USA > Massachusetts > Berkshire County > Pittsfield > The history of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, from the year 1876 to the year 1916 > Part 6
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Mr. Clapp's shrewd mind was able thoroughly and quickly to appreciate the value to the community of the Berkshire Athenaeum. He was one of the incorporators named in the charter of that institution, and he continued as long as he lived to advance its interests with patient and unselfish effort. By the will of Phincas Allen, under which the Athenaeum was the residuary legatee, Mr. Clapp was designated a trustee of the estate, and the complicated duties of the trust were performed by him alone and, at his own request, without compensation.
Francis E. Kernochan, although a resident of Pittsfield for less than a dozen years, was long remembered by the community with affection and esteem. He was born in the city of New York, December twelfth, 1840, was graduated from Yale College in 1861, was married in 1866 to Miss Abba Learned, daughter of Edward Learned of Pittsfield, and became a citizen of the town in 1873, having acquired an interest in the woolen mill at Bel Air. He died at Pittsfield, on September twenty-sixth, 1884. Mr. Kernochan was a man of scholarly and social refinement and of joyously intensc application to whatever his hands were
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set to do; he was twice elected to the office of town selectman at a time when that distinction was habitually reserved for natives of Berkshire.
A factor of influence in the town's business life was Nathan Gallup Brown, who died at Pittsfield, October twenty-third, 1884. He was born in Preston, Connecticut, January twenty- seventh, 1818; and he came to Pittsfield, as an innkeeper and merchant, when the railroad was built through the village. Mr. Brown served the town as a representative to the General Court during the Civil War, and the fire district as a water com- missioner, and did much of importance toward conserving the commercial interests of the community.
The business activities of no Pittsfield man ever were wider in range than those of Edward Learned. He was born at Water- vliet, New York, February twenty-sixth, 1820, became a resident of Pittsfield in 1850, and there died, February nineteenth, 1886. He was trained in boyhood to be a surveyor, and a conspicuous talent for mathematics was always of advantage to him. Mr. Learned's first important enterprises were those of a contractor for structural work and material for public buildings, principally custom houses, in different parts of the country, and as early as 1852 he was a prominent capitalist in Pittsfield, and interested financially there in woolen manufacturing. During the years immediately succeeding the Civil War his fortunes prospered rapidly. He acquired lucrative mining property in the Lake Superior region, and made other profitable ventures of various sorts. His most considerable project was to build a railroad connecting the Gulf of Mexico with the Gulf of Tehuantepec on the Pacific. This involved not only financial and engineering problems of great magnitude, but also the difficult diplomatic task of obtaining secure concessions from the Mexican govern- ment. Mr. Learned's resolute ability overcame many obstacles; nevertheless, the undertaking finally languished, and he died before he could revive it. He had been married in 1840 to Miss Caroline Stoddard of Pittsfield.
Mr. Learned, in business affairs, was a man of large vision, who did not, as the village said of him, "go hunting for spar- rows"; but his robust, alert mind, fortified by a courageous will,
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prevented him from being a merely speculative dreamer. His youthi had taught him the worth of perseverance and of intelli- gent industry, and he neither forgot the lesson nor ever failed to apply it. Hc made bold ventures, and he handled them boldly, but his boldness was sure to be backed by shrewd judgment and a remarkably comprehensive grasp of detail.
A convincing public speaker, he was a valuable contributor of counsel to the conduct of the town's affairs, and he was a liberal contributor of money to the town's meritorious causes. In 1857 he was elected to represent Pittsfield in the General Court, and he served in 1873 and 1874 as a state senator from the Berkshire district. His patriotism was unswerving, and upon the first nomination of Abraham Lincoln for the presidency he is reputed to have been the earliest to telegraph pecuniary support to the Republican campaign. In person he was com- pactly framed, with a clean-cut, finely chiseled face. He was fond of good horses, and knew how to drive them. His fine home, called "Elmwood", was on Broad Street; and there he maintained a sumptuous hospitality.
