USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Amherst > The history of the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, pt 1 > Part 10
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In the House of Representatives Read and Concurred."
" An act for erecting the Second Precinct in the Town of Hadley, in the county of Hampshire, into a District by the name of Amherst.
Whereas the inhabitants of the second precinct in the Town of Hadley, in the county of Hampshire, have petitioned this court, setting forth sundry difficulties they labour under by means of their not being a district and praying they may be so erected,-
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ACT ERECTING THE DISTRICT OF AMHERST. .
Be it therefore enacted by the Governor, Council and House of Representatives. That the said second precinct in Hadley, according to its present known bounds, be and hereby is erected into a separate and distinct district by the name of Amherst ; and that the inhabitants thereof do the duties that are required, and enjoy all privileges that towns do or by law ought to enjoy in this province, that of sending a representative to the general assembly only excepted; and that the inhabitants of said district shall have full right to join with the inhabitants of the said town of Hadley in electing a representative annually, and shall be notified of the time and place of election with the inhabitants of the said town of Hadley, by a warrant from the selectmen of Hadley, directed to the constable of 'said district, requiring him to warn the inhabitants of said district to attend the meeting for that purpose at the time and place by them assigned, which warrant shall be seasonably returned by said constable ; and the representative may be chosen indifferently out of said town or either of the districts, his pay and allowance to be borne by the town of Hadley and the said districts. in the proportion that they respectively pay to the province tax.
And be it further enacted,
That Isaac Ward, Reuben Ingraham, Phillip Ingraham, Isaac Hubbard and Edward Elmer, and their respective estates lying within the bounds of the tract of seventeen hundred and seventy-seven acres petitioned for, and adjoining to the said second precinct line. be and hereby are annexed to the said district, there to enjoy privilege and do duty.
And be it further enacted,
That Timothy Dwight Esq' be and hereby is directed and;impowered to issue his warrant, directed to some principal inhabitant within said district, requiring him to warn the inhabitants of said district qualified to vote in town affairs, to assemble at some suitable time and place to choose such officers as are necessary to manage the affairs of said district: provided, nevertheless, the inhabitants of said district shall pay their proportionable part of all such town, county and province charges as are already assured in like manner as tho' this act had not been made." [Passed Feb. 13, published Feb. 14, 1759.]
Judd says, Hadley consented that East Hadley should be a district, but opposed the annexation of the five families, who seem to have resided on the road leading from Amherst to Sunderland. Two minutes regarding the matter are found in Hadley records, one under date of . March 6, 1758, which reads as follows :
" Voted That the East Precinct besett off a saparate District according to their present Bounds."
The other, under date of Feb. 8, 1760 :
"Voted That the District of Amherst, shall have their proportionable part of the Town Stock of Powder. Lead and Flints, as they paid in the last Province Tax, before they were erected into a separate District."
The town and district organization was practically the same ; their powers were identical, save that to towns was reserved the privilege of send- ing representatives to the General Court. Amherst chose a delegate to the Provincial Congress in 1774, thus assuming the privilege accorded only to
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HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF AMHERST, MASS.
towns. In 1776, it assumed the name of the " town of Amherst ", to which it had no legal title. No special act for its incorporation as a town was ever passed, but March 23, 1786, it was enacted by the General Court that all districts incorporated prior to Jan. 1, 1777, should be towns. This carried with it the privilege of sending a representative to the General Court, a privilege that was also a duty, as it appears that in 1782 Amherst was fined £28, 6, 8 for not sending a representative; one-half this fine was afterwards remitted. In the management of its own affairs the district was supreme, electing officers, making rates and controlling highways. The first meeting in the new District was held March 19, 1759, with Ebenezer Dickinson moderator, when a full list of officers was elected.
There has been more or less controversy as to how the name Amherst came to be bestowed upon the District. The statement has been made that in the bill for erecting the District, the name " Norwottuck " was written in, and afterwards erased by Governor Pownall and " Amherst " substituted. The records at the state house in Boston contain nothing to verify this statement, and no documentary evidence can be found to substantiate it. It is possible, and even probable, that the name "Norwottuck " was sug- gested and favored by some of the residents in the Second Precinct. It was the old Indian name for this section of the Connecticut valley, signifying " in the midst of the river." The privilege of bestowing names upon the new districts was one of the perquisites of the colonial governor, and there is every reason to believe that when the bill erecting the District was passed by the General Court, a blank was left for the name and this blank was filled in by the governor with the word " Amherst". At that time Thomas Pownall, Esq. was governor-general of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, under appointment of King George II. of England. He was an intimate friend of General Jeffery Amherst, whom the king had placed in command of the expedition against Louisburg, and this friendship, coupled with the success of the expedition and the fame and honor which it brought to Gen. Amherst, made it natural and fitting that the name Amherst should be bestowed upon the new District.
