USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1916-1955 > Part 5
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The first depot, a fantastic wooden contraption of pseudo- Egyptian design, stood over the tracks on the west side of
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THE HISTORY OF PITTSFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS
North Street. Passengers boarded or left the trains in a dark, dank, greasy, and smoky tunnel below, having to climb long flights of steep stairs to reach the waiting room above. A loco- motive spark set fire to the depot in 1854, and the flames pre- sented "a beautiful spectacle" as they consumed the building, which "was never so much admired as during the last half hour of its existence." A new wooden depot of simpler lines and greater convenience was built a little farther to the west on what has since been known as Depot Street.
Other rail connections were soon established. A branch was built north from Pittsfield to North Adams. Pittsfield and Berk- shire County capital built the Stockbridge and Pittsfield Rail- road, which began operations in 1850. This road tied up with a chain of railroads extending down to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where there were connections to New York City, offering Pitts- field a new outlet. This chain of railroads, known as the Housa- tonic, became in time the Berkshire Division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford, with Pittsfield as its northern terminal.
Since 1800, when it became the largest town in Berkshire with a population of 2,261, Pittsfield had been steadily grow- ing. Between 1800 and 1840, its population more than doubled. It went on increasing, though not quite so rapidly, reaching 8,045 in 1860. Growth brought many new developments, and many new problems as well. As its industries grew, so did the town's financial institutions.
In 1818, a number of local men, both Democrats and Fed- eralists, joined to incorporate the Agricultural Bank with a capital of $100,000. After the debacle of the Berkshire Bank a decade before and the ruin of some of its directors, they may have had their qualms. But they confidently pushed ahead, ap- pealing "to the moneyed interest in the county to embark in the bank and rear it for the public good." Buying the building of the defunct Berkshire Bank, it started business there with Thomas Gold as the first president and Ezekiel R. Colt as cashier.
Still a powerful force in the community today, the Agricul- tural Bank was very successful from the beginning, supplying
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
the financial needs of a wide area and paying high dividends to its shareholders. It had no local rival until 1853, when the Pittsfield Bank was chartered with a capital of $150,000. Its directors chose David Carson as president and Junius D. Adams as cashier. Meantime, in 1846, the Berkshire County Savings Bank had been organized, choosing as its president Henry Shaw of Lanesboro, who was succeeded the next year by George N. Briggs of Pittsfield, then governor of Massachusetts, serving as the state's chief executive from 1843 to 1850.
As houses and factories in the town multiplied, the fire haz- ard grew proportionately. It was not until 1814 that Pittsfield bought its first small fire engine, with leather buckets and other appurtenances, but no suction hose.
To spread the cost of fire losses, the Pittsfield Mutual Fire Insurance Company was organized in 1819. It failed after a few years, having made the fatal mistake of not charging pre- miums upon policies when issued. Instead, it tried to collect assessments after losses had occurred. It was succeeded in 1835 by the Berkshire Mutual Fire Insurance Company, which is still doing business from its Pittsfield headquarters. The first policy it wrote, one for $750, covered St. Stephen's Rectory, which then stood on North Street.
For better protection, a fire district was set up in 1844, about two miles square, with the green approximately in the center. In School Street, at a cost of $540, an engine house was built, thirty feet square and two stories high, with stalls to accom- modate a hook-and-ladder cart and two engines, one of which was christened the Housatonic. To man this, volunteers formed the Housatonic Engine Company. Another company, the Pon- toosuc, took charge of the second engine, the Fame. There was a third engine in town, the Union, belonging to the Western Railroad, which kept it near the depot. This constituted Pitts- field's fire department for many years.
Water, too, was a problem. Beginning in 1795, many at- tempts had been made to pipe water into the town. But all failed for one reason or another-either because the source of supply dried up, or the gravity fall was not sufficient to create
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pressure, or the pipes cracked up. The want of water to fight fires was particularly worrisome.
But nothing much was done about the water supply until 1855 when, after five years of discussion, it was arranged to draw water from Lake Ashley, a pond of sixty acres located high on Mount Washington.