Samuel W. Bowerman, a lawyer eminent in Western Massa- chusetts, was born at North Adams, May eighth, 1820. Novem- ber second, 1887, he died at Pittsfield, where he had lived since 1857, having been in 1844 graduated from Williams College. Berkshire juries and Berkshire public meetings soon found that he was a notably effective advocate, using sound, understandable arguments, and speaking with plain force and directness. In politics, having been a vigorous "war Democrat" in '61, hc al- ways attacked narrow partisanship. His legal practice was ex- tensive and important; but in his later years it was not easy to excite his active professional interest except by cases of unusual complication or consequence. He invested profitably in local real estate, and at the time of his death owned the land and buildings at the corner of West and South Streets. Mr. Bower- man was an earnest, sagacious man, whose opinions were deemed authoritative by his fellow citizens. His counsel was of particu- lar value to St. Stephen's Church, of which he was a devout sup- porter.
The position in the community attained by Owen Coogan
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was a beneficial stimulation for many years to the Irishmen of Pittsfield. He was born in County Antrim, Ireland, in 1820, and about 1849 became a resident of Pittsfield, where he estab- lished himself in the business of a tanner. Mr. Coogan, who was one of the town's representatives in the state legislature, was an unassuming, reliable, and respected agent of much good in civic life, and a mainstay of his church, St. Joseph's, in its strug- gling pioneer days; and among his fellow countrymen, when they constituted more than half of the foreign-born population of the town, the influence of his strong, upright character was es- pecially salutary. On December eleventh, 1887, he died at Pittsfield.
A successful and respected Pittsfield farmer of the old-fash- ioned type was Chauncey Goodrich, who had been trained in his vocation when agriculture was the town's chief reliance. He was born in Pittsfield, December third, 1797, and died there, April twenty-ninth, 1887. For eleven years he was a selectman, and his probity and good judgment were highly esteemed.
The career in Pittsfield of Abraham Burbank was in many respects extraordinary. He was born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, June thirteenth, 1813, and came in 1832 to Pittsfield, where he worked as a journeyman carpenter. His earliest purchase of real estate was a small plot of land on Fenn Street; and there, utilizing whatever time he could spare from his regular employment, he managed to finish a house. In 1834 he was married to Miss Julia Brown of Pittsfield. He sold his house, took a note in payment, and went to Michigan, where with his wife he spent a frontier winter in a log cabin; but the note proved worthless, and Mr. Burbank returned to Pittsfield in 1837, having for his financial capital the sum of five dollars. When he died, half a century later, he owned far more real estate of value than anybody else in town.
The man's industry was little short of marvellous. He was at the same time a builder, a farmer, a hotel-keeper, a merchant, and a landlord of several business blocks and of scores of tene- ments. His physical constitution was metallic. With hammer and saw, or in the haying field, he did, until the day of his death, the work of several men. In the quantity of his building opera-
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tions, he was quite as likely to be ahead of the town's growth as behindit. In 1847 he built a brick block on the west side of lower North Street; in 1857 he bought and developed the land now bounded by North Street, Depot Street, Morton Place, and the railroad. He acquired in 1860 the tract now enclosed by Francis Avenuc, Union Street, North Street, and Columbus Avenue. In the northeastern quarter of the village he opened many resi- dential streets, while on his broad farm, next to the high road to Pontoosuc, he crected houses at Springside, and the then con- spicuous row of angular tenements long known to the irreverent as "Abraham's saw-teeth". Mr. Burbank was not accustomed to regard architectural elegance, or even the services of an archi- tect, as indispensable.
He died at Pittsfield, November twenty-third, 1887. To many a poor boy, compelled to face the world with bare hands, the story of Abraham Burbank's hardy persistence was inspirit- ing; nor did the village, while smiling at the countless anecdotes of his thrifty economies, fail to respect his courage, and to be thankful often for his faith in its future. Mention is made elsewhere of his last will, by which he purposed that the bulk of his large estate should ultimately provide for Pittsfield a free hospital, a school fund, and a public park.