The following interesting article, concerning the name "Amherst" and Lord Amherst, was written especially for this History by Prof. Herbert B. Adams of Johns Hopkins University, a native of Amherst, who has in many ways shown his interest in the preparation of this work.
AMHERST AND LORD AMHERST.
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The name Amherst is of old English origin and was first applied to a landed estate in the parish of Pembury, in the county of Kent. Early forms of the name were Hemhurste and Hemmehurst, compound words formed by prefixing the Saxon Hem, meaning a border, to the Saxon Hurst,
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GENERAL JEFFERY AMHERST.
meaning a wood. Amherst therefore probably signifies the border of a forest, or Edgewood .*
The Amherst family derived its name from the situation of its land. Gilbertus de Hemmehurst is on record as early 1215. The family occupied its Amherst estate for over five centuries, but now lives at a country-seat called " Montreal House ", near Seven Oaks, Kent. The present owner is Earl Amherst, who signs his name simply " Amherst ". His father and grandfather before him were Earls, but the man in honor of whom our town was named in 1759 was, at that time, Major General Amherst.
Jeffery Amherst was born January 29, 17.17. He was the second son of a barrister and early (1731) entered the English army, serving as staff- officer, under General Ligonier and the Duke of Cumberland, in those old wars which England waged for the defense of Hanover and in alliance with Frederick the Great. In 1758 Colonel Amherst was called home from Germany and made a Major General by William Pitt, who was looking for new and efficient men to lead the English campaigns against the French in America. Braddock had been defeated and killed. Oswego and the lake region were lost. The Earl of Loudon had failed to capture Louis- bourg and was now recalled.
In May, 1758, General Amherst was put in command of the Louis- bourg expedition, with over 12,000 troops and a great fleet of which Bos- cawen was Admiral. Under Amherst was Brigadier Wolfe, bold, dashing, and eager for glory, but not distinguished like his chief for prudence and absolute self control. Parkman says of Amherst : " He was energetic and resolute, somewhat cautious and slow, but with a bulldog tenacity of grip ". Amherst had the best fighting qualities of his race and nation, and was withal sagacious, far-sighted, and eminently humane in his policy of dealing with men.
On the eastern coast of the island of Cape Breton may still be seen, in a land-locked harbor, the ruins of old Louisbourg, once the French strong- hold, guarding the Northern Atlantic. Captured in 1745, by a provincial army under Colonel Pepperrell (see a good account in New England Mag- asine, June, 1895) the place had been ignominiously restored to France by
* Ik Marvel (Donald G. Mitchell) long ago adopted "Edgewood" for the name of his place. Professor F. A. March, of Lafayette College, Easton, Pa., a graduate of Amherst College and one of the most eminent English philologists in America, says, in a letter dated Sept. 14, 1895 : "I can find nothing more to establish or explain the history of Amherst suggested by the earlier fornis which you mention. I would take hemme as descriptive of hurst. Amherst = a border fodder-wood, bordering an open meadow, perhaps, or a stream. That makes a good name enough to be an accepted hypothesis for the given facts.
But the general run of the names of hurst makes one suspect that the hemme is a variation of hamme or helme for elmme, and that the original name was an enclosed wood, or elm-wood, or Ham's or Am's-wood."
Thus we have a pleasing variety of good old Saxon etymologies to choose from. Still another is Homewood, if we accept the derivation of Amherst from Hamhurst by dropping the letter "h." Homewood is as good a name as Edgewood or Elmwood. Amhurst is a family name in England.