More than $44,000 was spent in trying to raise the water level of Lake Ashley by building a dam, which proved to be deficient, and in laying miles and miles of concrete pipes, which promptly froze and burst because they had not been laid deep enough. Some water flowed, however, and the Lake Ashley project was finally put in good repair, but at many times the original cost, as the town found to its dismay.
As for public schools, those in Pittsfield seem to have been average for the time, though they would certainly not be ac- ceptable today. Many of the school buildings were wretched, as parents complained. No special training or qualifications were required of teachers. It was usual practice, except in the central districts, for schools to be taught by men in winter, and by women in summer. By 1844, Pittsfield had so grown that it had fifteen school districts. Each was almost sovereign in its terri- tory. A recommendation by the State Board of Education that the district system be abolished was stoutly opposed.
The town agreed, however, that it had to do something about the schools and in 1849 started a new program. The districts were to furnish suitable sites and keep the buildings in repair, while the town would shoulder the burden of building new schoolhouses, two a year, beginning in those districts that most needed them. School appropriations in 1860 totalled $6,300.
In 1827, a committee of three had been appointed-M. R. Lanckton, Thomas B. Strong, and Thomas Melville, Jr .- to consider whether the town should establish a separate school for "black children." Upon the committee's unanimous recom- mendation, the town refused to take any measures whatever in that direction.
By early Massachusetts law, every town had to provide a grammar or high school on pain of being fined for failure to do
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
so. Pittsfield had evaded this law until 1793, when it established a grammar school class in Town Hall. These classes ceased in 1824, and almost thirty years passed before the town again took up the question. In 1850, after some debate, the town voted $3,000 to build a grammar school, Pittsfield's first proper high school, on the northeast corner of the old First Church burying ground. It opened later that year with Jonathan Tenney as principal.
During the first sixty years of the nineteenth century, a num- ber of private schools flourished in Pittsfield-the Pittsfield Female Academy, founded in 1806 and later known as the Pittsfield Young Ladies' Seminary - the Pittsfield Young Ladies' Institute, founded by the Reverend W. H. Tyler in 1841, which later became the Maplewood Young Ladies' In- stitute-and the Berkshire Gymnasium, a school for young men, founded in 1829 by Professor Chester Dewey, son-in-law of Lemuel Pomeroy, who financed the institution.
For some years Pittsfield had a college-the Berkshire Med- ical Institution, chartered in 1823, largely through the efforts of Dr. Henry H. Childs, one of Pittsfield's most highly regard- ed citizens in spite of his ultra-Democratic views. The college was established in the old three-storied Pittsfield Hotel, and twenty-five students enrolled in its first class, paying $40 tuition a year. Board, room, and laundry cost them $1.75 a week.
Fire destroyed the college buildings in 1850. The state grant- ed $10,000, the people in Berkshire contributed $5,000, and a new large building was erected on South Street. The average enrolment from 1823 to 1835 was about eighty-five. It reached a high point of 140 in 1846. Thereafter it steadily declined until 1869 when the college closed its doors, selling the South Street building to the town, which remodeled it for use as a high school.
As the town grew, the growth of the churches kept pace. The breach in the Congregational meetinghouse over Parson Thomas Allen's political zeal was closed in 1817. Under the agreement, the pastors of each section of the divided church resigned-the Reverends William Allen and Thomas Punder-
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son-and the Reverend Heman Humphrey was brought from New Haven to minister to the reunited congregation. Humph- rey, who resigned after six years to become president of the Amherst Collegiate Institute, soon to become Amherst College, brought to Pittsfield a radical new notion-nothing less than total abstinence from alcoholic drink.
Humphrey was aided and abetted in spreading this "heresy" by the local Baptists under their leader, Elder John Leland. The temperance movement had been growing, but Leland regarded its aims as far too moderate. It was he who first persuaded the friends of temperance in Pittsfield that the cornerstone of their faith should be total abstinence not only from hard liquor, but from wine and beer-and even cider. All of the large mer- chants in town sold liquors, but many were now persuaded to stop the practice. The old custom of lifting the cup that cheers on almost any and every occasion began to disappear.
