USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Springfield > The history of Springfield in Massachusetts for the young; being also in some part the history of other towns and cities in the county of Hampden > Part 7
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By this time the governor was thoroughly aroused. More and more he saw steady government going to pieces before his eyes and felt that something must be done. Loyal troops must be got and the state had no money to pay for them. He had to borrow money of Boston citizens to raise an army. This he did and was able to place General Lincoln at the head
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SHAYS' REBELLION
of 4,500 men. Of the troops raised here in the valley, General Shepard was in command. He at once proceeded to make himself strong at the Federal barracks, now called the Armory. None of the present buildings were there then; but there was a building containing arms and in the woods a powder maga- zine, of which Magazine street is still a reminder.
Captain Day was, meanwhile, drilling his men on West Springfield Common and making occasional raids. He cap- tured General Parks and Doctor Whitney in their sleighs and making a dash into Longmeadow, pulled one man out of bed and took him to West Springfield. Eli Parsons with his men of Berkshire was posted in Chicopee, so that, with Shays at Pelham, able quickly to descend upon the towns to the east, Springfield was in this way so surrounded that it was hoped to prevent General Shepard from being reinforced until Shays had captured the guns and ammunition at the arsenal, of which he was much in need. In fact, Day did capture, at Chicopee bridge, a supply of provisions sent to Shepard from Northampton, and Shepard began to be desperately afraid that he could not keep his force together until Lincoln's army should come up.
By this time Lincoln's army was on the move to relieve Shepard and Shays saw that he must attack the arsenal at once or lose his cause. So he came off the heights of Pelham and appeared in Wilbraham with 1,100 men. The women and children of Wilbraham fled to Somers, but Shays kept on his way to Springfield. It was in the dead of winter and slow marching; so that Shepard was warned of their approach by a swift horseman from Wilbraham. He arranged his forces in two divisions; one on Main street, to keep Day from crossing over on the ice to join Shays and the rest he drew up before the arsenal and planted a howitzer in a good position
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
with several cannon to the rear. Several times he sent his aids on horseback to meet Shays on the Sixteen Acres road and demand what he wanted. Shays' reply was that "he wanted barracks; barracks he would have and stores." He was told that he must purchase them dear if he had them.
It was about four o'clock when Captain Shays with his more than a thousand men was seen moving down the present State street by Benton Park from off the Bay road. Reaching the vicinity of the present memorial boulder, they halted. General Shepard sent an aid to inform Shays that if he came nearer he would be fired upon, whereupon Shays started his men. Two shots were then fired by Shepard, not aimed directly at the rebels but only intended to frighten them. This having no effect, a howitzer full of grape shot was discharged into the center of their column. This caused a disturbance and the second or third shot put the whole army to rout. They turned and fled in confusion without firing a gun, leaving several of their comrades dead on the field.
With such a ridiculous ending to the dreaded march of Shays, one cannot speak of the field of battle, and in all the rebellion there was nothing that came any nearer to a battle. Had Shays been more of a leader he would have done either less or much more. As it was, he proved very like that king of France, who, with 20,000 men marched up a hill and then marched down again. Henceforth there was no fear for the safety of the Armory until the days of the Civil war.
If we may still use military language of such a fiasco, we would say that Shays, after the rout, fell back on Five Mile pond, where, making a stand, he next day joined Parsons in Chicopee with such of his men as had not deserted. General Lincoln meanwhile arrived on the scene, emerging from the Bay road and joining Shepard at the Armory. Being the
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SHAYS' REBELLION
superior officer, he was from this time in charge and proceeded at once to break up what was left of the rebellion. A part of his force pursued Shays to Amherst whence he retreated to the fastnesses of Pelham where he, perhaps, thought that nothing but death and taxes could get him. He afterwards went for safety into the State of New York where he died in poverty. His life and exploits, real and imaginary, were made the subject of a ballad which became a popular song, even beyond the limits of Massachusetts. The entire ballad of nineteen verses may be found in the "Poets and Poetry of Springfield." The ancient music is here given.
My name was Shays in for-mer days, In Pel-ham I did dwell, Sir,
-4
But now I'm forced to leave that place, Be-cause I did re - bel, Sir.
