The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5

The town so originated and named grew gradually until the breaking out of the civil war, but its most rapid growth has been since 1865. In 1857 the water-power and property were purchased by a company which organized as the Holyoke Water Power Company, and which has fostered and developed the natural advantages of the place as a manufacturing centre to a wonderful degree.

In the first twenty years of its existence the town acquired a population of about 11,000 and a valuation of nearly $10,000,000. In the sixteen years that have succeeded, the population has almost trebled and the valuation this year is nearly $16,000,000.

There is not another city in the east that can show such swift and at the same time substantial growth as Holyoke has enjoyed during the two decades succeeding the war. In a few years it became the greatest paper-making centre of the country. It has now twenty-four large paper-making corporations, one having the largest paper-mill in the world. A long established cotton mannfacturing company employs one thousand and three hundred operatives. A company manufacturing worsted goods employs one thousand persons, the two mammoth thread-mills have some one thousand names on the pay-rolls. The Unquomonk silk works, which were destroyed by the great Mill River flood of 1874 were re-located in this city, where was found a safe, reliable water-power. There are woolen factories, including a company for manufacturing imitation seal-skin goods and a large blanket mill. The manufacture of Blank books and Envelopes, Steam-pumps, Wire, Machinery, Cutlery, Screws, Fire-hydrants and Steam-boilers, Cement works, Spindles and Reeds, Fourdrinier wire and Rubber-goods are among the city's greatly diversified industries. There are extensive brickyards and stone quarries near at hand and the lumbering business is an important industry.

The building growth of the city has kept pace with the manufacturing. Where a few years ago were acres of woodland, swamps or brambly pastures, are now well-graded streets lined with pleasant houses. Hills have been leveled, ponds and ravines filled and made into valuable real estate. From the highlands in the western part of the city, there are river and mountain views of surpassing beauty. Gradually the building centre is moving westward and many charming homes have been created on the suburban streets. The old stage-road which led from Springfield to Northampton is now a wide, well-graded highway with handsome villas surrounded by spacious grounds. Here are the fine residences of Treasurer R.B. Johnson of the Holyoke Savings Bank, G.W. Prentiss of the wire-mills, Westover, the residence of E.J. Pomeroy, Lawnfield, the house of R.M. Fairfield, "The Knolls" the fine residence of Mr. C.H. Heywood, and on the higest point of all is Rus-in-Urbe, the lookout point of Mr. Foster Wilson. Farther south on the same street are the residencies of Mr. Timothy Merrick, Donald Mackintosh, Oscar Ely, John Cleary and others. The residence streets of Ward six are pleasant with shade trees, blooming gardens and lovely houses. From the most sightly eminence of the ward, the house of William Skinner of the silk-mill overlooks the city. A central and pleasant square encloses the home of W.A. Chase, the agent of the Water Power Company, and houses with all the appointments of elegance and luxury are owned by Messrs. Whiting, Dillon, Farr, Metcalf, Mackintosh, W.A. Prentiss Clark, E.W. Chapin, Ramage, Newton, Corser and many others. Fairmount Square is a new section just opened for good residences. In the southerly part of the city is the farm of Congressman Wm. Whiting with its herds of beautiful Jerseys, and on the Springfield road is the model Brightside farm, the pet life-project of W.H. Wilkinson, blanket manufacturer. This farm is also the home of splendid specimens of the Jersey cow. A majority of the principal streets of Holyoke bear the names that were given them when the town was first mapped out by its prophetic founders, At first Holyoke was chiefly a cotton manufacturing town and of the streets laid out from east to west the names of prominent cotton manufacturing companies of the state alternated with the names of Massachusetts counties. There are Franklin, Hampshire, Essex, Suffolk, and Hampden streets, alternated with Jackson, Sargeant, Cabot, Appleton, Dwight and Lyman, named for noted cotton manufacturing firms. Main street is a long thoroughfare extending north and south and terminating at the river. Canal, Race, and Bridge streets were named from their location. Bowers, Mosher and Ely from former landowners of Depot Hill. John street and Oliver street perpetuate the name of John Oliver; High street was named for its sightly location. West of, and parallel with, High, the streets have the names of woods, Maple, Chestnut, Elm, Walnut, Pine, Beach, Oak, Linden and Sycamore. Many of the streets in Ward seven were named for persons first owning and or building upon them. Northampton street, is the county highway from Springfield to Northampton.

