USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 4
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Many in Pittsfield shared these views, which were anathema to Parson Allen and his friends. The American Revolution, they declared, had not been fought and won for the benefit of some self-styled aristocrats, many of whom had safely sat out the war, or had even actively opposed the American cause. His first duty to God and man, the Pittsfield pastor decided, was to preach the gospel of liberty and human rights, which he fre- quently did from the pulpit.
This was not "a regrettable innovation," as some complained. Then, as now, preachers often sermonized on non-religious mat- ters. Allen had been preaching democracy since 1776 and be- fore. But times had changed. The majority of his congregation, including most of its wealthier parishioners, were Federalists. They were becoming increasingly annoyed and angered by his "pulpit discourses," formally advising him to let politics alone.
Allen found a new and spirited ally in his nephew, Phin- ehas Allen. Coming to town in 1800, the latter founded Pitts- field's first successful newspaper, the Sun, which continued pub-
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
lication for more than a hundred years. Under its founder and first editor, the Sun was frankly partisan, faithfully supporting Jefferson and his followers in whatever they said and did. Dem- ocrats, apparently, could do no wrong. The Sun offered Parson Allen a new outlet for his zeal and ideas, and he contributed to it many leading articles under his own name and various noms de plume, as the scowls grew deeper in many of the better pews in his church.
In March 1807, the disgruntled named a committee, headed by Woodbridge Little, the erstwhile Tory, to draft a "letter of remonstrance" to the pastor. He had preached, in their view, more than one "offensive political and electioneering dis- course." His sermons were "constantly interlarded with poli- tics," and "most pointedly irritating and insulting." Many of the "uncandid and injudicious" in the congregation were "in- decently grinning their smiles of approbation" as the pastor spoke, "to the disturbance of public worship."
Allen had proposed a toast, "No compromise with Federal- ists, no concurrence with neuters." This was as much as "draw- ing the sword against us," said the complainants. "We com- plain of your publications in the Sun, and more particularly of that 'On the Death of Hamilton'."
Some critics even levelled the charge-which appears to be false that at the funeral of his son John, the pastor had used his sermon as a platform for another discourse on "republican- ism and democracy," extolling them as "the very essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ," which, to some, seemed little less than blasphemy.
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All of these charges were "false and malevolent," the pastor replied. Their pride hurt, their patience at an end, the dissidents met at the Town Hall, built in 1793, where the red stone church of St. Stephen's now stands. There, in the summer of 1807, they decided to secede from the First Parish-a schism that split the town from top to bottom and caused scandal throughout the Berkshires. Attempts to restore peace and unity failed. Woodbridge Little and 108 others incorporated them- selves as the Union Congregational Parish and soon built a
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PITTSFIELD'S FIRST HALF CENTURY: 1761-1811
meetinghouse on South Street. As their minister, they called the Reverend Thomas Punderson from New Haven.
In the midst of these distractions, broken in health but not in heart, the Reverend Thomas Allen died in his 67th year, on February 11, 1810, having ministered to his parish for forty-six years. A gentle soul with a flaming spirit, an eloquent preach- er and a forthright democrat, a student and writer of history and philosophy, and a man of action, too, as demonstrated on the battlefields at Bennington, Ticonderoga, and White Plains, he was sincerely mourned by friends and critics alike. No man in Pittsfield's annals, either early or late, has wielded greater influence in the community than "Fighting Parson" Allen in his day.
Buried in the old "eternity acres" just behind the meeting- house, his remains were first removed to the graveyard on First Street and later to the Pittsfield Cemetery, where, on Pontoosuc Hill, his grandson and namesake erected the obelisk that stands there to his memory, recalling the days when Pittsfield was little more than a clearing in the wilderness.
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III
From the War of 1812 to the Civil War
DARSON ALLEN'S SON, the Reverend William, Pittsfield-born and a man of thirty-seven, a graduate of Harvard, later a professor at Dartmouth and the president of Bowdoin College, succeeded to the pulpit in the old meetinghouse. As the new pastor had been hotly engaged on his father's side in the con- troversies raging about him, the change did nothing to quiet debate and assuage animosities. Indeed, the contentions grew more heated with the approach of the War of 1812.