General Lincoln ordered another part of his force to cross the river to encounter Day, who was still posted on West Springfield common; while the light horse meanwhile went up the river on the ice to cut off any union of Day with Shays. Day's men precipitately fled to some point beneath the terrace of the ancient river bank, perhaps not far from the site of the old white church where they made a stand and prepared themselves to receive an attack. Another flight and they
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
were on the heights where they were met by the light horse. Then began another rout. Some fled to Northampton and some fell out by the way. Among the latter was one Cooley who hid under a conven- ient haystack and thereafter went by the name of " the haystack Colonel."
The backbone of the rebellion was now broken. General Lin- coln was kept busy for some months in the counties of Worcester, Berkshire and northern Hampshire in suppressing small outbreaks; but, finally, a general pardon was granted to those engaged in the rebellion who would take the oath of allegiance, which they all did, and "lived happily forever after."
Shays' Rebellion, though local, had results affecting the whole country. The news of it reached Washington, in the quiet of his Mount Vernon home, and he was greatly stirred. That such a glorious peace as ended the Revolution should be succeeded by such disorder he thought a disgrace. It was not a resistance to tyrants but free men resisting a govern- ment which they had themselves set up,-a government of law replaced by anarchy. He seemed to see the great work of his life undone. It was partly for this reason that be began to give the great influence of his character and wisdom to the creation of a strong central government which might help the states to maintain order. He again became the leader of the people, and, in part, out of such apparently unfruitful soil as Shays' Rebellion grew the final union of the states and the adoption of the Constitution.
CHAPTER VIII.
OLD TIMES AND NEW .- THE CHANGE TO MODERN WAYS .- THE FIRST STEAMBOAT .- THE ARMORY .- DISTINGUISHED VISITORS .- 1789-1852.
ELL me about old fashioned times," a small boy used to say to his mother, mean- ing the times when she was a girl. What really are the "old- fashioned times?" What is the old world and what the new? We say that modern
We use these words in different senses. times began with the invention of printing and the discovery of America and, again, we say that ancient history is the history of the world before Christ, which we call B. C. But when we are thinking of old and new in Springfield we might properly say that the old fashioned times gave place to the new in the period between the birth of the nation by the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 and the incorporation of Springfield as a city in 1852. During this period the ways of life had greatly changed and causes began to be which later resulted in still further changes.
In the earlier days, men and women, boys and girls, lived in a different way. Their work, their amusements, their
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
studies, their mode of travelling and even of eating and drinking were different. The change in so simple a matter as getting a drink of water is typical of everything else. Once a well sweep (page 24) stood by every door, except where there was a convenient spring. "The old oaken bucket, the moss covered bucket" is no more; there is not now a well sweep within the limits of Springfield. One of the first ancient customs to pass away was that of slavery. From the days of John Stewart there had been slaves in Springfield, all, with
CHESTER
MONTGOMERY
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SPRINGFIELD
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S-FSOUTHWICK
AGAWAM
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.
MAP OF HAMPDEN COUNTY.
that exception, black. Finally, people all felt that slavery was neither profitable nor right, and although the slaves had always been kindly treated as members of the family, yet the custom vanished of itself without the passing of any law against it.
In this period, by the separation of Chicopee, Springfield came into the geographical form in which she has since re- mained, except for a slight change in the south line, and was henceforth the largest in population of the towns in the valley. For a time this was not so. West Springfield, at one
WILBRAHA
R.
BRIMFIELD
WEST
SPRINGFIELD
ICOPEE
YELD
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
time, grew so rapidly as to be ahead of the mother town, and in the Revolution was called on to furnish more soldiers than Springfield; but the census of 1810 showed Springfield the more populous. Springfield, too, became the shire town of a new county. In the old county of Hampshire, which ex- tended from Connecticut to New Hampshire and Vermont and was flanked east and west by Worcester and Berkshire, Northampton had been a county town. When the old county was divided, the middle section retained the old name, taken from one of the old counties of Eng- land. The northern section was named for Benjamin Franklin and the southern for John Hampden, a famous English patroit, who, believing that "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God," went of his free will to jail rather than pay the unjust ship money tax imposed by King Charles. He received his death wound fight- ing for the cause of liberty on one of the battlefields of the English revolution.
