YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

1944

OELEBRATIOlSr

OF THE

TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY

SETTLEMENT OF HADLEY,
MASSACHUSETTS,
AT HADLEY, JUNE 8, 1859;
INCLUDING THE
ADDRESS BY REV. PROF. F. D. HUNTINGTON, D. D.,
OF HAEVAED COLLEGE,
POEM BY EBWAED C. PORTER, A. B.,
OP HADLEY,'
AND THE OTHER EXERCISES OF THE OCCASION.

< ¦»•» >

noethampton:
PUBLISHED BY BrUDG-JVCA-lSr & GUILDS.
1859.

NORTHAMPTON:
PRINTED BY TRUMBULL AND GERE.

HADLEY BI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION.

At a Town Meeting lield Mal^ch 30th, 1857, it was voted, in re
sponse to an article in the Warrant calling the meetihg, having refer*
ence to that subject, that a committee be appointed to carry the
subject of the tenth article into effect, by employing some one of its
emigrant sons to give a public address, and to take and adopt such
measures as the case may require for a public celebration.
Voted, That the town choose a committee of thil-teen to carry the
above vote into effect.
The following persons were chosen to act upon that committee :— »
Giles C. Kellogg, Sylvester Smith, Theodore G. Huntington, Eleazer
Porter, George Dickinson, Jeriah 8. Smith, F. Bonney, Thaddeus Smith,
Koyal W. Montague, E. H. Bartlett, Levi Adams, Edmund Smith, John A.
Morton. At a town meeting held March 28th, 1859, it was voted that the
town appropriate the sum of seven hundred dollars to defray the
contingent expenses of the celebration of the Two Hundredth Anni
versary of the settlement of the town ; and that the money be placed
in the hands of the Treasurer of the town's committee of thirteen,
to be used by them in furtherance of the objects of said appropria
tion. The committee of thirteen, appointed by the town, met June 1st,
1857, and organised by the choice of Giles C. Kellogg as Chairman,
and F. Bonney as Secretary.
At a subsequent meeting the following officers and committees
Were chosen to assist the general committee in carrying out the ob
jects of their appointment: —
President of the Z>ay^-EKA8TU3 Hopkins, Esq., of Northampton.
Vice Presidents — Rev. Dan Huntington, Giles C. Kellogg, Esq., Dea. Jason
Stockbridge, Dea. Sylvester Smith, Rev. John Woodbridge, D. D., Dea.
Ashley Williams, Mr. Chester Gaylord, and Mr. Cotton Smith.
Treasurer — Eleazer Porter.
Chief Marshal— Wm, P. Dickinson.

Assistant Marshals— V. S. Williams, Benjamin Adams, Charles H. Smith,
Levi Stockbridge, Rodney Smith.
Toast Mastei — Erastus Hopkins, Esq.
Assistant Toast Masters — Arthur D. Phelps, Oliver E. Bonney.
Committee of Finance~-T. G. Huntington, Eleazer Porter, George Dick
inson. Committee on Invitations — C. P. Hitchcock, James B. Porter, L. N. Gran
ger, liev. E. Ayres, Rev. F. Tuxhury, Rev. W. H. Beaman, Joseph Smith,
Parsons West.
Committee on Music — Ezra Thayer, Charles Cook, 2d, Francis Smith,
Frederick Bell, Edward Stebbins, A. H. Cook.
Committee on Printing — Wm. S. Shipman, C. E. Lampson, J. E. Porter.
Committee on Receptions— Joseph Smith, Eleazer Porter, J. R. Davenport,
S. C. Wilder, T. P. Huntington.
Executive Committee — The Committee of Arrangements.
The Chief Marshal was authorized to appoint two aids.
It was voted that the celebration be held on the eighth of June,
and that there shall be an Address, a Poem and a Dinner. Rev.
Prof. F. D. Huntington, D. D. was chosen Orator, Mr. Edward C.
Porter, A. B., Poet, and Rev. John Woodbridge, D. D., Chaplain.
It was decided to have the exercises as nearly upon the site of the
first m.eeting house, as circumstances would admit.
•Advertisements were inserted in various Papers and Circulars
sent to as many as could be reached, inviting all persons related to
Hadley by descent, marriage or otherwise, to participate with us in
the exercises of the occasion.

The day was opened by the discharge of one hundred guns, the
roll of the drum, and the ringing of the church bells at dawn. At
an early hour a large concourse of people began to gather and con
tinued in unabated numbers, till the exercises of the day were closed.
Soon after 10 o'clock in the morning, a procession was formed at the
Town Hall, in the following order, and marched to the ground upon
which the exercises of the day were to be held : —
Aid. CHIEF MARSHAL. Aid.
A volunteer corps of Horsemen, 50 in number, Capt. A. H. Cook.
Belchertown Citizen Cavalry, Capt. T. R. Green.
Northampton Infantry, Capt. Wm. R. Marsh.
Colt's Armory Band.

President of the day and His Excellency Gov. Banks.
Lieut. Gov. Trask, Hon. Oliver Warner, Secretary of State, members
of the Council, Sergeant-at- Arms and Clerks of the Legislature.
Chaplain.
Oeatoe. and Poet.
Invited Guests.*
Vice Presidents.
Maeshal.
Committee of Arrangements.
Clergymen.
Representatives of the Press.
Members of the Bar.
Physicians.
Maeshal.
Soldiers of 1812 with the National Flag.
Sheeiee.
County Officers.
Selectmen and Town Clerks of the five Towns.
Representation of the olden time,
consisting of four gentlemen, and as many ladies on pillions, dressed
in antique costume, and others dressed in the same manner, riding
in old carriages. Immediately after them came an old-fashioned
churn, painted black and mounted on wheels, bearing some resem
blance to a cannon, illustrative of a traditionary report of the use of
that article by the ladies of the olden time, when the town was attack
ed by Indians.
Maeshal.
Citizens of Hadley.
Representation of the Trades,
consisting of a wagon from North Hadley, drawn by a four ox team,
with a, banner inscribed : —
" Then the red man scoured the roofless room,
Which now we sweep with the Hadley broom."
Within the wagon were old-fashioned spinning wheels, kitchen
utensils, farm implements, guns, cow-bells, a large wooden mortar
* It was gratifying to have present among those invited, two of the direct descend
ants of Rev. John Russell, Mr. H. S. Russell of Chester, Ct., and Mr. John B.
Bussell of Plymouth, Mass.; also Mr. Wm. Chattncey of New York, descendant of
Rev. Isjiao Chauncey, and numerous other distinguished and honored guests.

and pounder, a warming pan, a cobbler at work, and much else, repre
senting the past, that was novel and attractive. In direct contrast
came representations of manufactures of the present day, comprising
two large, wagons filled with mechanics at work, from Plainville and
North Hadley. In the first of these w*e brooms in the course of
manufacture, silver wire for piano strings, a card setting machine,
sewing machines, and, not least important, a specimen of soap from
the manufactory of W. A. Govern. In the second of these wagons
were represented the celebrated wheel manufactures of North Had
ley, specimens of hubs, felloes, wheels, &c., with mechanics at work,
from the establishment of J. Adams & Sons, W. E. & C. P. Clark,
D. S. Cowles, and others ; at the head of this team was a banner
with this inscription : —
" He who by the plow would thrive.
Must either hold the plow or drive."
In the center appeared the word " Plainville," the present name of
the district, and at the end, " Patrick Swamp," its former cognomen.
In the bottom of one of these wagons was a piece of iron with a label
stating that it was a portion of a cannon used against the Indians in
an attack made by them in 1676. This part of the procession was
the great feature of the occasion.
Maeshal.
Hatfield Brass Band.
Citizens of Hatfield.
Haydenville Cornet Band.
Citizens of South Hadley.
Citizens of Amherst.
Citizens of Granby.
Maeshal.
Students of Amherst College.
Teachers and Students of Hopkins Academy.
Scholars of the several School Districts with their Teachers.
Citizens of other towns.

AN ATTACK.
As the procession neared the end of its route, an episode not laid
down in the programme, occurred. It was no less than an attack
from a party of Indians. A company of fifteen aborigines from
" over the river," so well disguised that their most intimate friends

did not recognize them, rushed out from an ambush and attacked the
military escort. The troops gave way as if badly frightened, ran a
short distance, and there was a sharp fight for a few minutes ; the
Indians were apparently masters of the field, when the women of an
cient days, dismounting from their pillions and the men descending
from their carriages, brought up the mounted churn, and, marshalled
by an old continental, with white hair and queue, representing Goffe,
came to the rescue. The red men were soon dispersed and fled be
hind the barns and houses. This scene was capitally enacted, the
Indians were most completely equipped with bows, arrows, spears
and tomahawks, clothed in blankets and skins, and with head dresses
of feathers, and ornaments dangling from ears and nose, and faces
painted and stained. It afforded much amusement to the spectators,
and whenever the Indians appeared during the rest of the day, they
were the " observed of all observers."

After reaching the stand, the exercises were as follows :
Singing by the Choir and audience, accompanied by the Band.
AMERICA.
My Country ! 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing ;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From every mountain side
Let freedom ring, &c.
Invocation by the Chaplain, Rev. Dr. Woodbridge.
HYMN.
BT MISS SUSAN A. WOODBRIDGE
God of the hUls that gird us round.
We praise thee in a gladsome lay,
We bid thy glorious name resound
From hill to hill, this festal day.
God of the valley of our birth,
So lovely now in summer's bloom.
With birds, that warble forth their mirth.
With flowers that shed their sofi perfume

8
God of the river at our feet.
Half-circling like a crescent moon,
God of the sky, so warm and sweet,
All glowing in the light of June.
We praise thee, nature's King and God,
For all thy works are greatly good ;
But here upon this sacred sod,
Here where the pious pilgrims stood,
Now, when upon this natal day,
Our thoughts go back two hundred years.
And we recall the weary way
Our fathers came, their toils and tears.
Now, when we think upon that Hand,
Which guarded them 'mid savage foes.
Which fed the weak and trembling band.
And ransomed them from all their woes,
Now, on this day, this natal day.
Let us across the ages bend.
With holy pilgrims let us pray.
Our praises with their praises blend.
We praise thee, God of providence.
We praise thee, God of truth and grace,
Our refuge and our sure defence.
We humbly bow before thy face.
God of all time ! we bless thy name.
And, O ! that we may worship thee,
Thou who wast, shalt be, art the same.
Through ages of eternity.
Prayer.
Anthem by the Choir.
Prof. Huntington then delivered the following Address.

PEOF. HUNTINGTON'S ADDEESS.

NOTE.
Although the chief matter of this address is history, the author has not been
careful to preserve, in all parts of it, a stately method. Indeed, the task put
before him was two fold : — to furnish a discourse not wholly uninstructive nor
unworthy of permanent association withthe Town and its people; and to
secure the continued attention of a vast assembly, including three or four
thousand persons of all ages and conditions, — standing and sitting, to a large
extent, in the open air, — exposed, as it proved, to copious showers of rain, —
and surrounded by many distracting sights and sounds belonging to the lively
character of the celebration. It has been thought best to present the address
as it was delivered, with some passages which were necessarily omitted.
The sources from which the facts have been collected are so various that
special references would only encumber the pages, to little purpose. With
some hesitation, they are therefore dropped out, excepting the instances of
due acknowledgment contained in the text and a very few in the margin.
F. D. H.
Harvard University, Cambridge, June, 1859.

ADDEESS.

Foremost among the encouraging thoughts that crowd upon
us as we take our places on this consecrated spot, is the thought
that our Jubilee, so auspiciously begun, has a valid founda
tion. We stand here on the authentic foothold of realities —
realities rooted in the truth of the past — living interests of to
day — permanent possessions for our race. Under us rests the
basis of historical fact; around us stand the tokens of a present
vitality. Many different elements, all animating and fruitful of
congratulation, enter into the high meaning of our assembly.
Perhaps it would be justified, if it were only the harmless and
lawful recreation of a holiday, a social diversion, or a playful
pageant, for a steady and hard-working community. There is
a place in God's genial providence for that. But I cannot help
holding this great and enthusiastic meeting to be something of
loftier significance than an entertainment. It is a reverential
celebration of forcible persons, beneficent actions and immor
tal ideas. It is a visible homage to a race of men and women
who were here before us, noble-spirited, brave-hearted, right
eous-minded. They were Christian heroes. It is also a cordial
and almost spontaneous expression of some of the best senti
ments of our common nature : — the confidence of neighbors,
the love of kindred, the mutual sympathy of those who sprang
from the same place, now turning affectionately back to the
native ground. It is a tribute to the soil and institutions of the
country, — and so is an offering of patriotism. It honors enter-
prize, education, industry, self-sacrifice, in the persons of those
who planted here in hope, wrought with energy, suffered
patiently, builded wisely, died willingly. It gathers up the

12
traditions and narrations of a territory abounding in early ad
venture, and hands them over, as an unpretending contribution,
to the domain of general knowledge — thus doing for the trea
sures of National History hereafter what the rivulets that col
lect the rain drops and original springs of the hill tops around
us, do for the broad current that rolls their blended waters to
the ocean. It refreshes our feeling and it enriches the future.
It wakens gratitude to our fathers, and provides a better herit
age of sacred memories and intelligent interpretations for our
children. Above all, it is an ascription of religious thanksgiv
ing to Him in whom both the fathers and the children live : —
for it commemorates a work born of his own Spirit, and stand
ing in the lineal succession of that illustrious order of events
installed on this continent by the believing men who sailed in
the Mayflower, and who, in the "compact" written in her
cabin, declared that they had undertaken the voyage " for the
glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith."
On distributing my materials I find they fall naturally into the
following divisions : The general constitutional character of
a Town in the New England scheme of social and political life j
the natural capabilities and scenery of this village; the vital
origin and incidents of its early settlements; its physical divis
ions and developments ; the conflicts with the natives and
characteristics of Indian warfare ; the true romance of the
Regicides ; the moral quality, local customs, and industrial
enterprises of the people ; the interests of education ; popular
superstitions; the Christian power and action of the Hadley
church; the character of the ministry; the transition from the
Past to the Future.
Of the settlements of our fathers in New England, it is no
ticeable that they were settlements of towns. In the concep
tion of those clear-headed, forecasting men, who did nothing
by accident, but everything for a practical end, the town was
not merely an accidental community, located for convenience
in a given quarter ; it was a distinct, realized idea inseparably
associated with their whole system of political economy and
an essential element in their composition of a State. On the
one side, and that the inside, if we may say so, the town was

13
related to the family ; and on the other, or outside, to the Com
monwealth. That is, the town was made up of households.
The family was the simplest form of social life as respects both
religion and civil government. It was the germ of the Church
and of the State. There were first exercised authority, subor
dination, sympathy, mutual help, united worship. Hence the
family was a sacred institution, and its welfare and purity were
defended by strict safeguards. A sufficient number of families,
related together by a formal compact, made up a town. On
the other hand, a sufficient number of towns, entering into po
litical relations for a common object, occupying a suitable
geographical vicinity, instituted a Colony, Commonwealth, or
State. A county was only a partial, intermediate form of or
ganization, mostly for the greater facility of the judicial ad
ministration. The confederate grouping of States, as every
body knows, was a subsequent step, growing out of new neces
sities. It is true, in those primitive and simple days, when men were
scattered in the wilderness, exiled from old comforts, with their
lives in their hands, and even more consciously in the Almighty
Hand, the presence of common perils and the consecration of
a common faith bound them together, and cast them upon one '
another's support, independently of all formal constitutions.
So we find the settlements of the Connecticut River, which
belonged geographically to Massachusetts but were bound by
moral ties or by origin and kindred to Connecticut, in the ex
posures of the Indian wars were constantly receiving aid both
from the one and the other. The truth is, they were all alike
too powerfully possessed by the vivid and all-controlling reali
ties of their faith in Christ and in another world, to be kept
wholly apart by the separation of civil guardianship or distance
of place.
And so it comes about that, obedient to that early economy,
indebted to that clear thought, we have come together to-day
for a town celebration. The large hospitalities of the occasion
rightly embrace and welcome all who, by descent or intermar
riage, by blood or by residence, from far or near, are related
not merely to the geographic but the human Hadley of two
hundred years ago.

14
The pi'oper view taken by a centennial discourse must be
retrospective. These several towns, which now occupy with
her the territorial limits originally assigned to Hadley alone,
namely, Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst and Granby, had in
the first period of our two centuries a common property, a
common history. To that period it is most natural and fitting
that we should to-day return. We have to do chiefly with
those beginnings which are precious to all alike as having an
ancestral charm and power. Any attempt to pass out into the
several town annals and fortunes would only complicate our
survey, to the loss of interest, unity and value of impression.
We have to deal here not with what we hold as apart, but with
what we hold together ; an inestimable, abounding legacy of*
honorable and thrilling memories : of materials for a whole
library of poetry, tragedy, romance, history, and even martyr-'
ology ; of strong character and bold adventure, of hardy en
terprise and terrible suffering, of quaint customs and majestic
sacrifices, of love and pity, tenderness and tears ; of industry
and order, of war and worship. The records of these things
are happily not wholly destroyed. Notwithstanding the loss
of the church manuscripts by fire, at the parsonage, in 17G6,
and the inevitable wear and waste of time, enough remains, in
the carefully kept proceedings of the town, in the reports of
local tradition, and, above all, in the researches of your faith
ful, untiring and most successful local collector and chronicler,
Mr. Judd, — enough to give new impressions, I think, of the
grand age of work and faith that went before us. It is one
of the comforts and assistances of my part in these exercises
to have had the friendly and almost indispensable aid of the
learned antiquarian just mentioned. It is a privilege pertain
ing to you all alike, that if God shall lengthen out his useful
life still more, you will have before you the published fruits of
his patient and admirable labors, yielding to you and your
children, and your children's children, treasures of entertain
ment and instruction.
One of the interesting departments of inquiry respecting the
external history of man on the globe is that where the moral
and material parts of his condition have their most obvious

15
connection : the influence of geography on his movements and
character. The moment we go below the superficial notion
that mere accident or caprice governs his migrations and
directs his settlements, we come upon the fact that these
things are largely regulated by those outward causes, such as
climate, soil, surface, disposition of water and land, plain and
mountain, all of which we frequently name under the general
word Nature. The more carefully we examine, the more clear
ly we shall see that this class of causes has very powerfully
affected the great currents of human affairs. Thus the Prov
idence which guided the wanderings and appointed the habi
tations of the Eastern tribes whose fortunes are written in the
Bible, clearly employed the geographical peculiarities of that
oriental territory as a means of their pastoral distribution and
political structure. Could we look closely enough into the
whole matter, we should find that there was a remarkable law
of relation between the table lands, the mountains, the rivers,
the lakes, the pasture grounds, of the several countries, and
the gradual process of colonization, the employments, the hos
tile or friendly intercourse, the civilizing, the wars, treaties,
commerce, and even the religious culture of the people. Who
shall measure the formative power of the rocky peaks, the star-
lighted plains, the deserts — of Lebanon, Gennesaret, Ebal and
Gerizim .'' Take away all the physical elements from the He
brew history, and how much of our vivid conception of the
Israelites, of their discipline and devotion, would be gone ! Or
consider the effects wrought by that single sea that spreads its
beautifully bounded waters between the three continents, from
the earliest day to our own ; and how impossible then to re
gard the Mediterranean otherwise than as a great geographic
civllizer ! Indeed, not only has poetry observed this, telling
us how " Mountains interposed make enemies of nations," and
" Lands intersected by a narrow frith abhor each other," but
the whole subject has been reduced to a branch of science,
and one of the best books of our day traces, through ingen
ious and striking analogies and correspondencies, the deep
bond of influence between " the Earth and Man." If we may
take a comparison from one of these very objects of natural

16
scenery, the entire course of human events is a stream or fiver,
whose windings and deviations, slow or swifter current, stillness
and dashings, clearness and turbidness, smoothness and foam,
deeper and shallower channels, eddies and freshets are largely
to be accounted for by the inequality of materitil substances
and surfaces it has encountered on the way.
Now, when we look beyond the great ideas that belong
in the domains of thought and of faith, the principal agent
that regulated the settlement of this part of New England
was the noble River, which flows daily before your eyes, the
thing of most life-like character even to the senses, which
has fashioned so much of the lovely sculpture of these hills
and meadows, whose annual spring-tide flood is the most su
perb pageant of the region, which irrigates your ground and
beautifies your homes, and which has become dear, as almost
in a human and spiritual friendship, to so many of our affec
tions. It was this River, with the rich alluvial acres which its
industrious action had been depositing, layer by layer, for ages,
that made the process of colonizing New England jump at one
bound from the Atlantic sea-board to the valley of the Con
necticut. It was this that tempted some of the adventurous
Hollanders, who were busy raising the Dutch forts and colonies
of Manhattan and Albany along the Hudson, to sail, in 1614,
under the direction of one Adrian Block, as far up its course
as Windsor, calling it by the unmeaning name of Fresh River.
It was this that brought William Holmes and his friends by
water, around Cape Cod, from Plymouth, in 1633, to ' plant
themselves just below the mouth of Windsor River, on what is
still called Plymouth Meadow. It was this that, late in the
same year, drew the first white travelers over-land, under the
direction of John Oldham, followed, in November, by the com
pany of Samuel Hall.
In the following years the spreading reputation of its fertile
bottom lands attracted various bands of settlers from Massa
chusetts Bay ; — from Watertown to Wethersfield, from Cam
bridge, then Newtown, to Hartford, and from Dorchester to
Windsor; — followed in 1636 by William Pynchon and
some of his Roxbury neighbors to Springfield. It was the

11
Falls in it, at the south part of Hadley, which, for nearly twen
ty years afterwards, prevented the extension of these planta
tions northward. It was the natural boundary line furnished
by it, which afterwards separated Northampton from the Had
ley plantation, and not much later cut off from the latter the
town of Hatfield. Then, if we could at this day gather up all
the refining touches it has given to the mind and heart, the
taste and feeling of the successive generations, from infancy to
age, as they have watched its play under cloud and sun, its
rising and sinking, its ripple and its icy crust, we should proba
bly discover, in its apparently evanescent and shadowy impres
sions, causes which have exerted a deeper power on the real
life of the place than many of the conspicuous incidents of
the recorded history.
We are not to forget, however, that forces yet more com
manding than any territorial appearance or material economy
had to do with the settlement at Hadley. It is the privilege
of our traditions, that we share in the dignity of the great Puri
tan emigration across the ocean, in having a real reason for our
location, among the solemn questions of conscience and faith.
About two years before this town was planted, a church coun
cil, sitting in Boston, composed of delegates from the Massa
chusetts and Connecticut colonies, had so far innovated uptjn
previous ecclesiastical usage as to declare that the rite of bap
tism might be administered to the children of non-communi
cants if themselves baptized and of a decent external life.
Among the places where this rule of the half-way covenant
introduced a division of sentiment was Hartford. Perhaps
there were other occasions of difference. Cotton Mather says
that " from the fire of the altar" in Hartford, "there issued
thunderings and lightnings and earthquakes through the col
ony," but that "the true original of the misunderstanding was
about as obscure as the rise of the Connecticut river." Rev.
Mr. Hooker, who had moved there from the First Church in
Cambridge, eminent and judicious, had died ten years before.
His colleague and successor, Samuel Stone, leaned to the new
way, was possibly a little disposed besides to extend the recog
nized conditions of church membership, and at the same time
2

