USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 21
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During the hospital's third year, its efficiency was enlarged by changing it from a solely surgical to a general hospital, re- ceiving medical as well as operative cases. At the same time the word "surgical" was dropped from the corporate name, and the post-graduate nurses' course was abandoned, because of the growth of the scope of the regular training school. Under the broadened policy, the institution continued to show gain both in
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patronage and in the performance of charitable service. The executive committee in July, 1915, reported that during the pre- ceding twelve months "the cost of the charity work done during the year was $4,632.31, or $3,741.81 more than was received in donations. Notwithstanding this fact the hospital is able to show itself free from debt." The admissions to the hospital in that period numbered 698, and there was a well-patronized out- patient department.
The first president of the corporation was Walter F. Hawkins, who has since been re-elected annually. The treasurer, serving for the same period, has been Dr. Charles H. Richardson. The directors were chosen from the county at large; Pittsfield citizens upon the earlier boards were Rev. Werner L. Genzmer, William A. Burns, Luke J. Minahan, Dr. William L. Tracy, Walter F. Hawkins, Ambrose Clogher, John White, Dr. Charles H. Rich- ardson, Henry J. Ryan, and Leo Zander. A ladies' auxiliary association, of which the purpose was the promotion of the benev- olent work of Hillcrest Hospital, was formed in 1911. The presi- dent was Mrs. John H. Noble, and the number of members in 1915 was 125. In the same year, there were 109 honorary mem- bers of the hospital corporation, representative of many Berk- shire towns. In common with Pittsfield's other charitable enter- prises contemporaneous with it, the hospital was steadily con- fronted by the problem of supplying a public need with dis- proportionate resources, and, like them, it relied more than is usual upon the constant efforts of its philanthropic supporters, and upon especially watchful management.
The professional staffs of the hospital were from the first under the leadership of Dr. Richardson, whose distinction in the practice of surgery was an important resource of the institution, and among his associates at Hillcrest of long service were Drs. William J. Mercer, Stephen C. Burton, William L. Tracy, A. W. Sylvester, John A. Sullivan, and R. A. Woodruff. The super- intendents of nurses and of the training school have been Miss Marion G. Keffer and Miss J. F. Smith.
Charitable care of the indigent sick at their homes, which had been undertaken for several years by professional nurses in Pittsfield, formally enlisted public support in 1908, when the
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Pittsfield Visiting Nurse Association was organized. The ob- jects werc declarcd to be "to provide for the aid of those other- wise unable to secure assistance in time of illness, to promote cleanliness, and to teach the proper care of the sick." A trained nurse was employed, who devoted all her time to the work of the association and who soon found assistant nurses to be necessary. In 1915 the association, at the request of the school committee, assumed the task of instructing pupils of the public schools in personal hygiene and of helping their parents by such instruction when needed. For the year ending in March, 1916, the number of visits made by the nurses of the association was 2,820.
The Pittsfield Visiting Nurse Association has been supported almost entirely by yearly gifts and subscriptions. The presi- dents have been DeWitt Bruce. Mrs. Henry R. Russell, Mrs. Charles H. Wilson, Mrs. John L. Robbins, and Mrs. Robert D. Bardwell.
It has been said that, before the establishment of the Visiting Nurse Association, the work of charitable nursing among the poor of the city had been carried on for a number of years by the professional nurses of Pittsfield of their own initiative and at the generous expenditure of their time, skill, and labor. Most of them were graduates of the Bishop Memorial Training School. The advantage of skilled nursing and its philanthropic as well as its practical mission were thus first fully proved to Pittsfield by that institution, the founder of which did more than merely pro- vide for the technical education of trained nurses. Another effect of his gift was to add the provision of free, skilled care of the sick at their homes to the list of local charities.
Henry W. Bishop was born in Lenox, June second, 1829, and died at Seabright, New Jersey, September twenty-eighth, 1913. He was graduated in 1850 from Amherst College, and in 1856 began the practice of law in Chicago, where he gained professional and civic prominence. For Berkshire, however, he always re- tained the warmest affection; and after his marriage to Miss Jessie Pomeroy, daughter of Robert Pomeroy, he made Pittsfield his summer home. Mr. Bishop was a cultivated, kindly man, of rare social graces and strong friendships. The school for nurses on North Street was founded by him in memory of Henry W.
