USA > Massachusetts > The story of western Massachusetts, Volume I > Part 23
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Occupation proceeded to such an extent that on March 7, 1653/54 it was "ordered that no inhabitant dwelling in the long meadow should suffer their swine to go at liberty in the meadow without rings", complaint having been "made against the dwellers in the long meadow that much spoil is done both in meadow and corn land". On March 7, 1654/55 the selectmen ordered that "no householder in the long meadow shall suffer swine to go at liberty".
On August 27, 1660 "Thomas Gilbert hath liberty granted him for building and dwelling on his land which he hath bought of Ben- jamin Cooley at the Longmeadow Gate".
On December 31, 1660 "George Colton desiring liberty to build on his land at the Long meadow, had liberty granted him for erecting a building or dwelling place there".
On March 13, 1660/61 there was "granted to Benjamin Cooley, thirty acres on the east side of the swamp over against his house at the long meadow which land lies between two dingles and to run from the brow of the hill backward into the woods eastward till thirty acres be made up". This is the first recorded mention of a house in the Long-Meadow owned by Benjamin Cooley.
Just what was the intent of these building permits is a question, but there is reason for suspecting that they were often a mere white- washing of a prior act,-a legalizing of a condition already existing. An example is the act of December 26, 1678, when "all those persons who have builded up the ruins have their buildings allowed of". That of course was in the time of stress following King Philip's War, but it was not an uncommon custom even in normal times. As a whole, the permits give little information as to the actual date of building.
With characteristic deliberation, Benjamin Cooley seems to have been in no haste about removing to Longmeadow. His efforts in the town must have been greatly handicapped by the limitations of his little four acre tract there, even though that was supplemented by ten acres across the Connecticut and he would have profited by that ex- perience. Though he did increase his nine acre Long-Meadow grant to twenty and a half acres, by purchase on December 2, 1651 from Reice Bedortha of the five acre tract adjoining it on the north, and also the Griffith Jones six and a half acre tract north of the latter, yet the location seems not to have been to his liking for a homestead. The witchcraft hearing testimony is evidence that in the spring of 1651 he still lived in the town, and his deposition concerning the
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Parsons-Burt House suggests that at least as late as November, 1651, he continued there.
However, on May 17, 1656, he received a grant of ten acres at the northerly end of the Long-Meadow. Adjoining it on the south was the eleven and a half acre lot of John Leonard's, that he bought on January 13, 1657/58. South of that was the seventeen acre Mer- rick lot, as well as the fourteen acre Bridgman lot, both of which he bought February 2, 1658/59. Thus he owned fifty-two and a half acres in one piece.
With amazing perspicacity and an uncanny appreciation of the future, on March 13, 1660/61, he petitioned for and received a grant of thirty acres on the highland east of his house "from the brow of the hill, eastward into the woods until thirty acres be made up". On the same date Thomas Gilbert was granted twelve acres on the north of this Cooley grant. Gilbert sold to Marshfield who sold to Cooley. Thus did the Cooley family acquire the forty-two acres of land on the hill at the north end of the present town street that was occupied by later generations.
This home-farm was rounded out by the grant, on February 1, 1664/65, of seventeen acres of "pond" that lay "against his own land at the higher end of the long meadow, bounded by the brow of the hill",-that is, extending from his meadow, up the hill to join the thirty acre grant of 1660/61. The combined area comprised one hun- dred eleven and one-half acres in one compact parcel, extending from the river eastward to the top of the hill and continuing easterly into the woods.
On the Leonard lot he built the home in which he lived for the rest of his life. That lot he bought in 1658. The first mention of his house was in 1661. At some time during those three years the house was built. His boon companion, George Colton, received his Long-Meadow building permit on December 31, 1660. One can surmise that at that same time Benjamin Cooley completed his plans, and that the house was built about 1660.
Even then he must have considered the removal in the nature of an experiment, for though he rented his house in town to his neighbor Richard Sikes, it was not until January 12, 1667/68, that he actually sold him the town property.