18
to favor some of the measures of the Presbyterians. A minoi'ity
of the church opposed these tendencies, to the extent of a con
troversy, venerating the measures and the memory of Hooker,
and standing firm on the Cambridge Platform. That the origin
of these difficulties, however, was earlier than the Boston Sy
nod appears from the fact that special local councils had been
previously held at Hartford, three years in succession. At last,
an apparent agreement, called a " pacification," was reached ;
but this was soon broken, and as several of the recusant mi
nority, including Gov. Webster, having been threatened with
discipline, were on the point of withdrawing, for the purpose
of joining the church under Rev. John Russell at Wethersfield,
the General Court interfered and peremptorily laid an injunc
tion on both parties, forbidding at once the excommunication
and the secession — a characteristic illustration of the existing
relations between the civil and ecclesiastical power. Just
now the minority sagaciously bethought them of a less offensive
expedient for getting rid of the obnoxious connection : that of
moving up the river into the Massachusetts Colony. A formal
and pious petition to that effect was entered at Boston, by John
Cullick and Wm. Goodwin, expressing a hope that " through
the grace of Christ," " the conversations " of the petitioners
should " be without offence." A grant was secured for lands
"East of Northampton," with a condition affixed that a new
council should be called for an orderly composing of the Hart
ford troubles : — a condition that shows how scrupulously the
authorities guarded both the purity and the peace of their reli
gious organization. They would not suffer a diplomacy which
merely separated the antagonists without healing the discord.
The upshot was a censure of both sides, acceptable terms of
reconciliation, and a continued fellowship between the Hartford
and Hadley churches. There had evidently sprung up a sym
pathy between these Hartford emigrants and a portion of the
church at Wethersfield, including their minister, Mr. Russell
which resulted in a transfer of a majority of the latter, with Mr.
Russell himself, to Norwottuck, or Hadley. Thus it appears
that the Founders of Hadley were strict and determined Con-
gregationalists, as opposed to the Half-way baptismal Cove-

19
nant, on the one hand, and to Presbyterianizing tendencies
on the other.
The meeting at Hartford, at which the engagement to move
was drawn up and signed, was held April 18, 1659, at the
dwelling house of " Goodman " Ward. Aiftong the names of
signers which are still known in the living generation of the
present town are Porter, Warner, Marsh, Russell, White,
Field, Dickinson, Smith, Hooker, Hitchcock, Montague, Bil
lings, and Hubbard. The name of Partrigg also occurs, be
ing undoubtedly the same from which the considerable dis
trict east of the mountain has been called " Patrick's," or Part-
rigg's " Swamp." The whole number of the withdrawers'
names is sixty, more than half of which belonged to Hartford,
the rest being divided between Wethersfield and Windsor;
but only forty-two men appear to have actually joined the
expedition. It was stipulated that house-lots, embracing
eight acres each, should be laid out on the east side of " the
great river," leaving " a street twenty rods broad betwixt the
two westermost rows of house-lots." To this wholesome
provision at the outset we owe the ample breadth of this
avenue, unsurpassed in New England, which with its two
rows of sentinel elms, supplied by the taste of successive gen
erations, has left an image of beauty in the memory of admiring
travelers scattered in all lands. On the part of the Northamp
ton settlers it had been voted, in October of the previous year,
to "give away Capawonk," — the Indian name of the lower
meadow in Hatfield, — provided the Hartford men should " set
tle two plantations, one on each side of the river ;" provided
they should " maintain a sufficient fence against hogs and cat
tle ;" provided they should " pay ten pounds, in wheat and
peas, " and provided, fourthly, they should " inhabit here by
next May." Remember, now, that this was less than thirty
years after the Pilgrims dropped anchor in Plymouth Bay, less
than half of man's full life-time after the mighty hand of Eng
lish civilization touched the wilderness. Most of the original
planters were born, and had their early training, in the Mother
Country. 2a

20
An order was adopted by the General Court, May 28, 1659,
directing five persons, — viz : " Capt. Pinchon, Left. Holyhoke,
Deacon Chapin, Wm. Holton and Richard Lyman," — three be
ing of Springfield and two of Northampton, — to " lay out the
bounds of the towne at Norwottocke," — " not only to carry on
a towne but Church-worke also," "that this wilderness may be
populated, and the maine ends of our coming into these parts
may be promoted." By their report, the limits were defined;
being fixed at " the head of the Falls " on the south, near " the
hills called Petowamachu," our Holyoke ; at the little brook
called Nepasoaneag and Mount Kunckquachu, our " Toby,"
on the north ; at a line nine miles from the Great River, Quienec-
ticott, eastward; together with a strip on the west side of the
river north of Northampton, two miles wide, extending from a
" little riverett" running by Capawonk up to " a great mountain
called Wequamps." These two last boundaries are readily re
cognized now as Mill River in Hatfield, and Sugar Loaf Moun
tain. In the actual allotment, the town on the east-ward never
extended nine miles. Among those who settled on the west
side we find ihe names of Dickinson, Graves, Belding, White,
Warner and Billings, with Allis and Meekins, of Braintree
in the Massachusetts Colony. The three Sachems of Nolwot-
ogg, or Norwottuck,* of whom Pynchon procured the deed of
this territory were Chickwollop, Umpanchella, and Quon-
quont. The price was about seven hundred feet of wampum
and a few trinkets. In money the whole cost of the town ter
ritory was one hundred and fifty pounds, — about the present
price of four acres of meadow land ; — and this was thought to
be a higher rate than was paid for any other plantation in New
England. It serves to show the rapid increase of value, that
only in 1664, seven hundred acres of the "Bradstreet farm" in
Hatfield, were bought for two hundred pounds in money, — fifty
pounds more than the original price of the whole settlement, —
besides a thousand acres in Whately and five hundred else
where given in exchange.

« The general Indian name of the region, " Norwottock," or " the City in
the midst of the River," is spelt, in different documents, in nineteen difier-
ent wajs.

21
The name, Hadley,* — adopted for no very apparent reason,
probably the early associations of some settlers from the Had
ley of Suffolk County, in Old England, — was applied by the
General Court in 1661. Commissioners were required to be
appointed to sit as Magistrates at the local courts in North
ampton and Springfield; and Mr. Wm. Westwood was "au
thorized to joine persons in marriage."
By the first plan of tbe village in 1663, it would appear that
the general and unusually regular features remain essentially
unchanged. Forty-seven house-lots were arranged on the two
sides of the single street where we are now assembled. There
were three highways leading into the meadows, one at the
north end, on ground since abraded by the river, another at
the south end as now, and the third the same that still, as it
did at first, conducts by the grave yard. There were also, as
now. North and South and Middle highways running eastward,
toward Pine Woods, or the Pine Plain, — the middle one, since
"Academy Lane," and later yet "Russell Street," ending with
a gate. Of these house-lots a few seem to be, or to have been
during the present generation, held by persons of the same
name and blood as their original owners, — as those of Monta
gue, Porter, and White. The spot occupied by the "Russell
church," or a little north of it, was reserved as town property,
and was next north of the residence of Rev. Mr. Russell. After
Mr. Russell, the settler that was found most frequently in pub
lic connections was Peter Tilton, a man of great energy and
activity, sagacious and trusty ; the ancestor of the Eastmans.
The original Porter family is represented here to-day, not only
by numerous residents and guests, and in the plain prose of these
exercises, but in the graceful genius of your Poet.
According to the general principle of the settlements, all
settlers were assigned land, though not in the ratio of their
previous possessions; and it does not appear that there was any
case of serious discontent or breach of harmony, in what, judg
ing by the common characteristics of human nature, and the
Yankee human nature in particular, we should pronounce a
very delicate and difficult undertaking. It was clearly the ap-
*" Hadleigh," or " Headleye," in the Saxon.

22
proved policy to make as many citizens as possible proprietors
in the soil, thereby laying what has always proved one of the
surest foundations not only of local prosperity, but of patriot
ism and civil stability. Consider the democratic equality. It
is proved by the records, that the largest difference of own
ership, among the original assignments, was as the difference
between one and four : that is, that the largest landholder
owned only four times as much as the smallestv What a model
of christian economy was this village one hundred and ninety-
eight years ago !
The outlying portions of the township were ultimately dis
tributed, in a similar way, to the inhabitants, — " Forty acre
Meadow," to the North, betwfeen the main village and " School
Meadow," — "Fort Meadow" to the South East, — "Hockanum
Meadow," so called from a similar district of land in East
Hartford, on the South, and the " Great Meadow" occupying
the body of the peninsula; including "Meadow Plain" next
the home-lots, " Aquavitae," or " Aquavitse Bottle," from some
resemblance to such a vessel, southward, " Maple Swamp "
adjoining, and a region on the northwestern extremity, named
" Forlorn," or otherwise " Honey Pot," either from a deep place
in the river, or, as some have supposed, from being the resort
of wild bees, or, as is less likely, from the richness of the soil.
Besides these, there were four meadows on the west or Hat
field side of the River: viz. the "Great North," the "Little
Meadow," the " South Meadow," or Wequettayag, including an
Indian " reservation " called " Indian Bottom," or " Indian Hol
low," and the " Southwest Meadow," toward Northampton,
or "Capawonk," the two latter, separated by Mill River, being
sometimes called Great and Little " Pansett."
Enclosures were made chiefly at common expense, by fences,
embankments and deep ditches, — traces of the latter still re
maining in some parts of the town. The existence of these on
high and dry grounds, where now there is plenty of timber, has
caused a good deal of speculation. But I have it from one of
the oldest and best-informed of the present generation,* that
within the memory of his grandfather the growths of large timber
*Major Sylvester Smith.

23
in this neighborhood were so scanty that the sills of a house in
Hockanum were brought from Belchertown.
This destruction of the forest and underbrush was doubtless
a periodical business of the savages — a fiery clearing — to facili
tate their pursuit of game. What more magnificent or awful
scene will the imagination furnish, than would be unrolled be
fore a spectator stationed, at some earlier time of the unbroken
forest, on some of these heights, commanding the long vistas of
the valley, the slopes and hill sides on either side, with the
peaks of distant mountains peering through the openings, or
soaring above their lines, — there on a dry October night to
witness the whole broad and far-reaching regions swept by
swift, fierce floods of flame, — the hot, red powers of devasta
tion darting from ridge to ridge, plunging down into the glens
and gorges, running in lurid sport across the plains, leaping in
to the taller oaks and chestnuts and grappling with their tops
as if in conscious fury, the wind swaying the blazing sheets, or
whirling aloft and scattering abroad the foliage in showers of
living coals thick as hailstones, — the clouds of smoke rolling
aloft into the black concave overhead, or drifting in the horizon,
— tongues of fire set like torches on every hill-top, — the glow
ing reflections of the river winding and doubhng like a crimson
sash loosened from the melting bosom of the meadows, — the
roar and crackle and hissing of the heat, — the crashing of the
falling trees, — the screams of startled birds, and howls and
shrieks of blistered animals, — all creating a grander comming
ling and variety of the powers and voices of conflagration than
any level burning of the prairies, and, leaving out the tragic
elements of human agony, on a vaster scale of majesty than
Moscow or any of the burning cities of the east.
Mount Holyoke was used as a fence for Hockanum Meadow ;
with a strip of rails, — less substantial but much more trouble
some to keep in repair, westerly toward the river. A capital
regulation existed for some time, — that whoever left a gate open
or the bars down, should be fined two shillings and sixpence.
These rules were made necessary by the importance of keep
ing the cattle confined to the back fields and woods, away from
the crops.

24
One of the chief signs and instruments of civilization is the
Road. Roads were laid out in Hadley while the land was com-'
mon, the lots upon them being appropriated afterwards. A
cait-path was made through " Forty Acres " to Mill Brook, now
North Hadley, in 1667. Mending highways was then a some
what extensive town practice. Communication had to be kept
up with Hartford ; and in one instance it seems that the teams of
Hadley and Northampton were called out to repair the roads in
Suffield, Ct. Even so late as the close of that century, the
records show that the people had a difficulty in keeping down
the bushes in the highways. The Northampton ferry was long
at the south end of Hadley Street, and by that the Northamp
ton people went principally to Springfield. Toward Massa
chusetts Bay the first settlement that offered a lodging, — and
that not till 1664,— was at Quaboug, or Brookfield. Beyond
there, the Bay Road branched into three routes,— one by Nash
ua, now Lancaster, another by Worcester, and a third by Graf
ton. These, however, were little more than savage trails for
traveling " Indian file," — paths for a single horse or man. No
wheeled vehicle passed between Hadley and Boston till about
the close of that century. The first bridge in Ihat direction, ex
cept for foot-passengers, crossed Fort River near the south end
of Spruce Hill, was built in 1675, and was succeeded, some
thirteen years later, by Lawrence's bridge, near the site of the
one now in use. Produce for Boston was carried around by
water. It was carted to Willimansett, below the Falls. Skil
ful boatmen navigated the Enfield rapids. The grist-mill was
at Hatfield ; and the grist from the East side was carried over
by two ferrymen, on certain days of the week, for three pence
a bushel, payable, like other toll, in gra'in. In 1670, however,
the East-side farmers set up a mill of their own, on the North
Stream, now North-Hadley. In Philip's War tliis mill was
turned into a military garrison, and shortly after was burnt by
the Indians ; but it was rebuilt and became the nucleus of en
terprise in the upper village. Flour was sent down the River.
Joseph Smith, the first permanent settler there, was the miller,
and brought up his sons to the craft. The bolting was done in

25
families, with cloth or sieves ; Mrs. Richard Montague, of Had
ley Village, did it for her neighbors by the barrel. The mani
fold branches of industrial development were soon in operation.
Of course, the soil has determined, from the beginning, that
most of the inhabitants should live by husbandry ; and tiiey
have generally not only lived but, whatever they may individu
ally report, have thriven by it. It may be also said that agri
culture as a science has benefitted by the intelligence and
industry of the farmers here. In the early period, there was
an extensive and common merchandise in tar. Previous to the
year 1700, some now obsolete occupations and officers existed :
as packers (of meat and fish),, fence-viewers, hay wards, hog-
ringers, cowkeepers, shepherds, and the Lord's Day guards,
who took a gun to meeting, and had a particular seat. The
second Samuel Porter was the first considerable merchant, was
next in importance in the County to Pynchon, and grew rich.
Dr. Westcarr traded with the Indians. He seems to have sold
them, contrary to law, certain hot liquors, including rum, called
in those days " kill-devil," a name so notoriously contradictory
to the actual effect of the drink, that one is inclined to attrib
ute its invention to that personage himself, who is apt to be
never so much alive as when he is supposed to be dead. The
mechanics commonly united their small trades with the general
business of farming. Produce was more the currency than
money. It was only eight years after the laying out of the Town that
the people of the West-Side, to the number of fourscore and
ten, sent to the Colonial Governor and Deputies a petition for
a separate organization, — ^setting forth the distressing and intol
erable inconveniences of the ferry, especially as creating a vio
lation of the Lord's Day in the labor and time of crossing, in
rough weather causing the women and children to "screech"
and be made " unfit for ordinances," bringing the men into
the water and through the ice, wetting them to the skin, and
obliging them to leave many of their number at home, exposed
as " a prey to the heathen." One house was already burnt to
the ground while the men were gone to worship. The people

26
of the East side opposed this dismemberment, conceiving that
their neighbors had " no call of God thereto." The matter was
debated with spirit by both parties some three years, when in
1670, the incorporation was granted, and the territory set off
was called Hatfield, or " Hattfields," after an English town.
Rev. Hope Atherton of Dorchester was first minister, with six
male church members, and sixty pounds salary, payable in wheat
and pork. He was followed by Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey, son
of Charles Chauncey, second President of Cambridge College,
and later by Rev. William Williams. A free school was early
established. By the terms of the separation, a large portion of
the meadow land next the river, west of the ferry, was reserved
to Hadley. In 1692 Hatfield moved for a transfer of this land
to her own domain, which was not obtained till after a series of
hard legal contests extending over forty-one years.
Up to 1700 the places included in Hampshire County were
Springfield, embracing Longmeadow, Northampton, Hadley,
Hatfield, Westfield, Deerfield (or Pocomtuck), Suffield (or
Southfield), Enfield, and Brookfield. Settlements were soon
made in Sunderland (or Swampfield), and Northfield (or Squa-
keag). From time to time, on petition of the inhabitants, the Gen
eral Court extended the bounds of Hadley towards the east and
south. The contents at the largest were eighty square miles.
Oliver Partridge of Hatfield, surveyed, in 1739, from a point
six miles east of the old meeting-house, five miles north and
four miles south, and from each extremity a line straight to the
river, — a very regular outline. A difficulty in settling with
Sunderland the north line, which had formerly terminated at
the mouth of Mohawk brook, led to the grant of an equivalent
at " Deerfield Falls," above Sunderland, called Hadley Farm,
sold in 1749. Middle Street was called " the hill over the low
valley." In 1681 Isaac Warner had a grant of a houselot on the
river-bank, extending from the main street up towards "Cole
man's brook." This was the " Highbanks," since washed away.
The late Dr. Porter knew a well of water on the west bank,
which was originally dug and belonged to a house on the East
bank.

21
The vote for a tier of lots on what is now Middle Street was
first passed in 1684 ; but very few lots were taken till the close
of that century, on account of danger from savages. Swamp
lands east of Forty acres, between Coleman's brook and the
Upper Mill, were fenced in 1699, and called " The Skirts of
Forty Acres." Traces of the " old ditch " connected with this
skirt fence are still visible. All this region above Coleman's
brook, including the land which afterwards, as the " Phelps
Farm," was enthusiastically described by President Dwight, in
his New England Travels, was kept as a common field till after
1750, about which time Capt. Moses Porter built there. Two
gates, on the highway, had to be opened and shut by all travel
ers. Lots were first laid out north of Partrigg's Swamp in 1714.
A point of special interest, connected with our early annals
and the incipient fortunes of the settlement, is the character
and conduct of the natives of the soil. Most of the recent his
torical writers push us to the unwelcome opinion that, after all,
our high notions about the New England Indians must be a
good deal lowered and many of our admirations sacrificed. It
is hard for hero worshippers to hear the blows of the iconoclast's
hammer upon their idol, and it is hard for everybody to see an
ideal vision of honor, courage or genius dispelled. With a pain
of this sort we are shown too many reasons to believe that these
wild children of the forest, instead of being magnanimous, in
trepid, enterprising, intellectual and reverential, were, to a mis
erable degree, mean, cowardly, cruel, lazy, filthy, and easily
sunk in some disgusting forms of sensuality. Their braves very
often turn out to have no other courage than a brutal and re
vengeful ferocity. The men tyrannized over the women, which
is always one of the surest signs of a low nature. Their intel
ligence was little else than a small species of cunning. Their
propensities to thieving, treachery and falsehood were a contin
ual disappointment to those who trusted them. Philip himself
was wily and cautious rather than heroic, and was not often
seen in bold engagements. Instances of cannibalism occurred,
at least among the Mohawks, by whom " twenty-seven French
men " appear to have been roasted and devoured. Perhaps the

28
true estimate of these unfortunate and mysterious tribes will be
found somewhere between the old sentimental traditions and
these disparagements of a more recent date.*
One of the circumstances on the more attractive side of the
aboriginal character is the trace of a certain rhetorical felicity
in the invention and application of names, betraying an un
questionable activity and sometimes brilliancy of the power of
imagination. Indian words are pictures. No mind, for in
stance, could apply to a beautiful rural lake such an epithet as
" the smile of the Great Spirit, '" without being familiar not only
with vvhat we all understand as poetic conceptions of nature,
but also with a loftier range of ideas penetrating the region of
art and even of religion. And this is only one of many com
mon examples. Another occurs in the Indian designation of
this very domain of our pride and love, Norwottuck, — " the
habitation of the River."
We shall not fail of finding some cause of respect and
even of fellow-feeling towards these barbarians, in their ev
ident susceptibility to the natural attractions of this valley.
For one I shall always deem it mutually to the interest of the
spot and its red master, that he lingered about its meadows,
wet his canoe in its waters, built his wigwam under its woods,
lit his council-fires by its hills, and made his chosen grave in its
loveliness. That he did so, we have visible and materia) proofs
enough left, in the relics of his rude skill and taste, in the
mouldering bones that have been found bleaching on the sur
face or decaying in the loam ; in the populous grave-yard on
the ridge between the two " School-meadows" where a charm
ing vista of landscape so irresistibly suggests the happy hunting
ground of the departed, and even furnishes no faint symbol of
the " green meadows and still waters " of the Christian immor
tality, — the "River of the water of life," — the " living green "
of the "sweet fields" of that Beulah where the Shepherd, who
is also the Lamb, leads his flock forever, and the mountains that
keep watch eternally around the New Jerusalem. Other proofs
*Mr._ Palfrey, in the first volume of his " History of Massachusetts," gives
emphatic expression to the darker side of the picture.

