by Pat Kennedy and Diane Brenner

At Worthington’s historic Ringville Cemetery – on Friday, September 16, 2016, under a full moon – onlookers gathered to meet some of the resident wraiths, who had awoken from their eternal slumber in a chatty humor. Their words are documented for posterity below.

Ringville Cemetery, on Witt Hill Road close to the Ringville hamlet in southern Worthington, was established in 1866 and gradually expanded to its present three acres. In 2004 the cemetery was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Despite the 1866 establishment of the cemetery, the earliest stones are from the 1810s. These graves were apparently moved from a cemetery in Chesterfield, as our first resurrected speaker explained.

Rosanna Cole Cole Cowing (1766-1818)

Good evening, dear visitors, and welcome to what I sincerely hope is my final final resting place. My name is Rosanna Cole Cole Cowing.

I was born in 1766 at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, over near the Atlantic Ocean coast, where the Coles had been settled since the 1620s. My parents, Samuel and Sarah Cole, desired to take advantage of the unspoiled wilderness out here in the western part of the state, so we came to the newly incorporated town of New Hingham – you know it now as Chesterfield. Several other Coles came as well, among them my cousin Consider, whom I married in 1782 when I was 17. So I became Rosanna Cole Cole. We farmed our 100 acres between Ireland Street and Norwich Lake – one of the first parts of town to be settled. My husband was a blacksmith during the winter months.

Consider and I produced thirteen children. The first babe arrived in 1785 when I was 19, and I had another every year or two until 1809, when I was 43. That’s a lot of birthing, and we weren’t especially lucky. My first namesake, Rosanna, died when she was but seven years old. My second Rosanna didn’t survive infancy. I guess the Lord didn’t intend for me to bear any more Rosannas. In all, five of my children died at birth or in early infancy. As if that wasn’t enough, my son Ansel died when he was 24. He’d been married only two years, and left his widow with a young daughter, Electa. My husband and I were fortunate to see six children survive. Life was mostly a hardship for us women back then.

So many other folks settled this area as part of the Congregregational Church, but the Coles were Baptists. Baptists were an important force in the Bridgewater area. Many were attracted to the teachings of Roger Williams, who preached a different kind of religious freedom – the freedom not to belong to an established church of any kind. We’d had quite enough of that in England, thank you very much. Congregrationalists believed that being baptized as an infant meant you were predestined to be part of the elect. But we Baptists felt strongly that adults should deliberately commit to their faith through adult baptism. Some saw us as heretics and dissenters, which was kind of ironic, given why so many folks came to New England in the first place.

There were Baptists in New Hingham as early as 1760. The meetinghouse I went to was built in 1779 at the corner of Partridge Road and Ireland Street. I don’t think you can see any traces of it anymore. The church was later moved to the center of Chesterfield, where it was easier to get to. Consider was proud to own his own pew which, at the time of his death in 1814, was worth $5.00 – that would be several hundred dollars today. It was filled every Sunday by our children who attended the local school when they weren’t working on the farm or in the blacksmith shop.

We lived here just after King George’s forces surrendered at Yorktown and the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783. None of the Coles hereabouts served in Mr. Washington’s army, but many Cole cousins in Bridgeport did. After the American victory – thanks be to a providential God — the menfolk spent a lot of time discussing whether to ratify the new Constitution. Each town had a vote. The Cole men joined the rest of the folks in Chesterfield and voted yea. We had to learn to say dollars instead of pounds. But of course we still drank tea!

We womenfolk had little time for politicking. Our lives were focused on helping make ends meet. We didn’t really use cash money in those days – what there was changed value too much to count on it. What we couldn’t grow we mostly bought through trade or barter. We never felt isolated, as the community was strong, and a stage coach route ran from Northampton over the bridge down by the Gorge, and along the Post Road to Albany.

Unfortunately my husband Consider was taken to a better life in April 1814, leaving me with two children still at home and $140 in debt, which we met by selling off a lot of our land in Chesterfield and bordering Norwich. It’s very difficult for a woman to run a farm on her own, so in November that same year, at the age of 54, I married the Captain Reuben Cowing, a widower with five children still at home –one just a child of four. I was Reuben’s third wife. After I passed in September 1818 the Captain did not remarry. By then, I had the enjoyment of several grandchildren.