For years the settlement continued in its own unobtrusive way. The handful of Indians were much in evidence on the street and in the houses; a pest to be endured. Real estate speculation was rife. Allotments were often sought solely as material for barter. Those intending permanent occupation of the meadows bought adjoining tracts of their neighbors. Grants were made of the swamps east of the meadow until, eventually, it must have been about all parceled out. Various attempts were made to drain the wet ground. Then, as now, ditches were all over the meadows, but the result was rather negative. Today, the swamps are much as they were in the days of the Indians,-a little more worthless, perhaps, for then they did at
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least produce cranberries. In 1683 Benjamin Cooley, as one of the last acts of his life, essayed a rather elaborate drainage project, digging a ditch "a little above his house that he might lay dry that low and wet land behind his house". As it crossed the county road he was obliged to give a bond providing security against any damage that might accrue. A vestige of that ditch can be seen today. In 1695 Ebenezer Parsons and Henry Burt gave a bond in connection with a similar drain in another section of the meadows, but it was all rather futile.
On January 5, 1665/66, Nathaniel Burt, John Keep and George Colton were granted "ponds" adjacent to their lands. On February 1, 1665/66, Benjamin Parsons and John Bliss had similar ponds granted. On March 5, 1665/66, widow Margaret Bliss was granted 'so much of the pond as is at the end of her lot". All of these grants were in the Long-Meadow and all were made with the proviso that "the Indians be not wronged in their pease", referring of course to cranberries, the sasachiminesh that they had reserved in the deed of 1636. Evidently these grantees were acquiring cranberry bogs and it would seem that in the language of the day, a bog was a pond.
In 1648 William Pynchon had said of the Indians,-"Until they have fully subjected themselves to your government, they must be esteemed an independent, free people". The wise mentor had long since left the colony, but his precepts were still a guiding factor in the town. This regard for the rights of the natives continued to the very end, for on February 26, 1672/73, Samuel Bliss, Jr. was "granted so much of the pond as is against his land in the Long Meadow, provided the Indians be not hindered gathering pease in the pond".
That was the last of such entries, for soon after, during King Philip's War, practically all of the natives deserted the Valley.
During the night of October 4, 1675, long after the settlers were asleep, a moccasin-footed messenger sped through the hamlet of Longmeadow. The Indian, Totoe, of Windsor, impelled by "the great respect and many kindnesses he had received and for the love he bore" to the English, was making his way to Springfield with a warn- ing of impending danger. Incited by King Philip's successes, Wequogan the Hadley sachem, had the night before led by a winding path, with noiseless stealth, four score of his Indian warriors into the palisaded village that the English had built for their dusky neighbors on the reservation on Long Hill. There they joined the score of local Indians. Hidden by the stockade, the leader postponed for a day the sack of Springfield, to enable his scouts to retrieve from Hartford the hostages that the Springfield people had incar- cerated there, and during the journey the native scouts had revealed their secret to Totoe, a Windsor Indian, a protege of the Wolcott family there.
The messenger, bearing the secret, hurried on.
As soon as news of the impending disaster was received, word had been sent to John Pynchon, then with the Colony forces at
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Hadley, who brought his troopers to the rescue of his fellow towns- men before the close of the day, but he found his town a mere shambles.
Throughout those endless hours the Longmeadow settlers watched the smoke of the burning town in utter helplessness. Though neither
Eleazar Williams, One Time of Longmeadow
Reputed to be the lost Dauphin, Louis XVII of France. Photograph from life, 1851.
their lives nor their property were menaced on that fateful day, yet both watch and ward were kept in every household for many fear- some weeks.
The winter passed in a state of siege, but with the coming of the spring Longmeadow folk gradually ventured out again. On Sunday, May 20, 1676, John Keep, with his wife Sarah and their six months old son Jabez, started for Springfield. Jabez was born barely five weeks after the Springfield disaster, and this was the first Sabbath they had dared attempt his christening. All was well through the street of the hamlet. They passed the last house and hurried on through the fearsome narrow pass. As they approached the bridge
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over the Pecousic, shots rang out. It was the end for father, mother and son.
With the death of King Philip in August, 1676, life in the Valley became quite normal; though it was another seventy-five years before rumors of impending danger ceased to be common.
Longmeadow strove to make itself an independent community. In 1693 application was made for the right to establish a saw-mill on Longmeadow Brook and the following year for one on Pecousic Brook. In 1694 "the inhabitants of Longmeadow desiring to get a school master to teach their children to read and write and so be exempted from paying to any such school master in the town, it was voted in the affirmative with the proviso that they pay their propor- tions with the rest of the town for a grammar school". In 1695 appli- cation was made for the use of Pecousic Brook for a corn-mill.