29
we have in forts that are still pardy discernible, in half-levelled
mounds and embankments, as in the spot just mentioned, and
near the South Meadows ; and others yet in the flinty arrow
heads, stone pesdes, hatchets, hoes and mortars, which click
against your ploughshares, or reward the eager eyes of boyish
teamsters, in your homelots.
Among other abating representations of the modern investi
gators, we find a diminished estimate of the number of these
New England Indians ; so great a reduction of the popular im
pression, indeed, as to suggest the inference that, except as they
made up for their fewness by their fierceness, the vague fears
struck by them into the hearts of our ancestors were dispropor-
tioned to the danger. There seems no reason to suppose that
when the whites arrived there were in all the towns of this valley
more than about twelve or fifteen hundred Indians. Of the
Nipmucks there were four small tribes, — the Agawams about
Springfield, the Woronocks about Westfield, the Pocomtucks
at Deerfield, and the Norwottucks or Nonotucks about Mts.
Holyoke, Tom and Warner. Eastward, at Brookfield, were
the Quabougs, and far westward the Mohawks. The Nip-
mucks were not distinguished as warriors. When they under
took an expedition against the Mohawks, they came back; it is
said, " much ashamed, and retired under shelter of the English."
The Connecticut River Sachems were not great men. Under
the effects of the white men's liquors, dealt out for skins,
baskets, mats and land, their heroism mostly effervesced in
drunken brawls. The Indians that affrighted these settlements
in 1675 were not only Nipmucks, — who annoyed the whites as
much by peaceable vices as by warlike onsets, — but Wampan-
oags who had been driven over from Rhode Island and Pocas-
set Swamp.
The Summer of 1675 was a dark time for Hadley and the
neighborhood. The terrors of savage slaughter and all its at
tendant aggravations hung over the people, — a cloud of mis
erable, dim, uncertain fear, — when they went out to their lots
in the morning, leaving helpless families behind, when they lay
down at night, when they gathered for worship. Flames of

30
hostile conflagrations, kindled by a scarcely visible but relent
less enemy, lighted up the valley at midnight; and bullets
from hidden marksmen went to the hearts of farmers working
in their fields. These disasters were supposed by the people
to have been foreboded by an omen in the air, — a strange
sound, like the " report of a great piece of ordnance, with a
shaking of the earth and a considerable echo when there was
no ordnance really discharged," which, according to Mather,
was heard along the valley, Sept. 10, 1674. Let those who
are more confident about the limits of God's action in the Na
ture that he ordered and governs than any knowledge of mine
has made me, call this a superstition, or by some worse or bet
ter name. The minds of men have been very subject to it,
both long before and ever since Shakespeare made Lenox
speak in Macbeth of
" Lamentings heard i' the air ; strange screams of death ;
And prophesying, with accents terrible,
Of dire combustion, and confused events.
New-hatched to the woful time. The obscure bird
Clamored the live-long night. Some say, the earth
Was feverous and did shake."
" And even the like precurse of fierce events,
As harbingers preceding still the fates.
Have Heaven and earth together demonstrated
Unto our climatures and countrymen."
The succession of tragic events opened at Mendon, July 14,
but more decisively at Brookfield, Aug. 2, with the murderous
attack on Capt. Hutchinson's party. Rev. Solomon Stoddard's
letter from Northampton to Increase Mather, recounting the
suspicious appearances among the natives, and giving awful
reasons for disarming even the apparently friendly portion of
them,, was written in September. Capt. Lothrop and Capt.
Beers arrived in Hadley a little after the middle of August.
There was a fight near " Sugar Loaf Hill," Aug. 25. The af
fair in Hadley street, in which the regicide Goffe was imphcated,
took place Sept. 1, Wednesday. Other attacks, up the River,
toward Northfield, were made by the same party Sept. 2d,

31
4th, and 6th. The fearful havoc by the River Indians at
Bloody Brook, with the sudden destruction of the " Flower of
Essex," the seventy men, soldiers and teamsters, who were am
bushed as they were stopping to gather grapes, while on their
return from Deerfield to Hadley with teams of threshed grain,
under Capt. Lothrop of Beverly, occurred Sept. 18, creating
heavy mourning throughout the colony. Capt. Samuel Apple-
ton of Ipswich was ordered by the Council to take command
on the River, Oct. 4, and in the "Memorials" of the Appleton
family in Boston, I find letters from him dated at Hadley, where
his troops were quartered. Hubbard says his " industry, skill,
and courage" saved these towns from being turned to ashes.
He was evidently of an energetic spirit and quite an Old Tes
tament cast of mind. He says with a Hebrew emphasis, in a
letter of Oct. 12, "By the prayers of God's people, our Israel
in his time may prevail over this cursed Amalek; against
whom I believe the Lord will have war forever until he have
destroyed him."
Individuals continued to be picked off by Indian muskets.
Major Pynchon spent much time at Hadley, but was called
home at the burning of Springfield, on the night of Oct. 4.
An express had ridden up to inform him of the plot, and on
October 5 the town was in flarnes. His letter back to Rev.
Mr. Russell, the next day, was worthy of a Puritan believer.
It begins : " Rev. Sir, — The Lord will have us lie in the dust
before him. It is the Lord, and blessed be his holy name."
Those were days of faith. Mr. Russell wrote: "Our tov»n
of Hadley, is likely to drink next, (if mercy prevent not.)
of this bitter cup ; we are but fifty families, and now left
solitary. We desire to repose our confidence in the Eternal
and Living God who is the refuge of His people."
The formidable attack upon Hatfield was on October 19th.
Fires were lit in the woods to draw the English into ambus
cade. Some scouts were killed ; but the enemy were repulsed
by Capt. Moseley at the middle of the street, and Capt. Poole
and Capt. Appleton at either end, — the latter, says Hubbard,
having a " bullet passing thfough his hair, by that whisper tell
ing him that death was very near." So many settlers deserted,

32
from fright, that Capt. Appleton was obliged to issue a public
order forbidding any to leave the towns without a "permit"
from the Commander in Chief. A council of war was formally
established. A hundred and forty-five English, including one
woman, were killed that memorable year, in the Old County of
Hampshire. The Nipmucks sometimes cruelly mutilated their
captives : but what shall we say, when we know that even civ
ilization itself was so far barbarized by the exasperations of the
times, that our white predecessors had actually caused an In
dian squaw to be torn to pieces by dogs ?
In the following cold winter, — snow " mid-thigh deep," —
measures were taken for breast-works, and for two lines of
wooden palisades, one east and the oth/sr west of Hadley street,
the stakes eight feet high and fastened together; so that the
village was one enclosed pen, with strong gates through which
every inhabitant was required to pass in going out to work.
The people were divided into four squadrons, under military
rules. The Indians wintered near Brattleboro', Brookfield and
Albany. The next year. Deacon Goodman was shot at Hock
anum, while looking after his fence. A proposition was made
to concentrate all the people of the county at Springfield and
Hadley for better defense ; but the Northampton families
thought it would show a " lack of faith in the Lord."
In the disastrous fight at Turner's Falls, May 19, were Had
ley Dickinsons ; also Rev. Hope Atherton of Hatfield, who was
wandering about three days afterwards alone in the woods, and
came into Hadley almost starved. He represents the savages
as having a reluctance, perhaps leligious, to take him as a cap
tive. On the 30th of May an engagement took place in the
Hatfield meadows, and among those who fell, says Mather, was
"a precious young man whoso name was Smith," — an ancestor
of Oliver Smith, famous for his legacy.
The pageant which has moved through these streets this morn
ing carries us back to another and very different procession
that enlivened the same scene just one hundred and eighty-
three years ago. To day is the anniversary of the arrival of
four hundred and fifty men, as relief troops from Connecticut
under Major Talcott. It was a spectacle of solemn joy. Those

33
motly ranks, sonie in bright British Uniforms, some in plainer
colonial dress, some of them filled with friendly Pequots and
Mohegans in brilliant and fantastic War-blankets, and others
with well mounted soldiers, brought a welcome promise to the
weary and reduced families, as they marched cheerily Up the
street with their red silk banner and animating music. We
must remember how sorrow had been making its darker en
trance, from day to day, and night to night, for many months,
as the fearful news came flying in, after each engagement, that
one and another home had lost its master or its ornament, the
grey head, or the young man in his strength ; how mothers and
children had mourned ; how often the venerable or beautiful
body, borne suddenly in before any alarm was given, ended long
hardships with the sharper agonies of bereavement; how fear
had become the habitual feeling ; how the people looked out
over their lonely fields as they waked in the night, to see where
the fire of their foe was kindled, and then dreamed again of
slaughter, captivity and starvation. No wonder there was glad
ness and gratitude on the eighth of June.
Nor did the succor come too soon. A few mornings after,
as the farmers were about going out to hoe their corn in Fort
Meadow, some two hundred and fifty Indians came up from the
East, burnt a barn, and were proceeding to other pillage, when
" a great gun," i. e. a small cannon was fired at them from a
house at the north end of the street, — and they fled, routed and
pursued by some of Talcott's soldiers. That summer, the peo
ple of Hadley voted that, in harvest time, not less than forty
men should go at once to work in Hockanum or Fort Meadow ;
that while these were working none should venture to work in
Great Meadow, on penalty of a fine of three shillings ; and that
the parties of laborers should go out in these two directions on
alternate days.
Another great day of rejoicing came at the end of May, two
years after. In the preceding October, a disastrous onset of
savages upon Hatfield' ended, after murder and burning, in
the carrying away, northward, of seventeen captives, mostly
wives, mothers, and young children. What a world of torture
for strong and loving souls is opened, before a sympathetic ima-
3

34
gination, in that single sentence ! Nearly all the materials of
romance and tragedy that, when touched and marshalled by
genius, have thrilled the heart of the world, are gathered into
it. Two brave and patient men, whose wives and children had
been snatched from them into the horrors of this exile, — Ben
jamin Wait'and Stephen Jennings, — let their names be memo
rable in all the sad or happy homes of this valley forever ! —
after suffering their solitude a month in the vain hope of some
effective pursuit or negotiation, arose and went forth together
with their grief. Their first point was Albany, where the un
feeling authorities not only discouraged them, but sent them
by force to New York, to Gov. Andros. The dear faces were
farther off than ever. Every day was a fresh anguish. A
month more, and they were back at Albany, with permission
to proceed. But new hindrances met them. Winter was
setting in. At last they hired a Mohawk to guide them to
Lake George, where he left them, with a canoe and a rough
sketch of the route. They were the first New Englanders
that passed that way to Canada. Over the two lakes, over the
hills, and the streams, and through the ice and frost, paddling
their canoes, or bearing them on their backs, sleeping between
the snow and the stars, with only God's hand to lead them,
and the faith in him to uphold them, and the love of the dear
ones to urge them on, — they made their difficult way, till, at
last, in January, at Sorell, they overtook and greeted the lost.
Who of us would not give some tears to see that meeting ? '
The captives were all redeemed, save three that had perished.
Protected by a French guard they traveled back to Albany, in
May. One day, a messenger appeared at Hatfield, and the
news spread from house to house, awakening anxious inquiries,
heart-throbs of new fear, and weepings of joy, that th-e res
cued prisoners were safe ! Two touching letters were brought,
which were sent forward to Boston, were read publicly in
the churches of the colony, where thanksgivings were offered
up, and with apostolic charity collections were taken for the
ransom, for the heroes, and for their families. Benjamin Wait
wrote from Albany to his Hatfield neighbors : " Any that have

35
love to our condition, let it move them to come and help us.
We must come very softly, because of our wives and children.
I pray you hasten. Stay not for the Sabbath, nor shoeing of
horses. Stay not night nor day." The Hatfield people met
the party at Kinderhook, and led them in with praises to God
who " looseth the prisoners, and bringeth them by a way they
have not known."
In February, 1677, men and teams were tjrdered out to for
tify Hadley meeting-house as a place of refuge. The men
continued to carry their guns and powder to meeting on the
Lord's Day. The officers of the troops were quartered at Rev.
Mr. Russell's house, where they appear to have consumed gen
erous quantities of what is not now always found in a parsonage
— " divers barrels of beer, and much wine and fruit suitable."
The Second Indian War, beginning in 1 638, the year that
Gov. Andros made an official visit to Hadley, brought little
destruction of life to this immediate vicinity, though it created
disturbance and anxiety, and, having emptied Northfield a
second time, left Hadley the northernmost town east of the
River. A hunting party of Indians shot Richard Church, who
was also hunting, one evening, near Mt. Warner, and in the
morning his body, pierced with an arrow and bullet, and scalp
ed, was brought in to his widowed mother. The murderers
were overtaken at Mt. Toby, tried in Court, and "shot to
death." After this, the visits of natives to this township were only
rare and harmless. In the succeeding wars, while other places
in New England were exposed to annoyances and cruelties,
Hadley was more and more exempt. In the middle of the last
century, my great-grandmother, the wife of Capt. Moses Porter,
who went north with his company in the French War, and was
captured in a morning scout and killed near Lake George,
mentioned, in letters written to her husband, that Indians
troubled her in her solitude, prowling about the house at night,
and sometimes showing their savage features at the windows.
They were probably in search of plunder, not blood or scalps
But with the captured husband, by Crown Point, the savages
were dealing in all the most terrific cruelty of their savage-

36
ness ; — I cannot say brutality, for brute nature shows nothing
so horrible. It was soon understood that there was some un-
mentioned mystery connected with Capt. Porter's fate. Grad
ually it was whispered by one of his companions that among
other tortures not to be described, the Indians actually drove
sharpened sticks of pine into his flesh, and then setting these
pitchy torches on fire broiled his body to the bones. Thank
Heaven, his poor widow never tasted the added bitterness
which a knowledge of this would have dashed into her grief:
but she was a loving young wife, and it has often been said of
her that she carried a mournful face to her old age and her
grave. For the fame of the incident in our early annals which is most
widely known, and which has done more than all beside to make
Hadley historical, we are indebted, in about equal proportions,
to two very different causes, — English politics, and man's univer
sal passion for the marvellous. My recent studies of the suf
ferings and fidelities of the men and women who conquered
this wilderness, conquered its natural obstinacies and reluc
tances, conquered its forests, its solitude, its poverty, its frosts,
its savages, conquered them by patience, by labor, by pain,
by faith in Christ, have satisfied me that there were many
among them, — their bodies now sleeping in yonder grave-yard,
dust with dust, — their spirits risen from the rude dwellings
they reared here into the immortal tabernacles not built with
hands, — their sacred names found on no other tablet than your
town records or perhaps missing even there, — many who deserve
as well of our gratitude and admiration as William Goffe and
Edward Whalley. Yet these also were patriots and friends of
the people whom we love to remember, — fortunate perhaps in
this, that the public service which exiled them and made them
prisoners hidden from men for a few short years, lifted them
up into the sight of after ages, and gave them an imperishable
fame before the world.
The restoration of Charles II. drove out of England most of
the fifty-nine men who took the responsibility of signin g the
death warrant of his royal father, — that determined tyrant
whom Dr. South in his sermons ever mentions as God's blessed

37
saint and martyr. Those of us who have — as I have — the
blood of regicides in our veins, or who take history from the
facts and not from court favorites or tory partisans, of course
read Dr. South with some grains of allowance, valuing his
scorching invectives against Satan much more than his flowery
flatteries of King Charles. Col. Whalley, a near relative of
Cromwell himself, a merchant, turned by the stress of the times
into a brave Puritan soldier, and Gen. Goffe, also in the Par
liamentary army, whose wife was Whalley's daughter, both
judges and signers, reached Boston from London in 1660, and
took up their residence openly near the college at Cambridge.
Hutchinson, whose political bias did not let him overpraise
them, says " they appeared grave, serious and devout, and the
rank they had sustained commanded respect." When news
arrived that all but seven of the regicides were to be pardoned,
and that these two were not included, the solid men of Boston
began to be shy of them. Gov. Endicott summoned the
Court, who were slow to act, and before the warrant for their
arrest was issued they had escaped to New Haven. There, by
the help of three faithful friends, they were so effectually hid,
sometimes in Rev. Mr. Davenport's house, sometimes in a cave,
sometimes in a mill, as to outwit the royal messengers who
pursued them, and even to elude the eyes of the neighbors,
whom the large rewards offered might have tempted. At last,
apprehensive that Mr. Davenport would have to suffer for their
concealment, they came out and showed themselves in the
street, thus releasing him from responsibility for traitors, and
then retired to privacy again. At Milford, growing bolder,
they held religious meetings, with a few prudent and godly
persons, in their chamber. In 1664, on the arrival of fresh
Commissioners at Boston, they betook themselves to their cave
at West Rock. Some Indians reporting traces of them there,
they fled to Hadley on foot, traveling only by night, and clan
destinely pitched what they called their " Ebenezer " in the
walls of Rev. Mr. Russell's house, who was privately rewarded
by English and American friends for harboring them, and who
discharged his trust so kindly and faithfully, that one of them,
Goffe, who survived his patient and uncomplaining father-in-

38
law, continued there some fifteen years in as much comfort as
exile and confinement can ever be expected to afford. Mr.
Judd supposes that when the Russell house was filled by the
colonial officers, the regicides were temporarily removed to
the house of Samuel Smith or Peter Tilton, or some other of
the few trusty persons in the secret. The general belief was
that they had left the country. Once they read English ac
counts of their execution, sitting comfortably in their chamber.
Probably men were never more relieved at hearing of their
own death. Their monotonous days were much occupied in
writing, their diaries giving full particulars of all affairs in the
neighborhood, reported to them in their retirement. Their
hope of final deliverance was based on an interpretation of the
Apocalyptic prophecies. Goffe carried on an affectionate
secret correspondence with his wife in England, — the two
sometimes writing respectively under the names of Walter and
Frances Goldsmith, and as son and mother.* Hutchinson adds
*I cannot refrain from giving in full the following affecting and remarkable
letter to Goffe, from his wife, in 1662, found in an appendix to one of the
volumes of Hutchinson : — •
" My Dearest Ilart : — I have been exceedingly refresht with your choyce
and precious letter of the 29th May, 1662. Those scriptures you mention,
through mercy, with many others, are a great support and comfort to me in
this day of my great affliction. Through grace, I doe experience the Lord's
presence in supporting and providing for mee and mine, in this evill day.
The preservation of yourselfe and my deare father, next to the light of his
own countenance, is the choycest mercy that I enjoy. For to hear of your
wellfare gives, as it were, a new life to me. Ah ! what am I, poor worm,
that the great God of heaven and earth should continue such meroys to me
and mine, as I at this day enjoy. Many others have lost their deare youke-
fsUowes, and out of all hopes to see them in this life ; but that is not my con
dition, as yet, blessed be his holy name, for he hath made mee hope in his
word. 10 Zech. 9. — And I will sow them among the people, and they shall re
member me infarre country es, and they shall live with their children and turne
againe. Persecution begins to be high heere, the bishop's courts are up as high
as ever. But wee have the promises of a faithfull God to live upon, and he
hath said, To you it is given not only to believe but to suffer. He hath alsoe
promised to lay noe more upon his poore people than he will give strength
to beare. Oh my Hart I I doe, with my whole soule, blesse the Lord for his
unspeakable goodness to you and your deare friend, in that he hath been
pleased to appeare soe eminently for your preservation. He brings to the
grave and raises up againe. Oh that the experience that wee have dayly of
his goodness may make us trust him for the future. Wee have scene that
word in the 5th of Job in some measure made good to you. Reade the 12th
verse ; from the 11th to the end of the chapter, there is much comfort to those
in our condition ; as alsoe in 91 Psal. O my deare, let us henceforth make
the Lord our refuge and our trust, and then he shall cover us with his feathers,

39
significantly : " There is too much religion in their letters for
the taste of the present day." We here may thank God there
and be a sanctuary to thee wheresoever he shall cast thee. I mention these
•scriptures because I have found comfort in them, and I hoped thou wouldest
doe soe too. I shall now give you an account of your family as farre as I dare.
Through mercy, I and your little ones are in reasonable health, only Betty
and Nan are weakely, and I fe'are will be lame a little, the others are very
lusty. I am yet with my aunt, but how soon she may be forst to give up
housekeeping I know not, (for she is warned in to the bishop's court,) and
wee shall be disperst ; but I hope the Lord will provide for us, as he hath
done hitherto. — Oh my deare, lett our trust be in the Lord alone. I do
heartily wish myself with thee, but that I feare it may bee a meanes to dis
cover thee, as it was to  and therefore I shall forbeare attempting such a
thing for the present, hopeing that the Lord will, in his owne time, return
thee to us againe ; for he hath the harts of all in his hands and can change
them in a moment. I rejoice to hear that you are so willing to be at the
Lord's disposall ; indeed, we are not our own, for we are bought with a price,
with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. And, therefore, let us comfort
ourselves with this, though we should never meete in this world againe. Yet
I hope, through grace, wee shall meete in heaven, and soe ever be with the
Lord, and it will not be in the power of men to part us. My dear, I know
you are confident of my affection ; yet give me leave to tell thee, thou art as
deare to me as a husband can be to a wife, and if I knew anything I could
doe to make you happy, I should do it, if the Lord would permitt, though to
the losse of my life. As for newes I shalfforbear writing of any, for I know
not much and you may heare it from better hands. My uncle Burket is dead,
and my mother is with her. My brother John is gon beyond sea, but I know
not whither. His father-in-law is dead. My deare, my aunt and many
others are very kinde to mee, soe that, through mercy, I have noe want of
food and rayment, though in a meane way. The Lord is pleased to suit my
mind to my condition, and to give mee strength, in some measure, to take
pains with my children, which I look upon as a great mercy. I know not
whether I may ever have another opportunity to send to you this season or
noe, which makes me the longer now ; for I shall not send but by those I
judge to be faithfull, and I being in the country, I may not heare of every op
portunity, and, though it is an unspeakable comfort to mee to heare of thy
wellfare, yet I earnestly beg of thee not to send too often, for feare of the
worst, for they are very vigilant here to find out persons. But this is my
comfort, it is not in the power of men to act their owne will. And now, my
dear, with 1000 tears, I take my leave of thee, and recommend thee to the
great keeper of Israeli, who neither slumbers nor sleepes, who, I hope, will
keepe thee, and my dear friend with thee, from all your enemies, both spirit
ual! and temporall, and in his owne time return you with safety to your fam
ily. Which is the dayly prayer of thy affectionate and obedient wife, tiU-
death. ^¦
" Many friends here desire to be remembered to you. It will not be con
venient to name them. I am sure you have a stock of prayers going for
you here, which you and I reap the benefit of. My humble duty presented
to you know who. .
" Frederick and the rest of thy dear babes that can speak, present their
humble duty to thee, talk much of thee, and long to see thee.
" My humble duty to my dear father, and tell him I pray for him with my
whole heart, but I am soe bad a scribe, I dare not write to him.
" Pray be private and careful who you trust,"

40
was no less, for their consolation and our instruction,— the re
ligion that believes in God, loves freedom and serves mankind.*
In 1792, Stiles was shown by Rev. Samuel Hopkins the reg
icide's room in Rev. Mr. Russell's house, then standing, with
the closet behind the chimney, having a trap door or sliding
board, communicating through a private passage with the cel
lar, to be resorted to in case of surprise, — and as tradition says
once actually used, while those conducting the search walked
over the floor. The prevailing accounts have been that the
bodies of both of the Judges were buried in Hadley, — one about
the premises of Mr. Russell, and the other in the cellar, gar
den, or houselot, of Peter Tilton, — some rods below on the
same side of the main street. The Russell estate has been
directly transmitted from that family through Isaac Chauncy,
the second minister, his son Josiah Chauncy, two Samuel Gay-
lords, father and son, to Chester Gaylord, now living on the
spot. Mr. Gaylord remembers that at the rebuilding, in 1795,
the bones of a large human skeleton, much decomposed, were
found under a flat stone, with the remains of a coffin, behind
the front cellar wall. Beyond question, these were the re
mains of Whalley, the sturdy old King Killer, buried one hun
dred and twenty years before. On exposure to the air, the de
cayed fragments crumbled into dust, fine as that of the sum
mer threshing floor, which the wind driveth away ;•]¦ another
fit theme for Hamlet and Horatio at the grave of poor Yorick,
the King's jester. The Puritan Republican was no jester for
a king, quite otherwise than that ; he was in solemn, awful
earnest ; his word for the tyrant was the axe, though it should
afterwards fall on his own neck or sever his own heartstrings.
That uncovered skull was no " Cain's jaw-bone that did mur
der ;" no " pate of a politician," " one that might circumvent
God," nor of a courtier who could say " Good morrow, sweet
lord," nor of " my lord such-a-one that praised my lord such-
*President Stiles dedicates his history of the Judges " To all the Patrons
of real, perfect and unpolluted liberty."
fA tooth has been preserved, and was shown to the audience by the
speaker, through the kindness of the President of the Day, in whose posses
sion it remains.