So why am I here in the Ringville Cemetery, when I was buried in the Cole Cemetery off Ireland Street? Well, in 1930 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts took our eternal resting place for a dam project and moved the cemetery over here to Ringville! Can you imagine? One poor soul, Laura Ellis, was left behind, probably because they couldn’t locate any next of kin. Anyway, we Coles are gathered here again, resting peacefully with our Worthington friends and neighbors. As you can see, I have a beautiful stone with unusual decorations, and all our stones have recently been straightened and cleaned by a lovely young woman, Ricky Chick, who lives near where we Coles lived in Chesterfield. Fitting isn’t it?

Besides, we are all related here. My granddaughter Elisa, Consider Jr.’s daughter, married Elkanah Ring. The Rings have that big stone over there in the center. Why don’t you go on over there and meet Elkanah’s sister-in-law, Lucretia? It’s been lovely meeting you all.

Lucretia Clark Ring (1814-1846)

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I am Lucretia Clark Ring. I was born in West Worthington in 1814, the youngest child of Spencer Clark and Hadassah Bardwell. We Clark children – Alonzo, Elvira, Electa and I, Lucretia (great names aren’t they?) – were a right tight bunch of ruffians.

My wise, hard-working father Clark established a tannery, the first successful business in Chester. He sold it and built a new one in West Worthington, on the river. Life on the River Road was harsh weather-wise but very pleasant. We went to the school near the edge of our property and helped out with farm chores and at the tannery. Have you ever smelled a tannery? Such a foul-smelling process!

And then – what were they thinking? – my brother and sisters went off and left me. Alonzo went to Williams College. Elvira married and skedaddled off to Ohio with the good Doctor Boise. It took them more than two weeks to get there. They smartly traveled ahead of the spring floods – if they’d waited it would have taken longer. And sister Electa, that sourpuss, went to teach in New York over by the new Erie Canal.

I spent my time studying and, of course, going to Methodist meeting. I wasn’t very religious, but at meeting I got to socialize. Our preachers were circuit riders so we had a welcome variety of preachings and teachings. I could tell you a lot about our neighbors – well, maybe another time.

I became a teacher, but wasn’t very successful. There were eleven schools in town, and each one hired its teachers anew each year, so we had to compete for the positions. My heart wasn’t really in it. But around here, pretty much all the young women either taught or married. I had plenty of suitors, including that simpering Mr. Stebbins who sidled when he walked. My father knew me well enough to send him packing!

In 1836, at the advanced age of 22, I married Mr. Thomas Ring. I am such a sloth – I barely got the bed quilt I started back in school ready in time. My husband and his brother, Elkanah Jr., made wooden tools, children’s sleds and other items from wood and metal. My parents moved out to Ohio to live with the Boise family, and I, properly married, moved to Ringville.

Was that ever a change! Husband and I lived in Thomas’s parents’ old house along with Elkanah, his wife, and around ten to fourteen workers. I had to work really hard – laundry, cleaning, cooking, washing up, laundry, cleaning, cooking, washing up, and farming a little, and milking and churning butter. Sounds awful but I liked it. Husband and I discussed moving to Ohio to join the others. Thomas even went out to see what it was like, but we decided we were better off on the “Worthington prairie.” Plus the Rings had a good business with ready water. In Ohio, water privileges were hard to come by and very costly. Thomas was a loving husband, and Father Ring was kind. Mother Ring especially liked me – some said better than her own daughter.