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Bishop 3rd, a son by his first marriage, who died while a student at Williams College. In an address at the dedication of the building in 1889, Mr. Bishop made a touching allusion to the impulse which prompted his gift.
"The last year of my son's life was full of weariness and pain, very patiently endured. During his illness, I came to know and appreciate the inestimable value of trained scientific nursing. He left me just as he was entering into manhood, before he could make for himself a name to be remembered. Naturally, I de- sired that his memory should be kept green among the Berk- shire people, and remembering the comfort and peace which sometimes came to him through skillful, tender care, the two ideas became associated. If thus a permanent material monu- ment shall stand in his memory, and if this memorial structure shall send forth streams of healing and comfort to the sick and wounded inhabitants of Berkshire forever, then what was his loss will be their gain and my sweet consolation."
Mr. Bishop builded better than he knew, perhaps. The relief of suffering was not the only mission accomplished by the insti- tution which he founded. Another result of his benefaction was that many Pittsfield people were taught the value of trained method in philanthropy by observing the charitable work of the pupils and graduates of the school for nurses.
In 1909, it was strongly believed that scientific method might with advantage be applied also to the unification, in certain respects, of some of the city's charitable institutions; and an or- ganization called the Associated Charities was then projected, and was formally established in 1911. Arthur N. Cooley was the first president, and has since served in that office. In May, 1915, the trustees of the Union for Home Work, which had then been inactive for four years, voted to unite with and take the name of the Associated Charities, and in June this amalgamation was legally effected, and the combined organizations were incorpo- rated. The Associated Charities, employing trained and profes- sional agents, thus succeeded to the functions of the former Union for Home Work, in so far as the investigation and assistance of poverty and unemployment were concerned, and furthermore placed its advice and co-operation at the service of any local charity operating in a particular field, and, indeed, at the service of any individual benevolently disposed. Accordingly, the in-
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fluence of the Associated Charities was toward that systematic centralization of philanthropic effort which is today characteristic of American social life, and which was evident in Pittsfield as early as 1878, when the Union for Home Work was formed.
CHAPTER XVI
MILITARY AND PATRIOTIC ORGANIZATIONS
I N the first volume of Joseph E. A. Smith's "History of Pitts- field", the author characterizes Hosea Merrill in these words: "Mr. Merrill was in after-life a fine specimen of the Revolutionary soldier retired to private life-a calm, even- tempered, collected, and thoughtful man; kind and affectionate; speaking ill of none; quiet, industrious, and economical; spend- ing a long life without reproach, and fearing no man". Those phrases might well be used of many volunteer soldiers of the Civil War who made their homes in Pittsfield. In 1876 and for several years thereafter they were a considerable and an in- fluential part of the community. They were then in the prime of life; most of them, indeed, were still young. Prominent among them were such good citizens as William Francis Bart- lett, Henry S. Briggs, Walter Cutting, Joseph Tucker, Michael Casey, Henry H. Richardson, John White. A town possessing examples of this stamp of the nation's citizen soldiery knew the best of it.
But the community, although thus strongly infused with men who had seen military service, was unmilitary. The veterans themselves exhibited the characteristic Pittsfield dis- like of permanent organization. The first local post of the Grand Army of the Republic that was formed had but a brief career. Even the regimental reunions were slimly attended. There were resident in the town in 1876 about fifty men who had worn the uniforms of commissioned officers, but an attempt failed to organize them in a formal officers' association. As for the Pittsfield company of state militia, it was on the rocks, and in 1878 it was wrecked completely. The announcement, made in 1876, that "Co. E, 2nd Battalion, 6th Brigade, M. V. M." was retained in the service of the Commonwealth, was greeted
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by a display of fireworks at the Park, a paradc, and a serenade in honor of John L. Colby. Two years later, however, the Colby Guard was disbanded by the governor, and a petition for the establishment of a new company was denied. The last captain of Company E was J. Brainard Clark. John L. Colby, whosc name the company borc, was a wealthy owner of iron works at Lanesborough. He had a summer home in Pittsfield and was a dashing figure in the social life of the town. In 1888 he died in New York.
