USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 26
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This was accomplished in 1876. The regular force, in April, 1877, consisted of John M. Hatch (chief), John H. Hadsell (captain), Daniel Barry, James W. Fuller, James Solon, L. R. Abbe, and Patrick Cassidy. Each of the seven men was on duty twelve hours out of the twenty-four. The force, during the year 1876-1877, made 256 arrests. The chief, who was no respecter of persons, classified one of the arrested individuals by profession as a "Justice of the Peace", and two as "Editors".
While it would be a distortion to say that the Pittsfield of 1876 was other than an orderly community, it is true that there was a small element to which the novel presence of uniformed officers on the streets was an irritating challenge. Of this ele- ment, the amiable desire was not the commission of felonies but the joining of combat with the new chief and his force. Hatch was well-equipped for encounters of this kind both by nature and by experience, a hardy, compactly built, energetic man, faithful in his duty to the town. He seems, however, to have been sometimes indiscreet in speecli, and as a consequence often to have been in water at least tepid with some portion of the public.
The hard times of 1873-1878 so increased the number of the transient poor that during the year ending in March, 1878, 2,240 of them were sheltered in the flimsy, narrow police station on School Street, where they were nourished on crackers, at an an- nual expense of $40, and where in the winter months coffee was administered to those who shoveled snow from the crosswalks. Under the crowded conditions, a description of the nightly state of things in the lockup became almost impossible, even for the plain-spoken chief. Furthermore, the detention cells opened directly upon the "tramp room"; general jail deliveries could be prevented only with difficulty, and jail riots could not be pre-
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vented at all. In 1879 the town built a new, brick station house, for which the appropriation was $2,800 and which still stands, as the front part of the present police station.
James McKenna, a tall veteran of the Civil War, succeeded Hatch in the position of chief of the force in June, 1881. He served for five years, and was followed by John Nicholson, who became chief of police November thirtieth, 1886, and retained the position, under the town and city governments, until 1905, when he resigned because of his appointment as high sheriff of Berkshire County.
In the later years of the town government, each member of the force was annually appointed by the board of selectmen, and appointed orally, moreover, and in the presence of the entire board. Perhaps this little yearly ceremony tended to impress upon the men a sense of their responsibility to the public; per- haps it reminded them that at the end of each period of twelve months they might fail of reappointment if they had shown themselves ineffective. Perhaps it did neither, but at any rate the town police of Pittsfield, under John Nicholson, exhibited commendable efficiency and discipline; and the morale then ac- quired continued after the small force of fourteen officers, in 1891, entered the service of the city, under the same capable leadership.
In the first year of the city government, Pittsfield's police force mustered seventeen men, who were called upon to make 1,033 arrests. The station house in 1897 was substantially en- larged, and apparently just in time, for during that year the number of wayfarers who voluntarily sought lodgings there rose to the unprecedented total of 4,480. A patrol wagon was first placed in commission in 1903, and an electric signal system on the streets in 1906. In 1915 there were upon the force the chief, a captain, an inspector, a sergeant, thirty-three patrolmen, and a matron. When John Nicholson resigned from the office of chief of police, in 1905, William G. White was promoted to the position. The latter's resignation, after a service of thirty-two years in the department, took effect in January, 1913, and Daniel P. Flynn succeeded him in the following March. Mr. Flynn, born in Palmer, Massachusetts, in 1860, began his long and faithful ser-
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vice on Pittsfield's police force in 1887. While holding the office of chief, he died at Pittsfield, May eighth, 1915. On September thirteenth of the same ycar, John L. Sullivan, the present chief, was appointed.
A record of Pittsfield's police cannot be concluded without honoring the name of Michael Leonard. Captain Leonard, a veteran of the force, gave his life to save the lives of others, ac- cording to the precepts of his duty. On the evening of May thirty-first, 1898, he was clearing the railroad tracks at the Union Station and assisting to a place of safety some helplessly bewildered spectators among the throngs gathered there to wit- ness the passing of troops enlisted for the Spanish war; he was struck by a locomotive; and he died on the following day, June first, at the House of Mercy. His death touched the community deeply.