With the turn of the century there came to be an increasing interest in the lands on the high ground. Frequent applications were presented for grants variously described as on the hill; on the great hill; and on the plain.
"At a town meeting of the town of Springfield, January 29, 1702/03 the inhabitants of Longmeadow did present a petition that they would grant them land on the hill eastward of Longmeadow to build on for homelots". One of the principal causes was that "by reason of floods our lives be in great danger, our housing much damnified and many of our cattle have been lost". It has long been contended that this was due to a disastrous flood occurring in 1695 but no evidence of there having been such a flood is presented. It seems strange that if there had been such an experience that the settlers would have waited eight years before taking steps to avoid a similar disaster. For fifty-six years the meadows had been inhabited during which time but one mention was made in the records of such an episode. That was in the spring of 1680, when "the bridge over Long meadow brook was carried away or spoiled by the late flood". That bridge, however, was but a few logs over a brook that might have been carried out in the spring rains and does not of necessity have any reference to the river. In modern times the meadows are annually inundated but that may be entirely due to modern conditions. Before the extermination of the beaver and the destruction of their dams on the upper waters there may not have been any such floods as are common today. On November 21, 1685, Increase Mather wrote from Boston to Rev. Thomas Gouge, pastor of an English Church in Amsterdam, Holland, saying that "in Connecticut on August 13, there happened a dreadful flood. The water rose twenty-six feet in a few hours so that their corn and hay is almost destroyed in those towns which border upon the river and the poor people there reduced to great extremities. The good Lord have compassion on them". It can safely be assumed that by "those towns which border upon the river", Mather referred to Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield. Twenty-six feet of high water there would have meant flood condi-
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tions in Longmeadow. Evidence exists to show that the greatest flood in the valley, prior to the so-called Jefferson flood of 1801, began February 24, 1692, and did great damage. Perhaps the older generations took such episodes in their stride while the sons rebelled against repeated undoings which doubtless increased in intensity with the years, as the natural conditions were altered. Until further evi- dence becomes available, some questions must remain unanswered.
In any event, at a town meeting, held on March 9, 1702-1703, "it was voted to give them liberty to build upon the hill eastward of the said Long-Meadow".
Such was the birth of the modern town.
In the nineteenth century, Longmeadow strove to utilize the potential power of its streams in the creation of a manufacturing community.
In 1848 Diamond Chandler began the manufacture of cloth- covered buttons. The following year he took into partnership, his son-in-law Nelson C. Newell, and the latter's elder brother Samuel R. Newell, under the firm name of D. Chandler & Co. By 1854 the company was doing an annual business of $50,000, and employing forty hands. In 1864 the business was removed to Springfield, where, seventy years ago, it was the largest employer of labor in the city, being exceeded only by Smith & Wesson.
In 1838 Diamond Chandler began the manufacture of gold spec- tacles, and gold and silver thimbles. The business grew until it amounted to some $20,000 annually. In 1847 he sold out to Jacob Colton and Gilson D. Hollister. Ninety years ago there were four shops manufacturing gold and silver spectacles. Sumner W. Gates employed ten hands and produced $15,000 in finished goods annually. Ferry & Colton did about half that amount of business, and Samuel Burbank about the same. At that period Jacob Colton alone continued to make gold and silver thimbles and carried on quite successfully. As late as 1880 William H. Toppin made papier-mâché geographical globes in a brick factory at the mouth of Pecousic Brook.
But such things were just not on the cards for Longmeadow. In 1855, the novelist, J. G. Holland, then editor of the Springfield Republican said, that "within the last twelve years Longmeadow has become the residence of a considerable number of men of wealth and leisure and is largely represented abroad, in the world of letters by names of which she may well be proud".
Such a movement was given great impetus by the extension of the trolley facilities through to the state line in 1896. Then came the automobile, which has made the town the delightful residential section it has come to be.
CHAPTER XXII An English Recluse
O N RETURNING to England, William Pynchon settled first at Hackney in Middlesex. Today, this is one of the slum districts of northeast London, but in the seventeenth century it was a residential suburb of the city, made up of the fine homes of wealthy London merchants. From there he oversaw the printing in London of a second book, The Jewes Synagogue, by William Pinchion of Springfield in New England, which obviously was penned while he was still living in America. Also while at Hackney, he issued the second edition of his first book, dated 1652. In 1654 there came another book from his pen, The First Sabbath.