41
a-one's horse when he meant to beg it." Nor have we only to
mutter in some poor, cynical moralizing of despair,
"•Imperious Csesar, dead and turned today,
Might stop ai hole to keep the wind away ;
O, that the earth, which kept the world in awe.
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw !"¦
— but to sing in tones of triumphant thanksgiving with Lu
ther's old martyr-hymn, —
" Flung to the heedless winds>
Or on the waters cast.
Their ashes shall be watched
And gathered at the last ;
And from that scattered dust
Around us and abroad
Shall spring a plenteous seed
Of witnesses for God.
Still, still tho' dead, they speak.
And trumpet toogued proclaim
To many a wakening land
The one availing Name."
Would that we had a handful of that sacred dust here to-day„
that we might inurn it, and keep it as a Christian talisman in
the village Pastor's study, as long as Christ has a minister here
to preach the Gospel that is deliverance to the captive, and the
opening of prison-doors to the bound !
Of Goffe's grave nothing is known. That mystery ends in
mystery. The young girls of tbe last century, that used to
shudder and whisper, as they ran, after dark, by Peter Tilton's
garden, lest the apparition of the honest and brave old martyr
should rise up to chase them, had hardly more reason for alarm
from the quiet sleeper's spirit than the damsel of old that
hearkened at the gate for the angel of the Apostle. This on
ly we know, that both the prisoners passed at length out of
their weary prison-house, through a door that opens into a
larger than any human liberty, and, having the Good Shepherd
to lead them, walk in Paradise with the sons of God.
One thing is quite clear from this history. The men and
women that were here before us knew how to keep a secret.
Their talent in that kind, considering the quick instinct that

42
detects and attacks mysteries, and all tlie chances of exposure,
is one of the real wonders of the past. Rev. Mr. Hopkins
says he had heard an old man say that older men had told him,
that a search w^as once made for the regicides in all the houses
of Hadley ; but that " they searched as if they searched not."
It was, as everybody knows, in the attack of the Indians on
the town, Sept. 1, 1675, a Day of Fasting, and while the peo
ple were assembled in their meeting house, that Goffe, willing
to incur the sacrifice of exposing his own life to the double
enemy — one here in the bushes, and another on the British
throne — came suddenly forth' from his hiding-place, and by
valor and skill arraying the aflrighted worshippers in ranks,
and putting himself at tlieir head, drove the assailants back.
Considerations of policy fully account for the obscure allu
sions in the contemporaneous records. The principal correc
tion supplied by modern investigations touches the question,
at what precise spot the encounter took place. Mr. Judd ju
diciously suggests the extreme improbability that a small body
of Indians would pass by the houses, barns and cattle of the
village, to " surround " a meeting house full of armed men.
The engagement probably occurred further east, before the
Indians entered the street. This accords with a traditional
feature of the story, which I heard for the first time last w in
ter. An aged woman, in a remote part of the town, says she
had heard that Goffe saw the Indians entering the town from
the mountains at a distance. Now, from Stiles' plan of Rus
sell's house, we know that the regicide's chamber projected
eastward, looking at once east, north and south. While the "
people were all gone to meeting, the solitary captive would
feel a degree of security in sitting at his window, which at
that season might be open. There descrying the approach of
the skulking savages, who would not suspect an observation
from this elevated post, and who probably thought every man
to be inside the meeting house, Goffe would, we may imagine,
apprize the congregation at once of their danger, and throw
himself in with the men as they rushed out from tlieir inter
rupted devotions. Everything in this theory is consistent EUid
probable.

43
Let us pass to some more particular notices of the character
of our ancestors. The records of the early Courts show that
the Hadley people of both sexes were sensitive in respect to
their reputations. In 1662, a person by the name of Fellowes
sued a Dutch woman bearing the suspicious designation of
Judith Varlett, for calling him a rogue. The cases of crime
or serious immorality were very rare, and the village exhibited
an almost uniform integrity, order and religious self-control.
Slander was one of the most frequent causes of prosecution,
and that not so frequent as one would expect if the offence
were made actionable at all. So far as appears, there never
was but one divorce case in the town. May our lovers and
maidens always be so careful and so true, and our homes so
righteous and pure, and flirts and scoundrels so scarce, that
there never shall be another ! Husband and wife were some
times separated, however, before they were married. That is,
the old-time frolic of stealing away the bride, just before the
wedding ceremony, by the sudden appearance of a party of
uninvited neighbors, in revenge for their neglect, and keeping
her hidden or locked up till an invitation was forthcoming —
was one of the rude merry-makings of these neighborhoods,
in their fun-loving moods. The last victim of this bride-rob
bery seems to have been Elizabeth Smith, daughter of Oliver,
married in 1783 to Doctor Marsh, who bore also the name of
Job, and who evidently needed his patriarchal namesake's pa
tience before he recovered the stolen property. Gershom
Hawkes suffered prosecution in 1682 for having in his posses
sion a pack of cards, and also for traveling till twelve o'clock
on the night before the Sabbath. A man was fined for saying
" so it seems " in " a scoffing manner " to Justice Partridge in
the court room, lighting his pipe with the tongs, and other
tokens of disrespect. The law undertook ,to secure simplicity
in female dress. Five wives and one maid of the best quality
in the town were fined or admonished in 1673 for wearing silk.
Sometimes the quantity or a flaunting manner of wearing silk
is specified. It does not appear that mere circumference was
made a circumstance of guilt. A silk hood and scarf " some
thing worn " were produced in court. There can be hardly a

44
bolder sign of rugged democratic equality than those suits in
the name of Christian morahty, against respectable families.
But social morality is rarely clear of all one-sidedness ; and
there was obviously a disproportion between the zeal against
the women's wardrobes and the men's decanters and tobacco
boxes. Perhaps there was finally a compromise between the
sideboard and the toilet-table, for it is clear that the women
had their way, sometimes wearing other ornaments than " a
meek and quiet spirit " even into court on their trial, and will
ing, apparently, to pay, if necessary, not only the bills of the
dry goods merchant, but the charges of the magistrate. In
the town itself lawyers never flourished. It helps to show the
thrift and industry of our beginnings, that for a hundred years
Hadley had only eight or ten persons, all told, that needed
public relief as paupers. Some of these were " boarded
round" by turns in the families. The inhuman resort of put-
. ting them up to the lowest bidder, auctioneering wretched
ness, came in later, and, to our Christian credit, went out not
long after it came in.
A large part of the Town Records is taken up with the terri
torial matters belonging to the " Inner Commons," — the com
mon lands lying eastward of the " New Swamp," ending three
and a quarter miles from the meeting-house, and stretching
from Holyoke to Mill River. Many difficulties and readjust
ments occurred from time to time, in connection with the
'distribution of these commons to the private ownership of
the inhabitants. It would be unprofitable to follow these
complicated transactions. At the beginning of the last cen
tury there were about three score and ten families, — all liv
ing on the Broad street, or on the north highway leading out
of it, except the miller at North Hadley. These took their
shares of the divided lands by lot. An acre of " Inner Commons"
was valued at a shilling, or even less. Occasional Indian
invasions, or rumors of them, kept back the settlement of Am
herst through a quarter of that century. A few " outer " grants
were made south of Holyoke much earlier. Most of South Had
ley was then a pasture for horses and cattle ; and deer and wild

45
turkeys were seen darting through the forests.* At first, the
settlers in these south and east sections were thought to be very
hardy and enterprising people to attempt to get a living on such
distant and barren uplands, and were welcomed with mingled
feelings of wonder and gratitude, when, on Sundays, they gath
ered back to the old hive to worship. It is said some tender
hearted fathers and mothers actually shed tears over their sons
and daughters, and implored the mercy of Heaven on their ven-
turesomeness, when they went off to settle in the woods or " outer
commons " of South Hadley ! Th^ house of the first settler at
Hockanum, Capt. John Lyman, from Northampton, is still
standing. A well known character, called " silly Peter Domo,"
had a house under Mount Holyoke, on the south end of Law
rence's Plain, two miles from any neighbor, where he lived a
curious frontier life, and kept sheep for the town. Very un
like Socrates of old in intellectual furniture, he resembled him
in domestic politics, being notoriously quite as much subject to
Mrs. Domo, as the sheep of his flock were to him. The beautiful
Island opposite "Old Rainbow Meadow," now owned by a
North Hadley farmer, began to form early in tbe last century,
took on grass about a hundred years ago, and was sold by the
province to Solomon Stoddard for one hundred pounds.
In the last century hundreds of people came in, in the
spring, to fish for salmon and shad, some say fifteen hundred
men at once, carrying away bags of the fish on horseback.
The shad were so plenty that ibey were often thrown back in
to the water as worthless. It was considered disreputable to
eat them, indicating poverty. Mr. Judd tells of a family that
being surprised at dinner hid the shad under the table. I can
match this with a family anecdote of one of the Porters who
happened to like shad, and ordered his negro to watch his op
portunity on the river bank, and when no one should be looking
silp a shad under his frock. Old fishermen have told of three
thousand shad taken at a haul at South Hadley Falls. The
principal stations above Holyoke were at the south end of the
* The Holyoke track of the Amherst and Granby road, by " Round Hill,"
was called " Turkey Pass." Turkeys have been shot by sportsmen like Paul
Wright in our own day.

46
Main street, and at Forty Acres, by the present ferry. When
shad rose in value they were sold for a penny apiece. The
fishing season was a time of company, frolic, and practical jok
ing, on both sides of the river.
South Hadley was made a separate precinct in 1733; Am
herst in 1734 ; and Granby was incorporated as a town, being
set off from South Hadley, in 1768. In the permission granted
by the mother town to both South Hadley and Amherst, the
express condition was affixed that they should "settle a good
orthodox minister."
The founder of our Academy was Edward Hopkins, a noble-
souled, princely merchant of London, who in 1637 exchanged
his splendid and hospitable mansion in England for the hard
ships of the infant colony. Quincy says of him, " Few if any
of the early emigrants to New England have left a name sur
rounded by a purer or more unfading lustre," and adds, that in
coming to this country he had no less exalted an aim than
to " plant a church and state approaching to that model of
perfection which he had conceived in fancy."* If he failed of
so magnificent a design, he certainly contributed, out of his
great estate, his large heart, refined intelligence and elegant
manners, to lay the best foundations of social welfare, in the
education and religion of the people of New England. Re
fusing the inducements held out to him to settle in Massachu
setts, he accompanied Davenport and Eaton to Connecticut,
and became Governor of the Colony, taking an active share in
forming its Constitution and serving as " one of the Commis
sioners who formed the articles of Confederation of the United
Colonies of New England in 1643, the precursor of the con
federation which nearly a century and a half afterwards was
the instrument of American Independence." Administrative
ability, public and private integrity, a cheerful courage amidst
domestic griefs, wealth generously lavished for Christ and man,
a severe and steadfast piety, these were the qualities and aims
which made his career eminent and admirable, and placed him
as so brilliant a figure in our annals. On his return to England
* History of Harvard University, Vol. I. page 168.

41
he passed through a series of high offices in the Government
of Cromwell, and became a member of Parliament. The pres
ent value of his bequest to Harvard College is thirty thousand
dollars. This legacy was invested in lands of the town of Hop-
kinton, taking its name from the donor.
Hadley shared with New Haven and Hartford in the Hopkins'
Fund for Grammar Schools. For some reason not fully ex
plained, but probably owing to the poverty of the Institution
at that time and the interest of the churches in it, it was agreed
by the Trustees that Harvard College should receive from Had
ley, as lying in Massachusetts, a considerable portion of what
would otherwise be the Hadley share. Rev. John Davenport
of New Haven was one of the two original Trustees, William
Goodwin of Hadley being the other. Yale College was not
founded till the beginning of the eighteenth century, and was
either not vigilant enough or not early enough in the field
as a competitor with Cambridge. The grant of land made to
the School by the Town in 1667, called " School Meadow,"
containing the Indian burial ground, was originally of about
sixty acres, but by the liberal action of the River now in
cludes about one hundred and forty acres.* The grist mill
at School Meadow was built by the Hopkins funds. The first
" Committee," or Board of Trustees, consisted of six leading
citizens. Other donations came in from other quarters. A
vexing controversy, on the question whether this " Grammar "
School should be turned into an " English " School soon after
agitated the town, — Rev. Mr. Russell and about a dozen others
standing for the old plan, but a majority being eager, and even
passionate, for a change. The matter found its way into the
courts, disturbed the neighborhood, and was finally settled by
appeal to the Council House in Boston, — Dudley being Presi
dent, — in favor of Russell and the original scheme. Mention
is made of "the hot and raised spirit of the people of Hadley,"
and it appears that the sun arose if it did not " go down " upon
their wrath ; for notice is given of one public meeting that was
held in the morning when the sun was only a quarter of an hour
* The average rent at which this whole meadow was let out, for half a cen
tury, was six or eight pounds per annum.

48
high. The most influential person in the defeated party was
Samuel Partrigg, or Partridge, who afterwards removed to Hat
field. He is said to have been, — after Pynclion's death in
Springfield — the most conspicuous man of the County. He
had a license to " sell liquors for the helpfulness of his neigh
bours," and that certainly needs considerable talent. He was
handled sharply on the school question, by the Court of Ses
sions, and at last bidden " to seek his own peace."
This was the first occasion when the Hadley people discov
ered a gift for division and disputation. To a considerable
extent, it was an honest difference of judgment between those
who appreciated the advantage of an elevated literary cul
ture, or "Grammar" training — including classical studies —
for the whole surrounding country, on the one side, and those
who clung to town privileges and the plain elementary educa
tion of their children, on the other. The school afterwards
kept its " Grammar " character, and did not lose it when, in
1817, it became an Academy.
The first schoolmaster was Caleb Watson, of Roxbury, who
seems to have come about 1766.*? The first salary mention
ed was thirty pounds per annum. The second teacher bore the
patronymic of Younglove, and was a preacher. The school was
kept at first in the private house of Nathaniel Ward, on the
Broad street, near where Mr. Giles E. Smith lives now. A school
house was built on the same street in 1796.? Most of the teachers
from the beginning were recent college graduates, and instruct
ed in Greek and Latin as well as the English branches, that is,
the Hornbook, Primer, Catechism, Psalter and Testament, with
a little Accidence and Arithmetic. Among those of the first
half century I find the names of Russell, Partrigg, Mather, Sal
mon Treat, Hubbard, Chauncey and John Partridge of Hatfield,
Aaron Porter of Hadley, Elisha Williams, in 1726 made Pres-
dent of Yale College, Ebenezer Gay, afterwards minister of
Hingham, Solomon Williams, afterwards minister at Lebanon,
Connecticut, and Daniel Dwight of Northampton, — as honora
ble a catalogue as it would be easy to find belonging to any
similar institution. Girls at first attended the school only in
small numbers. Mr. Judd thinks not one New England woman

49
in a dozen could write her name, one hundred and fifty years
ago. Now nearly as many as that write poetry for the news
papers. Throughout its whole history, Hadley has been worthily dis
tinguished for its liberal interest in the cause of education. I
find from the annals of Harvard College, that in 1669, when
the public spirit of the entire colony was appealed to for con
tributions to aid in erecting a new college building at Cam
bridge, and thus to extend the influence of that favorite seat of
Puritan learning and piety, — for which sacrifices had been
made elsewhere of almost ludicrous simplicity and minuteness,
solemn enough when we think of the souls that gave and the
souls for whom the gifts were made, one man giving a few
sheep, another a pewter flagon, another a silver-tipped jug,
another a salt cellar, and another a sugar spoon, and many a
peck of corn apiece, — the people of Hadley gave thirty-three
pounds fifteen shillings and three pence, which was more than
any other town west of Watertown gave, and nearly twice as
much as Springfield or Northampton.
Reference has been made to superstition. That mournful and
destructive form of moral hallucination, which had long been
blighting parts of the old world, and which broke out toward
the close of the seventeenth century in the staid and earnest
religious mind of New England, found but few victims along
the valley of the Connecticut. Either our predecessors in this
region were too sound in their mental constitution, or had too
much on their hands, to give themselves up to disgusting con
flicts that allowed no honest, direct resistance. An invisible,
impalpable abstraction of a black cat may very reasonably be
postponed to a live, red, muscular, yelling savage, with a musket
in his hands and a tomahawk and a torch in his belt.
Nevertheless, when the pressure of Indian hostilities yielded
a little, the delusion crept in and left a kw wretched families.
At Springfield the misery was great, as many of my audience
have learned from the engaging pages of a popular historical
fiction, where the names of Parsons and Moxon are made as

50
familiar as household words.* To the credit either of oui' lo
cal subjects or of the Boston juries, no one of the possessed that
were sent from this region for trial was visited with capital pun
ishment. Even the story-telling genius of Widow Noble— the
romantic heroine of a real love story, \Aho from the brilliant
beauty of her youth became a town mendicant in her old age —
had to travel far from home to find the dark materials of those
thrilling midnight legends that curdled the blood and lifted the
hair of her young listeners, sending them to hide under the bed
clothes, with the feeUng that there was a nest of scowling mon
sters in every corner of the room and a demon behind every bed
post. Only three persons of this valley appear to have been seri
ously implicated, and only one of these as exercising the power
of the spell. Moll Webster, a termagant pauper, living on the
middle meadow lane, just in the rear of the house now occupied
by Mr. Bell, where the old town's poor-house stood, and who was
accused of a variety of infernal malpractices, was doubtless formi
dable enough with her tongue ; but the infirmities of her temper
could evidently be accounted for without resorting to the nether
world. She was accused of bringing the oxen to a sudden stand
as they passed her door on the way into the meadow ; but the,
whips of the teamsters, applied inside the house, were said to dis
pel the enchantment. Unquestionably there was one instance of
real and tragical distress, occasioned by the notions then current
about this same Moll Webster, who after all came out of her
trial at Boston with an honorable acquittal.
One of the most esteemed and trusty men of the community,!
a deacon of the church, a lieutenant in the troops, the ancestor
of a large posterity always holding a high place in the town,
died of some inscrutable disorder, attended with unusual and
violent symptoms. The credulity of the time pronounced him
witch-struck by Mary Webster's enchantments while the good
man was relieving her destitution with charity. Those who
would read the revolting particulars may find them detailed in
" Mather's Magnalia " as the seventh of his fourteen instances
of the " Wonders of the Invisible World." It appears that

*" The Bay Path." f Plii'ip Smith.