The first observance in Pittsfield of the ceremonies from which was to be developed the impressive and beautiful solemnization of Memorial Day appears to have been informally and hastily arranged. The custom of annually decorating the graves of soldiers began on May thirty-first, 1868. The local newspapers recount merely that "a large concourse of people" met at the cemetery to lay flowers on the soldiers' graves "under the direc- tion of the sexton, Mr. J. W. Fairbanks", and that, at the grave of Capt. William W. Rockwell, a brief address was made by Gen. Henry S. Briggs. In subsequent years, the town meeting appro- priated money yearly to defray the expenses of a suitable cele- bration, conducted by a committee appointed by the moderator. The original appropriations for this purpose were obtained mainly through the stirring advocacy of Morris Schaff and Thomas G. Colt.
The earliest organization in the town of a post of the Grand Army of the Republic was in 1869. This was Post No. 98, Department of Massachusetts. In 1870 it bore the name "Phil Sheridan", and in 1871 was named for William W. Rock- well. Capt. Rockwell, a native of Pittsfield and a son of Judge Julius Rockwell, died in the service of his country at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1863; he was a gallant young officer of the Thirty-first Massachusetts regiment, greatly beloved by his men. A complete record of the first W. W. Rockwell Post seems to be unobtainable. When the post was chartered, July eighth, 1869, its commander was Jacob L. Green, and among his successors werc Henry S. Briggs, Warren T. C. Colt, and Henry B. Brewster. On January sixth, 1877, the charter was surrendered. At that time there was little interest in the Grand
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Army of the Republic discernible in the western part of Massa- chusetts. Its total membership in Berkshire County scarcely exceeded one hundred, distributed among four posts.
Prosperity and influence, however, awaited the organization. The veterans in Pittsfield re-established a post of the Grand Army in 1882, when, on March tenth, was instituted W. W. Rock- well Post, No. 125, with twenty charter members. Three years later the membership was two hundred. The first com- mander was Byron Weston of Dalton, and the scene of the for- mation of the post was a hall in the block next north of the Berkshire Life Insurance Company's building. In 1883 the headquarters were removed to the Renne building on Fenn Street and there remained until 1911, when Municipal Hall was made available by the city for the uses of the Grand Army and kindred organizations. The list of commanders of Rockwell Post, No. 125, includes Byron Weston, 1882; Charles M. Whel- den, 1883; William H. Chamberlin, 1884; Oliver L. Wood, 1885; Walter Cutting, 1886; Robert B. Dickie, 1887; L. B. Simons, 1888; W. F. Harrington, 1889; C. B. Scudder, 1890; John White, 1891; Jesse Prickett, 1892; William F. Harrington, 1893; John Campbell, 1894; Joseph Tucker, 1895; Francis A. Ireland, 1896; N. S. Noyes, 1897; Edward L. Mills, 1898; John White, 1899; John M. Lee, 1900; John White, 1901. Since 1901, Mr. White has annually served as commander of the post.
The Women's Relief Corps, auxiliary to the W. W. Rockwell Post, was chartered in 1884, and was honored in having Mrs. William Francis Bartlett for its first president. The devoted and kindly work performed by the patriotic women of the corps, as well as by those of its sister organization of the other Grand Army post in Pittsfield, seems even to have increased in value with the passage of time. A camp of Sons of Veterans, which was an outgrowth of Rockwell Post, was formed in 1883, but its existence was limited to a few years. It bore the name of Thomas G. Colt, whose death was the first one entered on the records of Rockwell Post, No. 125.
Thomas Goldthwaite Colt was only nineteen years old when, in 1861, he enlisted as a private in the Tenth Massa-
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chusetts regiment; in 1862 he was on the regimental staff, as adjutant, of the Thirty-seventh; and at the end of the war in 1865 he had won his brevet of lieutenant colonel. He was the son of Henry Colt, one of the town's stanch and vigorous "war selectmen", and was born in Pittsfield, September thirtieth, 1842. There he died, May tenth, 1883. Dominant among his traits was his cheerfulness in the face of danger or in defeat; the vetcrans of the Thirty-seventh believed that their youthful adjutant embodied the buoyant soul of the regiment. After the war, he preserved his interest in military affairs and military men, for he was a born soldier, whom soldiers followed with gay contentment.