New elements, economic rather than political, kept the Dem- ocratic-Federalist conflict boiling. The Napoleonic wars were raging, and both the British and the French were unlawfully interfering with American commerce on the high seas, seizing without warrant many ships flying the Stars and Stripes. In a very high-handed manner, the British were impressing our merchant seamen for service in the Royal Navy.
In retaliation, the Jefferson administration prohibited the im- portation of a long list of British goods, chiefly manufactures. This hurt British industry. But it hurt even more the business of our larger merchants, especially in the bigger cities along the seacoast, for infant American industries could not begin to supply the needs of trade. The merchants had plenty of cus- tomers, but little to sell, which was exasperating.
Trying to preserve a precarious neutrality, anxious to keep our ships out of harm's way, Jefferson next laid down a strict embargo that swept American ships off the seas by prohibiting
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
trade with any foreign country. This struck the New England seaport towns a stunning blow, especially Boston, where hun- dreds of ships lay rotting in the harbor, to the impotent rage of shipowners, bankers, merchants, and unemployed seamen. The Federalists found many new supporters in their ranks, less from sympathy with the Federalists' basic philosophy than be- cause that party was belligerently anti-administration.
In 1812, President James Madison, Jefferson's political heir, declared war on Great Britain. This did nothing to help Massa- chusetts' carrying trade. Federalists went to great lengths in their opposition to what they sneeringly called "Mr. Madison's War," declaring that the country should be fighting not the British, but the French.
With the Federalists in control, Massachusetts refused to allow its militia to be used outside its borders. It gave little and very grudging financial support to the war, and took the lead in calling the Hartford Convention in 1814. There, in secret session, Federalist delegates from all New England talked obliquely about nullifying the Federal Constitution, taking the same stand on states' rights, including the right of secession, that the South did a half century later in precipitating the Civil War. This was too much, and the bitterly partisan Hartford Convention sounded the death knell of the Fed- eralist party, which rapidly disintegrated.
The War of 1812 and the events leading up to it, whatever their effects elsewhere, brought a new burst of prosperity to Pittsfield. The non-importation and embargo acts stimulated its infant industries. With the outbreak of hostilities, Pittsfield became an important military center. A large cantonment was built on the east side of North Street, not far above the present railroad tracks of the Boston and Albany. Hundreds of soldiers went through the camp each year, being drilled and trained before they were sent north and west to the battlefronts.
Still strongly Democratic in sentiment, the town voted to buy a large stock of ammunition; it offered a $10 bounty to any who volunteered for service. At a town meeting, all parties in Pittsfield, even the Federalists, "came forward unanimously
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
and sacrificed at the shrine of their common country all their animosities and dissensions in support of true American prin- ciples," reported the Sun. Pittsfield's Federalists were not as stiff-necked as their brothers elsewhere.
Pittsfield took great pride in its local infantry company, the Berkshire Blues. The men looked stunning in their dark blue coats turned up with red, their pantaloons of the same color, and their tall leather grenadier caps sporting a plume of red and black. Pittsfield was also represented in the 9th and 21st infantry regiments, which fought well in American victories at Chippewa, Lundy's Lane, Niagara Falls, and Fort Erie.
As the soldiers moved to the front, the cantonment along North Street was transformed into a detention camp for cap- tured British soldiers and sailors, holding as many as a thousand at a time. They were often unruly, but Pittsfield treated them with unusual kindness and humanity, allowing many of them to earn a few extra dollars by "hiring out" to responsible local people. Few of the prisoners attempted to escape. Still fewer got away.
The organizer and general superintendent of the cantonment was Thomas Melville, who had been commissioned a major in 1812, shortly after his return home to Boston after living more than twenty years in France. Major Melville had the task of feeding and clothing the men at the cantonment. He bought as much as he could locally, which stimulated agriculture and industry for miles around.
"Cash, cash," Major Melville promised in advertising for the many things he needed-great quantities of woolens and other cloth, leather, beef, pork, vegetables, grain, hay, horses, wagons, wood, iron, and numerous other items. This gave a great lift to Pittsfield's farms and to its small and struggling industries just then getting well started.