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HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF AMHERST, MASS.
treaty in 1748. Since then the fortifications had been greatly strengthened. They were a mile and a half in extent and enclosed an area of 120 acres in the form of a peninsula triangle, protected on two sides by the sea and. on the land side, considered impregnable. In spite of the difficulties occasioned by heavy surf and a craggy shore, a landing was effected at Fresh Water Cove by the gallantry of Wolfe and his soldiers, supported by Amherst and the whole army. The British fleet cooperated and destroyed the French shipping. General Amherst commanded operations and con- ducted the siege. Batteries were erected at various points around the harbor. By means of trenches the siege-guns were brought nearer and nearer to Louisbourg, whose great bastions began at last to give way. After an heroic defense of two months, the French commander was com- pelled to sue for terms. Amherst demanded the surrender of the whole garrison as prisoners of war and a definite reply within an hour. A French officer was sent out to beg for more honorable conditions, but Amherst refused to parley. He sent back a curt and peremptory message to Drucour, the commandant : " You will have the goodness to give your answer, yes or no, within half an hour." A contemporary account says : " A lieuten- ant-colonel came running out of the garrison, making signs at a distance and bawling out as loud as he could, 'We accept ! We accept !' He was followed by two others, and they were all conducted to General Amherst's headquarters."
Louisbourg was duly surrendered July 26, 1758, with all its stores and munitions of war, together with the whole island of Cape Breton and also the Isle St. Jean or Prince Edward Island. All the outlying coast-pos- sessions of France in this region were thus cut off at one blow. It was a signal victory. Throughout the English colonies men thanked God and took courage. England went wild with joy. The flags captured at Louis- bourg were carried in triumph through the streets of London and were placed as trophies in the cathedral of St. Paul. In recognition of his dis- tinguished services General Amherst was made Commander-in-Chief of the King's forces in America and his name was honored throughout the English- speaking world.
From the beginning of recorded history towns have been named after illustrious men. The town of Amherst,* Massachusetts, is a living monu- ment to the hero of Louisbourg. On the 13th of February, 1759, (see Acts and Resolves, vol. Iv., 173), the precinct hitherto known as Fast
"A glance at the postal-guide of the United States shows that " Amherst " is a local name, not only in Massachusetts, but also in Maine. New Hampshire. Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, Wiscon- sin, Minnesota and Kansas. There is a town called " Amherst " in Nova Scotia (midway between St. John and Halifax) on the Bay of Fundy ; and there is an " Amherst Island", the chief of the Magdalen group, at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There is an Amherstburg in Ontario, Canada, and an Amherst island in Lake Ontario. The name is applied to a seaport in Burmah, to islands off the coast of Arakan, and to a group off Korea.
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GENERAL JEFFERY AMHERST.
Hadley, or Hadley Farms, or East Farms, was made a separate district* with all town privileges except special representation and with the distinctive historic name of Amherst. Our beautiful town, still on the edge of the woods in almost every direction, was a fitting although unconscious revival in New England of the old English Hemhurst, for the conscious purpose of honoring the man who bore the Amherst name and who had restored the greatest conquest in American colonial history. The recovery of Louis- bourg was absolutely necessary for the siege of Quebec in 1759 by Wolfe and the final occupation of Canada in 1760 by General Amherst.
It is a great mistake to suppose that French dominion in America was destroyed at Quebec. Wolfe's exploit was another glorious victory, but it did not end the war. The French army escaped, returned again in 1760 under Gen. Levis, and defeated Wolfe's successor, General Murray, before the walls of Quebec, as Wolfe had defeated Montcalm. But for the oppor- tune arrival of an English fleet, the reckless Murray would have lost all that the daring Wolfe had won. It was left for General Amherst to capture the army of Levis at Montreal, where, after taking Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Oswego, Fort Niagara, and restoring all posts lost by his predeces- sors, Amherst brought together three English armies in a masterly strategic combination. Under Amherst's orders Murray moved up the St. Lawrence from Quebec with 2,500 men, the remnant of Wolfe's forces. Brigadier Haviland advanced northwards from Crown Point with 3,400 men, forced the passage out of Lake Champlain, and marched through the woods to the St. Lawrence to unite with Murray below Montreal. Amherst descended the river from Lake Ontario with 10,000 soldiers, 1,000 Indians, and all his artillery. It was considered something of an exploit by his contempor- aries. Sir Joshua Reynolds, with unerring instinct, seized upon that descent of the rapids with an army in open boats as the most heroic scene in Amherst's life time. He is represented as watching the passage of the flotilla at one critical point as he stands upon the heights above the river. For artistic reasons the great painter pictured his hero in the full regalia of a Knight of the Bath, with armor glistening, the red sash over his shoulder, and a golden sunburst upon his breast. His helmet is removed and rests before him, while he leans thoughtfully upon a marshal's trun- cheon, with the map of Canada spread out before him.