A conspicuous member of Rockwell Post, and a conspicuously valuable citizen of Pittsfield, was Henry H. Richardson. He was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts, January twenty-fifth, 1826, and in 1848 began the trade of carpenter in Pittsfield. He was a lieutenant of the Allen Guard, with which command he went to Maryland in 1861, and of which the seventy-eight members supplied later to the war one brigadier general, two lieutenant colonels, one major, four captains, and seven lieu- tenants. Immediately after its discharge, he obtained a cap- taincy in the Twenty-first Massachusetts, and with this famous fighting regiment he served without intermission for three years. Some of the more important battles in which he did duty were those of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, South Mountain, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. At Petersburg he was wounded, and while he was in hospital in 1865, he was promoted to be lieutenant colonel. He does not seem to have accepted the promotion, but the speech of his neighbors always thereafter proudly gave to him the title.
Col. Richardson, after the war, became a builder and con- tractor in Pittsfield, where he died, on March thirty-first, 1904. Of proverbial integrity, he served the fire district as an efficient commissioner of main drains and the city as a member of the municipal council. His face was rugged, his figure was solid and squarely set, and he was a natural leader of men, being masterful, straightforward, and reticent; it was often amusing
MILITARY AND PATRIOTIC ORGANIZATIONS 237
to observe with what difficulty he could be induced to speak of his fighting days in the Civil War. To few of his time can be applied with stricter truth Mr. Smith's characterization of the Revolutionary veteran, which begins this chapter-"speaking ill of none; quiet, industrious, and economical; spending a long life without reproach; and fearing no man."
Charles M. Whelden was born at Boston, December twenty- sixth, 1821, and died at Newton, Massachusetts, January twenty-fifth, 1910. He became a resident of Pittsfield in 1851, after adventurous experiences in California and South America. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he attached himself to the leadership of Gen. Benjamin F. Butler; and through the in- fluence of that much-debated commander he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1862. The actual commission, because of the pique, it was said, of a fellow officer, did not come into his possession until 1895. Col. Whelden served as a provost marshal in Louisiana, Virginia, and North Carolina. He was for many years of his long life a druggist in Pittsfield, where his sprightly temperament and ability to make many men his friends brought him often to the fore in town affairs and in those of the Rockwell Post.
One of the leading charter members of Rockwell Post was Israel C. Weller, who was born in Fowlersville, New York, in 1840, and died in Pittsfield, November third, 1900. He came to Pittsfield in his boyhood, was a member of the Allen Guard in 1861, and afterwards served as a captain in the Forty- ninth. He was endowed with an extraordinary genius for humorous story-telling, and all his life his popularity was un- bounded. Accustomed to deprecate jocosely his own military services, he was nevertheless a reliable and steadfast volunteer officer.
William H. Chamberlin, commander of Rockwell Post in 1884, was a native of Dalton, where he was born May fifteenth, 1841. He enlisted from Illinois in the Thirty-sixth regiment of volunteer infantry of that state, and was wounded and captured at the battle of Stone River. In 1878 he became a resident of Pittsfield, having in the meantime conducted profitably the business of paper manufacturing in New York. His philan-
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thropy was far-reaching, unostentatious, and practical. The aid which he gave to the interests of the Young Men's Christian Association was specially noteworthy. A quiet, democratic man, he cherished stoutly the patriotic spirit of the war-times of his youth; and it is believed that few old soldiers failed to find him a cheery and helpful friend. He died in Pittsfield, August ninth, 1901.
In 1889 a number of the members of Rockwell Post with- drew from the organization and formed Berkshire Post, No. 197. The latter was instituted, with forty-six charter members, on April eighteenth, 1889, in a hall in West's block on the corner of North Street and Park Square. The first commander was Walter Cutting, who served until 1893. In 1893, William E. Wilcox was commander of Berkshire Post; in the years 1894 and 1895, James Kittle; in 1896, James F. Thurston; in 1897, Orra P. Wright; in 1898, William F. Hunt; in 1899 and 1900, John S. Smith; in 1901 and 1902, Richard Stapleton; in 1903, Charles E. Johnson; in 1904 and 1905, Oliver L. Wood; in 1906, William E. Wilcox. John H. Skinkle, the present com- mander, was first installed in 1907, and has since been annually re-elected.