As briefly noted before, Pittsfield's industrial history began in 1800 when a young English clothing worker from Yorkshire, Arthur Scholfield, came to Pittsfield and built a small shop down West Street, a half mile from the meetinghouse, on the banks of the West Branch of the Housatonic.
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
Here, in his shop, he set up a carding machine, fashioned on closely guarded English models, and informed Pittsfield's hard- working housewives that they could "have their wool carded into rolls for 121/2 cents per pound; mixed, 151/2 per pound. ... They are requested to send their wool in sheets as these will serve to bind up the rolls when done. Also, a small assortment of woolens for sale."
As general everywhere, the women of Pittsfield had been doing their carding, spinning, and weaving at home. They were at first very skeptical about Scholfield's newfangled contraption. But after giving it a trial, they discovered that Scholfield could do a faster and better job at moderate cost, and it soon became a familiar sight to see Scholfield's wagon going down West Street with a load of wool, or coming back up with finished rolls neatly wrapped in linen sheets pinned with thorns.
Dignifying his small shop as "The Pittsfield Factory," Schol- field advertised that, in addition to carding wool, many other enterprises were carried on there-such as "dyeing of wool of various colors, making of chairs of various kinds, cut and wrought nails, marble monuments, Rumford fireplaces, com- mon stone for building, hulling and perling of barley, etc., etc." What the "etc., etc." stood for, in view of the small size of the shop, is difficult to imagine. In any case, here was Pittsfield's first multiple-purpose industrial plant.
In 1806, Scholfield sold his carding business so that he might devote himself entirely to the manufacture and sale of machines for the woolen trade, successfully making picking machines, comb plates, looms, spinning jennies, and spindles, among the first machinery of the kind in the country.
Though his sales were good, Scholfield did not prosper as a businessman, being too trusting in his accounts. He announced that he would extend no credit-a rule he forgot to his great cost. He lived his last years in very straitened circumstances, dying in a small cottage on West Street near his "Pittsfield Factory," which had long since passed into other hands.
At the time when Scholfield was busily producing new and better machines, the local woolen industry unexpectedly gained
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
a new friend and advocate, Elkanah Watson. A man of wealth and many talents, Watson came to live in Pittsfield in 1807 and remained for some years, establishing himself and his family in Broadhall, buying the mansion from Henry Van Schaack, who retired to his old home in Kinderhook, New York.
A friend of Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and other dis- tinguished men, Watson had traveled widely in Europe and America, studying public and private improvements-paving, lighting, canals, and industrial techniques, to cite a few. A successful businessman, he was now primarily interested in the improvement of agriculture and related enterprises. More par- ticularly, he was interested in breeding sheep that would give more and better wool.
Merino sheep, prized for their fine fleece, had been intro- duced into the country from Spain and Portugal in 1802. In coming to Pittsfield, Watson brought with him two prize Merinos-a ram and a ewe, the first of their breed in New Eng- land. In the fall of 1807, a few months after his arrival, Wat- son exhibited these on the green under the Old Elm, arousing considerable public interest.
As many farmers, "and even females, were attracted to this humble exhibition," this set Watson to speculating.
"If two animals were capable of exciting so much attention," he asked himself, "what would be the effect of a display, on a large scale, of different animals?" Here was the genesis of the Berkshire Agricultural Society for the Promotion of Agriculture and Domestic Manufactures, organized in 1811, with Watson as president and Arthur Scholfield as one of the trustees.
A cattle show had been held the year before, one of the first such shows in the country. But the new society planned to make its first formal event something much more elaborate and ex- citing. It was to be a big county fair, with all of Berkshire rep- resented, a carnival in which everybody could participate.
An enclosure was built around the Old Elm for the exhibit of the best specimens of livestock. Prizes were small, running from $5 to $10-the Society could afford no more. To please
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
and amuse the crowd, the more enterprising set up on the green a number of booths for the sale of refreshments and Yankee "notions," as well as a "fandango," or "aerial phaeton," evi- dently a sort of ferris wheel. Putting their differences on the shelf for a time, Federalists and Democrats joined together to enjoy as gay a few days as Pittsfield had had.
After the usual speeches, with the marshal of the day and his aides galloping about on white horses, a large procession got under way at noon on a beautiful September day, with the surrounding hills a blaze of scarlet and gold under a high blue sky.