51
there were several " brisk lads," who were disposed to trace
the mischief no farther back than the will of a woman who was
either weak or wicked. With more zeal than gallantry, and
more indignation than mercy, they " dragged her out of the
house, hung her up until she was near dead, let her down, rolled
her some time in the snow, and at last buried her in it, and there
left her," — after which she lived eleven years in quiet. Col.
Sam. Partridge, magistrate, evidently took a very rationalistic
view of the whole matter. His recipe for a complaint of witch
craft was ten stripes of a whip on the back of the accuser.
It is one of the saddest aspects of all this humiliating delu
sion of the human mind, that it owed its prevalence and energy
so largely to a few prominent, influential, educated men, grossly
open to imposition, and mistaking a fear of phantoms for a
righteous regard to realities. The whole bewilderment may be
taken for a solemn illustration of the responsibility connected
with our susceptibility to supernatural impressions ; as a warning
against all foolish tamperings with that world of secrets, which
God hath kept in his" own power ; as a plea for a practical, hum
ble, scriptural faith, working by love in the world that now is,
as the sure preparation for the things that we must wait to see
opened in the world that is to come. " The secret things be
long unto the Lord our God ; but those things which are re
vealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we should
do all the words of this law."
This Faith, scriptural, humble, practical, we find in our fore
fathers, with little alloy, and never lost. The history of the
Church, in almost any of these New England towns, is tbe his
tory of the town itself ; for the whole New England movement
and settlement had a religious basis. Faith was the spring of it.
Everything was done, in the deep and primary motive, for the
glory of God. There was a valiant, reverential piety in the
commonest acts. The Hebrew theocracy was the model of the
Commonwealth. Even the raising of ordinary buildings was
often begun with a prayer to Jehovah. And when the religious
service was omitted on occasions where we now perform it, un-

52
der the apparent contradiction there was often a real theological
consistency. Thus, in the first half-century, there was no sort
of religious act, no prayer, at funerals. But this was doubtless
omitted from a violent repugnance to the Romish superstition
*of prayers for the souls of the dead. The company of Massa
chusetts Bay wrote to Gov. Endicott and his Council, in their
first letter of instructions, " For that the propagating of the
Gospel is the thing we do profess above all to be our aim in set
tling this plantation, we have been careful to make plentiful pro
vision of godly ministers, by whose faithful preaching and ex
emplary life we trust not only those of our own nation will be
built up in the knowledge of God, but also the Indians may, in
God's appointed time, be reduced to the obedience of the Gos
pel of Christ."
It is an honorable distinction that the first Church organized
on the River north of Springfield was at Hadley. Northamp
ton was a year later, though settled earlier. Nearly all the first
settlers were church-members, consistent and godly men, as em
inent for piety as they confessedly were for'general intelligence.
Conspicuous' among them were the two deacons, Nathaniel
Dickinson and Peter Tilton. Meetings for worship were held
at first in a private dwelling. The order for the first meeting
house was passed by the town in December, 1661. This sanc
tuary was not finished till the year 1670. It stood in the great
street, very near where we are now met, on an elevation of land,
since levelled away, called " meeting-house hill," — being placed
so near the north end to accommodate the people west of the
River. Its hundred and twenty-eight seats for adults were all
taken at once. Each " seat " probably accommodated several
persons, — high pews not being yet introduced. The sexes were
separated, not with a high partition, as is sometimes seen among
the Quakers, but in the distribution of the audience. The men
generally sat on the minister's right, and the women on his left.
The juvenile portion were put by themselves, and sticks were
set up at intervals with " fit persons " to use them, " as occa
sion should require," on the disorderly. Galleries were voted
at the end of the century. The singing was Congregational,

53
as all public singing ought to be. A bell was bought
for twenty-five dollars, and paid for in winter wheat at three
shillings a bushel. What is the contribution that any of us
here would not cheerfully make, to-day, for any mysterious re
cuperative phonographic art, that should call up from some hid
den Holyoke dell, or some nook by the river-bed, a slumbering
echo of that holy sound, for the first time shaking the still Sun
day morning air of this valley, or dying away, over the river,
and calling the reverent worshippers to prayer ? The bell-tower
was on the centre of a four-sided roof so that the bell-rope was
pulled in the centre of the main aisle. In 1676 it was ordered
" to ring the bell at nine o'clock at night, through the year."
This first meeting-house resounded with the preaching and
praises of the strong, pure worship of our ancestors, forty-seven
years. In 1713, at a town meeting, — for the town was then
the Parish, — order was given to Mr. Samuel Porter, Lieut. Ne-
hemiah Dickinson, Sergeant Daniel Marsh, Peter Montague and
Samuel Barnard, committee, to superintend the erection of a new
meeting-house, fifty feet by forty, " in the middle of the town
street." Neither that nor its predecessor was dedicated. Such
a ceremony was then hardly known. In 1739, Col. Eleazar
Porter, by permission, erected a new pulpit and sounding-board,
at his own cost. The balcony, or steeple, was built up from
the ground, on the north side, and was the first of that con
struction in Hampshire County. Open seats only gradually
gave place to pews, which, though uncarpeted and uncushioned,
were considered aristoratic, and could be put up only by vote
of the town, which was hard to be got. The seating of the
people was done by a committee, and as the order of arrange
ment was not based upon the scripture rule of precedence, giv
ing the best the " lowest room," — but upon estate, as well as
age, it gave rise to some jealousy, and occasionally to an un
seemly contention. Even " age," as a title to priority, might
possibly disturb some sensitive natures, as it could hardly be ex
pected with all persons, and both sexes, that there would not be
an internal struggle between the advantage of a high seat and
the public disclosure of the precise number of years. In this

54
building there was at least one wedding, — that of Sarah Porter
and David Hillhouse, about 1781.* The first trace of a dis
tinct choir of singers in the gallery appears in 1772. The spire
seems not to have been carried completely up till 1753, when
it was crowned by the same copper weather-cock which still
surmounts the steeple of the later house, now standing in the
Middle Street, and which has breasted every wind that blew
for more than a hundred years. It has known but two other
movements, viz : when two young mpn climbed to it by night,
in 1803, and stole it from its perch, as a feat of mischievous
skill, and in its journey from one street to another, in 1341.
In the high negro-seats, at the corners, above the galleries, might
be seen the well-known Ralph Way and other black worthies.
The commanding figure of Joshua Boston, owned in the Porter
family, a person of such gentlemanly dignity that it is said pas
sengers stopped to notice him in the street, — who always carried
his wife's reticule to meeting from his sense of breeding, and
was thought to bear a resemblance to Gen. Washington, — re
fused to take a place in this enclosure for color, and persisted
in sitting in the porch, even at the risk of church discipline.
He was valued at twenty pounds : — a moderate price for so fine
a specimen of a body, — not reckoning the soul, which, possibly,
was not owned at all, save by that Lord of whose spiritual body
in the Church he was a member.
George Whitfield preached once in Hadley, in 1740. One
of the great days of the century it must have been. Hatfield
refused to let him come there ; but it is said some people heard
the new-light theology ringing in his clarion voice, across the
river. As you all know, the first minister. Rev. John Russell, came
with his flock from Wethersfield, — having their full confidence
as to the validity of the ordinances, and all other matters of
*This ceremony is remembered by a lady present at the celebration, who
says the bridegroom wore a white coat. This lady is the daughter of a citi
zen who gave Hadley the distinction of having the first scythe made in it
ever manufactured on this side of the Atlantic, — Benjamin Colt. One of his
descendants is well known on both continents as an inventor, and the master
of a great establishment in the manufacture of pistols, at Hartford, Ct.

55
aith and of practice. In their jealousy of preferments and their
economy of titles his people rarely wrote " Reverend " before
his name ; but reverence for him, in his person and his office,
was written on their hearts, and there was no lack in him of
every ministerial quality, including practical skill as well as evan
gelical fidelity, — a shrewd economy in the things of this world
as well as a zealous testimony for the inheritance to come. He
was every way worthy of his charge ; a scholar, graduated at
Harvard College in 1645, in the third class sent out from that
Institution, — then commonly called " the School of the Proph
ets." That he was zealous and faithful as a Pastor there is
every evidence. That he was independent and fearless in his
loyalty to duty appears from his course, not always popular, at
Wethersfield, and his firm behaviour in reference to the trust
and management of the Hopkins School. That he was at once
strong in his attachments and sagacious in affairs, is proved by
his untiring devotedness and consummate skill in the protection
of the regicides. That he was publicly esteemed as a preacher
is indicated by his appointment to preach the Election Sermon
in 1665. I take the liberty to say, — here among neighbors, —
that I count it among my best ancestral honors to be descended,
through my mother, from Mr. Russell's third wife, Phebe Greg-
son, — Phebe Whiting by her first marriage, — asking no other
warrant for her goodness than that she was the chosen compan
ion of two good divines ; nor for her talents and those of her
two predecessors as housewives, than the fact that on a salary
ranging from eighty to ninety pounds a year, paid mostly in pro
duce, her husband, besides supporting his family, educating two
sons, discharging all debts, providing for funeral charges and
tombstones, and delivering to his wife Phebe about one hundred
pounds sterling, which was more than she brought him, left to
his children £830. The only items I could wish out of the in
ventory of the estate are " three negroes, a man, woman and
child." The second settled minister was Rev. Isaac Chauncey of
Stratford Ct. grandson of the second president of Harvard Col
lege, where he was himself graduated in 1693. He was or-

56
dained about 1696. The parish gave him the home lot and
buildings of Mr. Russell, the former pastor, and twenty acres
of meadow land " to him and his heirs forever," a salary of
eighty pounds and his firewood. There is every reason to be
lieve he fulfilled the high calling of his office conscientiously;
a lover of peace, not excelling in doctrinal discrimination, but
dwelling happily among his own people. One of his four pub
lished sermons is on tlie vanity of superficial religion ; another,
preached at the funeral of Rev. John Williams of Deerfield,
is spoken of as showing more taste and learning than was com
mon at the time. A tragical occurrence took place in his fam
ily in tlie loss of tlie reason and the life of his son Israel, a
young minister of education and promise, who became de
ranged and perished in the flames which consumed the build
ing where he was confined. Public events made Mr. Chaun
cey less conspicuous than his predecessor. But he was more
accomplished and abler as a man of books, and continued to
be revered and loved to his death, which took place in 1745,
in his seventy-fifth year.
The third minister was Rev. Chester Williams of Pomfret,
Ct., a graduate of Yale in 1735, and tutor there two years.
In his answer to the call he thinks the salary hardly sufficient
to support a minister " free from the entanglements of life,"
but accepts, " hoping," he says, " I covet you more than
yours." His ordination in 1741 was an occasion of great re
joicing. It is honorable, both to him and to his parish, that
they carefully supplied his wants, paying him more, commonly,
than his annual salary, without the expedient of " donation
parties." That Mr. Williams was not wanting in energy ap
pears from what is known of his course generally, and from
his being willing to act and vote against Jonathan Edwards
on the question of the qualifications for church communion.
Edwards limited the participation in the Lord's supper to con
verted persons, but Mr. Williams, sustained by his church, re
garded the ordinance as a converting on?. The great body
of evangelical Christians in New England have held to the
view of Edwards, and the Hadley church returned to it. Mr.
Williams married a daughter of Hon. Eleazer Porter, received

57
through her a handsome property, kept an extensive wardrobe,
rode the best horse in Hampshire county, disrelished scandal
mongers, and is reported to have said to an intermeddler who
came to him with some piece of parish gossip : " Sir, this
room has two doors, — you can take which you please."
Mr. Williams was followed in 1755 by Rev. Samuel Hop
kins, a nephew of Jonathan Edwards, and a graduate of Yale,
who was ordained after a Fast and two sermons in February,
his father, from West Springfield, preaching. He married the
widow of his predecessor. In 1766, his house was burned,
but in eleven days his prompt and energetic people had framed
a new one, in which he was soon re-established ; the same
now standing north of the Russell church, and ninety-three
years old. Through a long and happy ministry, lasting till
1809, within two years of the end of his life, this earnest and
godly preacher maintained the character of a hospitable,
cheerful, conciliatory, exemplary shepherd of the flock. Grav
ity and humor were so admirably blended in him as to make
him a very animating companion to the young, without abat
ing anything from his ministerial dignity. If he was some
what deliberate and monotonous in the pulpit, there are anec
dotes to show that he was witty enough oat of it. He fulfilled
his high vocation, according to the pastoral Epistles of St.
Paul, magnifying his office. His body was committed to its
rest, beside those of the other venerated fathers, in the holy
ground of our graveyard. I will not repeat the affectionate
and hearty epitaphs which the mourning people carved upon
these stones. You have read them again and again, or will
read them before to-day's sun goes down. Not a stain rests
on the memory of those four faithful lives. Let us thank the
Chief Shepherd for that ! And when the great multitude they
turned to righteousness shall appear with them, how many of
our ancestry and kindred will come to crown them, in robes of
light, with palms in their hands !
In the first of those epitaphs you find it declared that the
pastor " governed the flock," but he and the three others I
have mentioned governed it in the benignant spirit of their
Master, with gentleness and modesty, with simplicity and truth,

58
blending courtesy with integrity, and letting love govern them
selves. They did not lord it over God's heritage. They had
that spiritual discernment, given to the true and pure in heart,
which knows how to recognize the spirit of piety, even under
a deviation from its received forms ; and they had that heav
enly charity which sees that they who are not against the Mas
ter are on his side, while they that have not the spirit of Christ
are none of his. There was no Diotrephes among them, lov
ing to have the pre-eminence. There was no vulgar, officious,
blatant assumption of authority, no wilful dictation, no false-
accusing intolerance, nor eager suspicion betraying a con
sciousness of inward wrong, no upstart imitation, on a petty
scale, of Papal airs, requiring their people to pity, pardon and
forget. Their record is clear, and it is on high.
In the same burying ground are to be seen memorials over
the mouldering remains of four, besides Russeli, of those stout
hearted worthies who came in the original migration from Con
necticut, to wrestle with the wilderness and turn it into a gar
den for our sake, making it the dear old Hadley, the beautiful
old Hadley, the venerable old Hadley, that we know, and love,
and admire, and venerate, and mean t© love and venerate more
and more, as long as God lets us have hearts, reasons, memo
ries, souls. Headstones are set thei^e for Captain Aaron Cook,
Chileab Smith, John Ingram and John Webster. Mr. Web
ster was the first adult buried. It is a touching incident, and
comes very close home to many of us, who have seen life open
in forms made of our flesh and blood only to close again be
fore this world's air had colored its consciousness, that the very
first body laid in our field of burial was that of a little infant
without a name, born to Philip Smith, dying away from the
hardship and the peril, away from the race and the battle, be
fore they came ! How that solemn cemetery humbles and
brings together all ages and conditions !
" He lived, he died : behold the sum.
The abstract of the historian's page !
Alike in God's all-seeing eye,
, The infant's day — the patriarch's age."*
*I cannot help connecting with this passage, as the sheets pass through the
press, a reference to the solemn and beautiful lyrical tribute to the " Name-

59
Friends, I think another generation can hardly move on to
take the appointed place in that burial-field, without obeying
more carefully than has yet been done the refined and elevated
sentiments which bid us adorn chastely the places of the dead ;
bid us cover them with the bloom and the beauty of foliage
and flowers ; bid us win and soothe the mourners there with
tender colors, fair outlines, and a graceful order, — all in the
name of him who brought life and immortality to light, and
whose dear form slept in the garden of Joseph. Christ never
despised reverential tributes to the human body. He gra
ciously accepted the costly anointing of Mary, " done against
the day of his burial." In the elder times, it was a custom to
lead out the youths of royal families to gaze on the monuments
of their ancestors, and be inspired there to emulate their hero
ism. And here are ancestral memorials, rekindling in us and
our children the holy courage of those who have won incor
ruptible crowns. Scatter along those ridges the seeds of fra
grant blossoms that shall breathe their perfume of benediction
over the green sods. Twine there the delicate graces of the
sweet-briar, the woodbine, the ivy, the clematis, and the rose.
Multiply, by every avenue and pathway, the voiceless preach
ers of hope, — " Floral apostles, that with dewy splendor
Weep without woe, and blush without a crime.'-'
LESS Ones," presented at a later hour of the Day of Celebration, fi-om Dr.
Holland. Years ago, Mrs. Hemans, whose " Pilgrim Ode " eloquently utters
her generous sympathy with these New England heroes, wrote, —
" The kings of old have shrine and tomb
In many a minster's haughty gloom ;
And green, along the ocean's side,
The mounds arise where heroes died ;
But show me, on thy flowery breast,
Earth, where thy nameless martyrs rest !
" "What though no stone the record bears
Of their deep thoughts and lonely prayers,
May not our inmost hearts be stilled,
With knowledge of their presence filled,
And by their lives be taught to prize
The meekness of self-sacrifice ?"
In even more spirited verses, our native Poet makes these nameless sleep
ers arise and speak : — " Blood of ours is on the meadow ;
Dust of ours is in the soil ;
But no tablet casts a shadow
Where we slumber from our toil."

60
Once it was an observance for every passer-by to perpetuate
and enlarge the mound that marked a grave by casting one
more stone upon the sepulchral pile. And here, where affec
tion and veneration alike plead with us, ought we not to unite
in bringing each a shade-tree, a honey-suckle, a forget-me-not,
or a lily .'' Cleanse away the weeds. Set up the leaning or
fallen tablets. Restore the fading inscriptions. Make smooth
the rough and sunken spots. Plant the living shafts and arphes
of the elm, the willow, the pine, the larch, to attract the birds
and their melodies. Make the whole what the Moravians love
to call their cemeteries, a " Field of Peace."* Into those
" acres of God " have been borne out from almost all these
houses — from how many of these living arms ! one and another
very precious contribution to the congregated multitude of the
departed — given up with tears, yet, if faith had her triumph,
given up willingly because itwas the Almighty Love that called
them. It is right that our long review of the generations of the
living should halt here where every generation and every pro
cession halts at last. Through the gateway of mortality every
review must pass. There every history must be sifted. A
hundred years hence, how many, coming after us, will have
entered ! To those who shall gather to celebrate the third
centennial, what strange and quaint antiquities the surviving
specimens of our customs and fashions and dwellings and forms
of speech will be ! But this we know ; and let this be our
consolation : — Humanity, Duty, Character, Goodness, Truth
Freedom, Faith, Hope, Charity, will all be unchanged — keep
ing their loveliness and majesty forever. " Glorious is the fruit
* It will be taken in good part, I hope, if I suggest farther that any effec
tual improvements in this direction must depend very much on some social
action of the people of the town. Measures for the decoration of private lots
are apt to wear a look of singularity or ostentation, in a village grave-yard,
if the adjacent spaces are left bare. The Providence of our history has com
mitted to us a very unusual and a very sacred treasury in this dust of the
great and good. The better instincts of humanity, the better tendencies of
the age, and the genial teachings of our religion, all charge us to ask our
selves how we are guarding that trust. The reasons for action would be
equally strong if we only inquired how we might provide a resort of most be
nign and purifying influence for the leisure hours of those that shall come
after us.

61
of good labors, and the root of wisdom shall never fall away."
Christ, our Redeemer, shall abide, " the same yesterday, to-day
and forever." The everlasting Word shall live. He who is
without beginning of days, or end of years, — who said " Let
there be light " over creation, and there was light, who made
the first beams of civilization to play along this valley, and
who is to make the kingdoms of the earth the kingdoms of our
Lord, shall not leave his people nor forsake them.
" In pleasant lands have fallen the lines
That bound our goodly heritage.
And safe beneath our sheltering vines
Our youth is blest, and soothed our age.
" What thanks, 6 God, to thee are due
That thou didst plant our fathers here ;
And watch and guard them us they grew,
A vineyard to the Planter dear !
" The toils they bore our ease have wrought ;
They sowed in tears ; — in joy we reap ;
The birth-right they so dearly bought
We'll guard, till we with them shall sleep I"

62

The following hymn, selected and slightly changed, was then sung
by the choir and audience : —
. God of our fathers ! hear the song
Their grateful sons united raise.
While round their hallowed graves we throng.
To think and speak of other days, —
Those days of toil and peril, when.
In faith and love that conquered fear.
They bought the fields of savage men.
And reared their homes and altars here.
To thee their daily vows were paid ;
To thee their hearts and lives were given ;
And, by thy guidance and thine aid.
They trod their pilgrim path to heaven.
Kich is the heritage we claim.
Whom thou hast made their favored heirs.
Their cherished faith, their honest fame.
Their love, their counsels, and their prayers.
They left us freedom, honor, truth ;
Oh, may these rich bequests descend
From sire to son, from age to youth,
And bless our land till time shall end.
So, as successive centuries roll.
When we shall long have passed away,
Here may our sons, with heart and soul.
Still hail Old Hadley's natal day.

63

POEM.

As pilgrims, when they reach the shrine their weary feet have sought, —
As sailors, when the anchor drops within the well known port, —
As tired children, when they hear their mother's gentle call,
To come around the glowing hearth at quiet Even-fall ;
So we have gladly laid aside the sandals that had grown
Too dusty in the busy world, through which we journeyed on,
And furled the weather-beaten sails that long have floated free,
To catch the ever shifting wind upon Life's restless sea ;
And hastened at our mother's call upon this festal day,
To smooth the brow of weariness and drive all care away,
To circle round the ancient fire and sing the songs of old.
And, listen once again to hear the tales our grand-sires told.
We come to tell the faithful ones — our brothers — who at home
Have kept the Fathers' memories fresh while we have loved to roam.
The story of our wandering life, the wonders we have seen,
Since in our boyhood's days we played upon this noble green.
For some of us have wandered long beneath far distant skies.
And sought in strange and foreign lands to win the golden prize,
That glittered through our boyish dreams, as drowsily we lay
On the long grass beneath these elms in the hot summer day.
And some have hurried up and down where Wall street's busy throng
Among the vaults of untold gold sweeps restlessly along.
From where the ships are lifting their anchors for the sea,
To where the spire of Trinity points heavenward solemnly.
And some have crossed the 'barrier hills that toward the sunset stand.
And carried bright New England homes to the broad Western land.
And given their thriving villages the old familiar name.
In grateful loyalty to spread their Birth-place's honored fame.

64
And some have gone, with loving hearts, upon those prairies wide
To tell the simple story of a Savior crucified.
And labored long and labored well till darkness fled away.
And from the East across the West flushed the glad dawn of day.
And some have stood in Learning's halls to guide the feet that climb
With young and often straying steps the cloud-capped hlghts of Time,
And with an earnest, loving faith in youth's quick, generous blood,
Have led them upward joyfully through manliness to God.
And some have crossed the billowy seas to that fair Mother-land,
Where our stout Saxon fathers fought long ere the pilgrim band
Came westward in the Mayflower, with iron hearts and bold.
And called this home iVea) England for the love they bore the Old.
And some have stood with half drawn breath within the walls of Rome,
And heard the Miserere thrilled beneath St. Peter's dome,
And climbed far up the solemn Alps o'er the eternal snows.
And felt their inmost hearts grow still amid the grand repose.
And from these quiet village homes some have gone forth to stand
As messengers of peace on earth in the dark heathen land ;
And though they rest in far off graves, yet who shall dare to say
Their spirits do not meet with ours upon this festal day ?
And some there are — God bless them all — who watchfully have kept
The fire alive on the old hearth, e'er since the Fathers slept.
And peacefully from year to year have marked the seasons' round.
From Winter with its fireside joys to Autumn harvest-crowned.
God bless them — 'for they've guarded well our vacant places here.
And watched with welcome for our steps through many a weary year ;
God bless them for the kindly thoughts that in their bosoms burn.
As on this happy day they hail the wanderer's return.

Bright dreams of childhood's joyous hours, glad thoughts of early days,
Come swiftly thronging round us now, as from our various ways
We gather at the quiet home our fathers loved of yore,
And light the fires of Auld Lang Syne within our hearts once more.

65
Oh, vainly in the honied words that I may try to use,
Or in the smoothly flowing rhymes a poet's ear could choose,
Or in the soft measures lightly moved as the sweet breath of !May,
All vainly shall we seek in these the Poem of the day.
But each man in his own deep soul can read with tearful eyes
The record that is written there of youthful memories.
And paint on Fancy's canvas the days that are no more,
The well known forms and gentle smiles of loved ones gone before.
And as we raise, all thankfully, our thoughts to that far Heaven,
Where God is keeping safe for us those treasures early given.
And guiding by their starry light our often wandering way,
Each loving heart will be its own best Poet of the day.
And all around this dear old home, on Mountain, Vale and Stream,
In these tall elms, amid whose leaves the dews of morning gleam.
And on the meadows where the birds are singing blithe and gay,
God's hand has written for us all, the Poem of the day.
Grandly rise the Mountains toward the Southern sky,
"With the bannered pine trees on their turrets high.
Through the smiling Summer — through the Winter's gale,
Like twin castles guarding all the peaceful vale.
Bagged rise the Mountains where the river pours
Its swift current darkly past the rocky shores.
Like grim, silent warders in their iron mail,
Guarding well the portal of the peaceful vale.
Solemn stand the Mountains where the white mists rise
From their rocky summits to the morning skies,
Like twin Druid altars where the incense pale
Bears aloft the worship of the peaceful vale.
Sternly frown the Mountains when the thunders loud,
Echoing round their bulwarks, roll from cloud to cloud.
And the wrathful Storm- wind hurls the icy hail
On the summer verdure of the peaceful vale.
Softly smile the Mountains when the sun goes down.
And his last light lingers like a golden crown.
Round their pine-clad summits, while o'er hill and dale
Stretch the Evening shadows through the peaceful vale.
5

66
And thus the grand old Mountains stood.
Through Summer's bloom and Winter's snow.
And watched amid the solitude.
O'er hill and valley, fleld and wood.
Two hundred years ago.
Jeweled lies the Valley when the dew is spread,
On the glistening flowrets of the fertile mead,
When the breath of Morning from the placid streams
Rises white and holy in the Day King's beams.
Fresh and green the Valley when the sun's slant i-ay
Browns the strong-armed mower 'mid the scented hay.
While the meadows murmur low with droning bees,
And the light winds whisper through the lofty trees.
Broad and rich the Valley when the leafy June
Shades the weary cattle from the scorching Noon,
Where the brooklet tinkles in its mossy bowers,
Glancing merry laughter to the nodding flowers.
Lovely lies the Valley when the shadows drawn
In the level sunbeams, stretch o'er field and lawn,
And all Nature hushes in her wondering pride.
As the regal purple robes the mountain side.
Beautiful the Valley when the dying day
Clad in wondrous glory grandly glides away,
'Mid the flooded radiance o'er the West that's rolled.
Gilding cloud and hill-top with the liquid gold.
And thus the peaceful Valley lay.
And watched the River's ceaseless flow.
All blooming in the showers of May,
Or decked with Autumn's garland gay,
Two hundred years ago.
Brightly flows the River where the sparkling gleam
Of its myriad ripples silvers all the stream.
Flowing in the sunlight ever restlessly,
Toward its far-off union with the mighty Sea.