The town became the headquarters of Berkshire County's organization for the enforcement of law when the county seat was removed from Lenox to Pittsfield and the new county build- ings were finished in 1871. Graham A. Root was then the high sheriff of the county. He was born in Sheffield, Massachusetts, August first, 1820. In 1855, being a member of the General Court, he was appointed high sheriff by Governor Gardner, and two years later, when the office was made elective, he was chosen for the position by the voters of the county, who regularly re- elected him until he declined the nomination in 1880. He died in office on December third, 1880, having been high sheriff for twenty-five years. Few men were so popular or so well-known, not only in Pittsfield but throughout Berkshire. His person was imposing. A genial and companionable man, he could assume on formal occasions great stateliness of port. He held the office longer than any other high sheriff of the county, with the ex- ception of Henry Clinton Brown. Sheriff Root's immediate successor was Hiram B. Wellington, who served until 1887 and is now a special justice of the District Court of Central Berkshire. He was followed in the shrievalty by John Crosby.
John Crosby was born in Sheffield, February fifteenth, 1829, and died in Pittsfield, December seventeenth, 1902. As one of Sheriff Root's assistants, he came to Pittsfield from Stockbridge
HENRY L. DAWES 1816-1903
JAMES M. BARKER 1839-1905
WILLIAM E. TILLOTSON 1842-1906 -
ROBERT W. ADAM 1825-1911
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in 1869, and held the office of high sheriff of the county for nine years, beginning in 1887. Otherwise, and under both the town and city governments, he was often in the public service, for which he was thoroughly adapted by the possession of the quali- ties of integrity, good judgment, and urbanely resolute decision. To the office of high sheriff he brought its traditional physical dignity and grace of presence; and his conduct of its duties was marked by kindliness as well as firmness.
Succeeding Sheriff Crosby, on January first, 1896, Charles W. Fuller became high sheriff of the county. He was born in Great Barrington in 1858, he had been a deputy under Sheriff Wellington, and he was chief of police of North Adams at the time of his first election to the shrievalty. Having served for nine years, Sheriff Fuller died at Pittsfield, February first, 1905. To fill the vacancy occasioned by his death, Governor Douglas appointed John Nicholson, then Pittsfield's police chief, and the voters of the county have since retained him continuously in the office.
The county jail on Second Street was twice the scene of exe- cution by hanging, before the legislature enacted that the legal penalty of death should be paid thereafter at the state prison in Charleston. John Ten Eyck was hanged at Pittsfield, August sixteenth, 1878, for a double murder committed in Sheffield, un- der circumstances of peculiar atrocity, on the evening of Thanks- giving Day in the previous year; and William Coy, convicted of killing John Whalen in the village of Washington in August, 1891, suffered death on the gallows in Pittsfield on March third, 1893. Coy, it is believed, was the only white man ever hanged in Berkshire County for the crime of murder.
CHAPTER XX
FIRE DEPARTMENT
T HE force of volunteer firemen was in 1876 well-organized, well-equipped, spirited, and competent. It had recently passed through a period of revival. The fire district, in 1870, had purchased uniforms for the firemen, who had thereto- fore been obliged so to provide themselves from their own funds. Two steam fire engines, bought by the town, had been first used by the department in 1872. In 1873 the engine houses on School Street had been partly rebuilt, and on July third, 1874, the district had appropriated $2,000 for the erection of a brick hose tower. And not the least of the causes of the renewed efficiency of the department in 1876 was the fact that its master- ful and strenuous chief engineer was Deacon Jabez L. Peck, who officially reported of a fire in 1875 that "by faithful and prompt attendance, and by overruling Providence, the injury was slight."
There were four fire companies. The oldest in point of con- tinuous organization was the Housatonic Company, formed in 1844. This company had charge of the steamer "Edwin Clapp," and was housed in a building on School Street, behind the Baptist Church. The George Y. Learned Company, with a steamcr of the same name, occupied the south half of a wooden house facing the east termination of School Street; and the S. W. Morton Company, custodian of a hand engine belonging to the Boston and Albany Railroad, had quarters on Depot Street. These engine companics were known more familiarly as "Number One", "Number Two", and "Number Three". They maintained hose carts, in addition to their engines, and of each the full com- plement of membership was fifty men. The Greylock Hook and Ladder Company of twenty-five members kept its truck and equipment in the north half of the wooden house at the end of
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School Street, of which the south part was tenanted by the George Y. Learned Company.