In October, 1635, there had come into the port of Boston "two great ships", with a large group of Puritan emigrants. With them came young John Winthrop, with his newly-wedded second wife and the bride's step-father, the canting parson Hugh Peter, former pastor of the English church at Rotterdam, Holland. "There came also, Sir Harry Vane, a young gentleman of excellent parts"; stormy petrel of his day and age. The glamour surrounding one of title, together with his personal charm, made him right welcome, and the following spring, though but twenty-four years of age, he was elected governor of the Colony. Throughout a stormy administration, his sympathy for Ann Hutchinson and the Antimonians brought him into such disfavor that the following year he failed of re-election, and in August, 1637, he returned to England.
It was inevitable that William Pynchon, by virtue of his office and a common interest in a warfare for the rights of man, should have had many associations with such crusaders.
On reaching Hackney, Pynchon sought out his young friend Vane, who was so impressed with Pynchon's reasoning that on April 15, 1652, he wrote to the authorities at Boston, pleading for leniency for Pynchon and his book. On October 20, 1652, the Council replied that while "Mr. Pynchon was one that they did love and respect", yet the errors of the author were so apparent that they "should not need to make further defense" of their objections.
"John Norton, one of the reverend elders of Ipswich" had been drafted by the General Court to reply to Pynchon's contentions expressed in his book and in 1653 this was published under the title, A Discussion of that Great Point in Divinity. To this Pynchon made
W. Mass .- I-15
·
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rejoinder, which in 1655 was published in a volume of 440 pages as The Meritorious Price of Man's Redemption, by William Pynchon esquire late of New England. That work ran to a second edition under the title, A Further Discussion.
Pynchon remained at Hackney for a year or more, and he evi- dently found satisfaction in English life, for on December 5, 1653, he bought from Andrew King, mer- chant of London, and Mary King, his wife, property at Wraysbury, by the Thames, in Buckingham- shire, twenty miles west of central London, and four miles east of Windsor. This property had in part been in the occupation and tenure of this Andrew King and in part of Thomas Blatt. The con- veyance quieted also an interest or claim had by "William Sharrow of London, gentleman, James Shar- row, late of the Middle Temple, London, gentleman, deceased, bro- ther of William Sharrow, and John Sharrow, gentleman, deceased, late father of William and James Shar- row". The property, as described, included the usual buildings and appurtenances, as well as gardens and a "part thereof planted with fruit trees and used for an orchard and one dovehouse lately built".
It is significant that the year and the month when Pynchon de- cided to remain permanently in William Pynchon Home, Wraysbury, England, 1652 England and so bought this estate was the year and the month when Cromwell became Lord Protector. At Wraysbury he was joined by Henry Smith, who left his wife, Ann, a capable Pynchon daughter, to settle his New England affairs, having given her power of attorney to so do on October 17, 1653. Acting under this power, on August 18, 1654, she conveyed to her brother, John Pynchon, the Smith one-third interest in the mill prop- erty and practically all of Henry Smith's real estate holdings, where- upon she too departed for Wraysbury. There Pynchon's wife died, October 10, 1657, and there he lived until he died, October 29, 1662, and was buried in the adjacent churchyard.
John Pynchon's name appears on the Springfield records of Sep- tember 10, 1656, and (with one exception) not again until November 3, 1657. That one exception reads, "November 4, 1656, Elizur Holyoke was chosen recorder till Mr. Pynchon's return or for the year ensu-
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ing". On John Pynchon's ledger of that period, Robert Ashley was belatedly credited for "forty bushels of wheat delivered when I was in England".
John Pynchon was then thirty years old. He had left England at the age of four and could have retained little impression of its appearance. To him, houses were structures of wood, clay and reeds. He had little acquaintance with buildings more pretentious than was the tiny wattle-and-daub meeting house by the Connecticut. Now he was to see moated castles, drawbridges, towers, great halls, play- houses, theaters, pageants, and all the glitter and grandeur of the times. He was to ride in richly appointed coaches and canopied river boats. Gentlemen would be attended by lackeys and torch-bearers. There would be uniformed guards; bombardiers, musketeers and buffetiers. He would see Westminster Abbey, with its memorials to England's great. He would walk on velvet-like lawns in parks and formal gardens, amid strange trees and unique fountains. The austerity and Puritanism of the past decade had provoked a reaction that was fast becoming evident. Fashionable London was growing modern. In 1654 John Evelyn "observed how the women began to paint themselves, a thing formerly done only by prostitutes".