The total area of Holyoke is about fourteen square miles. The first city government was organized in January 1874, and the first Mayor of the city was Hon. Wm. B.C. Pearsons, now judge of the Police court, who held the office three years. The succeeding mayors have been Hon. William Whiting, at present a Congressman from the 11th District, R.P. Crafts, William Ruddy, F.P. Goodall, and James E. Delaney, the present Executive. The city offices and the public library are located in the city hall, a fine granite building which was completed in 1876 at a cost of nearly $400.000. In the same year the city erected a monument on Hampden Square in memory of the soldiers who died in the war of the Rebellion. The handsome open house, where the best of theatrical and musical talent appears during the entertainment season, was built by Messrs Whiting & Brown and was completed in 1878.

The city has four National Banks, and three Savings Banks. It has a daily newspaper, the Transcript, which is the direct successor of the first newspaper printed in Holyoke, in 1849. Under its present title the Transcript has been published since the year 1863.

The water supply for the city is derived from the Ashley and Wright ponds, the water-works having been completed in 1873. Since then, other mountain streams and reservoirs have been united with the water supply of the ponds, to make it adequate for the growing city's needs. The ponds from which the pipes are laid are located some four miles from the City hall.

Holyoke pays liberally to support its public schools. There are eight brick school buildings with all the modern improvements and conveniences for the graded schools, besides suburban school houses and a High school with 160 pupils. The Catholic parishes in the city also support flourishing parochial schools, St. Jerome parish having just completed a huge brick building for a girl's school.

The city has a wealth of new churches. The first little square white church which the Baptists built in the beginning of the century was removed in 1880 and a modern brick church now occupies the site. The Second Baptist Church society in the central part of the city has just completed a fine church edifice. The Second Congregational society, two years ago, dedicated a splendid granite building which cost nearly $100,000, the successor of the plain brick meeting-house which in 1853 was erected at the corner of High and Dwight streets. The city has a large Catholic population and three extensive Catholic parishes each having a capacious church of fitting architecture. The Episcopal people worship in a picturesque stone church on Maple street, and near it is the cozy little Unitarian church. The Methodists built a church of brick on Main street about the year 1870. The First Congregational society has a wooden edifice on Northampton street—the oldest church building in the city since the primitive First Baptist meeting-house was taken down—and the church at South Holyoke where the German residents listen to the services of their faith in the language of the fatherland.

THE LAST PORTRAIT OF DANIEL WEBSTER

The many who cherish the memory of Daniel Webster with more than common interest and veneration, are fortunate, in that the records of his life, his habits and his appearance are so complete. The portraits of Webster, now extant, represent the great statesman at numerous periods of his life.

In July, 1852, Mr. Webster was in Franklin, N.H., and there sat for his picture to the local artist of the town, who finished an excellent daguerrotype. The picture was given by Mr. Webster to the Hon. Stephen M. Allen, who now has it in his possession at the rooms of the Webster Historical Society, in the Old South Meeting House, and by whose courtesy it is here reproduced.

In October of the same year, three months after the picture was made, Daniel Webster at his Marshfield home, breathed his last; leaving this portrait the last ever taken of him from life.

FORT SHIRLEY

By Prof. A.L. Perry of Williams College

The recent centennial celebration in the town of Heath, Franklin County, Massachusetts, has freshened up an interest in the history of the old fort that was built within its borders, at the opening of the Old French War in 1744, by the State of Massachusetts. The present writer, however, has made a study for many years of that and its kindred forts, has repeatedly visited and critically examined its site, and has in his possession the chief movable memorials of what was indeed a small, yet in its historical connections a deeply interesting, military outpost.