67
Darkly flows the River where the willows lave
Their moss-tangled tresses in the rippling wave,
Flowing in the shadow ever ceaselessly.
Onward to its bridal with the grey old Sea.
Swiftly flows the River where it plows its way
'Neath the fallen elm trees crumbling in decay,
Hurrying on forever till its rest shall be
On the heaving bosom of the Bridegroom Sea.
From the Northern mountains, — down the valleys broad,-
Through the narrow gorges, — past the shining ford.
Past- the emerald islands, — ever steadily
Flows the river proudly onward to the Sea.
In the glare of Noon-day — in the moonbeams pale —
With the mists of Morning for a bridal veil.
Flows the faithful River on confidingly
To the heaving bosom of the Bridegroom Sea.
And thus the noble River flowed.
And watched the Summer come and go.
As on the mossy banks she strewed
Her flowers and garlands through the wood.
Two hundred years ago.

Beyond the seas proud nations stand in the firm ranks of war.
The echo of their mighty tread has reached us from afar.
The Eagles of Napoleon float where Csesar's legions lay.
Well nigh two thousand years ago in Rome's illustrious day.
And poor, down-trodden Italy is rising yet once more.
And her Roman blood flows proudly, as in the days of yore :
God help her as she takes the field for home and liberty.
And grapples with the tyrant that her children may be free.
But in our quiet valleys, we hear no war's alarms,
"We see no burning villages, no clash of burnished arms ;
Only the Wind's long battle with the grand old forest trees,
And the tall corn's- mimic warfare with the fitful Summer breeze.

68
The Broom-corn stands on the meadow lands.
Like an army still and solemn,
When it holds its breath as the leaden death
Pours fast from the foeman's column ;
For the tall Broom-corn is a warriot born.
In the stern battalions growing.
And his green leaves wave like a banner brave.
When the battle winds are blowing.
The yellow Maize in September days
Stands ripe on hill and meadow.
While brightly gleam in the slant sunbeam
The ears 'mid the green leaves' shadow ;
But the tall Broom-corn is a warrior born.
In the stern battalions growing.
And his green leaves wave like a banner brave,
When the battle winds are blowing.
The golden grain on the sunny plain
Stands calm in the early dawning,
And it nods with pride on the broad hill-side,
In the gentle breeze of morning ;
But the tall Broom-corn is a warrior born.
In the stern battalions growing.
And his green leaves wave like a banner brave.
When the battle winds are blowing.
His blood-red crest in the morning mist,
He waves o'er the close ranks proudly.
Like a soldier's plume in the battle gloom.
Where the cannon thunder loudly ;
For the tall Broom-corn is a warrior born.
In the stern battalions growing.
And his green leaves wave like a banner brave,
When the battle winds are blowing.

A few short hours, a few glad words will close this happy day.
And we must leave these well known scenes and go upon our way ;
Put on the dusty sandals, — unfurl the sun-bleached sail.
And seek once more upon life's sea to catch the favoring gale.

69
But yet before we spread our sails upon the restless waves,
For one brief moment we will stand beside our Fathers' graves.
And drop the unforbidden tear as we remember those
Who started with us in the race, but early sought repose.
In the old Burying Ground over the hill,
Our Fathers are sleeping calmly and still,
The moss covered tombstones guarding their rest.
The soft earth pressed gently on each still breast ;
Loud have the winter storms round their graves swept,
Long years have silently over them crept.
Yet all unheedingly they have slept still.
In the old Burying Ground over the hill.
Manful and earnest men. Godly and tried.
Nobly they lived on earth, fearlessly died ;
And, though the carved names are wasting away, —
Though the old tombstones sink in decay, —
Yet on a fadeless scroll God's care hath kept
The names of our Fathers bright while they have slept.
To the old Burying Ground, over the hill,
Through the two centuries gathering still.
Youth and gray headed man, mother and maid, '
Have been borne tearfully, silently laid
To rest with the Fathers who slumber so still.
In the old Burying Ground over the hill.
There in the quiet earth, through the long years.
Free from life's busy cares, safe from its fears,
Peaceful and calm they lie, while gently wave
Daisies and violets on each still grave ;
And from the waiting Heaven starry eyes keep
Watch o'er their dreamless rest through the long sleep.
Oh when our turn shall come, and the church bell
Shall toll for us slowly the funeral knell ;
When meekly the pale hands are crossed on the breast,
God grant us a quiet place for our last rest ;
Like that where our Fathers slumber so still, —
Like the old Burying Ground over the hill.

70
Anthem by the Choir.
Benediction.

After these exercises were closed, a procession was formed of those
holding tickets to the dinner, which marched to the ample tent, lo
cated in front of the church in West street, in which plates had been
set for sixteen hundred people, by John Johnson, Esq., of Boston.
Although there had been much rain during the day, nearly all the
seats at the table were occupied, and the interest which had been
manifested from the commencement of the day, seemed in no wise
abated. After order was secured, a blessing was asked by the Chap
lain. The following Ode, by Wm. C. Bryant, Esq., designed to be sung
at the opening of the table exercises, was necessarily omitted, it be
ing past three o'clock. Two hundred times has June renewed
Her roses, since the day
When here, amid the lonely wood.
Our fathers met to pray.
Beside this gentle stream, that strayed
Through pathless woodlands then.
The calm, heroic women prayed.
And grave, undaunted men.
Hymns on the ancient silence broke
From hearts that faltered not,
And undissembling lips that spoke
The free and guileless thought.
They prayed, and thanked the Mighty One
Who made their hearts so strong.
And led them towards the setting sun,
Beyond the reach of wrong.
For them He made that desert place
A pleasant heritage, — •
The cradle of a free-born race
From peaceful age to age.

71
The plant they set — a little vine —
Hath stretched its boughs afar,
To distant hills and streams that shine
Beneath the evening star.
Ours are their fields, — these fields that smile
With summer's early flowers :
Oh, let their fearless scorn of guile.
And love of truth, be ours ! (By permission.)
Before the dinner was quite through with, the president of the day,
Ho>f. Ekasxus Hopkins, announced that as Gov. Banks must ne
cessarily retire at this hour, he would anticipate the order of proceed
ings and present the following sentiment : —
The State of Massachusetts, the parent that created, fostered and protects
our towns ; first on this continent, in the cause of sound religion, solid piety,
civil liberty, untiring industry, and first in the hearts of her children. God
save the Commonwealth !
Hon. N. p. Banks responded and was greeted by the vast as
sembly with three hearty cheers. He spoke nearly as follows: —
I thank you for the hearty sentiment given in favor of the Com
monwealth. I am glad to be present to-day and participate in this
occasion, and learn of the early history of the founding of this town.
Hadley is distinguished by a noble avenue of trees, as I had occasion
to notice upon a former visit, and this street, of ample width, lined
with rows of beautiful trees, speaks a volume as to the character of
the early settlers. Roads and highways are the pioneers of civiliza
tion, they give an idea of the character of the settlers. On arriving
in your beautiful town on a former occasion, I remember, I instinct
ively stopped, alighted from the carriage and walked beneath the
overhanging boughs. In nothing is the march of that element in
human affairs shown more than in the highways its constructs. And
in your case there is ample evidence that there was no lack of that
element in the character of your ancestors. Massachusetts owes more
to the citizens of the towns for her prosperity than to any other cause.
He felt indebted for an opportunity to be present, and closed with
the following sentiment :
The Town of Hadley.— M&y the great faith and unexampled strength of
its founders, as certainly stimulate the people to perpetuate its prosperity and
happiness, as they will furnish a wise and patriotic example to other towns of
this ancient commonwealth.

72
The afternoon being now well advanced, the Governor and Coun
cil were obHged to leave in order to reach the train in season for thei"^
return homeward. The regular exercises were then continued.
Introductory remarks of the President of the Day — Eeastus Hop
kins, Esq., of Northampton.
Through the partiality of the people of Hadley, I have been hon
ored with the duty of representing them on this occasion, so full of
historic interest. In their name and behalf I cordially welcome this
vast assembly of her guests who, at her bidding, have assembled
around this festive board. Filled with fraternal feelings to each other,
we are here assembled to review the history and to honor the memory
of our fathers. And the citizens of Hadley feel proud, this day, in
beholding this response of your presence to their invitation. You
alike honor the living and the dead. I rejoice in Hadley as my birth
place. And this joy, with its accompanying gratitude, is only in
creased as years roll on, and knowledge of the world is enlarged.
Travel and observation in other parts of our own, and in foreign
lands, are required to appreciate fully, or even approximately, the
blessing of such a birth place. No where on the face of the wide
earth can communities be found, composed almost exclusively of mere
laborious tillers of the soil, which, in point of esthetic beauty, wide
spread intelligence, and independent thrift can compare with the
communities inhabiting this town of Hadley and its sister towns of
Massachusetts, on the banks of the noble Connecticut. This is my
earnest, my deep felt conviction and belief, and should be the occa
sion of devout gratitude while it legitimately awakens a profound
sense of responsibility.
Whatever else may occur to me to be said, I must confine myself
to the official duty of introducing others to address you. But we
are not to forget, while we indulge in our varied feelings of joy, and
pride, and gratitude, that we are enjoying the labors of those who
were, but are not, that we are here to cherish their virtues and to
emulate their example.
I introduce the commemorative exercises of this occasion by the
following sentiment which I request you to receive standing, and in
silence :
The sacred memory of our Fathers.
This was received in silence, the assembled multitude all rising,
and the band following with a dirge. Mr. Hopkins then rose and said
that he was specially pleased with the delicate, just and touching al-

73
lusion made by the Orator of the day to the humble and unrecorded
dead. The same sentiment had been most beautifully embodied in a
communication which could be presented, at no time, so appropriate
ly as at the present moment. He then read the following letter from
Dr. Holland : Springfield, June 7, '59.
Erastus HopTdns, Esq. — Dear Sir : — You must know that the pulsation of
the sheet of water at Hadley Falls shakes our doors and windows in the night.
The effect of this pulsation is very peculiar upon some minds, and you will
find below a record of its effect upon mine :
Heart of Hadley, slowly beating
Under midnight's azure breast,
Silence, thy strong pulse repeating,
Wakes me, shakes me from my rest.
Hark I a beggar at the basement !
Listen ! friends are at the door I
There's a lover at the casement !
There are feet upon the floor !
But they knock with muffled hammers.
They step softly like the rain.
And repeal their gentle clamors
Till I sleep and dream again.
Still the knocking at the basement !
Still the rapping at the door !
Tireless lover at the casement —
Ceaseless feet upon the floor.
Bolts are loosed by spectral fingers ;
Windows open through the gloom ;
And the lilacs and seringas
Breathe their perfume through the room.
'Mid the odorous pulsations
Of the air around my bed.
Throng the ghostly generations
Of the long forgotten dead I
" Rise and write !" with voice united.
They command, and I obey ;
And the message they indicted
I transmit to you to-day.
" Children of the old plantation.
Heirs of all we won and held.

74
Give us grateful celebration —
Us, the nameless ones of eld.
We were never squires and teachere.
We were never wise and great ;
But we listened to our preachers.
Worshipped God, and loved the State.
Blood of ours is on the meadow.
Dust of ours is in the soil ;
But no tablet casts a shadow
Where we slumber from our toil.
Unremembered, unrecorded.
We are sleeping side by side ;
And to names is now awarded.
That for which the nameless died.
We were men of humble station ;
AVe were women pure and true ;
And we served our generation.
Wrought and fought, and lived for you.
We were maidens ! we were lovers !
We were husbands ! we were wives !
But oblivion's mantle covers
All the sweetness of our lives.
Praise the men who ruled and led us ;
Carry garlands to their gi-aves ;
But remember that your meadows
AVere not planted by their slaves.
We were freemen ; we were neighbors ;
Each the minister of all ;
And ye enter on our labors
As on theirs whose names ye call.
Children of the old plantation !
Heirs of all we won and held !
Greet us in your celebration —
Us, the nameless ones of eld."
This the message ; and I send it,
Faithful to their sweet behest ;
And my toast shall e'en attend it
To be read among the rest.
" Fill to all the brave and blameless.
Who, forgotten, passed away!
Drink the memory of the nameless.
Only named in Heaven to-day."

75
After the reading of the above, the President said that having act
ed in behalf of the people of Hadley, he would now assume the un
delegated office of representing the guests and presenting a senti
ment which the modesty of the committee of arrangements prohibit
ed from the programme of regular toasts, to vv^it : —
The Hadley of the present day ; beautiful in appearance; rich in associa
tions; abundant in hospitality ; worthy and honored heir of the homestead.
Assembled at her bidding, around this ancestral hearth, we proclaim her
Blessed. GiiES C. Keilogg, Esq. responded.
77(6 Town of Hatfield ; our first born and fairest daughter ; the delight and
honor of her mother— the heir and welcome rival of her thrift and beauty.
Rev. John M. Gbeene of Hatfield, replied. He said, though
Hatfield had the honor of being the oldest child of Hadley, yet in
truth she was born the same year with her mother. The flrst settlers
from Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor were fifty-three in num
ber — forty-seven stopped in Hadley and six went over the river and
settled" in what is now Hatfield. It is not to be supposed that the
most timid and irresolute would thus go away by themselves, and
therefore we have proof that the flrst settlers of Hatfield were equal
ly as enterprising and courageous as those who remained on this side
of the river.
Hatfield grew rapidly ; the land on Hadley street was divided in
to eight-acre lots, and when these had been taken they thought the
whole of Hadley had been settled, and so pushed on to Hatfield, and
in nine or ten years the population increased to about one hundred.
They entered into a mutual agreement on the two sides of the river,
by which Hatfield, having the grist-mill, should furnish the meal, and
Hadley, having the meeting-house, should furnish the preaching.
Soon Hatfield complained' of the hardships attending her part of the
bargain, but we have no record that Hadley ever complained of hers,
and hence he concluded that they had better meal than preaching.
He alluded to witchcraft, and said there never \yas a case in Hat
field.* The discernment and good sense of the people were a suffi
cient barrier against it. In illustration he said that they have a story
of this sort : — a man in Northampton had a pique against his neigh
bor and to get revenge came to Hatfield and told Mr. Partridge who
held courts in Northampton, that his neighbor was a witch. Mr. P .
listened to his whole story, and then replied, "I shall hold a court iik
*Holki,nd's " History of Western Mass., vol. II, page 145.

76
Northampton next Tuesday, bring on your case. Of course I shall
convict the man. The sentence will be thirty-eight lashes, but one
half of them will go to the complainant and those will be put on
immediately." This is all that Hatfield had to do with witchery.
In conclusion he spoke of the distinguished men of Hatfield,
Rev. William Williams, of whom President Chauncey, comparing
him with Dr Stoddard, his contemporary in Northampton, said, " I
believe him to have been the greater man ;" of Dr. Lyman and
others. The Town of South Hadley ; true to the memory of her mother ; with a
Lyon heart, she is peacefully solving the vexed problem of Woman's power
and Woman's Rights. Her daughters will take care of themselves.
Dk. Kitteidge of South Hadley, replied.
Mr. President: — I had expected, till this moment, to have re
sponded only for Mount Holyoke Seminary, but I thank you in the
name of the Seminary and of South Hadley, for the sentiment which
is designed for both.
Sir, it is an honorable testimony you have given South Hadley —
" that she is true to the character of her mother." Of this she may
well be proud ; for that mother was' of puritan descent, and her
character of puritan stamp; — benevolent, firm and independent, hav
ing its foundation in the principles of God's word.
You say, "she has a Lyon heart." Sir, she has a heart that beats
firm and strong — which sends forth in every direction, to the remotest
extremities, — ^life, health and vigor, for every good work. " South
Hadley is true to the character of her mother."
But the sentiment is especially true in its application to Mount
Holyoke Seminary. Sir, it is not in my power, nor will I attempt to
describe the mighty intellect, and the great heart of that sainted Mary
Lyon, who, with firm reliance upon God, and with a heart overflow
ing with benevolence to all his creatures, laid m prayer, in tears, and
in toil, the foundation of that institution.
Mary Lyon has gone to her reward i'n heaven, but the heart of Mary
Lyon is yet there. Her spirit and principles have never ceased to
control her successors. In their system and instruction, their aim
has uniformly been, to educate the intellect, the heart, the wJwle wo
man ; to develops all her faculties, and prepare her for the realities
of life — for her highest usefulness and happiness.
Year by year, for more than twenty years, has that institution been
sending forth her daughters on errands of mercy. They have gone

77
into all parts of the world, carrying with them, and imparting to oth
ers, the habits and principles in which they have been educated.
The influence they have exerted for the cause of education, science,
morality and religion, can never be estimated.
How well they have succeeded in solving the vexed problem of
Woman's Power, and Woman's Rights, — let the light and joy, the
peace, purity and love, diffused by them in families and schools, in
the chambers of sickness, in the abodes of poverty, wretchedness and
ignorance ; yea, in all the circles in which they have moved and have
made happy — let these testify. And may the time never come when
the spirit of Mary Lyon shall cease to characterize that institution,
which has been thus consecrated to sound learning and religion, nor
when her daughters shall cease to go forth and bless the world.
" Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and said in his heart, shall
a child be born unto hira that is a hundred years old — and shall Sarah that is
ninety years old bear ?"
The Town of Amhemt, incorporated 1759 ; the child of our old age, deem
ed of doubtful intellect, and therefore sent to College ; we rejoice in its emi
nent learning, and feel a maternal pride in its noble contributions to litera
ture, science and religion.
Hon. Edwakd Dickinson of Amherst, responded as follows : —
Mr. President : — I thank you, in behalf of the people of Amherst,
for the kind notice you have taken of us in the sentiment just an
nounced. The present occasion, which is bi-centennial to you, is uni-
centennial to us. It is one hundred years since our separation from
you. "We rejoice to join youin celebrating this jubilee, on the bound
ary line between the centuries. And flrst of all, we should render
devout thanks to Almighty God, for our ancestry : that the kingdoms
of the Old World were sifted to procure the seed to plant this con
tinent ; that the purest of that seed was sown in this beautiful val
ley ; that we are of its product ; that the blood of the Puritans.
flows in our veins. " We are bone of your bone, and flesh pf your
flesh," and while we are not now embraced in the same munieipal
government, yet our interests are largely identical, and our relations
closely intermingled. We separated from you, from no want of do
mestic harmony, but because we wanted more room.
We left you in possession of the gardens, and meadows, and by
the side of our beautiful river ; and removed to the plains, and
swamps, and hill-sides ; and for a long period, were sportively caUed
" New Swampers," from a brook of that name, which skirted the

78
western limits of our territory. This is our &xkt public return to the
old homestead, and you will ask us how we have spent the first cen
tury of our childhood ; and we will answer briefly. W'e have clear
ed the forests, drained the swamps, and improved and fertilized and
beautified our fields and hills. In 1735, we were permitted, by vote
of Hadley, to become a " Precinct," then called the Third or East
Precinct, and to enjoy certain quasi-municipal rights and privileges,
on condition that we should build a meeting-house, and hire a minister.
Accordingly in the warrant, issued in " His Majesty's name," calling
the first meeting to organize the Precinct, by the choice of the proper
officers, was a clause to make provision for a meeting-house and a
minister. Again, in 1754, when, by the incorporation of South
Hadley into a town, we became elevated to the dignity of the Sec
ond Precinct, the warrant by which the inhabitants were summoned
to organize the Second Precinct, called for action in reference to the
support of a minister. And also in 1759, when our territory was
set off into a district or town, the warrant for organization required
action for the sustaining of a permanent ministry, and providing for
a house of worship. We complied, most cheerfully, vifith this con
dition of our emancipation, and since you allowed us to pass out of
your tutilage, we have scrupulously obeyed your injunction to pro
vide for the meeting-house, and to support the minister.
We next opened common schools. Then established an Academy,
and as we increased in knowledge and enterprise, with the aid of a
generous public, we founded a College, by which the material inter
ests of our region have been greatly improved : in the analysis of
the soil, and the application of science to practical husbandry, and
the useful arts. We have here- educated men for teachers, and for
usefulness and honor in the learned professions ; but more especially,
and above all other objects, have we been preparing good men,
(amongst the most distinguished of whom is the orator of tho day,)
to diffuse the knowledge of Christian truth at home and abroad, and
to carry back to the nations from whom we sprang, the seed raised
by us, therewith to replant and invigorate them, and thus fulfil the
high and solemn and sublime mission of our country to restore to
the old world, in all their purity, the principles of truth and a living
faith, which have laid the foundations of our own national prosperity.
It only remains to us to inspire those who succeed us, with the
love of that truth, and that faith, and an earnest desire to transmit
to their descendants, to the latest generation, those principles of vir-