For the erection of this two-company house, the district had appropriated $950 in 1853, and had voted at the same time to ex- pend $450 for the renovation of the original engine house, built in 1844 and occupied for nine years by three companies. The latter house was severely damaged by fire in 1859, and the brick building, which is the present headquarters of the Pittsfield Vet- eran Firemen's Association, was then erected for the use of Num- ber One Company. The two hand engines, purchased by the dis- trict in 1844, constituted in 1876 the reserve equipment of the department. A few years later, one of them was stationed at the factory village of Pontoosuc, where a large volunteer engine and hose company was formed. This organization made its first public appearance at a local muster in 1880, and dismayed the older companies by bearing off honors in competition.
Each company was an individual organization, chose its own officers, and controlled the admission of new members, under the approval of the district's board of engineers. Upon the second floor of the engine houses were the rooms for the company meet- ings, which were, in effect, club parlors. Rivalry between the companies was strong, and by this the public was in the main a gainer, because the most obvious way to show superiority was through the display of alertness, competence, and daring at a fire. There the work of the companies often was not dependent solely upon the active members. The chief engineer in 1876 was of the opinion that "the efficiency and discipline of the department is largely due to the very many veteran firemen who still 'run with the machine' ". A considerable number of the town's influential men had been, at one time or another, members of the two older companies; and although they did not, all of them, in 1876 "run with the machine", they retained a salutary interest in the affairs of the department.
Until 1883, five members only of the fire department were paid. They were an engineer and a stoker for each steamer, and a caretaker of the hose and hose tower. Men joined the depart- ment merely because they wanted to; and, while craving for lively fellowship and adventure had a good deal to do with this
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inclination, an earnest desire to help neighbors in time of sudden need was by no means absent. It is remembered of the old vol- unteer fire companies of Pittsfield that the humorous shirker, who flinched in an emergency, was not the most popular frequenter of the clubrooms. The department was a significant part of the community life, teaching its members to value a man otherwise than by his social graces or his bank account; and beneath its more or less boisterous fun lessons were to be learned of honest civic duty.
The chief engineer was elected yearly at the meeting of the fire district. Jabez L. Peck, who had become chief of the depart- ment first in 1859 and had then so served for five years, was again chosen in 1873. He was re-elected annually until 1878, when he was succeeded by William H. Teeling.
Mr. Teeling was born in East Albany, New York, July sixth, 1820, and became in 1838 a resident of Pittsfield, where he died on November twenty-fourth, 1900. He conducted a large bakery which was in the front rank of the town's minor indus- tries. His connection with the fire department was of long standing, dating back, indeed, to the formation in 1844 of the Housatonic Engine Company, of whose by-laws he was one of the original signers. As a chief engineer, he was enthusiastic and picturesque.
George S. Willis, Jr., followed William H. Teeling, being elected by the district in 1882. Mr. Willis was a native of Pitts- field, where he was born in 1841. To the performance of his duties as chief engineer of the department he devoted more than ordinary zeal and time, for he was an energetic, bustling, pro- gressive man, fond of accomplishing improvements, and per- sistent in his desire to discard outdated methods. His industry seems to have been appreciated by the fire district, for he was the first chief engineer to receive a salary, and the first to be pro- vided with office room for the transaction of business. Popular with firemen throughout the state, he left Pittsfield shortly after he ceased to be chief engineer in 1887, and engaged himself in Boston in the sale of fire department supplies. On December fifth, 1909, he died at Sandwich, New Hampshire; his grave is in the Pittsfield cemetery.
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In 1887 George W. Branch was elected chief engineer, and served until the abolition of the fire district. As first assistants to the chief engineer, the district chose, during the period from 1876 to 1891, Edwin Clapp, George S. Willis, Jr., William G. Backus, Erastus C. Carpenter, Terence H. McEnany, and John J. Powers.