Mary, my firstborn, arrived in early 1840. She was a quiet child, slow to talk, and well-behaved, as what child wouldn’t be in such a household? A second babe, George Spencer, arrived barely ten months later. I felt terribly unwell for the few weeks before he came. All I wanted to do was sit, but I managed to stay on my feet and do a little work. His delivery was hard and painful – fifteen hours. George was slow to thrive, and with Mary to care for and a long winter, I was aching and needed rest all the time. Plus the cough just wouldn’t go away. We tried many different remedies, including a trip to Saratoga for the waters. There I was forced to take in four large tumblers of that disgustingly bitter Congress mineral water and take two blue pills every day. Awful! I told people this helped, but all it did was loosen my bowels. Then, of course, I got pregnant again. Lyman was born in the spring of 1845. I never did get to enjoy the spring that year, and was too weak to nurse. As I got even sicker, Lyman and George went to stay with Mrs. Cowing, Thomas’s aunt down the road – a right blessing that was. Lyman, who was six months old, went from 11 pounds to 13½ pounds in less than five weeks. The tough part for me was that they considered Mrs. Cowing their mother.

I grew worse – I had pains everywhere, night sweats and day fevers, and a large abscess on my neck that wouldn’t stay drained and gave me a terrible sore throat. Though I could eat, I got thinner and thinner.

Brother Alonzo had become a doctor, a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons that had just merged with Columbia College. He practiced in New York City and during the summers taught at the medical college in Pittsfield. He was a modern doctor, very well liked and credited with making stethoscopes common in diagnosis. My husband, more and more desperate, turned to him for help, and my brother prescribed the most modern remedy for conditions such as mine: three drops a day of spirits of naptha – you would know it now as paint thinner. I couldn’t take it for more than a few days. It was near the death of me. Actually, I did die about a month later. I had been consumed by consumption – you know it now as tuberculosis. Back then we thought it came from the bad air from the brook over near the factory.

It’s funny – my dear sisters were sad I was dying, but their greatest fear was that I wouldn’t show the proper faith or contrition. They said I was just too blunt. But I am blunt, and never could lie. I loved life too much, and wasn’t happy to face death.

Thomas remarried, moved to Huntington, and lived another 20 years. George, never thrifty, died before reaching thirty. And Mary went to live with Alonzo, who remained a bachelor – married to his work, as they say. Mary took care of him until he died in 1887, then she married his longtime secretary.

Well perhaps you’d like to hear some happier stories. Why not head over there and meet Mr. and Mrs. Conwell? Our Lyman married their daughter, Hattie. They played together as children.

Martin Conwell (1812-1874)

Welcome neighbors, my name is Martin Conwell. I used to live on Ireland Street in the South Worthington village. You’ve probably heard of my son Russell H. Conwell, the famous orator and founder of Temple University – but there wouldn’t have been any Russell without me and my wife Maranda.

Like so many other residents of Worthington, I was born elsewhere – in my case, Maryland in 1812. In 1836, not long after I married my childhood friend Maranda, we bought a farm and some land from John Pomeroy, one of the early pioneers. Before the 1760s Worthington was an unsettled wilderness, and we either carved farms from the woods and stony ground or bought farms from the earliest settlers. I soon discovered that raising sheep and cows was more practical than farming the rocky land or selling eggs. But I never suspected the cotton fabric produced in those huge factory looms over to the east would send our flourishing wool business into a depression. Like so many other people in Worthington, I practiced several trades. I sold wool, meat, and produce as far as Springfield, and worked as a stonemason from time to time. We knew how to make do. My family had meat to eat, and our children dressed warmly and wore fine calf shoes.

I joined my South Worthington neighbors in the Methodist meeting that formed once the Baptists moved their meeting house to West Chesterfield. We met in a small building on the site of what became Russell’s grand academy. We followed the teachings of John Wesley and believed each man and woman has a personal relationship with God. As devout Wesleyans, we raised our children to recognize that no one was simply entitled to salvation – we needed to achieve it through good behavior and good works.

We also believed the enslavement of our fellow humans was an abomination to the Lord and called for the abolition of slavery. The Methodist Episcopal Church was slow to move on this, so in 1843 – the year Russell was born – our Worthington group split off and joined the newly founded Wesleyan-Methodist Connection, where we could advocate for abolition more openly. We Wesleyans also supported equal rights for women as expressed at the Seneca Falls Convention, hosted in 1848 by one of our member chapters.