First came the Pittsfield Band, playing "very inspiriting and creditable." Then came sixty yoke of oxen, harnessed in chains and drawing a plow held by Charles Goodrich, one of the first settlers-the farmers of Berkshire carrying a flag "representing a sheaf of wheat on one side and a plough on the other"-a wagon with a platform to exhibit such Berkshire manufactures as rolls of broadcloth, bolts of cotton duck for sails, handsome rose blankets, nails, anchors and leather-another wagon with a platform, bearing a large loom with a flying shuttle and a spinning jenny of forty spindles, which skilled workers busily operated as the parade moved along. Finally marched the officers and members of the Berkshire Agricultural Society, with heads of wheat in their hats, the badge of the organization.
Altogether, said Watson with pride, the procession was "splendid, novel, and imposing beyond anything of the kind ever before exhibited in America." The fair was repeated the next year and, with added features, every year for almost a century, down to 1902.
Other agricultural organizations had preceded the Berkshire Society, but these had been limited in membership chiefly to 'gentlemen" farmers and specialists. These organizations made little or no appeal to the interests and sentiments of the people at large.
The Berkshire Society was unique in being the first of its kind to be aimed at the ordinary farmer. It sought to kindle his imagination by showing him what could be done. It provided
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
a pleasant occasion at which he might talk shop and perhaps have a drink or two with fellow-farmers, not to speak of the excitement that his often lonesome wife and children found at the annual fairs.
Watson early realized the importance of interesting "females in the operations of the Society," which offered many prizes for their handiwork. Open to anyone, with dues set at a mere $1 a year, the Society radiated a wide influence, becoming the model of similar organizations throughout the country, as many of them gratefully acknowledged.
Encouraged by the efforts of Scholfield and Watson, the Pittsfield Woolen and Cotton Factory was incorporated in 1809 by a number of prominent local citizens, but no manufactory was established by them. Two years earlier, in 1807, many of these same men had founded Pittsfield's first bank, the Berk- shire Bank. A small counting house was built on the south side of Park Square, where the Berkshire Athenaeum now stands, along what was then named and is still known as Bank Row.
But one of the directors played fast and loose with the funds, and the bank collapsed-and with it, the Pittsfield Woolen and Cotton Factory, which languished and died when the directors of the bank, the Factory's largest stockholders, were imprisoned for debt. Under the law as it then was, they were held personal- ly responsible for the bank's losses. After a time in the jail at Lenox, which had replaced Sheffield as the county seat, the prisoners were released and returned to Pittsfield, many to find that they had been reduced to paupers.
The second attempt at making woolens on a large scale was somewhat more successful. Organized in 1812, the Housatonic Manufacturing Company built a mill on the East Branch of the Housatonic. Around the main building were four dwellings, a store, a fulling mill, and a dye house. As cash was hard to come. by, the company offered to accept raw wool, flax, firewood, soap, and all kinds of farm produce in exchange for its woolens, except for those dyed indigo blue-a favorite color and ex- pensive to make. The company prospered during the War of 1812 and then suffered ups and downs until the 1830s when it
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
ceased operations after a spring flood had carried away its power dam.
As the Housatonic was a Democratic mill, there had to be a Federalist mill, so the Pittsfield Woolen and Cotton Factory (the same name adopted by an earlier group of entrepreneurs for the abortive corporation of 1809) was founded in 1814 by a group led by Lemuel Pomeroy. They built a substantial brick mill on the West Branch of the Housatonic for making fine broadcloths. The company began operations just as the War of 1812 ended, and it suffered severely, as did all American in- dustry, in the usual post-war depression.
But it managed to weather this and other storms. Slowly ex- panding, it increased its facilities by buying the building and mill site of "The Pittsfield Factory" established by Scholfield. In 1839, the name of the firm was changed to Lemuel Pomeroy & Sons, later to L. Pomeroy's Sons. Under that name it con- tinued to operate for a half century, until it fell a victim to the great financial panic of 1893.
The tariff of 1824, sponsored by Henry Clay as the corner- stone of his "American system," encouraged local industry, and in 1825 the Pontoosuc Woolen Manufacturing Company was founded, building a factory on the West Branch of the Housa- tonic, near its outlet from Pontoosuc Lake.