Inspired by Elders Leland and Augustus Beach, the First Baptist congregation built and dedicated a new church in 1827. A well-proportioned brick structure, with spire and tower, it stood on North Street, in the northwest corner of the old bury- ing ground. The church seated more than four hundred, but a larger church was soon needed. The new one, built in 1849, was eighty-two feet long and sixty feet wide, with a high steeple bearing a gilded cross, which the wind took down a few years later.
The town granted the Methodists a lot on North Street in 1829, not to be occupied for a church, but as a grant of land to assist them in building elsewhere. The Methodist Episcopal Church built on East Street the same year was a rather plain brick structure with a spire. The congregation worshipped here until 1852, when a new church was built at the corner of First and Fenn Streets, a wooden structure seating six hundred peo- ple, with a chapel and classrooms in the basement. When the congregation moved to the new church, some members split off and continued to worship in the old East Street church, organiz- ing themselves as the Wesleyan Methodist Church, which con- tinued to meet for some years, down to the 1860s.
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
There had been Episcopalians in Pittsfield since the Revolu- tion, but never sufficient of them to organize a local congrega- tion until 1830, when twenty-two organized themselves as "St. Stephen's Church, Pittsfield." They held their first services on South Street, in the old Union meetinghouse, which had been turned into a lecture room, choosing as their first minister the Reverend George Thomas Chapman, a scholarly man who had been teaching at Transylvania University in Lexington, Ken- tucky.
Desiring permanent quarters, the Episcopalians wished to build at the corner of Allen Place and School Street, offering the town $500 for a lot there. This caused difficulties, for the lot was occupied in part by the Town Hall, in which the central school district had an interest, using two of its rooms as class rooms. To solve the difficulty, Lemuel Pomeroy made the town a proposition:
The old Town Hall was too small for the community's needs, he said, and a larger one should be built. If the Town Hall were conveyed to him with sufficient ground to build a church, and if the town provided a lot equidistant between the proposed Episcopal church and the old Congregational meetinghouse, he would erect at his own expense a new Town Hall. The offer was accepted. A new brick Town Hall, still in use today as the City Hall, was built in 1832.
On the site of the old Town Hall rose St. Stephen's, a stone structure of Gothic design. In 1851, to accommodate the grow- ing congregation, the church was enlarged and remodeled in- side and out. A stone tower replaced the original wooden one.
The first Roman Catholic services in the town had been held in 1835 by a visiting priest, the Reverend Jeremiah O'Callahan. Though there were few Catholics in the town, Father O'Calla- han and other priests regularly visited Pittsfield until 1844, when the Reverend John D. Brady bought a lot on Melville Street and built a small church there. A number of Irish who had worked on the construction of the Western Railroad settled in Pittsfield, and the congregation grew. Plans were made for
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the construction of a large church, a subject to be considered later.
In 1859, some of the four hundred or more German Protes- tants in Pittsfield organized the German Lutheran Church. With the Reverend Augustus Grotian as pastor, the congrega- tion first met in private houses. Later, the First Congregational Church offered it the use of its lecture room for worship. It continued to hold services there until 1865, when it built a church on First Street.
Meantime, the old Congregational meetinghouse had again been split-but this time, amicably. The congregation had be- come too large for the old meetinghouse, and in 1848 it was agreed that those who wished might be dismissed.
Organizing themselves as the South Congregational Church, they began building a new meetinghouse at the head of South Street, next to the old Union meetinghouse. During the course of construction, fire broke out and both buildings were utterly destroyed. Beginning again, the congregation erected a hand- some wooden church with a spire, dedicating it late in 1850, with the Reverend Samuel Harris of Conway as pastor.
For a time after the dismission of so many of its members, the First Congregation continued to meet in the old wooden meetinghouse built in 1790. Many changes had occurred in it. Its first organ was installed in 1816 but allowed to fall to ruin. Instrumental music was provided by a bass viol, a violin, and a flute down to 1846 when a second-hand organ was brought from Boston. Though having had no previous experience with the instrument, Helen Dunham, daughter of a deacon, became the organist at a salary of $100 a year and evidently gave satis- faction.