Around that time we built our own permanent meeting house. Local notables formed a committee, and we bought some land for $45. Rosanna’s son Consider Cole Jr. and I were the main financial contributors. Five years later, on May 18, 1848, the new South Worthington Church was dedicated. We roasted a calf and a sheep in the Reverend Niles’ oven, but there was no room for potatoes, so I built a fire to roast them outside. It was a grand celebration.

As both an abolitionist and a wool merchant, I had a chance to meet the famous John Brown, who tried his hand for a few years as a wool merchant in Springfield. Mr. Brown had gone to school for a spell in Plainfield, and knew the area well enough to visit us at our farm. Russell told stories about our involvement in what you now call the Underground Railroad, but our Russell knew how to embroider a tale. Whatever Russell said, I don’t recollect ever seeing Frederick Douglass here. And Russell’s story of my weekly wagon trips to help slaves escape north was wildly exaggerated. Nonetheless, I did contribute $10 to John Brown’s cause and kept sad vigil on that dark day he was hanged.

Our first child, Charles, was born in 1840. He and Russell were both educated at Wilbraham Academy and then at Yale. Russell later complained that he had to work for his tuition and resented being bullied by the richer students. And when he started to teach here in Worthington, he felt the need to build a grand academy to house his ambitions. But Charles was not a complainer, and he was happy to teach at the little school he had attended in South Worthington. I’m told he was considered the best teacher the district ever had. When the Civil War broke out he enlisted with his brother in the Massachusetts 46^th Volunteer Infantry. He survived the war, and afterwards took work as a surveyor, participating in the survey of the Mississippi Basin. But the war left him with weak lungs, and he died of pneumonia in 1869, leaving his wife Eliza.

Russell was born in 1843, and Maranda here will tell you some more about him. Our daughter, Hattie (named Harriet, after Harriet Beecher Stowe) was born in 1846. She married Lyman Ring, the son of Lucretia and Thomas Ring, and had one child, our granddaughter Flora. After Hattie married, we moved with her five miles down the road to Huntington, where I partnered with Lyman in a dry goods store. Ironically we were selling that cotton that had become so popular.

Our last child, Arthur, was born in 1854 but lived only seven months. That broke my Maranda’s heart. We’re surrounded here by all our children, except Russell, who is buried in Philadelphia near his college.

I died in 1874, but that’s ancient history now. Ah, I guess I’m rambling again. Maranda would like a word – or two.

Maranda Wickham Conwell (1817- 1877)

Well, you’ve met Martin, but I’ll let you know something about me. I’m Maranda Wickham Conwell. It’s “MAh-randa” spelled with an “a” – people usually get it wrong. Don’t you just hate that?

I was born in New York State, married my friend Martin, and settled here in Worthington. I passed away in Somerville, at the home of Russell’s son Leon and his sweet wife, Sarah. I am so proud of Leon. He became the mayor of Somerville, and served a term in the U.S. House of Representatives. But make no mistake, I am happy to be home again in Worthington.

My son Russell made much of his impoverished beginnings, but his was a rich and healthy country life where wealth was not measured in material blessings. As upstanding and prominent Methodists, we valued hard work and supported our church and minister as best we could.

Martin and I were well-educated and cultured people. We took several newspapers to keep up with events of the day, and I loved to read for my own enjoyment as well as my children’s edification. I shared with them the works of Harriet Beecher Stowe and John Greenleaf Whittier’s abolitionist editorials from the New York Tribune.

Let me tell you a little more about Russell. We loved his first wife, Jennie Hayden. He met her at Wilbraham Academy, and they married when she was very young. Russell then served in the Civil War, but didn’t exactly distinguish himself, whatever he said later – he was court-martialed, you know. After the war Russell and Jennie went out to Minnesota, while Russell worked at lawyering. He traveled around the world, writing articles for a Boston newspaper and then lecturing when he returned. Jennie was often left alone and developed an interest in weaving, especially the newly invented Jacquard technique. But like so many women she died too young, at 27. She left behind my dear grandchildren, Nima Harriet and Leon. At that time Russell was living in Somervillle, where he tried unsuccessfully to run for office. Just a year later he remarried Sarah Sanborn, from a wealthy family in Maine. She prompted Russell to follow his divine calling, and he took a position at a Baptist temple in Lexington, Massachusetts. This eventually led his family to Philadelphia, where he established the Baptist Temple and eventually founded the college that became Temple University. Russell accomplished great things, but you can’t believe everything he said, especially about himself. Even as a boy he was a storyteller. God gave him a gift for storytelling, and he used it to great advantage. But his tales got taller every time he told them!

