowly, steadily, surely, he
Jason Glapp.
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advanced until he stood at the head of his business; the man whose name was a warranty, whose workmanship was as perfect as care and labor could make it; and whose production it was an honor to possess.
It may be added that, at the head of a great manufacturing establishment, Mr. Clapp had the too rare virtue of remembering that his workmen occupied the same station from which he had himself risen ; and from which, very much through his example and encouragement, some of them were surely rising. It was with heart-felt truth that Dr. Todd said, " It was a melancholy but a beautiful sight, when some of these men gathered around his coffin and were his gentle pall-bearers-as if lifting the remains of a father."
The great intellectual leaders of the two political parties in the early part of the century in Pittsfield were John W. Hulbert and Ezekiel Bacon, both men of decided ability and more than ordi- nary eloquence. Mr. Hulbert was born at Alford, and was admit- ted to the bar about 1794. He commenced practice at Sheffield, but removed to Pittsfield about 1800. He was a man of brilliant intellect, of keen wit, of genial temperament and fascinating man -. ners. His eloquence was polished but pointed, effective, and very apt to excite the ire of his opponents. His fellow federal- ists, who placed no bounds to their admiration of the talents of their champion, styled him "the silver-tongued," and "the Ham- ilton of Massachusetts : " and, in their view, this latter phrase included all that was excellent in political character.
Ezekiel Bacon was born at Boston, September 1, 1776. His father, Hon. John Bacon, had been one of the pastors of the old South church, but differing, on some theological points, with his colleague and a majority of his people, he resigned in 1775, and removed to Stockbridge, where he afterwards held many honor- able places; among them those of chief-justice of the common pleas and representative in congress. He was accustomed to say that "Ezekiel went to Boston to be born ; " his mother being at his birth on a visit to her old home. When the family returned. to Stockbridge in the following summer, it was in the first " pleas-" ure-carriage " that ever crossed the Hoosac mountains.
Ezekiel entered Yale college at the age of fourteen and grad- uated in 1794: Having read law at the law-school of Judge Reeves, in Litchfield, Conn., and in the office of Hon. Nathan Dane, he commenced practice at Williamstown in 1798; but
HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD.
removed to Pittsfield in 1806. His father was a democrat of the straightest sect, and he inherited his principles in full measure. At the law-school he won the sobriquet "le petit democrat; " and in "The Mirror of the Berkshire Bar " he is enrolled as "Young Democrat Bacon." In 1799, he delivered a Fourth of July oration at Williamstown, which had the honor of being printed by his friends and burned by the federal students of the college ; although there was nothing in it specially to provoke their ire, unless it were a scornful allusion to the tory-element in the federal party. Mr. Bacon's addresses and speeches, many of which are preserved in print, are, although earnest and decided, moderate and courteous ; especially for the era at which they were delivered.
In 1806 he was chosen one of the state-senators from Berk- shire, his colleague being Dr. Timothy Childs. In 1807, upon the resignation of Hon. Barnabas Bidwell, he was elected to con- gress, receiving every vote in Pittsfield, and almost every vote cast in the district. The federalists had no candidate, and seem to have refrained from voting. Mr. Bacon continued in congress until 1813, serving on the committee of ways and means, and being its chairman during the first year of the war of 1812. He was not a fluent speaker or very ready debater; but his speeches, as reported in the Annals of Congress, and in the newspapers of the day, are distinguished for fullness of information, sound logic and clear thought, which gave them great weight. He was on terms of confidential intimacy with President Madison, and numbered among his chosen friends Albert Gallatin, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, De Witt Clinton and the other great leaders of the early democratic party; with whom he maintained correspondence long after he left congress. And it is proof of the life-long constancy of his friendships that so late as 1844 he delivered and published a lecture eulogistic of Galla- tin, Madison-and others of his early political associates ; a tribute which was pronounced by Judge Story to be "eminently just." With Story, his associations were especially intimate and friendly, and continued to the death of the former. It is creditable to Mr. Bacon's judgment that, both being young men together in con- gress, he recognized the great qualities which afterwards ren- dered his friend the most eminent jurist of his day, in America at least, and by his influence with the president secured his appoint-
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ment to the supreme bench, before Story knew that he was a can- didate.
Ardent as was his devotion to democratic principles, he was no blind follower of political leadership. He sympathized with Madison in his efforts to avoid a war with Great Britain, and thereby incurred the distrust of the French faction of the democ- racy. Not insensible to the rights and interests of New England, he favored the embargo of 1807 only as a temporary measure ; to him primarily, Jefferson attributed its repeal, and he shared with his friend Story the denunciations of that most arbitrary of politi- cal leaders for their course in that matter. He opposed in a vigorous and manly speech the proposition to arm the whole militia of the country at the expense of the national treasury, because under a previous law, Massachusetts and most of the northern states had supplied their troops fully, while most of the southern states had neglected to do so. That he did not continue longer at the head of the committee of ways and means. was probably due to the fact that he could not be relied upon to go all the lengths which party exigencies might require. With pure, unselfish and patriotic aims ; of sound and independent judgment ; well read in the principles of government, and guided by full and accurate information, Ezekiel Bacon ranked high among the very best class of American legislators.
· " His temperament," says a biographer, "was poetic, and he was familiar with all the standard literature of that class, and he largely indulged himself at one period of his life in poetic compo- sition, mostly, however, tinged with deep melancholy-the sus- piria profundis of a depressed spirit and an aching heart." It should be added that this was not the affectation of sensibility, at one time fashionable ; but, although deepened by ill health, was the genuine sadness of a heart seeking earnestly for religious truth, and finding it not ; for it was not until his latest years that he was able fully to recognize the truths of Christianity. In 1842 he published a volume of poems entitled " Recreations in a . Sick Room," and dedicated to his old friend, Story, who acknowl- edged them in a touching note.1
There were, in the excited and busy period of the town's history which we are now considering, other men whom we can see to have been of note and influence equally with some of those whom 1 Life and letters of Joseph Story.
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we have mentioned. Some of these are sketched in other connec- tions. Of many it is impossible now to recover more of their story and character than the reader will gather from the state- ment of their official positions and their places upon committees. The memory of their cotemporaries, or rather those who remem- ber them as men when they were children, describes them with monotonous indefiniteness. "A fine fellow," " A smart man," " A good man, farmer, or trader," are phrases which, when applied to half the town grow obscure. " A glorious old fellow,". " A sharp one," "One who knew what he was about, I tell you," have a little more meaning; but, at the best, the judgments of childhood in such matters, unless illustrated by incidents-and incidents personally observed by the narrator-are very liable to be false, or exaggerated.
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