Returning now to the ancient ways of life, we remember, as JOHN HAMPDEN. said in the second chapter, that in the very earliest times the people lived in houses made of logs and thatched with straw or grass. For windows they often had only oiled paper instead of glass. But things had gradually improved; so that many of the boys and girls whose fathers went as soldiers in the Revolution lived in much larger and more convenient
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
houses. Nevertheless, the best of those houses were rather cold in winter. Neither furnaces nor stoves were known. The only fire was in the great kitchen fireplace, with some- times another fireplace in the parlor. The great fire, built from huge sticks, crackled and roared and looked very warm, as indeed it was, if one was near enough to it. It boiled the kettle, hanging on the crane, and baked the buckwheat cakes; but while it gave out heat it was sucking in a deal of cold from all parts of the house, so that one would be warm in front and cold on the back, unless he sat on a settle. A settle was a seat with a high back extending to the floor. Sometimes the chimney place was so large that the settle was inside and one could look up and see the stars.
When bedtime came the great fire was useless. It con- sumed a vast quantity of wood, the preparation of which made the sound of "chop, chop, chop," a very familiar one at every house, and, as there would be no one to feed it during the night, it was carefully covered with ashes, in order to keep the coals alive until the next morning. Should it go out in those days when matches were unknown, somebody would go to the neighbors for live coals. The bed rooms were, of course, pretty cold, but, thanks to the great feather beds, the sleepers got warm after awhile and were able to keep so, sometimes by the aid of close curtains, all around and above the bed. Just before getting in it, the bed would be heated by the warming pan, a brass pan containing live coals and moved about between the sheets.
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
In the meeting-house there were no fireplaces; but the women tried to keep warm by the aid of a little footstove, filled with hot coals. The children, too, were often very cold in school. In the school house at Tatham little Lydia would find the pie frozen in the dinner basket under her seat, but she lived through it all to a healthy old age. It is not so much what we endure as how well we learn to endure, that counts.
People made their own but- ter and cheese and the boys milked cows and churned butter, while the girls early learned to spin; for the FOOTSTOVE AND WARMING PAN. cloth generally worn was made in the family and for this reason called "homespun." It took continual spin- ning to make the clothes for a large family. The flax for linen was raised on the farm, then dressed and carded; the wool, too, was raised at home. For the colors, if brown was wanted, the children had to gather butternut leaves for the dye. With all this, milking and churning, spinning and weaving, planting and hoeing, haying and husking, thresh- ing and gathering apples for cider, all going on in the family, there was not much time for young folks to go to school.
One of the most useful farming tools was the flail. With it all the grain that made bread for the family was pounded out by hand on the barn floor. The thumping
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
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of the flail was as familiar as the chopping of the axe as it cut the cords of wood for winter use. An old-time farmer used to say that he could always tell whether the man doing the
threshing was working by the day or the job. If the former, the flail seemed to say, "By --- the-day, by ------ the- day, by --- the -- day;" if by the job, the flail sang merrily, "By-the-job, by-the-job, by the job, job, job." Such is human nature that one is apt to accomplish more when he works for himself. When the right to do this is entirely cut off the result is slavery.
Notice the farming operations, pictured on these two pages. Late in March or early in April comes maple sugar making and when the weather gets warm enough to put the sheep into the water, their wool is first washed and then sheared; during the slack time of summer, when planting and hoeing are over, rails can be split for mending the fences, and in the fall the boys can catch rabbits. All these were
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
familiar scenes hereabouts in olden times and are now in some parts of the country. One who wishes to recall in imagi- nation the way of living in the old days may visit the Day house in West Springfield and see the ancient relics.
But about the beginning of the nineteenth century several events happened, which in the end changed all this and made Springfield, first, a large town, and then a city. The chief of these was the discovery of the useful power of steam; this meant steamboats and railroads. Others were the invention of the power loom and the spinning jenny, moved at first by water power; this meant the gathering of people into mills and the disappearance of cloth manufacture from the family. Modern machinery, in which Thomas Blanchard, of this town, won much fame as an inventor, began to take the place of human hands. The family life was all changed. There was less to be done and the bigger boys could go to school in
summer, when before they could only be spared in the winter. With
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
all these changes there was more demand for work and more people began to come from other countries.