The first white men known or supposed to have ever penetrated the original forests in the town of Heath were Richard Hazen and six others, the surveyor and chain-men and their assistants, who ran the official northern line of Massachusetts in the early spring of 1741. Besides the surveyor himself, who was then a prominent citizen of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, and his son of the same name, then nineteen years old, the party consisted of Caleb Swan, Benjamin Smith, Zachariah Hildrith, Ebenezer Shaw and William Richardson. Under an imperative order from the Privy Council in England, Governor Belcher, who at that time administered government over both Massachusetts and New Hampshire, commissioned Hazen to run the ultimate line between the two, beginning at a point three miles north of Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimac (now Lowell), and extending on a due west course till it should meet His Majesty's other Governments. This arbitrary decision of the Privy Council in selecting the very southernmost point in the whole course of the Merrimac, as the place meant in in the old Charter of Massachusetts in the phrase "Merrimack River," instead of taking, as Massachusetts claimed, the northernmost point of the river in Franklin, N.H., or as New Hampshire had claimed, the point at the mouth of the river, robbed Massachusetts of a strip of territory fourteen miles wide the whole length of the Colony, which New Hampshire had never before claimed, but which her shrewd and unscrupulous Agent now extorted trom the ignorance of English Councillors.

Hazen began his survey March 21, 1741. The English instructions required a course due west, and Governor Belcher and his Council ordered ten degrees for the then variation of the needle, which was not quite enough, so that the line actually ran slightly north of due west, and saved to Massachusetts at the west end of the line (in Williamstown) about 1 deg. and 50 min. After the party left the Connecticut river on April 6, they slept on snow at a depth of two or three feet every night till they crossed the Hoosac river in Williamstown on April 12. "It clouded over before Night and rained sometime before day which caused us to stretch Our blankets and lye under them on ye bare Ground, which was the first bare ground we laid on after we left Northfield." It was on April 9 that they measured the present north line of Heath. Let the clear-eyed surveyor describe in his own words the general situation of the future Fort Shirley.

"At the End of three miles we came to a large brook running Southeasterly and at the End of this days measure to another large brook running Southerly, by which we took Our lodging. Here we tract a Bear and therefore named it Bear brook, both these brooks being branches of Deerfield River. The land this day was some of the best of Land and for three miles together. The last year Pigeons' nests were so thick that 500 might have been told on the beech trees at One time, and they could have been counted on the Hemlocks as well, I believe three thousand at one turn Round. The snow was for ye most part three feet deep, the weather was fair and wind Northwest."

Although Hazen named the last mountain on his line where he supposed the eastern line of New York, would ultimately run "Mount Belcher," in honor of the Governor who had commissioned him to lay it, the just unpopularity of the line itself and Belcher's connection with it immediately caused his recall from his government, and the appointment of William Shirley in his stead. Belcher was Massachusetts born; while Shirley, though British born, became one of the ablest and most successful of all the colonial governors of Massachusetts. The building of Fort Shirley in 1744 and the naming it after the new Governor, as well as the building a little later of the two forts to the westward,—Fort Pelham in Rowe and Fort Massachusetts in what is now North Adams,—all within a couple of miles of the new boundary line, showed a concern of the colony for its now greatly curtailed northern limits, as well as a much greater concern for the defence of the scattered settlements west of the Connecticut river from the French and Indians, who had several well-trod war-paths to the English settlements on the Connecticut and the Deerfield.

But, after all, the route by the Hoosac River had been and continued the main path from Canada to New England for the French and their savage Indian allies. Whether they came down the Hudson to the mouth of the Hoosac at Schaghticoke, or struck that river on the flank at Eagle Bridge, there was a well-beaten trail—the old Mohawk trail—along the north bank of that river all the way from Schaghticoke to what is now North Adams; and, in continuation of that river trail, the "old Indian path" over the Hoosac Mountain, directly over the line of the present Hoosac Tunnel, led down to the upper reaches of the Deerfield river and so down to the Connecticut at old Deerfield. It became, therefore, of great moment to Massachusetts to defend the line of the Deerfield in the French and Indian war of 1744-48. A few private houses were fortified in what is now Bernardston, and two or three more further west in Coleraine, particularly Fort Lucas and Fort Morrison, the owners being assisted by grants of men and supplies from the General Court; and during this war and more especially the next and last French war, the Indians often lurked with hostile intent in the vicinity of these extemporized forts, and not infrequently surprised and killed and scalped men from the little garrisons, and carried women and children into captivity to Canada.