The membership was doubled within a few years of the insti- tution of the post, which exhibited a sound activity, wherein the early interest of such members as Walter Cutting and of William H. Chamberlin was conspicuous. In 1890 the post in- spired the forming of the William F. Bartlett Camp, Sons of Veterans; and in 1892 the post and the camp began to use the same quarters in the England block, on the east side of North Street. In 1894 was chartered, as auxiliary to both these as- sociations, the Women's Independent Aid Society, which after- wards became the Berkshire Women's Relief Corps, No. 129. In 1901, the meeting place of the three organizations was re- moved to a hall in the "Bay State Block", on Fenn Street, and in 1911 their headquarters were established in the Municipal Building opposite the post office.
In the various quarters occupied by the two Pittsfield posts, much sympathetic and substantial help has been extended to their members, many war stories have been exchanged, and
MILITARY AND PATRIOTIC ORGANIZATIONS 239
steadfast patriotism has been fostered, as in places of the same kind the country over. The relief funds were maintained by more or less elaborate fairs and entertainments. Public ob- servance of Memorial Day has been maintained with faithful alertness, in spite of the burden of advancing age. An excerpt here from the adjutant's book of Berkshire Post has a quaintly touching significance. It bears date May twelfth, 1913, fifty years after those who took part in the meeting, which it records, had marched in the Civil War.
"Motion made and seconded that the Post ride to Cemetery on Memorial Day-Carried.
"Motion made and seconded that the vote to ride on Me- morial Day be rescinded-Carried."
And the veterans marched, as stalwartly as might be.
The distinction of having been continuously an officer in Berkshire Post from the date of its institution to that of his death was possessed by John Summerville Smith. He was born in Paisley, Scotland, in 1842, came as a boy to Pittsfield, and there died, April first, 1907. His military service was in the Eighth Massachusetts, in 1864. By trade a harness-maker, Mr. Smith was a valuable member of the town's fire department, and an efficient foreman of the Housatonic Engine Company for many years.
Oliver L. Wood, commander of Berkshire Post in 1904 and 1905, was born in Becket, Massachusetts, October twenty-first, 1841, and died in Pittsfield, November eleventh, 1911. He went to the front in 1862, as one of the color corporals in the Forty-ninth Massachusetts regiment. In 1874 he became a resident of Pittsfield, a good type of the reliable and self-reliant volunteer soldier in civil life. In 1887 he was appointed a deputy sheriff, and in 1901 an officer of the state police.
Another veteran of the Forty-ninth regiment who was a faithful official of Berkshire Post was James Kittle, a native of England, where he was born in 1841. In 1855 he came to live in Pittsfield, and he died there, May sixteenth, 1915. A quiet, trustworthy citizen, he was for nineteen years chairman of the local board of registrars, and was a representative of his district in the legislature of the state. As the long-time secre-
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tary of the Forty-ninth Regiment Association, Mr. Kittlc was one of its mainstays and was held by its members in strong af- fcction.
Michael Casey was disinclined by temperament from holding office, but every organization of which he was a member was certain to find his membership a strong and dependable help. One of these organizations was Berkshire Post. Mr. Casey was born in Ireland in 1843. He came to Pittsfield when he was a boy, and was still almost a boy when he went to the front as sergeant in the Thirty-seventh regiment. At the close of the war he was a first lieutenant. In 1868 he established himself in business at Pittsfield in partnership with James L. Bacon. The firm of Casey and Bacon, dealing in grocery supplies, soon be- came solely a wholesale house; its career was prosperous and honorable; and having been conducted successfully as a part- nership for forty-one years, it was dissolved in 1909, and the present corporation was formed bearing the same name. Mr. Casey died at Pittsfield, November twenty-sixth, 1913.
He was a self-contained man of few words, but his influence was far-reaching. A devout churchman, he was found by suc- cessive priests at St. Joseph's to be among the foremost in up- holding, without ostentation, the interests of the parish. His public spirit was active and progressive. To this was in great part due, for an example, the provision of land at Morningside for the use of the Stanley Electric Manufacturing Company, when upon such provision depended the retention of the shops in Pittsfield. Mr. Casey believed in encouraging, and he himself often encouraged, the planting of new industries in the city; and in his later years he concerned himself largely with develop- ing new residential districts. For such enterprises the merited trust of the people in his probity and sound judgment well adapted him.
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