In 1851, fire broke out in the meetinghouse and did consid- erable damage. The old structure could have been repaired for $2,500, which was covered by insurance. But the majority of the congregation wished a larger and more substantial church. As a consequence, the old frame meetinghouse designed by Bulfinch was removed to become the gymnasium of the Pitts- field Young Ladies' Institute.
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FROM THE WAR OF 1812 TO THE CIVIL WAR
Money for a new church was raised by a practice known as "dooming." Under this, a committee assessed against each man a semi-voluntary tax based not only upon his property, but his personal interest in the project. The members of the congrega- tion were divided into various classes-the first asked to con- tribute $600; the second, $500; the third, $400; and so down to $100. The "dooming" raised $16,700, and plans for a stone church were drawn by a New York architect. The plans were much too elaborate, having to be cut again and again to meet the congregation's limited resources.
The church that resulted was nevertheless impressive. Con- structed of gray Pittsfield limestone, "Elizabethan" in style, with low walls and a very high roof, it still stands on Park Square. The clock in the tower came from the old meeting- house, having been given to the congregation in 1822 by Joseph Shearer, who had married the widow of Pittsfield's first great magnate, Colonel William Williams.
The widow was the third of Colonel Williams' wives. His friend Colonel John Stoddard once said of Williams and his wives that he "married 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."
Widow Hannah succeeded to her husband's extensive lands and whatever her faults, was ardently courted as a wealthy woman. Her hand was won at last by an enterprising man, Joseph Shearer, twenty-six years her junior. Both appear to have "got cheated like the devil," for the marriage was a most unhappy one.
On three or four occasions, Mrs. Shearer publicly accused her husband of plotting to do her to death by ingenious stratagems, such as leaving a well uncovered so that she fell into it, and of tricking her to mount an unbroken colt so that she almost broke her neck. Shearer was once actually brought to trial on her charge of plotting murder, but the evidence was inconclusive, except in his wife's eyes.
Perhaps just for spite, Hannah lived on and on for almost thirty years, down to 1821, when she died at the age of ninety-
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one, and Shearer at last could enjoy life and Hannah's fortune alone. But not for very long, for death claimed him about fif- teen years later. Today, seeing the old Shearer clock in the tower of the First Church, one wonders: was it a joyous thanks- giving offering for being free of his wife at last, or an act of penance for trying to hasten that much-desired end?
Down the years, Pittsfield had had its trials and troubles. But as the centenary of its incorporation approached in 1861, it looked back with some satisfaction and pride at what it had accomplished. Within a century it had grown from a small rustic village of scarcely two hundred to a bustling town of more than 8,000. It had contributed its full share of devotion and sacrifice to the War of Independence and the War of 1812. It had established a prosperous textile industry, chiefly engaged in making woolens from the superior fleece of the great flocks of Merino sheep pastured in the valleys and on the hills round about. It had three strong banks, a life insurance company, and a mutual fire insurance company, all of them doing an increas- ingly wide and profitable business.
Every year, at the end of the summer, people from all over the Berkshires and from neighboring states came to the three- day county fair at the exhibition grounds of the Berkshire Agri- cultural Society on Wahconah Street-an institution already a half century old. The town was becoming the trading center of an ever larger area.
So far as Pittsfield's own immediate prospects were con- cerned, they seemed very bright. But a mighty storm was gath- cring and already shadowed the whole land. There were rum- blings of thunder-or was it guns ?- as the North and the South faced each other, locked in furious debate over slavery, the right of secession, and related issues.
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IV
Pittsfield: 1861-1915
T HE HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY of the incorporation of Pitts- field fell on April 21, 1861. But it passed with little notice, for nine days before, precipitating the gravest crisis the United States had ever known, rebel forces in South Carolina opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, bringing to an open clash the long-smoldering conflict between the North and the South. The Civil War had begun.
Anticipating a call to arms, Massachusetts responded quickly in sending its soldiers forward. Pittsfield's militia company was one of the first to march-the renowned Allen Guard, which soon won a place for itself on the town's honor roll beside the names of Captain David Noble's company of Minutemen of 1775 and the Berkshire Blues, Pittsfield's pride in the War of 1812.