But the first regular fort built to protect the valley of the Deerfield and incidentally also the line of the Connecticut, was placed by Massachusetts in the present town of Heath. It was built wholly at the public expense, and garrisoned by regularly enlisted or impressed soldiers, and named Fort Shirley from the enterprising Governor of the Province. John Stoddard of Northampton was then Colonel of the militia of Hampshire, a designation at that time including all of Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River; he was Shirley's right-hand man for this end of the Province, and it was under his general direction that Forts Shirley and Pelham and Massachusetts were erected.

The letter is still extant in Stoddard's own hand, dated July 20, 1744, in which Capt. William Williams is ordered by him "to erect as soon as may be" a block-house sixty feet square "about five miles and a half from Hugh Morrison's house in Colrain in or near the line run last week under the direction of Col. Timo. Dwight by our order." In the same letter, Williams is directed to employ soldiers in the construction of the fort, carpenters to be allowed "nine shillings, others six shillings a day old Tenor." Several other directions are given, and the main outlines of the fort are prescribed; some bills are still extant giving items of money paid out for many different parts of the work; six of the original hewn timbers of the building are in good preservation today in the barn of Orsamus Maxwell in Heath, each stick telling some tale of the original mode of construction; so that, from all these sources of information, a pretty accurate idea of the old fort can be made out to-day, 141 years after it was built.

For the outside, white pine logs were scored down, and then hewn to six inches thick and fourteen inches high; and the scores worked 48 days on these, receiving £14, 8s. for their work, and the hewers 24 days, receiving £10, 16s. The walls of the fort were twelve feet high, thus requiring nine courses of these timbers laid edgewise one above another, each being doweled to the one below by red oak dowel-pins, two of which were pulled out of their quiet resting places of 141 years' duration, in a good state of preservation, by Mr. Maxwell and the writer, Sept. 5, 1885. Those ends of these timbers that came to the four corners of the fort were dove-tailed into each other in the well known manner, so that there were straight lines and strong locking at the corners; and it so happens, that three of the six timbers preserved are corner timbers, and show at one end the exact mode of locking.

There were two mounts on two corners of the fort 12 feet square and 7 feet high; and the houses and barracks within the fort were 11 feet wide with shingled roofs; and the mount-timber, the insides of the houses, and the floors, were all hewn, presumably of the same width and thickness as the wall-timbers. Undoubtedly the whole parade in the middle of the fort was also floored in the same way, as the site of the fort was and is low and wet.

The fort was built in this manner during the months of August, September, and October, 1744; and on the 30th of the last mentioned month, Capt. Williams commenced to billet himself and the soldiers under his command at the fort. He remained there all the winter and spring; about the 1st of March he enlisted 14 of his men for the Louisburg Expedition, at Col. Stoddard's request, whom he took to Boston; but was not himself allowed to embark, and returned to his fort; while later in the season, under a strong call for reinforcements for Louisburg by Gov. Shirley, Williams took 74 able bodied men to Boston, recruited by himself in less than six days mostly in the Connecticut valley, and was given a Lieutenant colonel's commission in the regiment destined for Louisburg commanded by Col. John Choate. They sailed in June, 1745, but the fortress had been taken before they arrived, and the regiment with Williams as acting Colonel was detained there to do garrison duty.

Fort Pelham in Rowe was built by Williams before he left for Louisburg, that is, in the spring of 1745; and in the autumn of that year we find Capt. Ephraim Williams, a kinsman of the other, afterwards founder of Williams College, in command of Fort Shirley and of the line of forts. It is fair to presume that he was appointed to the command on the withdrawal of the other in June; but which of the two built Fort Massachusetts along the same line, or whether either of them, can not now be stated with absolute certainty. It is probable that Ephraim Williams saw to its construction under the Committee of the General Court, of which Stoddard was Chairman; and at any rate he was in command of the whole "line of Forts, viz. Northfield, Falltown, Colrain, Fort Shirley, Fort Pelham, Fort Massachusetts, and the soldiers posted at the Collars, Shattucks Fort, Bridgman's, Deerfield, Rhode Town, and New Hampton," as early as Dec. 10, 1745. Just a year from that time he sends in his account for the entire year,—"In which time he has had three hundred and fifty men under his particular charge and government."