As population increased the wild animals gave way before it. The panther retired to forests more remote; the beaver left the streams and the deer went further north and were not seen after 1820. The last bear known at Bear Hole came out of that dark lair about 1790 when Seth Smith was hoeing corn. Wild turkeys lingered but the last survivors were those on Mount Nonotuck about 1850. The beautiful salmon that once leaped and danced in the rapids of Schonunganunk entirely disappeared, soon to be followed by the sturgeon and the shad.
A century and a half had passed after the settlement and as yet all the crossing of the river had been by canoes, skiffs and scow ferry boats, when one day the minister of the old church foretold a bridge in coming time. "Parson Howard talks like a fool," said Colonel Worthington. But Parson Howard was right and in 1809 the first bridge was completed. Not being strong enough it went down stream; but in 1816 another was ready that was to outlast the century. Its great timbered arches were an object of admiration. When the large droves of cattle that once passed through the country were going over the bridge, running, pushing and throwing their horns about, it was up these arches that the foot traveler could run for safety. Both the bridges were built with money raised by a public lottery, for it was not until later that the evils resulting from getting money by chance were so clearly seen as to make games of chance to be forbidden by law.
How Springfield looked from the river, below the town, in 1796, was described by President Dwight of Yale College, who was taking a horseback journey up the valley. " We took," says he, in his "Travels in New England and New
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
York," "a road along the bank of a river from Suffield through an almost absolute wilderness and crossed a ferry, one mile below Springfield. On the river we were presented with a very romantic prospect. The river itself, for several miles, both above and below, one-fourth of a mile wide, was in full view. Agawam, a considerable tributary on the west, with a large and handsome interval on the tongue between the two streams,
ACAWAM
W.HCLEAVES S
AGAWAM FERRY.
joined the Connecticut at a small distance above. The peak of Mount Tom rose nobly in the northwest, at a distance of twelve miles. A little eastward of the Connecticut the white spire of a Springfield church, embosomed in trees, animated the scene in a manner remarkably picturesque. On this side, immediately below the ferry, rose several rude hills, crossed by a sprightly mill stream. At their foot commenced an extensive intervale called Longmeadow; above which, in
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
the midst of groves and orchards, ascended the spire of Long- meadow church. The evening was just so far advanced, as, without obscuring materially the distinctness of our view, to give an inimitable softening to the landscape.
"We arrived at sundown. The town is built chiefly on a single street, lying parallel with the river nearly two miles.
הדיןדורון.
THE OLD TOLL BRIDGE.
The houses are chiefly on the western side. On the eastern a brook runs almost the whole length; a fact which is, I believe, singular. From the street a marsh extends about forty or fifty rods to the brow of an elevated pine plain. The waters of this marsh are a collection of living springs, too cold and too active to admit of putrefaction on their surface; and for this reason, probably, the town is not unhealthy. Part of this marsh has been converted into meadow. When
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
the rest has undergone the same process, the beauty of the situation will be not a little improved. The houses of Spring- field are more uniformly well built than those of any other inland town in the state, except Worcester. An uncommon appearance of neatness prevails almost everywhere, refreshing the eye of a traveler."
On a Monday, the 27th of November, 1824, a crowd of people was gathered at the foot of Elm street and at other places on the bank of the river. They were watching the com- ing of the first steamboat seen in Springfield. The Barnett must have been an object of great interest as she rounded the bend of the stream and steamed towards the town. On this occasion the following are supposed to have been the words of
THE STURGEON TO THE STEAMBOAT.
"What for ye're makin' such a dashin' And through the water such a splashin'? I'll tell ye what it's no the fashion In these 'ere parts, To make such a confounded buzzin'; Take care or ye'll disturb our dozin'! What are ye? first or second cousin To the Sea Sarpent?"
Thus did a local rhymer express himself in one of the news- papers. It was in this period that river steamboats were displacing stages, afterwards themselves to be displaced by railroads. The sturgeon, a fish about as big and long as a man's body, has not, it is believed, been seen in this part of the river for the past twenty-five years.