In the fire district's area of about four square miles there were, in 1876, sixty-one street hydrants and sixteen water tanks. The latter were of great importance. "Within a radius of 400 feet of the west end of the Park", reported the chief, "there are contained in seven fire tanks more than 133,000 gallons of water -a quantity sufficient, in case of Ashley water being shut off, to supply both our steamers nearly six hours". The number of street hydrants was increased slowly by the fire district. In 1880 it was 72; in 1890, the last year of fire district government, it was 101. After twenty-five years of city government, the num- ber of street hydrants was, in 1915, 573.
Until 1883, alarms of fire were given in haphazard village fashion, by ringing church bells. This sound was liable to mis- interpretation by the zealous firemen. The report of Chief Engineer Peck notes that "on the twenty-fifth of February (1878) a meeting was held at the South Church for the purpose of receiving subscriptions for the liquidation of the church debt. The contribution was so generous that the amount of the indebt- edness was substantially all subscribed, whereupon the sexton rang the bell as a manifestation of his happiness over the result. The ringing was mistaken for an alarm, and the department promptly turned out". Often the bell alarm was supplemented by blowing the steam whistle at Butler and Merrill's woodwork- ing shop on North Street.
In 1876 the fire district voted that a signal "such as the engi- neers may decide upon, be requested to be used by the different steam whistles in town to give an alarm"; and in 1877 a com- mittee was appointed "to examine and test the apparatus now ready for trial to give a continuous alarm for fire, connected with the bell on the First Congregational Church". The district appropriated $150 in 1881 for "putting in a telephonic alarm in the Police Headquarters, and to provide a watchman at night
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thereat to answer the telephone fire alarms". In 1882 money was voted by the district for installing a telegraphic alarm system, valued at $5,000, for which the sounder was the bell of the First Church, and this was placed in commission in January of the following year, with twenty-two street boxes. The bell alarm was reinforced in 1884, by utilizing also the steam whistle of the Terry Clock Company's shop on South Church Street. But many citizens, then, as later, desired a more noisy alarm. It is apparent that Chief Engineer Willis was ready to give them ample satisfaction; he officially recommended that the height of the hose tower be increased and that a bell weighing 3,000 pounds, with a striker, be placed therein, and that bell strikers be installed also in the towers of St. Joseph's and the South Street Churches, thus obtaining, in case of fire, the sound of three large bells and a steam whistle. The mere suggestion, which was not adopted, appears to have quieted the community. Subsequently the fire alarm system was connected with the shop whistle of the Pitts- field Electric Company; and in 1915 an apparatus was installed at the central fire department house, which gave the alarm by a "hooter", operated by compressed air. The number of fire alarm boxes was seventy-one in 1915.
During the final fifteen years of the fire district government, the improvement of the apparatus in charge of the fire depart- ment kept a pace reasonably equal with the public need. Each of the three engine companies undertook to provide itself, at its own expense, with a new hose cart. The cart so purchased by the George Y. Learned Company was a source of especial pride to the members of Number Two. In 1880 the district bought for the use of the Hook and Ladder Company a ladder capable of ex- tension to the unprecedented height of fifty feet, and concerning it the chief engineer's report explained that a ladder was desired which could be lengthened "or shortened so as to reach the rooms over the stores in the town's large buildings". The district in 1886 further increased the efficiency of the Hook and Ladder Company by supplying it with a new truck. The most substan- tial addition to the equipment of the department, however, was made in 1885, when the town purchased a third steam fire engine. At first it was not placed in the hands of an organized company,
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but was held in reserve. Horses for drawing the heavier appara- tus were provided by various livery stables, among which rivalry in alertness produced prompt action.
In the meantime, the manual force of the department was in- creased by the organization in 1883 of a fifth volunteer company. It was called the "Protectives, Number One", and it was formally accepted by the fire district in 1884. The company was intended to be a fire police, and its duty was to protect property in build- ings endangered by fire. Its equipment included waterproof covers and hand extinguishers, carried originally on the ancient Pontoosuc hose cart, and afterward on a horse-drawn wagon. The Protectives had headquarters in the supply house connected with the hose tower.