Because it was the first fort built by the Colony in that region, and especially because Fort Massachusetts was captured and burnt by the French and Indians in August, 1746, Shirley became very prominent in that war, and was the headquarters of the successive commanders of the line of forts. Massachusetts was rebuilt early in 1747, and thereafter became the chief work; for both before and after the Peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, it was perceived that the sites of Shirley and Pelham had been ill-chosen, and that the route by the Hoosac was the one to be kept open for hostile demonstration towards Crown Point, and the one to be defended against hostile demonstration from all that quarter. Forts Shirley and Pelham, accordingly, which were very differently constructed, ceased to be of much military significance after the Peace, though both were slightly garrisoned for several years after. In 1749 and a part certainly of the next year, there were five men only in Fort Shirley, namely, Lieutenant William Lyman, Gershom Hawks, John Powell, Samuel Stebbins, and Peter Bove. From June, 1725 till the end of May, 1754, one man in each constituted the garrison of Shirley and Pelham. Archibald Powell held watch and ward on the heights of Heath and George Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed enclosure of Fort Pelham.

There was but one chaplain to the line of forts, Rev. John Norton, appointed from Falltown in 1745, who passed from one to the other as his sense of duty to each garrison might prompt; and Mrs. Norton with one or two children lived in Fort Shirley for more than a year while her husband was in captivity in Canada. Scouting parties of the soldiers were kept constantly passing from fort to fort when not employed in garrison or other duty; their allowance on the march was for each soldier per day one pound of bread, one pound of pork, and one gill of rum; while in garrison each man was allowed per day one pound of bread, and one-half pint of peas or beans, two pounds of pork for three days, and one gallon of molasses for 42 days. It is certain, that one or more cows were kept by the garrison of Fort Shirley, perhaps on account of Mrs. Norton and her children, for there was a cleared field around the fort, and an old cow-bell half eaten up by rust was found not long ago near its site, which site, it must be remembered, was several miles from any habitation of men at any time in the last century.

After an existence of one hundred and forty-one years, the old well of Fort Shirley, which was undoubtedly within the block-house and probably in one corner of the enclosure away from the "parade," is able to tell pretty thoroughly to this day the story of its own construction. Four forest staddles about six inches in diameter, one for each comer of the well, were set upright on the ground, and then ash planks rived from a log about five feet long were pinned or spiked on the outside of these staddles, beginning at the bottom; and this frame being placed on the ground where the well was to be, the earth was thrown out over the sides, and so the well was gradually sunk to the required depth, the plank-siding being added gradually as the shaft was lowered. These rived planks and the tops of the four corner-poles, that can now be seen and fingered less than two feet below the surface of the ground, were not very uniform in thickness, and of course have rotted off at the top by time and exposure; but enough of both has been preserved till this time by constant submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil above it to betray without any serious question the nature of the materials used and the mode of their employment. One of the corner-posts was a black birch and the bark on it is in a good state of preservation at and below the surface of the water.

The last incident to be mentioned at this time in connection with Fort Shirley relates to the Rev. John Norton, his wife and daughter. Norton was born in Berlin, Conn., in 1716; was graduated at Yale College in 1737; was ordained in Fall Town, since Bernardston, Mass., in 1741; he was the first minister in that town, "but owing to the unsettled state of the times," and to the fact that his people lay right in the angle between the military line of the Connecticut and that of the Deerfield, and had consequently as much as they could do, to maintain their families exposed as they were, he labored there about four years, and was appointed chaplain to the line of forts almost as soon as the men were fairly in garrison. He was in Fort Massachusetts when it was besieged and captured by an army of French and Indians in August, 1746; went captive with the rest of the garrison to Quebec; returned, exchanged, in just a year; and wrote an account of the siege, the journey northwards, the captivity, and the return, a precious little book, which he entitled after a memorable precedent "The Redeemed Captive." His narrative begins as follows.—"Thursday, August 14, 1746, I left Fort Shirley in company with Dr. Williams and about fourteen of the soldiers; we went to Pelham Fort, and from thence to Captain Rice's, where we lodged that night. Friday, the 15th, we went from thence to Fort Massachusetts, where I designed to have tarried about a month. Saturday, 16th, the Doctor with fourteen men, went off for Deerfield, and left in the fort Sergeant John Hawks with twenty soldiers, about half of them sick with bloody flux."