79
tue and true religion, which in all' past ages, have tended to promote
material and intellectual and moral progress. Allow me to offer the
following sentiment : —
Old Hadley and her daughters ; may they ever maintain and cherish the
principles which have made them what they now are.
The Town of Granby — our only grand-daughter ; though she is modest and
coy, hiding behind the mountain, she cannot escape observation. Our eyes
rest with fondness on her beauty, and our ears delight in the sound of her
Mills. Rev. Mr. Mills of Granby, responded.
Amherst College ; above the valleys of the old world, frowning castles stand
as sentinels ; above ours, the smiling halls of learning and piety.
To this sentiment, President Stearns being called upon, briefly
responded : He began by relating an anecdote suggested to him by
the preceding sentiment, in which the old mother town seemed to
reflect rather seriously upon the "intellect" of one of her offspring, the
child of her hundredth year. An aged clergyman, somewhere near Bos
ton, who was somewhatof a bishopin his day, and not as greatly distin
guished for the grace of meekness as Moses used to be in the Primer,
preached one Sabbath very eloquently upon the control of the temper.
The next day his butcher called upon him with a formidable meat-
bill, which Ihe good old gentleman disputed with considerable pas
sion. It was now' the butcher's turn to be angry. "Dr.  ," said
he, " ain't you a pretty fellow io preach all day yesterday, ' he that
ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city,' — and now you
are as mad as you can live, because you have got to pay an honest
bill." The Doctor drew himself up with the proud dignity which be-
loncred to him, and which was made formidable by his full-bottomed
wig, and said, "Sir, it is the experience of our infirmities which enables
us properly to rebuke the sins of the people." Now, sir, if what was
intimated of " the doubtful intellect," which was " therefore sent to
college," is true, it cannot be denied that the experience of infirmities
may have conduced to improvement, in the case of Amherst.
Take an instance. In 1735, it was voted, by the precinct which
afterwards became the town of Amherst, and this remark is no dis
paragement to my fellow citizens, for the town was a part of Hadley,
then, " to heire a menester half a yeare and to build a meating-house,
forty-five foots in length and thirty-five in bredth." Here is a slight in
firmity in tl^matter of orthography, to be sure. But on the very spot

80
where that m-e-a-t meeting-house was erected, afterwards called meet
ing-house hill, stands the college. Near that spot Noah Webster,
who was the first president of the corporation of the college, and la
bored much to give it being, spent twelve years of his valuable life,
on that immortal thesaurus of English words and definitions, Web
ster's Dictionary, which can never cease to be a monument of glory
to its author, his country and the English tongue.
He could not say that such marked progress, connected with old
Meeting-house Hill, now called "College Hill," had been manifested
in every other respect. It appears that one John Nash was hired by the
town to "sound yekunk," or blow the conch-shell, for calling the peo
ple together on the Sabbath. Though good bells have long since taken
the place of the conch — yet they do say that sounds very similar to
conch shell's have sometimes been heard on week-days, from that very
spot, down to a recent period, though he should not think of paying
John Nash or any other John for making them, unless it was by allow
ing him a short vacation, perhaps, into the country.
So much for " the child born unto him that is a hundred years old.'
It was time to pay his respects to the pleasant sentiment which had
more directly summoned him to respond.
He began now to learn one thing which was, at first, a puzzle to
him. On receiving a polite note of invitation from " the Committee,"
he learned from the circular which accompanied it, that the persons
who were especially expected to attend this anniversary were " all
connected lineally or by affinity," with the original settlers or the
earlier inhabitants of the town. Now though he had always respect
ed old Hadley, and more and more since he came into her neighbor
hood, — yet how to make out a title by " lineage or affinity," to a
welcome on this occasion — " there was the rub." He remembered
to have had some acquaintance, with the Honorable President of- the
day, when they were both boys in Phillips Academy — but this seem
ed rather a weak peg to hang a claim upon. He thought, however,
tha,t on the score of lineage, he might be able through that same pres
ident, (Hon. Erastus Hopkins,) to make out a case. On looking
into Holland's History of Western Massachusetts — that same Hol
land to whose beautiful poem we had all just listened with so much
admiration — he had discovered that Dr. Emmons of Franklin, mar
ried for his second wife, Miss Martha Williams, the step-daughter of
Rev. Samuel Hopkins of Hadley — our president's noble grandfather,
— and that the same Dr. Emmons married Miss Deliverance French,
my grandfather's sister, for his first wife.

81
But lineage and aflSnity apart, he could not deny that he felt a deep
and growing interest in old Hadley, and especially of late. That
" tall broom-corn " which was " a warrior born," and which had been
so poetically and charmingly described to-day, had attracted his at
tention. And as a proof of it and of his good feelings for Hadley, he
would here state that the College had just appointed a new Professor
— who might not inaptly be designated Professor of Brooms and
Brushes. Now do not suppose, he said, that the design of this ar
rangement was to clean us up — for we trust you will suppose that we
were clean enough before. What, then, was the object of this new
foundation ? Surely enough, what could it be but to encourage, the
culture of that splendid crop which he had often seen, waving in the
breeze, for acres together, like seas of fire, as he had ridden by — so
that the H4dley farmers need not be constrained to sacrifice their lux
uriant and lovely meadows to the growth of a narcotic, which never
did much good to a college, whether in the line of cleanliness or of
morals. But you were pleased to speak, Mr. President, he continued, of
"the smiling halls of learning and piety, which stand as sentinels
above your valley." As long as they stand there, we trust the "frown
ing castles of the old world" which you brought into contrast with
them, will never be needed for the defence of the people. Letters,
science, religion — they are more powerful than military strategy, bay
onet and cannon. It is the glory of the old Hadley towns to .have
ushered into being two institutions of world-wide reputation and in
fluence. OneofthBin is that beautiful flower, which has grownup
so luxuriantly on the other side of the mountains — the queen of
schools of the kind, of which it might be said, " many daughters have
done virtuously, but thou excellest them all." The other is Amherst
College. And what are the Halls of Amherst but clusters of a vine
which is an offsett from the Old Hadley stock. He would not, how
ever, attribute too much to Hadley or to the Hadley Towns,not even
to the child " of doubtful intellect," which was "therefore sent to
college." Amherst College is the offspring of the religious and edu
cational sentiment of middle and western Massachusetts. It 'was
taking no credit to himself to say that this alma mater of piety and
learning had many noble sons, ministers, missionaries, statesmen,
teachers and others scattered all over the world. It had large means
and appliances for intellectual incitement, expan.sion and discipline.
Its progress, for the time, as an educational institution, had been
almost unparalleled. But it still has its wants ; especially it wants,
6

82
and is hoping to obtain, those means for physical training which will
enable it to unite in its students the stalwart forms of those who till
the soil, with the intellectual power of the truest scholars.
In conclusion, he would say nothing boastfully of the College, but
he would say to the old Hadley towns, and to all the towns surround
ing, and to whoever might be pleased to give them their confidence,
send us your sons, the marble from your quarries, iu the rough, and
our sculptors, with all the great examples of the past before them, and
noble ideals of excellence within them, shall hew and hammer and
chisel, and form and shape and mould the not indocile material, work
ing on for four years, steadily and earnestly, day in and day out, till
in the end, when the inspiration of the Almighty had given it under
standing, they shall start forth upon the world, the living statue, stand
ing up in the full proportions of its manhood, an Edwards or a Hunt
ington. Rev. John Russell — the first minister of Hadley who, fearing God rather
than man, braved all personal perils in his care of trembling fugitives from
tyranny. The Hon. Judge Russell, being called upon by the President,
responded substantially as follows : —
Your President, who generally forgets nothing, has forgotten the
ancient reputation of Hadley. Your good town is famous for its
hospitality to judges ; but that hospitality was shown, not by calling
them out, but by keeping them quiet. I cannot trace my descent
from John Russell. If I had the ingenuity of President Stearns, I
would go cousining as he did, for I should be proud if I could claim
as my ancestor, that noble old Puritan who dared to shelter the men
who came to his home with a King's blood on their hands, and the
Avenger of Blood on their track. My fathers never saw Hadley
meadows. If they had, they never would have settled down on the
barren sands of Plymouth. You, Mr. President, had so much diffi
culty in finding any descendants of your old pastor, that I began to
fear he was like that famous Irishman, who said it was hereditary in
his family not to have any children. Some of those descendants
have been found, and you are glad to welcome them here. But they
cannot claim that honor alone. Wherever there is a man who loves
liberty and hates tyranny, and will hide the outcast that flies from
oppression, — there is a descendant of John Russell, — there is a child
of the Puritan Fathers. That lineage I claim by this right.

83
You have alluded to my descent from Miles Standish, — a man fa
mous in his day as the sword of Plymouth Colony. But such is the
power of poetic genius, that he is likely to be remembered chiefly as
the man who was so foolish as to do his love-making by proxy. I has
ten to assure you all that this is not " hereditary in the family," nor
practiced in the Old Colony. We never had any witchcraft there in
old times ; but there is a witchcraft, in which we fully believe, and
of which some of you must be the victims to-day.
I should not have dared to intrude upon this Thanksgiving Din
ner of the great Hadley Family, if I had not been a young branch
of that old Plymouth stock. But we love to boast of Plymouth
Rock as the " primitive formation " of the continent, and if Profes
sor Hitchcock doesn't think the joke too old, he would perhaps re
mind me that each man who pushed his way a hundred miles into
the wilderness, might claim to be ranked as a boulder.
Your poet has referred most appropriately to the graves of your
ancestors " over the hill," which you can visit with pride and admi
ration. Not so can we visit the graves of the Pilgrim Fathers, who
died in that first sad winter after their landing. For, as you all
know, the survivors leveled those graves and sowed them with grain,
so that the Indians should not count the number of the dead. They
sowed them with grain ; but the product of that mournful sowing
was more precious far than golden grain or than California gold.
The tree of civil and religious liberty springs from those graves.
Even now its branches spread from sea to sea ; and its leaves are
for the healing of the nations. They talk of raising a Pilgrim Mon
ument at Plymouth ; but your fathers and mine are not without a
memorial. The fertile meadows, the thriving towns of this happy
valley ; the wealth of our crowded cities ; the comfort of our peace
ful villages ; the science of our colleges ; the intelligence, liberty,
morality and progress that make old Massachusetts first among
Christian Commonwealths, — these are the enduring monument of the
Puritans. Let these answer every charge that can be brought against
them. We need not deny their faults ; we need not apologize for
them. " Bigoted and fanatical " they are called. We can believe
it. These are faults of human nature and of their age. But when
we remember the toils of our fathers, and reap the fruits of those
toils, we might tremble, if they could be allowed to Hve again freed
from the imperfections, with which their memory is reproached. We
may doubt whether any men but fanatics would have left their pleas-

84
ant homes for this howling wilderness ; we may well doubt whether,
without bigotry, they would not have lost something of their stub
born virtue. When we judge the Puritans by what they have done
for us, we shall be ready to thank God that he made them just as he
did make them, — with all their glorious virtues, with all their heroic
faults. There have been men of more refined taste than those, who
shed their blood at Turner's Falls, or Bloody Brook, or Hadley
Jleadows ; there have been men of more graceful speech than those
who sunk beneath the frosts at Plymouth ; there have been men of
more pleasing manners, of more enlarged views ; but they have no
New England for their monument.
It would be well if those who have learned to censure the errors
of the Puritans, would imitate their virtues. Remember that to those
virtues not yet quite forgotten, we owe the prosperity of New Eng
land. Her wealth comes not from her soil or her climate, but from
the qualities of mind and heart transmitted from the Puritans. They
came to found a Christian State ; their example, their honored mem
ories have saved and blessed the state. And if luxury and vice, cor
ruption, serviHty and unbelief should prevail through the land, we
should almost expect to see the grand old regicide, comiug not now
from his hiding-place at the parsonage, but from his resting-place in
the grave, to drive back these unhallowed invaders from the soil
which they pollute. Let me give you as a closing sentiment :
The Virtues of our Fathers — As your Mountains guard the peaceful mead
ows at their base, so do Puritan principles guard the happy homes of New
England. May those principles be honored, as long as Holyoke lifts its sum
mit toward the clouds, as long as the Connecticut rolls its waters to the sea.
The Orator of the Day ; may his active life find solace and vigor, and may
his age reap the fruits of serenity and peace, amid the placid retirements of
his native Elm valley.
Prof. Httntingxon replied as follows : —
Mr. President : — W^hen one is called up by somebody's grandson,
it is perfectly fair to make use of the grandfather as an assistance in
getting down. And so, sir, when I remember how much you all had
of me before dinner, and what you may be likely to say when you
see me at it again, and what the natural effects of a dinner are, I re
sort to an anecdote, which I flatter myself you will pronounce a very
pertinent one, as suggesting a good reason why I should be let off
with a short speech. The good Dr. Hopkins had it among his other
magnanimous traits, that he was willing to tell a joke at his own ex
pense. He used to say that on one of his Sunday exchanges at

85
Northampton, he was invited to dine with " Squire Strong," after
wards Governor Strong, and that when Mrs. Strong offered the Doc
tor a plate of pudding, he declined it, with the remark that pudding
was apt to make him dull in the pulpit ; whereupon Mr. Strong
turned to him and said in a subdued voice, " Doctor, didn't you
have pudding for breakfast?"
Mr. President, the company here seem to like that story so well, I
will tell them another. One day, as Doctor Hopkins said, he called
on a young man in his parish who had been some time out of health,
and, after improving the occasion by some serious and condoling re
flections, observed to him, " Well, my young friend, it is now a long
time since you were able to come to meeting with us ; I think I must
bring you one of my sermons and read it to you." " Ah," replied
the reprobate, " I wish you would. Doctor, for I haven't had a wink
of sleep since I was taken down!"
Now, after sitting and standing out that two hours' discourse of
the morning, — which, after all. Sir, considering all its accompani
ments and episodes you cannot fairly call a very dry performance, —
you may likely enough have supposed I was laid safely away for this
occasion ; very much as her neighbors fret about the vexatious witch,
Moll Webster, when she seemed to expire, and doomed to be disap
pointed, too, as they were. The account runs that after her apparent
release, as the funeral bearers, not very heavy at heart, but with all
the solemn proprieties of the custom, were carrying her into the grave
yard, some mis-step brought the bier with a jar against the gate-post.
At this, a sharp voice, with a very characteristic accent, was heard in
side the coffin, objecting to the whole proceeding. The resuscitated
lady was taken out and walked home. Some time after, the same
scene was repeated; when, as the procession readied the gate, a sober
and prudent neighbor stepped rapidly up and said to the bearers, —
"Take care, there ! Don't hit that gate-post this time !"
The friendly sentiment which you have been pleased to connect
with me just now, Sir, alludes to the "placid retirement" of Old
Hadley. That is all very well indeed ; that is just what I, for one,
love Elm Valley for ; — but I can't help Wondering, whether, when
you got up that toast, there wasn't just the least possible gleam of
the grand*parental humor and mischief, in the Presidential eye — as
much as to say, " Hadley is exceedingly lovely, and serene, and all
that, but a little slow : the enterprise we keep over our side of the
river." And there is something in it. You have been a little smarter
than we have, ever since you got the Court House. But lest pride
should wax too complacent on that point, I will venture to repeat a
tradition which I picke'd up last winter from some one hereabouts —
I think it was Deacon Stockbridge. According to that, when the
commissioners came up to determine which should be the shire town,
they visited Hatfield, Hadley and Northampton, and after an impar
tial examination reported, in substance, that they considered the
holding of courts and trials in any place as dangerous to its morals
and manners, bringing in much idle company and loose gossip-;, that

86
they had found tho Iliitfiold people very virtuous, and the Hadley
people very industrious ; but when they came to Northampton, the
people appeared to be neither remarkably virtuous nor industrious ;
and they would therefore recommend that the courts be held at North
ampton I My private opinion is that this extract from our unwritten
annals wants confirmation.
It has been good for old Hadley, to-day, to hear her children give
so handsome an account of themselves, and of their children. Par
ticularly pleased is she with her two educational ^rand-children, of
opposite sexes, at Amherst and South Hadley, so admirably sustain
ing the culture not only of the Iraiu, but of the heart. It is firmly
believed, you know, that the interposition of a strip of mountain wall
between these two young cousins — whether that was prudently ar
ranged by the old lady, or whether the coy girl hid herself behind
Holyoke and Bachelor's Brook, from maidenly reserve, — has not been
utterly fatal to a confidential communication, and that, as sometimes
happens in other cases of a suituble nearness of age and station, the
mere trifling circumstance of a cousinship has not proved an abso
lutely insuperable barrier to the growth ol more romantic relations.
A brave voice from Hatfield, too, defends the character of the sen
sible, steady-going farmers who did not like too much navigation on
Sundays, and were shy of witchcraft. As to the first of these mat
ters, the living representation of the Hatfield pulpit wo have had to
day amply justifies the preference of tho people there for choosing
their own preaching ; as to the other, there is, I believe after all,
an unfortunate suggestion in the books that our Hadley witchcraft
was somehow started by a certain young woman in Hatfield. But
that is no matter. What care we now whether there were more
witches here or there ? especially delicate is the question, when wo
come to the witchcraft of young women. Why, Sir, only a quarter of
a century ago, or thereabouts, I remember I used to think there wore
live witches of that sort all the way from " Major (Smith's " to " Spruce
Hill." President Stearns has given us some striking reasons, in specimens
of the spelling of the Amherst Records, why distinguislfcd litci'iiry
advantages should have been conferred on Amherst, us they were.
In the very order he refers' to, for organizing a Parish in that east
ern precinct, if I remember rightly, the first member of the com
pound word "Meeting-house" wuh spelt M-e-a-t-i-n-g. Huppy and
significant blunder ! If it contuined an unc;onscious prophecy, that
prophecy has not to our day failed of its fulfilment. " Strong moat "
still nourishes the families of the First Parish in Amherst, and it is
dispensed in a liberal, unsuspicious, fraternal spirit. Let ino conclude,
Sir, with speaking an honored, Illustrious and yencrablc name, — hon
ored in all this town and county, illustiious for many generations
throughout the land, venerable for lofty services rendered to Learning,
to the State, and to the Church, — the name of Davioiit.

87
The town of Northampton ; it clasps hands with us across the dividing
waters, thus forming the connecting link between the natural divisions of our
county. Though the palpable connection may be interrupted for a season,
there are less palpable ties that neither time nor force can sunder.
The Rev. Gordon Hall of Northampton, replied as follows : —
I am called upon, it seems, to represent on this occasion the town
of Northampton " clasping hands with Hadley across the dividing
waters." I have sometimes represented the fellowship of Churches
by giving the right hand to a ministerial brother. But to take the
shape of a town, and give a town's right hand to another town, and
that across the Connecticut river, is quite a different affair. This
however, I am pledged to do by the sentiment to which I speak.
" Northampton clasps hands with Hadley across the dividing waters ;"
— and I am to represent Northampton — all its good, respectable peo
ple-— its farmers, merchants, lawyers, physicians, all trades and pro
fessions, and ladies too, I suppose, as well as gentlemen. So, good
friends of Hadley, ptease to understand that I gather the hands of
all these, my town's-people into one great hand, and reach it across
the Connecticut, taking hold of the great hand of Hadley with a
cordial greeting.
I have been thinking whether I could claim any relationship to
Hadley. Occasionally, you know, it is quite an object to make out
relationship. When my Uncle or Cousin becomes wealthy or re
nowned I am quite happy to claim connection with him. To-day the
town of Hadley seems to be in very high repute, riding in her tri
umphal chariot, with a goodly procession for her retinue. We are
all here to glorify Hadley I suppose, or to be glorified on account of
some connection with her. So that we all feel a little Hadleyish,
without doubt. Now I am one of the unfortunate number who can
not succeed in tracing any of my ancestors to this honored place. I
do not find that either of the " Three Brothers "' to whom, of course,
my pedigree reaches back, and who "came over in the Mayflower,"
ever settled in Hadley. But I do not wholly give up the case on this
account. For, by affinity I am related to a man who, some years ago,
married a Hadley lady. And furthermore, I am settled though not
exactly in Hadley, yet next to it ; so I came, as 3'ou see, very near
being a native of Hadley. On these grounds, not to detain you with
farther particulars, I file my claim for a small dividend of the glory
of this illustrious day.
I have no doubt of the good feeling between the towns of Hadley
and Northampton. I do not see the necessity of asserting it. But
it seems to be the way sometimes to tell how much we love one an
other — to make a declaration. So we do protest, and would have it
published to " all whom it may concern " that we are on the most
friendly terms and clasp hands across the river with a right hearty
good-will. In the sentiment by which I am guided allusion is made to the
river as a line of division or separation. But we " clasp hands across

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it." Between us the Connecticut is no unfriendly barrier. Indeed
water is conceded to be one of the very best conductors ; and who
doubts that the pulse beating on either side is felt upon the other ?
W"ho, when referring to the Connecticut valley, thinks of the river
as divorcing one part from the other ? Who does not rather think
of the meadows collectively as one rich carpet or dress, and the river
winding through it, as a thread of beauty ? And the bridge is hke
the clasp of a lady's girdle ; which giving way and disappearing, it
reveals that above and below are only parts of one whole, the unity
of which is more clearly disclosed. In fact, before the failure of this
" palpable connection," we hardly knew how much we loved one an
other, and how intimate were our relations. Northampton found
she could not do without Hadley. Hadley could not do without
Northampton. So, at once, we set a boat plying as a shuttle be
tween us and weaving the bonds of connection still more closely. I
do not believe our merchants were aware before how much they loved
their Hadley customers ; or our lawyers, how much they loved their
Hadley clients ; or our physicians, their Hadley patients. Now that
the bridge has been carried away, and communication made more
difficult, we ascertain how deep, vital, practical was the interest which
survived the crash of material structures.
And this brings me to the concluding feature of my sentiment
which speaks of " ties less palpable and stronger, that neither time
nor force can sunder." Now waiving all pleasantry and trifling,
this language expresses a profound and precious truth. We are
united by the ties of a common Puritan ancestry, and by historic as
sociations in common. In colonial times and in days of peril by the
Red Man, our fathers were one in their privations and struggles.
Our fathers were of one heart in the days of Goffe and Whalley,
w hen the Rev. Mr. Russell of Hadley was so recreant to " the lower
law," and so " confounded Religion and Politics " as to harbor the
Regicides in the ministerial mansion. Our fathers stood together in
the Revolutionary conflict. We are one in a common education, a
common religious faith, a common heritage of principles, interests and
sympathy, one in hope and aim for our country and the world. And
we will continue one in opposition to vice, error and wrong, I think
were it announced in any new settlement, that two immigrants had
arrived, one brought up in Hadley the other in Northampton, the
presumption would be that the two men were much the same in prin
ciples and spirit. The sons of Hadley and of Northampton, wherever
scattered, shall be found on the same side of great vital questions,
doing battle for truth,- righteousness and freedom, for God and
humanity. Yes, there are ties unseen but potent which bind us together.
And if there be a soul here to-day who has aught other feeling than
that of friendship, union and beneficent co-operation, he stands re
buked by yonder generous meadows, which lie together so peacefully
and lovingly. But by a voice higher and more impressive he stands