For the accommodation of the S. W. Morton Company, the town provided a new house in 1887. The company had been dis- possessed of its quarters on Depot Street and was using a room in a Fenn Street block for its meetings, while its apparatus was stored in the town's tool house. Its new engine house, for which the appropriation was $7,000, stood on the east side of North Street, between the railroad bridge and Melville Street, and was a well-designed structure of brick. When it was ready for oc- cupancy, the third, or "Silsby", steamer was consigned to the custody of its tenants.
The chief engineer first received a salary in 1883, and the gradual change from a purely volunteer to a paid fire department in Pittsfield was again noticeable in 1885. In the previous year, arrangements had been made whereby four or five men slept every night in each engine house, and in 1885 these "bunkers", so-called, began to receive a yearly compensation, which at first was thirty dollars. But until the town became a city, and the old fire district went out of existence, the department remained essentially a volunteer organization. The recommendation of Chief Engineer Branch in 1889 that the manual force be reduced to twelve men to a company met with little favor. Even after the installation of the city government, the fire companies re- tained much of that esprit de corps characteristic of independent volunteer bodies, and this was especially true of the Protectives. However, the passing of the regulation of all fire department af-
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fairs into the hands of a committee of the city council so altered conditions in the department, and by city ordinances it was so reduced in membership and so rcorganized, that the year 1891 may be considered as the termination of the distinctively volun- teer system.
From 1876 to 1891, the Housatonic Company had for its foremen Edwin Clapp, John S. Smith, and Harley E. Jones. Its assistant foremen were John S. Smith, John Howieson, Lucien D. Hazard, F. V. Hadsell, and Sanford Desmond. Clark F. Hall was its treasurer during the entire period of fifteen years, while the successive clerks were William F. Osborne, Henry V. Wolli- son, John Howieson, Harley E. Jones, James Goewey, and G. H. Gerst.
The continuity of organization maintained by the Housatonic Company was unique. Edwin Clapp, first elected foreman in 1846, was annually so chosen until 1883, when he declined the nomination; other officers had periods of service as remarkably long. By the internal harmony thus displayed, company pride and self-respect were fostered, as well as by a good record of use- fulness to the community. The organization boasted of being the oldest engine company, in point of continuous service, in Massachusetts. Its spirit was always the democratic, conserva- tive, and reliable spirit of its village days, and upon its roll of both active and veteran members were names of citizens broadly representative of the entire town.
The large "anniversary sociables" of the Housatonic Company were festal events which commingled dining, music, dancing, and, until about 1879, a good deal of oratory. In 1885 the company first joined the George Y. Learned and Protective Companies in organizing a yearly "Union Firemen's Ball" at the Academy of Music, which took the place of the former anniversary celebra- tions. During the winter months, the members of the Housa- tonic Company, as well as of the other companies of the volunteer fire department, were in the habit of entertaining their friends of the gentler sex at "socials" in the company parlors; and the ladies reciprocated by elaborately decorating the company's apparatus with flowers on inspection and muster days.
The foreman in 1876 of the George Y. Learned Company,
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Number Two, was Warner G. Morton, who was followed in office, until 1891, by John Allen Root, John Nicholson, Theodore L. Allen, William F. Francis, and C. I. Lincoln. The assistant foremen were Louis Blain, Theodore L. Allen, William F. Francis, Harry A. Taylor, Frank Smith, John Noble, A. W. Stewart, and F. J. Clark. The clerks were Theodore L. Allen, Charles H. Brown, William F. Francis, Frank C. Backus, Harry A. Taylor, Frank Harrison, Enos I. Meron, Joseph E. Purches, and Jerry Coonley. Albert Backus, Charles H. Brown, Theodore L. Allen, and Arthur Smith were the treasurers.
Apparently the George Y. Learned Company, while diligent in evincing dash and competence on duty, cultivated its fraternal life with unusual ardor. The company seems to have been dis- tinguished, at least after 1876, by the invigoration of a youthful, pushing element, fond of fine equipment and uniforms, and of striving, whether on actual service or not, to excel all rivals. Its hospitalities were frequent; its field days and excursions were popular; and its annual concert and ball, held at the Academy of Music, was an occasion of much renown. The organization, more conspicuously perhaps than the other companies, fulfilled every purpose of a social club.
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