We can not now follow the good chaplain in his deeply interesting narrative. He makes no mention in it of his family, but it is certain from other data that he left Mrs. Norton and his young children in garrison at Fort Shirley, and that just about the time of his return from captivity to Boston, which was August 16, 1747, his little girl, Anna, died at the fort and was buried in the field a little to the west of it. Probably some soldier in the fort chiselled upon the rude stone the inscription as follows:

Hear lys ye body of An'na
D: of ye Rev:
Mr. John Norton. She died
Aug; ye – aged – 1747.

This stone stood there in the bleak field exposed to the suns of summer and the storms of winter for more than one hundred and thirty years. The day of August on which she died and the number of years she had lived have become illegible by exposure,—impossible to be deciphered. The stone has lately been removed to Williams College, and with its companion relic, a stick of one of the timbers of Fort Shirley, and a few other memorials of the well and fort, are safe in a fire-proof building.

The tradition is still lively in Heath, and it may well be an historical fact for it has been handed down by an aged citizen there whose life began with the century, that there used to come up from Connecticut on an occasional pilgrimage to the site of Fort Shirley and particularly to the grave of Anna Norton some of her relatives. This is very likely; for John Norton became in 1748 a pastor in the parish of East Hampton, Middlesex Co., Conn., where he died in 1778; and one may still read on his tombstone there the following inscription:

IN MEMORY OF
THE REV. JOHN NORTON
PASTOR OF THE 3D CHURCH IN CHATHAM
WHO DIED WITH SMALL POX
MARCH 24th AD 1778
IN THE 63D YEAR OF HIS AGE.

He left several children. Among them an unmarried daughter, who lived till 1825. It is no mean touch and print of vital human sympathy that is left upon the sod beneath the great tree in Shirley-field by the figure of one who came and came again from a distant place to catch, it may be, a note from the dreary Past and drop a tear upon the grave of a sister whom she never saw.

To his Excellency William Shirley, Esq. Capt. Gen. and Gov'r in Chief of this Province, the Hon'ble his Majesty's Council & House of Representatives in Gen. Court assembled—

The Memorial of John Norton of Springfield in the County of Hampshire, Clerk, humbly showeth That in the month of February, 1746, he entered into the Service of the Province as a Chaplain for the Line of Forts on the Western Frontier and continued in that service until the Twentieth day of August following, when he was captivated at Fort Massachusetts and carried to Canada by the enemy, where he was detained a prisoner for the space of twelve months, during which time he constantly officiated as a chaplain among his fellow-prisoners in the best manner he was able under the great difficulties and suffering of his imprisonment, and your Humble Petit'r begs leave further to inform your Excell'c. & Honors that besides the great Difficulties and Hardships that your Petit'r indured during his captivity abroad, he and his family by means thereof are reduced to great Straight and Difficulties at home. He therefore prays your Excell'c and Honors would take his distressed Circumstances into your wiser Consideration and grant him such Help and Relief as your Excell'c, and Honors in your Wisdom and Goodness shall deem meet, and your memorialist as in duty bound shall ever pray.

JOHN NORTON.

Springfield, Jan. 25, 1748.

[ENDORSED]

In the House of Representatives, Feb, 23, 1748. Read and Ordered that the sum of £37, 10s. be allowed the memorialist in consideration of this officiating as Chaplain to the Prisoners whilst in captivity at Canada.

In council read & concurred W. Hutchinson, Speaker

J. Willard

Sec'y