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HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD
A line of small steamboats was established between Spring- field and Hartford. On one of these Charles Dickens embarked when he came to this town in 1842. "It certainly was not called," he wrote, "a small steamboat without reason. I should think it must have been about half a pony power. Mr. Paap, the celebrated dwarf, might have lived and died happily in the cabin, which was fitted with common sash windows, like an ordinary dwel- ling house. These windows had bright red curtains too, hung on slack strings across the lower panes, so that it looked like the parlor of a Lilliputian public house, which had got afloat in a flood or some other water accident, and was drifting nobody knew where. But even in this chamber there was a rocking chair. It would be impossible to get on anywhere, in America, without a rocking chair."
It was just before this visit of the great novelist that the railroad CONNECTICUT RIVER STEAMBOAT IN A FLOOD. From "Marco Paul at the Spring- field Armory" 1853. had been built from Boston to Springfield. The people of the town had been eager to bring this to pass. They knew that great things would come of it and Justice Willard declared in a public meeting that one would be able to go from Springfield to Boston "between sun and sun." But when he added "and back again," there were those who thought it a wild prophecy. Pictures of the early engines and cars look queer to our eyes. The passengers had to endure some bumping over rough track but they welcomed something faster
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
than the old yellow stages, with four horses and a bugle, that connected Springfield with Boston, Albany, Hartford and other towns. The chief engineer of the new railroad was Major Whistler, whose portrait hangs in the City Library. He brought his boy James with him when he came to reside here. James used to amuse his schoolmates with his clever drawings and afterwards went abroad, where he became one of the famous artists of the world. His paintings and etch- ings hang in the great galleries of Europe.
When the rail-
road was built from Springfield to Hartford it made necessary the removal of
the ancient ceme -
tery at the foot of Elm street. The training ground and the pound had long since gone and for the cemetery there was now provided a beautiful tract of hill and dell which, for a cemetery, is exceptionally near the heart of the city, yet so full of birds and squirrels, old oaks and tall pines, as to be interesting to a naturalist. To this place was removed the dust of Mary Pynchon, of her brother, the Major, of the brave Captain Holyoke and the good French peddler. The selection of this spot was made by William B. O. Peabody, clergyman, poet, naturalist and a man of pure and refined character, whose life, most of it spent here, was a blessing to the town. By reason of his knowledge of birds the celebrated Audubon once came here to visit him. Verses by him are given on page 39.
Two notable men visited Springfield at about the close of this period. One was Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, a champion of freedom, an exile from his country, and a
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master of thirteen languages. He made here an address in English. The other was Father Mathew, the great apostle of total abstinence, whose wonderful work in Ireland had filled the world with his fame and made the temperance reform respected and popular. By his own efforts for temperance he had remarkably reduced the amount of crime committed in his own country. Coming to Springfield in 1849 and stand- ing in the church of his own faith, then located on the cor- ner of Union and Willow streets, he administered the pledge to people of all faiths. HG Kitson Many societies that are
THEOBALD MATHEW.
today organized for total
The Armory has been a great help to the prosperity of abstinence bear his honored name.
Springfield. We
have seen that
Washington ap- proved of the
location here. When president
he passed through the town and his diary describes his careful inspec- DA'S tion. Little had as yet been done; but later such buildings were erected as
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OLD TIMES AND NEW
allowed a large manufacture. As the words are used in the United States, an armory is a place for the manufacture of arms and an arsenal a place where they are stored. It was decided that the This is the Sorgenal. from flor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rige the bur- nished arms; ** * * Longfellow . heavy work of forging the bar- rels should be doneat the Water- shops, where the trip hammer could be run by water power, and on the hill, "Armory Hill," should be done the lighter work of filing, milling and assembling. Walnut street was then run straight through the woods and over the plain to connect the two parts of the Armory, and on the hill there began to be, as it were, almost a village by itself, com- posed largely of armorers, with even lawyers' offices, and a bank. So distinct were these commun- ities that there was rivalry be- tween the boys of the "Hill" Copeland. and the "Street," and snowball and other fights were common
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