A fine example of the ready devotion with which substantial citizens served Pittsfield, under the town meeting system, was the participation of Henry Colt in the village government. The son of James D. Colt, he was born at Pittsfield, November twelfth, 1812. In 1839 he was married to Miss Elizabeth Bacon, daughter of the distinguished Ezekiel Bacon of Pittsfield. Mr. Colt's earlier life was that of a farmer, but there was a close connection then between Berkshire agriculture and Berkshire manufacturing, because of the importance to the manufacturer of the raising of Berkshire sheep; and Mr. Colt, a prosperous wool dealer, became in 1852 the first president of the Pittsfield Woolen Company, whose factory was on the present Wahconah Street, near Bel Air. In 1868 he was chosen by the legislature to the directorate of the Boston and Albany Railroad, and he so served until the end of his life. Mr. Colt died at Pittsfield, January sixteenth, 1888.
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In the conduct of public affairs his fellow townsmen were ac- customed to lean often upon him, because of his safe, conserva- tive judgment, because he could with peculiar authority speak at once for the farming, the manufacturing, and the financial interests, and because of his ingrained and inherited loyalty to Pittsfield. He was a member of the General Court, and was se- lectman from 1852 to 1856, and again from 1861 to 1867; and his steadying value in the latter office was proved particularly during the strain and excitement of the Civil War. Mr. Colt seems to have been rated by his contemporaries as the reliable balance wheel of the community mechanism, but he was none the less a constantly propelling force in the welfare of the town.
The store of William G. Backus on the corner of Bank Row and South Street was a sort of landmark of the older business center of the town for many years. Born in Pittsfield in 1813, Mr. Backus died there, November third, 1888. He was a dealer in stoves and plumbers' supplies, and was so engaged in the town for half a century. Mr. Backus was a member of the first board of engineers chosen by the fire district in 1844, and was dependable for the performance of duties of good citizenship.
Robert Pomeroy impressed himself upon the social life of Pittsfield more picturesquely than any other man of his time. He was born in Pittsfield on June thirtieth, 1817, and until 1884 lived on East Street in the ancestral homestead, which stood opposite the head of First Street, and has since perished. There, in joyous, patriarchal fashion, he was a memorable host. The roomy old house, with its orchards and well-stocked paddocks, had descended to Mr. Pomeroy from his father, Lemuel Pomeroy, from whom also he had inherited a lucrative interest in the woolen mills of L. Pomeroy's Sons. He engaged his capital, too, in profitable manufacturing enterprises at Taconic and Bel Air; and in iron works at West Stockbridge. He had a Solomon-like fondness for doing large, lavish, and generous things. Mr. Pomeroy in aspect was precisely what he should have been- debonair, handsome, radiant of vivacious spirit. His breezy speech and cordial charm of manner made friends whose brilliant circle extended to Canada and England, and with equal solici- tude and hospitality he cherished his friends in his home town.
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By them, and indeed by the entire village, he was affectionately known as "Colonel Bob".
His business talent was neither constructive nor patient; and in the besetment of financial depression he made speculative ventures which caused his fortunes, soon after 1876, to fall upon darkened days. He endured losses with equanimity and philo- sophical courage; and he died at Pittsfield on December twelfth, 1889. In 1840 he had been married to Miss Mary Jenkins of Pittsfield.
Edward Pomeroy, another son of the imperial Lemuel, was born at Pittsfield, September third, 1820, and died there, August second, 1889. A man of esthetic tastes, he stood in his youth at the anvil in his father's gun factory; but his later life was almost that of a recluse, spent in his garden and his library. Floriculture had a no more ardent or successful devotee in Berkshire.
Dewitt C. Munyan, a trusted selectman and a representative of Pittsfield in the state legislature, was a contractor who erected a large share of the town's public and private buildings after 1851, when he came with his father to Pittsfield to finish the construction of the medical college on South Street. Mr. Mun- yan was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1825, and died at Pittsfield, October twenty-seventh, 1889. The court house, the Athenaeum, the Berkshire Life Insurance Company's building, and the county jail are some of the products of his capable workmanship.
Dr. Abner M. Smith was a well-known physician and a help- ful citizen of Pittsfield for thirty-three years. He was born in Dalton in 1819, and became in 1856 a resident of Pittsfield, where he died, May twenty-third, 1889. Enthusiastic in culti- vating fraternal relations with his professional associates, he was prominent in the medical societies of both the county and the town. Dr. Smith gave public-spirited service as a member of the school committee, for he was always a seeker of learning; and many families knew him to be a tolerant friend and a gen- erous counsellor.