With Henry Shaw of Lanesboro as president and Thaddeus Clapp of Pittsfield as general manager, this was one of the most successful of the early enterprises. Its broadcloths and cassi- meres, so many said, "were not excelled by any cloths imported from Great Britain," and had a wide market. One of the hon- ored names in Pittsfield's industrial history, the Pontoosuc com- pany continued to do a successful business for more than a hundred years, down to the 1930s, when, like so many enter- prises, it perished in the Great Depression.
Other early mills included the New Woolen Factory, built in 1811 by Daniel Stearns on the Southwest Branch of the Housatonic close to its outlet from Richmond Pond. Stearns built other mills to enlarge his plant for the manufacture of broadcloths, cassimeres, satinets, and flannels. The community
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
that grew up around these mills in southwest Pittsfield became known as Stearnsville, later as Barkerville when J. Barker & Brothers took over in 1861, an already established firm that became one of the more prosperous in later years. The Stearns enterprise became J. Stearns & Brothers in 1826, and D. & H. Stearns in 1843, under which name it continued down to its bankruptcy in 1881.
Several more woolen enterprises of lasting importance began in these years, but will be discussed later. The Osceola Woolen Mill, built in 1833, was bought in 1864 by Otis L. Tillotson, a man of prominence in later years. Solomon N. and Charles Russell began making cotton batting in an old iron forge along Onota Brook in 1843. They leased the Wahconah woolen mill in 1856, and in 1863 built a three-story brick mill of their own along Onota Brook, one of the best factories Pittsfield had yet seen. The S. N. and C. Russell Manufacturing Company, as it was named in 1886, was a landmark on the Pittsfield industrial scene for many years.
Beginning as manufacturers of tinware in a small shop on East Street in 1816, J. & E. Peck branched out into textiles, erecting in 1844 a mill along Onota Brook for the manufacture of cotton warping, later adding a flannel mill. The Peck fac- tories closed down in 1910.
Among their other troubles, transportation difficulties ham- pered Pittsfield's early manufacturers. The first through roads were built by turnpike companies which hoped to make a profit from charging tolls. But the roads were so wretched that few used them, with the result that tolls were low, the roads got worse, and the companies went broke.
By 1825, Pittsfield travelers and shippers had the choice of three turnpikes. One ran from Northampton through Pittsfield to the New York border, where it met another road laid out to Albany. Another came into Pittsfield from Russell, in Hamp- den County. The third and best, the Pontoosuc Turnpike, ran from Pittsfield to Chester, where it connected with a road join- ing the southern Berkshires and Springfield. Difficult to con-
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
struct, most of these roads were expensive to maintain and risky to travel because of precipitous grades.
Indeed, such was the state of the roads throughout Massa- chusetts that sensible men seriously talked of building a canal from Boston to the Hudson River. One of the proposed routes would have come through Pittsfield-to take advantage of its streams and lakes!
But the favored route ran some miles to the north. How to get over the great hump of the Hoosacs presented a problem. But the promoters easily solved that by saying that they would drive a four-mile tunnel through the mountains, picking almost the exact spot where a tunnel was later driven for the railroad tracks of the Boston and Maine.
But now came the iron horse to kill the canal project and put the turnpike companies out of business. Organized in 1831, the Boston & Worcester Railroad began running trains in 1834 and its tracks reached Worcester the next year. In 1836, the Western Railroad began building westward from Worcester to Albany. Its tracks reached Springfield late in 1839. Con- struction was somewhat delayed by a fight between Pittsfield and Stockbridge on which way the line should run, each claim- ing that it offered the best route. Surveys favored running the tracks through Pittsfield and so it was done, a decision of transcendant importance in the history of the town, which might otherwise have withered on the vine.
The first train into Pittsfield-a locomotive and one car- crept in on May 4, 1841. By the end of the year trains were running from Boston to Albany-two each way a day, morning and afternoon, for passengers. The afternoon trains laid over for the night at Springfield. Freight service was provided by one train a day each way, and the freights soon brought the first coal Pittsfield ever used. It had been a wood-burning town. Nor did it take quickly to coal. The first shipment lay a long time near the depot, until it was finally carted off "by persons unknown," without protest from anybody.
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