89
rebuked — ^by that voice which bids us love our neighbors as ourselves ;
and which bids all the friends of truth and righteousness be of one
mind in resisting the leagued forces of evil.
The Orator of thfe Day has compared the valley spread out between
us to the " land of Beulah." I well remember, as I was riding, one
Sabbath morning, across these meadows, and feasting myself with
the prospect which lay stretching out Northward and Southward and
all around me, how forcibly the thought pressed upon my mind, if God
has made a world so lovely for a race of sinners, what will that
"New Earth " be wherein shall dwell righteousness. We will think
of this our beautiful valley as like the land of Beulah. And, God
helping us, we will work together t6 make it like the fair fields of
the Blest — like the Paradise above, in the midst of which is the River,
and on either side the Tree of Life, whose fruit is perennial and
whose leaves ai-e for the healing of the nations.
The early Clergy of New England ; the faithful Pastors of willing Flocks ;
in whose every " crook " there was virtue and strength.
Prof. W. C. Fowler, late of Amherst, now of Connecticut, being
called upon by the President, said : —
Mr. President, the scenes witnessed here to day, and the
word spokeiij have carried my mind two hundred years into the past,
so that I need to pause for it to come back, before I can say anything
appropriate to the present moment.
The clergy to a large extent derive their character from the people
to whom they minister. Good pe6ple are very apt to have good cler
gymen. And who were the first settlers of Hadley? They, at least
a prominent portion of them, came from England first to Massachu
setts, then to Connecticut, and then to Hadley, with minds enlarged
by experience in the mother country and in two colonies, and thus
qualified to lay the foundation of a new settlement. And why did
they emigrate to Hadley ? They came to Hadley under the same im
pulse which brought them first from England, then from Massachu
setts to Connecticut, namely, that strong sense of religious obligation
which was the master passion of their lives.
When the first colony went from Massachusetts to Rhode Island
under the lead of the banished Roger Williams, it was said that they
left Massachusetts because they were too bad to be kept in it. When
the "goodly company" under the lead of Thomas Hooker, "the light
of the western churches," went from Massachusetts to Connecticut,
it was said that they left Massachusetts because they were too good
to stay in it. Whether this antithesis was uttered seriously or jocose
ly, it might with equal propriety be said, that the first settlers of Had
ley returned to Massachusetts, because they were too good to stay in
Connecticut. Thus England was first sifted, and then Massachusetts
was sifted ; and then Connecticut was sifted for the good wheat to be
sown in Hadley. And this good seed was sown upon good ground,
and brought forth seed abundantly after its kind. Cuba tobacco,

90
when sown in the valley of the Connecticut, may degenerate, but not
the people. And why not the people ? Because they placed them
selves from the first under the conservative power of the institutions
of religion. The Rev. Mr. Russell, Governor Webster, Elder Good
win and others sought not political power, for themselves or a party,
not nuggets of gold, but what they deemed a " faith's pure shrine."
Their religious principles were inculcated from the pulpit and trans
mitted to others.
Mr. President, the ministers of Hadley in the first century, or in
the language of the resolution "the early clergy, were faithful pas
tors;" and one reason why Russell, and Chauncey, and Williams.
and your ancestor, Hopkins of the first church, and Atherton, and
my ancestor, Chauncey, and Williams, of the second church, and
Parsons, of the third church, were " faithful pastors," was that they
had each of them, in the language of the resolution, " willing flocks."
The pastor and his flock felt that they were united together for time and
for eternity. The flock instead of diffusing their reward and love up
on a pope and cardinals, and bishops, and rectors and curates, con
centrated them upon the man of their own choice. And the pastor
instead of considering his settlement in one parish as a stepping-stone
to something higher, made up his mind from the first, to live and die
with his people. And when in a mutually confiding spirit he spoke
the truth in love, and "ruled with diligence," there was virtue and
strength in his " crook." But if that crook in the hand of a bishop
should become a crosier, it would lose its virtue and strength.
The early inhabitants of Hadley sought for a desirable locality, and
here they found it. They found it here on these alluvial formations
which contained the elements of fertility stored up by the provident
hand of nature for their use. They found it here in the presence of
the crowned monarch of the mountains. They found it here on the
banks of the noble river which lingers to clasp, in its genial embrace,
those fair meadows before it passes on to the ocean. They found it
here where they could thank God in their daily devotions that the
"lines had fallen to them in pleasant places."
But the early pastors and their flocks were pilgrims on the earth
who were seeking a " better, even a heavenly country." I see them,
like the elders who through faith obtained a good report, moving on
in their pilgrimage in " long procession calm and thoughtful" towards
the city of the great king — I see them like a great cloud of witnesses,
looking down upon us here assembled, in a filial spirit to do them
honor, and saying to us with'parental yearnings, " come up hither."
In response to a call of the President, Judge James B. Colt said :
Mr. President, — It was my good fortune to be among the invited
guests of this occasion. I do not know but I would have come with
out it. I am sure those whom misfortune or forgetfulness prevented
from being present here to-day, have lost much, both of interest and
of instruction, in not being permitted to behold this glorious scene.

91
Many generations are here represented. It is not a Legislature
planning laws for good government; it is not a Congress, pregnant
with great resolution to redress wrongs committed, and to build up a
new nation, but it is a fair and brilliant collection of the descendants
of those pioneers of labor and principle, who subdued the forest, es
tablished Government and Religion, to the end of promoting their
interest and happiness, and that of their posterity. We, their posterity,
raise our voices in commendation of their fidelity and heroism. We
are to-day enjoying the fruits of their glorious labors. Two centuries
have passed away since they first pitched their tents here ; and now,
while I am speaking, in presence of this assemblage, six generations
of .spirits are hovering around us. Behold them — each seeking for its
temporal relation, in myriads, as we see in some old life-breathing
canvas, they wander about us. They do not speak but in influence,
as. spirits only can influence. They guide the heart to renewed de
votion, and make the head clear for renewed conflict. They are our
monitors, our guiding stars, both for this and the life to come. Long
may we live to respect the devotion and heroism of the departed, and
be guided by their counsels.
But I will not trespass upon the province of the able speakers who
have so eloquently discharged the offices of the day. I am but "a. look
er on here in Vienna." Though for many years a resident of a new
home many hundred miles from here, I do feel a deep and an abiding
interest in my father's native town. As I love and revere his memory,
so must 1 cherish the sacred spot where first his eye beheld the glo
rious sun. I must love the old house where he was born, the old
meadows where, in boyhood, "he drove "his "team afield" — the
old spot where the school house stood — the old church — and the old
burying ground, sanctified and made holy by a thousand recollections
of the descendants of those who lie buried there. We cannot forget
John Webster, the magistrate and fifth Governor of Connecticut ; and
the Rev. John Russell, of Wethersfield, who with his band of adven
turers seeking a spot where they could enjoy the rights of conscience,
were the first to pitch their tents in this beautiful valley. We cannot
forget good old deacon Goodwin, who, upon Mount Holyoke fell a
sacrifice to the tomahawk — the wars of king Philip — when two towns
men were killed — the number of Indians slain not known— nor the
fact that the good old ladies of the time thought they were protected by
the guardian Angel, who suddenly appeared in the streets of the town,
among the soldiery " with strange manner and stranger garb." And
who turned out to be in one sense a guardian Angel — for he so mar
shalled the little band of soldiers,, as to make good their resistance to
the savage foe who becoming intimidated, dispersed to the forest and
were not heard of afterwards.
This strange spirit, this guardian angel proved to be no other than
Major General Goffe, a soldier of Cromwell's army — the Regicide,
one of the Judges of King Charles I, and who, fleeing from his pur
suers, had found a hospitable asylum in good old Parson Russell's
house, where it is said he was concealed for some fifteen years, and

92
then went away, no one knew where. We cannot forget all this, nor
the spot where these scenes were enacted, nor would we, if we could.
Mr. President : — Now mark the contrast. Our ancestors not only
planted here, but they scattered their seed upon the waters of civil
ized life. Scarcely a century and a quarter passes, with the fifth gen
eration after the first settlement here, in the then wild wilderness,
when the world beholds a new nation of three millions of free and
independent people, born into life. It is a curious fact that while the
question of recognizing the Independence of the United Colonies, was
before Lord North, or the Marquis of Rockingham's administration,
a sage member of the English Parliament, thought that the question of
recognition a matter of no greaUmportance. There were only about
three millions of people in the whole country, — which was very un
healthy — with a very forbidding coast, and a very high mountain back,
called the Alleghanies; and that from the nature of the poor lands,
high mountain, inhospitable coast, sickly climate, the population,
thought the English Parliamentarian, would never increase in num
ber to be over three or three and a half millions ; not much of a
people to make a nation out of, and never one to become a rival or in
any way formidable to the mother country.
Mr. President: go with me, sir, and stand upon some high peak of
the Alleghany ; let your mind pass over the coming century, and your
eye behold the then condition of the Republic of the United States.
As you face the South, your eye cannot see the Southern line still
moving towards the equator or beyond it. Upon your left, a thousand
cities teem with all the arts and sciences of civilization. And as you
turn to your right, you behold almost as many States, filled with an
enterprising, heroic population. The commerce of the Indies pours
n upon us from the golden gates of the setting sun ; the iron horse
is in mastery, and lights up the night through his fiery nostrils. I speak
not of the printing press, the steam plow, the reaper or the telegraph,
nor the uprising of cities in that great trough of the Continent. The
largest cities of antiquity have been inland cities. The inland com
merce of a'country is ten times as great as the external commerce,
and must necessarily make cities in proportion. Behold, I say, this
coming period, and as you stand upon that high peak, and as you look
upon that glorious scene, raise your voice in praise of such an ances
try as have gone before us, and whom we are proud to venerate, and
thank God, you are an American citizen.
Mr. President, with your permission, sir, I will give as a toast :
The two M's, Massachusetts and Missouri ; their " Union, now and forever,
one and inseparable."

The Connecticut Valley ; always considered staid and immovable, it now
appears that she has all the while been making tracks for Amherst College.
Dr. Hitchcock of Amherst, was called upon to respond to this
toast, but he having left the tent, and no one being found to do honor

93
to the sentiment, the President read the following letter from Judge
S. F. Lyman of Northampton : — Northampton, June 7, 1859.
Hon. E. Hopkins — Dear Sir : — I sincerely regret that official
duty will prevent me from joining in the Hadley Celebration to-mor
row. To show my presence in spirit and reverence for the occasion,
— my sympathy with the living and my respect for the dead, I beg
leave to offer you, as President of the festive board, the following
sentiment :
Professor Hitchcock — Interpreter of our sandstones — dear to our
hearthstones. His triumphant exercise of private judgment on our elder
Scriptures of Rock, vindicates his lineal descent from the puritan pioneers of
New England, who placed truth above tradition, and conscience next to God.
Respectfully Yours, &c.,
,Sam'l F. Lyman.
The Missionary Pastor of Wisconsin : The plant of Christian Civilization,
carried forth by a faithful Hadley Porter, has supplanted the " Green Bay
trees," by the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.
The Rev. Jeremiah Porter of Chicago, formerly of Green Bay,
responded as follows : —
Feeling utterly unworthy the honor intended by the sentiment just
read I am embarrassed in replying to it, and yet I must improve the
opportunity to express my sincere delight in being permitted to meet,
in these intensely interesting circumstances, my fellow townsmen, af
ter an absence at the far west of twenty-eight years.
Though I find not here the fathers that I left in this my native vil
lage, never more beautiful than now, I rejoice to mtet here so many
of their surviving children, so many of our name still dwelling on the
soil purchased by our ancestors two hundred years ago and which
has never passed out of the family ; to meet all the children of my
own father and so many of his brother's children.
The facts in the history of Hadley so admirably presented by the
_ Orator of the day have led me to contrast this good old town with
one of the young towns of the west with which Providence has given
me a peculiar interest, and which is now the home of so many of the
sons and daughters of this place. Having been myself the first from
thi stown to reside there and having witnessed its unexampled growth,
I may be excused for presenting this contrast.
As the Rev. Mr. Russell came with a little church to take posses
sion of this place sold to them by the retiring Indians, so the guiding
hand of God led me to Chicago twenty-six years ago with a company
of United States troops and the nucleus of a church. Twenty-six
years ago this month it was my privilege to organize the First Church
in that place, composed chiefly of New England men. The town, in
cluding the troops of Fort Dearborn, had a population of only three
hundred. During that year, 1833, about five thousand Indians as
sembled at Chicago by proclamation of Governor G. B. Portgr of

94
Michigan to make a treaty for the sale of their lands in Illinois, Wis
consin and Michigan. After weeks of deliberation and over persua
sion, they relinquished four million acres of land for five million west
of the Mississippi, and very reluctantly retired, receiving for a term
of years an annuity of fifty thousand dollars. A tide of people at
once set strongly toward Illinois, and Chicago received the multi
tude as it passed and retained its full proportion, so that now it has
a population, of from one hundred thousand to one hundred and thir
ty thousand. Its one original church of a quarter of a century in age is
surrounded by some sixty Protestant churches and about twenty
Catholic. It affords me peculiar pleasure as this contrast in the growth of this
ancient and venerable town of my fathers' sepulchres and the young
giant of the west, my present home, is so vividly before me ; to say,
that as Old Hadley sent to Chicago its earliest minister, except the
Methodist pioneers, so it has sent many of the daughters of its late
venerable Pastor, the Chaplain of this day, who with their husband,
and brother and others from this quiet valley are now pillars in those
churches, aiding to plant in that great city, whose growth has just
begun, those institutions of learning, humanity and piety that were
so early planted here and have made New England what it is.
While the sons and daughters of Hadley now residing in Chicago
can never forget the sweet valley of their birth may they cherish most
warmly the sentiments of their christian ancestors and leave as pre
cious an inheritance to the city of their adoption.
May I propose as a sentiment the children of our venerable Chap
lain, long the beloved Pastor of this church :
The Poetess of the day and her sister of Chicago.
The adopted citizens of Hadley : For none do we care more earnestly than
our poor.
The Rev. Warren Poor, D. D., of Newark, N. J., responded
in a brief, but happy and feeling manner, and in conclusion gave the
annexed sentiment : —
The adopted sons of Hadley — They will ever rival the homebora children
in the depth of their affection and the strength of their adoption.
The Hadley law givers of the olden time : We recognise among us one of
their profession and descent — a worthy representative of their abilities and
virtues. Hon. John Poster of Auburn, N. Y., replied :
My friends and fellow Townsmen, it affords me sincere pleasure to
meet you here on this most interesting occasion. To commemorate
the exploits of our ancestors, the first settlers of this town, to talk
over and celebrate their eminent virtues, their noble daring, and
their great sufferings in the cause of humanity — of religious and
civil liberty, is a pleasing task to me, and I have no doubt to all as-

95
sembled here. I esteem it a privilege to be with you, and to testify
how much I appreciate the good fortune of being able to say that '
here I was born ; here I enjoyed the invaluable teachings in which
the youth of this town are trained ; and can to-day look back upon
an unbroken line of ancestors who have contributed to the good
name, and have participated in the prosperity of this town from its
very beginning. And although I confess myself to have been among
the number of those who have deserted the family domicil, and spent
our lives in labors elsewhere, making room, it may be, for more
worthy occupants, yet I have come back at short intervals to revisit
the scenes of my youth, and always with deep emotions not easily
to be described. My long residence in another State, now near fifty
years, makes me a stranger to most of you ; yet I meet you here to
day, as one claiming kindred with you, and as one of the sons of
Hadley, entitled to participate in the delightful duty of celebrating
this centennial return of a memorable day. '
Your Committee have called on me to respond to a sentiment,
which has allusion to our ances.tors of the legal profession. To such
of you, my friends, as are familiar with the history of Hadley, this
will readily be understood to be a very limited theme, for with the
exception of my esteemed and venerable friend, now present, — and
he quit the profession so long ago, that I think he would find it
troublesome to remember the time, — I have never known one, nor
heard of one who practiced law here, except an uncle of mine ; and
he after a few years of trial, removed to New Haven more than fifty
years since. No, Mr. President, lawyers will not live where there is
no professional business ; and the people of this town are not of that
class that furnish business for lawyers. If they make contracts, they
make them in good faith, and are careful to express what they mean.
And when they have made them, they have no other thought or de
sign than to fulfil them, in letter and in spirit. The evasions and
subterfuges, that are too often resorted to, and which furnish so fruit
ful a source of business to the profession, are foreign to their thoughts
and condemned by their moral feelings. And in all the two hun
dred years' history of this town, who ever heard of a litigation ensu
ing out of a disputed will. There may have been such, but I have
never heard of them ; nor do I believe there is any tradition of any
such occurrence. How emphatic is such a fact, in establishing the
high moral training that has always prevailed here. What high re
gard and deference to parental wishes it proves. You can ask for
no better reasons than these why we have no account of lawyers,
who have lived and flourished here. Do not understand me as in
any manner depreciating the legal profession. Far from it. The
science of law is a noble science, one I love ; and in the pursuit
of which I have spent many years of labor. Those of the profession
who are thoroughly imbued with its principles, make useful and val
uable citizens, and often become the ornaments of their time. But
still that people that can, without any essential loss, dispense with
their professional services, is surely deserving of some compliment —

96
and such, I believe, to have been the case generally with the people
of this town. If there have been exceptions, they are so' few, as not
to detract from the high honor we would award them in this respect.
But, Mr. President, I will not intrude longer upon your time, and
in conclusion will offer you this sentiment: —
May the expiration of another hundred years find here a people, equally
ready to imitate and celebrate the self-sacrificing, patriotic and worthy exam
ples of the fathers of this town, as are those of the present day.
The Chaplain of the day ; Though past the usual sunset of life, his eye is
not dimmed, neither is the light of his intellect faded.
Dr. Woodbridge briefly replied to the compliment, by expressing
his gratitude to the people for their respectful kindness, and his best
wishes for their temporal and eternal welfare. He spoke of his ad
vanced age, his nearness to the grave, and his hopes to meet those
whom he then addressed, purified from error and sin, before the throne
of God and the Lamb, in heaven.
The following volunteer toast, by Mrs. Thomas F. Plunkett of
Pittsfield, was then offered by the President : —
The memory of William Goodwin ; the man whose well directed public
spirit was the pebble which turned the current of Gov. Edward Hopkins' be
nevolence in this direction, so that, the world over, you cannot go amiss of
the graduates of Hopkins Academy ; nor find the corner where old Hadley
is not known.
The following response was then read by F. Bonney, by request
of the same lady :
" My further mind and will is, that within six months after the decease of
my wife, five hundred pounds be made over to New England, according to
the advice of my loving friends, Major Robert Thompson and Mr. Francis
Willoughby, and conveyed into the hands of the trustees before mentioned,
in further prosecution of the aforesaid public ends, which, in the simplicity of
my heart, are for the upholding and promoting the kingdom of the Lord Jesus
Christ in those parts of the earth." — Extract from the Will of Gov. Edward
Hopkins : about the year 165 7.
Yes, Edward Hopkins : you shall have just praise.
On this most festive of all festal days.
For the wise forethought, and the generous deed
Which, for the " love of Jesus," sowed the seed
Of that fair tree of learning, the old school
That soon or late has had us in its rule ;
Through the broad Union go where'er you wiU,
Hopkins Academy is known there still.
And, ten to one the " first man in the town "
Gained on its classic " stage," his first renown ;
Or in its " classes," his first impulse caught
To wield the silent, mighty power of thought.
We welcome back its graduates to-day.
And proudly point you to the bright array.
Not least among them, he whose eloquence

97
Enchants us all, but dates from " nowhere else,"
Nor he, the bright eyed minstrel of the hour,
Whose numbers charm us by their magic power.
And to our dear " old teachers " here's a health.
Those patient miners of this mental wealth.
First on the list, as first in many a heart
He whose wise labors " gave the school a start "
Long may he live, of that to tell the tale
The white-haired patriarch of the peaceful vale.
The President then read the following volunteer toasts : —
To the memory of those who laid out ihe broad '¦'front street" in Hadley : —
Liberal minded men, who had no small ideas : worthy progenitors of the sons
who have extended the generous hospitalities and hearty welcome of tbe pres
ent occasion to the home-returning children.
The three peculiar jiroducts of Old Hadley: Broom Corn, " School Marms ''
and Ministers' Wives.
The following sentiment was offered by E-x-Governor George N.
Briggs : —
" Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and
their children another generation." Joel I. 3.
John B. Russell of Boston, a lineal descendant, of the sixth gen
eration, from Rev. Mr. Russell of Hadley, sent to the chair the fol
lowing sentiment : —
The Church of Hadley — may it prove as durable as the Rock of Plymouth,
and may the name and noble acts of its venerated founder, like those of the
Pilgrim Fathers, be held in lasting remembrance.
Dr. Smith of Newark, N. J. made a few appropriate remarks and
offered the following : —
Old Hadley, her Sons and Daughters — She can truly say like the Roman
matron, " these are my jewels."
A letter was received from the Hon. A. F. Vinton of Ohio, in re
sponse to an invitation tp be present upon the occasion, of which the
following is an extract : — Washington City, May 28, 1859.
Hon. Erastus Hopkins, Dear Sir :— It was my good fortune to be born
and to have lived from my birth to manhood, within the ancient limits of the
town of Hadley ; and although I have been a dweller in other lands for more
than forty years, still the recollections and fond attachments of those old-fash
ioned and by-gone days, which, in my memory ever cluster around the place

98
of my nativity, have lost, by time and distance, none of their freshness, sin
cerity and warmth. I regret exceedingly that it is not in my power to attend.
My heart and good wishes will be with you. It will be an occasion of rare
interest, and taking the present time as a stand-point, and looking back for
two hundred years, and forward to what, in the benevolence of a wise and
good Providence, we may hope for the future, the orator of the day could not
desire a wider, richer or better theme.
I am, with great respect, very truly yours, A. F. Vinton.
It was now seven o'clock in the evening and therefore necessary
that the exercises should close. Other sentiments had been prepared,
and other voices would no doubt have given utterance to the thoughts
and emotions which seemed to well up spontaneously from full and
overflowing hearts ; but the time for parting had come, and the great
company quietly dispersed, each to seek his own home, and the sphere
of his accustomed effort ; but all apparently well satisfied to have
spent one day in commemorating the virtues of their ancestors and
reviving the friendships of earlier years. It is to be hoped that those
who shall occupy their places, a century hence may deem it proper,
and find it equally satisfactory, to pay a like tribute to the memory
of those who have gone before.

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