John T. Power was a Pittsfield manufacturer schooled among the traditions of those who had so successfully founded the
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town's textile industry. He was born in Pittsfield, July eleventh, 1844 and died on March sixth, 1890. Mr. Power learned his business under the vigorous tutelage of Theodore Pomeroy; in 1882 he entered the partnership of Tillotson and Power, which operated its factory in southwestern Pittsfield. He had a stanch, perhaps an old-fashioned, ideal of duty to his vocation and to the people in his employ, and the community knew him for a safely and firmly fixed quantity among its younger men. For many years he was a trusted officer of the First Church.
CHAPTER V THE CHANGE FROM TOWN TO CITY
A T the April town meeting of 1872, John C. West, who had been a selcetman for nineteen years, proposed to decline re-election; and Thomas F. Plunkett, in a speech com- menting on Mr. West's services to the town, suggested that the administration of public affairs had grown too burdensome to be sustained chicfly by three men, and that the time had come for Pittsfield to apply to the General Court for incorporation as a city. The suggestion was not very seriously advanced, nor was it at the time seriously considered; but a special town meeting, called in the following June, authorized, by a vote of 83 to 73, the appointment of a committee of five to report on the advisa- bility of adopting a city form of government. The members of the committee were George Y. Learned, James M. Barker, John C. West, William R. Plunkett, and George P. Briggs. Their labors were apparently languid. An informal report was made to the town meeting of April, 1873, and a motion prevailed "that the whole subject of the City Charter be recommitted to the Committee to report at the next annual meeting." After an- other year accordingly, the committee presented a somewhat in- determinate plan for the election of nine selectmen from whom one should be chosen "to transact all the town business", a method of municipal government which appears to resemble in some respects the modern scheme of administration through a city manager. The subject was recommitted. The committee then drafted a city eharter, obtained the enactment of it by the Gen- eral Court in April, 1875, and was thereupon discharged by the town.
In the meantime, the slender public desire for a charter had become still more attenuated for two reasons. One of them, al- ready mentioned in these pages, was the revelation of govern-
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mental corruption in several great American cities, which for a brief period made people everywhere in the country vaguely and unduly distrustful of mayors and aldermen. The other reason was the pressure of hard times, following the financial panic of 1873. Opposition to a change of government in Pittsfield was so general that the selectmen did not deem it worth while even to submit the charter to the voters, although the two years' period required for its acceptance was extended to one of four. The charter was modeled conservatively on the form of city charter then usual in the Commonwealth, and provided for the division of the new city into six wards, from each of which an al- derman and three common councilmen were to be chosen.
From 1875 to 1885, the project of changing town to city was allowed to slumber peacefully, but observant men were noting with disquietude the altered character of the town and the fire district meetings, wherein were hastily decided questions becom- ing every year more numerous and complex. The former habit of patient discussion and of leisurely reference to committees was often infringed, while there was an increasing proportion of citizens unwilling or unable to spare the time necessary for in- telligent acquaintance with the public measures upon which they were to vote. The palate of the town meeting began to demand the spice of constant action, and the pepper of quick decision; those eager for what they called "fun" were in evidence more often than formerly; and a humorist with a loud voice and a broad joke was a more dangerous opponent than he had once been to sagacious and important action.
The town meeting warrant of 1885 contained an article pro- posing the designation of a committee empowered to draft a city charter, and to apply to the legislature of 1886 for its enactment. The article caused a vigorous, sharp-witted, and dignified debate. Advocates of a change emphasized the need of harmonizing the divided and rapidly growing responsibilities of the town and the fire district, the discrepancy between the increasing size of the town meeting's appropriations and the time available for consid- ering them, and the stiff argument of the census. In reply, Pittsfield's traditional and deeply rooted repugnance to the dele- gation of authority found forcible expression, as, for example, in
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an earnest specch by Samuel W. Bowerman, who declared that, so far as the argument of the census was concerned, he should rather vote to build a new town hall seating five thousand people than vote to surrender the present right of every citizen to cn- gage actively in the affairs of the town. Other influential and effective speakers maintained that local legislation through dele- gates would be intolerable, that the town was not beyond "the government in open meeting of men of brains and virtue", and that all which could be gained by a city charter would be costly municipal machinery "and a dozen fat aldermen".