Horace Walpole, in his Memoirs of George II. (III. 287-2SS) says : " Wolfe, with all the formidable apparatus of modern war, had almost
*Judd, in his excellent History of Hadley, p. 426, says " Amherst was a district in August, 1775, and a town in January, 1776. The date of its incorporation as a town is not known." Amherst simply grew as a District. She acted with Hadley in public matters as long as it was convenient to do so, and then virtually seceded. Amherst obtained practical recognition as a separate town by independent representation in the General Court two years before the United Colonies declared themselves free from the mother country.
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HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF AMHERST, MASS.
failed before Quebec: Amherst with barks and boats invaded Montreal. and achieved the conquest, though, what would have daunted the heroes of antiquity, he had the cataracts to pass. He surmounted that danger with inconsiderable loss*, and appeared before Montreal on the very same day with General Murray." The English armies then closed around the French on the island of Montreal as the Germans closed around Sedan. Sept. 1, 1870, when Sheridan, shutting his field glass, said to Moltke, “It is all over with the French now." It was all over with the French then. on that morning of the 7th of September, 1760, when the three armies of Amherst, Murray, and Haviland, came together from those far-distant points of departure, Oswewo, Quebec and Crown Point.
On the following day, Vaudreuil, the French governor, signed the capitulation of Montreal, and with it surrendered all Canada, on the terms demanded by General Amherst. " Half a continent," said Parkman, " had changed hands at the scratch of a pen."
The present generation is in danger of forgetting who Amherst was and what he did to make our forefathers rejoice in his name for our town. They knew the reason for their rejoicing. The pulpits of New England resounded with Amherst's praises. The pastor of tlie Old South Church in Boston said to his congregation : "We behold His Majesty's victorious troops treading upon the high places of the enemy, their last fortress delivered up, and their whole country surrendered to the King of Great Britain in the person of his General, the intrepid, the serene, the successful Amherst." In like manner all the churches of Massachusetts observed a day of Thanksgiving. Parliament gave the victorious Com- mander-in-Chief a vote of thanks and he was appointed Governor General of British North America. He took up his residence in New York City and was knightedt at Staten Island, Oct. 25, 1761, by authority of the King and William Pitt.
Sir Jeffery Amherst returned to England in November, 1763, and was for many years a popular hero. Honors and emoluments were heaped upon him all the rest of his days. In fact, he became Commander-in-Chief of all the Forces of Great Britain and was the adviser of the English gov- ernment during the war of the American Revolution. In 1787 he was created Lord Amherst of Montreal, having already in 1776 been made Baron Amherst# of Holmesdale, Kent. When at last, in 1795, he resigned the office of Commander-in-Chief, he refused an earldom. The following year he was made Field Marshall. He died August 3, 1797, at the ripe
*Amherst lost 64 boats and 100 lives in the Cedar Rapids alone.
tSee Magazine of American History, 11., 502.
#The supporters to the Amherst coat-of-arms are two Indians in full battle array. The family motto is Constantiact Virtute.
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PROVINCE TAXES ON HADLEY AND AMHERST.
old age of eighty, leaving no children. His title and property and country- seat " Montreal " in Kent, passed to his nephew, William Pitt Amherst, whose name commemorates the great minister to whom the Amherst family and the English nation owed in no small degree their glory in America. Jeffery Amherst* should be remembered as the hero of Louisbourg and as the conqueror of Canada.
In the General Court Records, under date of October, 1759, the fol- lowing appears :
" A Petition of Jonathan Smith and others Selectmen of Hadley, Setting forth that the District of Amherst being taken off from said Town, they are apprehen- sive that part of the province Tax which ought to be paid by Amherst still lies upon Hadley, and that said District ought also to be assessed for part of the Representative's pay in 1757 and 1758. And praying the Interposition of this Court for their Relief.
In the House of Representatives ; Read and Voted That the Tax laid upon the Town of Hadley in the County of Hampshire this year shall be assessed and levied upon said Town, and upon the District of Amherst in the same County in the proportion following that is to say, Two hundred and eighty pounds seven shillings and ninepence thereof upon the Polls and Estates of the Inhabitants of said Town; and one hundred and thirty-eight pounds fifteen shillings and nine- pence thereof upon the Polls and Estates of the Inhabitants of said District, and the Assessors of said Town and District respectively are hereby ordered to govern themselves accordingly in making their Assessments."