After the dissolution of the Berkshire Blues in the 1830s, Pittsfield had no militia company until 1853, when the Pitts- field Guards were organized. This company led a languishing existence for some years down to the summer of 1860 when the town, prodded by the State House in Boston, made an ap- peal for funds to equip the company properly and breathe some life into it. The appeal brought in $2,000, with $1,500 of this being contributed by Thomas Allen, grandson and namesake of Pittsfield's first minister, "the Fighting Parson," who had ral- lied the town's forces for liberty and independence during the Revolution and later had outraged his richer parishioners by his
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forthright preaching of Jeffersonian democracy, causing a wide schism in church and town.
But the old sharp differences between Whigs and Tories during the Revolution, and between Democrats and Federalists in the years preceding the War of 1812, had now been forgot- ten. As the Civil War approached, Pittsfield was unanimous in its support of the Union cause.
To honor their chief benefactor, the Pittsfield Guards were rechristened the Allen Guard. As their first captain, the com- pany chose Henry S. Briggs, son of one of Pittsfield's most dis- tinguished citizens, George N. Briggs, member of the Congress from 1830 to 1841 and governor of the Commonwealth from 1843 to 1850. Under Captain Henry Briggs, who rose rapidly to become a brigadier general, the Allen Guard built up its strength and was soon in fighting trim.
On April 17, 1861, four days after the fall of Fort Sumter, orders came that the Allen Guard should join the 8th Massa- chusetts Regiment without delay, being the only company in western Massachusetts honored by the Commonwealth in its first call for troops. At noon the next day, with bells ringing and amid great excitement, the Allen Guard was drawn up in Park Square, seventy-eight strong, resplendent in uniforms of gray and gold, soon to be laid aside for the prosaic blue of field service. After the usual speeches, the company marched through cheering crowds to the railroad station and entrained for Springfield, where it joined the 8th Massachusetts and proceed- ed south toward the battlefront .*
Shortly after the Allen Guard departed, President Lincoln issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to serve three years. Massa- chusetts had to raise six regiments as its quota. One of these- the 10th-was recruited in the western counties. To this, Pitts- field contributed a company known as the Pollock Guard. Early in May 1861, this company went into camp on the extensive grounds of the Berkshire Agricultural Society on the west side
*Though some new facts have been added and the general interpretation is somewhat different, the basic material for this chapter has been drawn from the History of Pittsfield, 1800-1876, by J. E. A. Smith, and the History of Pittsfield, 1876- 1916, by Edward Boltwood. Readers desiring greater detail on this period should. consult these informative volumes.
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PITTSFIELD: 1861 - 1915
of Wahconah Street. Here, in 1855, the Society had acquired some thirty acres as an exhibition ground, erecting many build- ings which served the soldiers as barracks.
Later, in August 1862, a camp for western county recruits was established on Elm Street, at Camp Briggs, which subse- quently became the Berkshire Pleasure Park. Here the men for the 37th, 49th, 57th, and 61st regiments were trained. For a time the camp was under the command of Major General Wil- liam F. Bartlett, who later became a resident of the town. He was one of the first in the North to plead the cause of reconciliation with the South, stressing the need of healing old wounds to make a united nation again. The General died in Pittsfield of injuries received during the war.
During the war Pittsfield men fought at Fair Oaks, Fred- ericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, New Orleans, Mobile, Lynchburg, Winchester, and the battles in the Wilderness that brought about Lee's surren- der at Appomattox.
While the war was going on, the Ladies' Aid Society under the direction of Mrs. Curtis T. (Parthenia Dickinson) Fenn had raised more than $10,000 to help meet the needs of local soldiers and their often hard-pressed families. When peace came, Mrs. Fenn initiated a movement to erect a monument to the men of Pittsfield, both living and dead, who had served in the Union armies. On the base of this monument, which stands in Park Square facing West Street, are inscribed the names of the townsmen "who died that the nation might live"-number- ing 108, a high proportion for a community of 8,000.
But years passed before the Soldiers' Memorial took shape and substance. In 1871, supplementing about $3,000 raised by individual contributions, the town government finally appro- priated $7,000 for a "suitable and appropriate soldiers' monu- ment" to be erected in Park Square. Even then there was delay until Park Square could be made worthy to receive the monu- ment.
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