The powerful opposition, however, finally consented, with only a few negative votes, to the appointment of a committee of reference. This included in its membership of twenty-five the most prominent of those both in favor and in disapproval of a city form of government; and upon it were Abraham Burbank, Thomas Barber, S. W. Bowerman, J. M. Barker, Joseph Tucker, Jacob Gimlich, William Turtle, E. D. Joncs, Redmond Welch, J. Dwight Francis, W. M. Mercer, S. N. Russell, Henry Noble, D. C. Munyan, J. F. Van Deusen, J. M. Stevenson, W. R. Plunkett, A. J. Waterman, J. L. Peck, James W. Hull, C. W. Kellogg, Thomas A. Oman, Laforest Logan, Harvey Henry, and W. W. Whiting.
Of this committee's deliberations the result was the drafting of a charter which the legislature declined to grant. Its salient feature was the provision of a city council of a single board, to consist of seventeen aldermen, of whom three were to be elected at large. The city of Waltham had obtained a similar charter. The legislative powers at Boston in 1886, however, were not con- vinced that, in the case of Pittsfield, the Waltham form of charter was expedient and just; and the local proponents of the change from town to city made no immediate attempt toward the fram- ing of a substitute. From the feeling displayed at the meetings of the general committee and at less formal discussions, they judged it to be unlikely that a considerable majority of the voters could then be obtained for the acceptance of any charter what- ever. The agitation developed a strong sentimental attachment for the old town and fire district systems, which caused their in- creasing difficulties and dangers to become for the moment in-
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distinct. Simply because they had been habitually followed, people were inclined to believe that the old systems were practical.
Nevertheless, the efforts of the committee of 1885 were by no means in vain. Its sub-committee on statistics compiled and published an elaborately informative report of the town's fi- nances between the years 1875 and 1885, which compelled the thoughtful attention of every tax-payer, large or small. No public document on a similar scale had ever been printed in Pittsfield. A defect of the town meeting government had been that it encouraged in the voters a tendency to consider each financial question as a thing apart, without estimating its rela- tion to the future or to the past. The sub-committee's report was a comprehensive study of the expenses of a decade, en bloc, both of the town and the fire district. Briefly summarized, it showed that, from 1875 to 1885, the amount chargeable to the administration of the dual government had been $132,979.76; to general expenses, $918,610.30; to permanent improvements, $197,929.87; and to interest payments, $243,953.87.
That these sums must substantially increase during the next ten years, was perfectly patent. That their expenditure could with justice and economy be regulated by a town meeting form of government was becoming doubtful. Moreover, it was the investigation of this sub-committee which led indirectly to the disclosure of the looseness of accounting between the town and a former treasurer; and the fact that this irregularity could have existed for so long without correction was not reassuring to those who still believed in adhering to the town meeting.
In 1888, the thirty-first article of the April town meeting warrant read as follows: "To see if the town will establish a rate of wages for town work". When the article was moved for con- sideration, it was seen at once that the meeting was in the control of men who already knew exactly what they wanted, and were determined to obtain it. Indisposed to listen to argument, and unwilling to reply to it, the resolute majority voted that no em- ployee of the town should be paid less than two dollars for a working day of ten hours. Critics from all classes and parties vainly represented that this regulation would throw out of the town's employment the aged and infirm who could not earn the
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wages fixed, that it would be as sensible for the meeting to award interest at variance with the current rate to lenders of moncy to the town, and that an individual thus conducting his private enterprises would be judged to be insane by the very people who supported the measure. The debate, if indeed it can properly be so called, provoked unique turbulence and acrimony, which af- fected, by a sort of contagion, the transaction of other business by the stormy meeting, where $170,000 was appropriated in the course of an afternoon. The result was a large and important accession to those who advocated a city charter.
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