At the session of the General Court in May, 1761, the western part of Hampshire county was set off and incorporated as a distinct county by the name of Berkshire. At this same time there arose a controversy among the towns in Hampshire as to whether Northampton or Hadley should be the shire town. The towns on the west side of the Connecticut river gen- erally favored Northampton, while those on the east side preferred Hadley. Amherst sent a petition to the General Court signed by Jonathan Dickin- son, Peter Smith, John Dickinson, John Field and Joseph Eastman, select- men, urging the claims of Hadley, as nearest the center of the county, and being itself " very handsomely situated". One great objection to Northampton was the difficulties experienced in crossing the river, particu- larly in times of flood.
*There is no life of Amherst. His dispatches are preserved in the public record offices at London and Halifax. In Albany there are many of his letters to Col. Bradstreet, Sir Wilham Johnson and Gov. DeLancey, written by secretaries but bearing Amherst's well-known signature. Other original materials are printed in the N. Y. Colonial Documents, vol. VII. and in the Aspinwall Papers. Among the Parkman mss. in the Mass. Hist. Society are copies of five letters from Amherst to Pitt, written at Louisbourg. Parkman's " Pontiac " and his " Montcalm and Wolfe " contain many inter- esting passages relating to General Amherst. See also G. E. Hart's " Fall of New France" and numerous references in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, vol. v .; Wright's Life of Wolfe ; Stone's Life of Sir William Johnson ; and Lanman's Michigan. Lodge's Portraits, vol. VIII., has a very inaccurate sketch of "Jeffery, First Lord Amherst." Leslie Stephen's Dictionary of National Biography (1SS5) gives a better notice, with a short list of authorities, by II. M. Stephens. who justly says of Amherst : " His greatest glory is to have conquered Canada; and if much of that glory belongs to Pitt and Wolfe. neither Pitt's combinations nor Wolfe's valor would have been effectual without Amherst's steady purpose and unflinching determination."
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HISTORY OF THE TOWN OF AMHERST, MASS.
In 1761, the province tax of Amherst was £142, 3, 9; in 1762, the same ; in 1763, 592, 7, 11 ; in 1764 and 1765, the same ; in 1766, £75. 16, 8 ; in 1767, 476, 2, 3 ; in 1769, 456, 17, 6 ; in 1770, 647, 7, 11. Amherst's proportion of the representative's pay was, in 1761, 64, 10; in 1762, 55 ; in 1763, 53, 4; in 1764, 53; in 1765, 56, 2 ; in 1765, 5 ;. 10 ; in 1767, 68, 5 ; in 1769, 69, 10 ; in 1770, 55, 10.
The following statistics of Amherst in 1771 are taken from Judd's His- tory of Hadley : Ratable polls, 196 ; unratable polls, 9 ; dwelling houses. 120; barns, 84 ; shops, 14; gristmills, 2 ; sawmills, 3 ; potash works, 2 : money at interest, {1312; stock in trade. 573; horses, three years old and more, 153; oxen, four years old and more, 187 ; cows, three years old and more, 319 ; sheep, one year old and more, 647 ; swine, one year old and more, 214 ; barrels of cider made, 524 ; acres of tillage land, 1292 : bushels of grain raised, 6596; acres of English and upland mowing, 827 : tons of hay from it. 720; acres of fresh meadow, 389 ; tons of hay mowed, 337 ; acres of pasturage, 419. These statistics were copied by Mr. Judd
from original papers in the state house. From other sources he gained the following : Families in 1765, 104; white people in 1765, 639 ; white people in 1776, 915 ; polls in 1784, 276. Side by side on the same page with these figures are other statistics of the same date from Hadley, South Hadley and Granby. They show that Amherst had, in population and in many branches of industry, outstripped the parent town. Thus while Amherst had 196 " ratable " polls, Hadley had 147, South Hadley 131, and Granby 95. Amherst had 120 dwelling houses, Hadley 88, South Hadley 79, Granby 61. Amherst had S9 barns, Hadley 82, Granby 47. Amherst had {2 more money at interest than Hadley, but Hadley's stock in trade was £1252 while Amherst's was but 573. Amherst had the most horses. oxen, cows, sheep and swine; it had also the rather doubtful honor of making the most barrels of cider. Hadley had more tillage land and raised a much larger quantity of grain, but Amherst had nearly four times as many acres of English and upland mowing and raised a proportionally larger quantity of hay. Hadley had the largest number of acres of fresh meadow, Amherst the most acres of pasturage. Amherst had five more families than Hadley in 1765, 86 more white people in 1765, 234 more white people in 1776 and 73 more polls in 1784.
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