John Pynchon tarried at Wraysbury for the greater part of a year. He realized that in all human probability, this would be his last visit to his father, and he lingered on, loath to leave. There were renewals of old ties. Long evenings with his eldest sister, Ann, and her husband, Henry Smith. Visits with his stepmother. Days with his nieces and nephews, the Smith children. One of them, Elisha, born in England after his mother's return, he had never before seen. There were journeys to London with his father for conferences with fur dealers, bankers, merchants and shippers.
Then came farewells and departure and John Pynchon reached America in time for a last visit with his sister, Mary Pynchon Holy- oke, who died October 26, 1657. He was later to receive the news that Frances Sanford Pynchon, his stepmother, had died at Wraysbury on the 10th of that same month.
From his quiet retreat at Wraysbury the elder Pynchon saw a mighty pageant pass before him, happenings such as his world had never known. Though he left little record of those events, one may, through the eyes of John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, see some of those things that were his to view, had he cared to look.
In 1656 Sir Harry Vane published a book called A Healing Ques- tion, Propounded and Resolved, that brought him four months' imprisonment in Carisbrooke Castle. One may well suspect that Pynchon had a part in the compiling of that book.
On September 3, 1658, "died that arch rebel, Oliver Cromwell". On May 8, 1660, "his majesty was proclaimed in London". Then the mills of the gods began to grind and on October 11, 1660, "Hugh Peter was executed on the scaffold".
On June 30, 1661, "the carcasses of those arch rebels, Cromwell, Bradshaw and Ireton were dragged out of their superb tombs in Westminster Abbey and hanged on the gallows".
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In 1661 John Winthrop made a long visit to England on business connected with securing a new charter for Connecticut. Though there is no evidence of the fact, it would have been most natural for him to seek advice of his old and trusted friend, who could supply first- hand evidence of facts that Winthrop was having trouble in confirming.
On June 14, 1662, "Sir Harry Vane died on the scaffold, justify- ing himself and the cause he stood for and showed more heat than cowardice, yet with all humility and gravity". That would have been a sad and thoughtful day for the Wraysbury squire.
In 1662 Pynchon's last book was published, The Covenant of Nature. The "address to the reader" was dated "From my Study at Wraysbury, Feberary 10, 1661-1662". The author was then seventy- two years of age and it was destined to be his last year.
In the spring of 1663 the inevitable message arrived at the home in "Springfield on the Connecticut". The patriarch had died the previous autumn at Wyrardisbury (as the purist spelled the name that he pronounced Wraysbury), but during the winter months there was but scant opportunity for transmitting letters overseas, and the sending of the message was delayed until February when Henry Smith wrote as follows:
"Dear Brother Pynchon :
"Our most cordial love and respects salute you and yours joying in the continuance and extension of the goodness of God toward you all as by your letters received appears. Sir, the only wise Lord in whose hand is all our ways and times, all whose works are done in wonderful and admirable council, are very just, holy and good even when they seemingly speak forth to us the sharpest and sorest trials, crosses and temptations (as to Abraham when to offer up his only son Isaac) daily instructeth us both by his word and works to live in a daily expectation of and preparation for changes in this our pilgrim- age. It's his usual course of dealing with all his Saints to give them occasions of daily exercise of those precious graces (the work of his holy spirit in their hearts) which else would contract rust, or lie in obscurity, not shining forth so splendid and beauteous to the praise of his glorious grace in Jesus Christ. The decree of God hath limited us our stations so our times and days beyond which we cannot, may not pass. The same is manifested in his late visitation upon your and our most loved and much honored father who expired and drew his last breath in Wyrardisbury October 29th, a loss to us unrepairable, a gain to him inexpressible, making a blessed change from earth to heaven, from a state of corruption, to a state of incorruption, from imperfection to perfection; from a state of sin and sorrow to com- pleted joy and bliss, celebrating the everlasting praises of God and of the Lamb, who hath redeemed us with his blood. Brother, I presume you are not altogether unprepared for these sad tidings which I am occasioned as one of Job's messengers to acquaint you with, resolving all your thoughts and griefs into that holy speech of his. The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. It's one of God's unalterable appointments that all must die. Death
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