Once he left for the war, he never really returned to Worthington to live. He did come as a summer visitor with his followers, which brought some fame to the town and some money into local pockets. But don’t forget my other children here, the ones who stayed behind. They were good Christians and kindly neighbors.

My own life was a hard one, full of worry and hard work, but blessed all the same. I lost my baby Arthur, as my husband said. In those days we lost so many babies that we were afraid to count them among our children until they were five or six.

We enjoyed living in a tight community of like-minded neighbors in South Worthington, who helped each other whenever there was a need. For a new bride we would weave blankets and linens and construct quilt tops, either pieced or whole cloth. All the women and young ladies would gather, sometimes for two or three days, to quilt the tops onto the batting and a back piece. Occasionally we made a memory quilt for the bride, with each woman contributing an “autographed” square. We also worked together at haying and harvesting season. I wonder, do the ladies of the town still get together to make quilts?

Well, now I’ve had my say. I’ve been very glad to meet you all. Why don’t you head on over to the other end of the cemetery there and meet Johnny Ring. He grew up with my Russell and served with him in that terrible war. He has a lot to tell you.

John Quincy Ring (1843-1864)

Hello friends and neighbors. Gather around the stone here. If I could, I’d have a campfire ready for you.

I am John Quincy Ring, but thanks to my neighbor Russell H. Conwell, I’m better known to history as “Little Johnny Ring.” As you can see, I’m hardly little. I stand tall at five feet and nine-and-a-quarter inches. Perhaps I seemed little to Russell – he was always good at seeing what he wanted to see.

I was born in what was known then as Ringville. Is it still Ringville? Oh, good! I was the oldest son of Ethan Ring from Chesterfield and Fanny Murdock from South Hadley. We were cousins of those grander Rings buried over there, where I’m pointing. From 1851 on, my dad was postmaster at the Ringville post office and he was mighty proud of his work for the U.S. government. In our day there were five post offices in town, and we delivered mail twice each day. My mother was a beautiful, kind and gentle woman, but she took sick with a wasting disease, so I spent time caring for her and my younger brother and sister.

At the South Worthington school I was in the same class as Russell, who was only four months older than me. I had to leave school early, and by age 18 I was a salesman in Westfield. I think I was in the audience when Russell gave his first big speech about the evils of drink at the Methodist Church there. He was always good at speechifying, and ambitious, too, hankering after a college education and more. I was smart too, and good with numbers, but had to work and help look after things at home. Our family were devoted Methodists and I followed my faith as best I could.

After the War with the South started, Russell became a recruiting agent, paid to organize a company out of Hamden County – Company F of the 46th Mass. Volunteers. Russell was always good at bringing in a penny for a good cause. Because he formed the unit, he was of course named its Captain, and his “Mountain Boys” (his name for them) gave him a ceremonial sword to mark the occasion. The 46th didn’t see much action before disbanding, so Russell re-upped and became Captain of Company D of the Massachusetts 2^nd Heavy Artillery, stationed in New Bern, North Carolina.

War fever was raging at that time. I wanted to enlist as soon as I turned 18, but I couldn’t with my mother so sick. I enlisted soon after she died and joined up with Russell and his new company. That was in August, 1863, and by September I had become the Company Clerk. The following January I was promoted to Corporal. But in the fanciful stories Russell told about me, I was too young to enlist and joined him as his dutiful servant, following him into battle like a puppy dog.

I served faithfully until I died on March 13, 1864. Russell claimed I died running across a burning bridge to rescue his sword, but actually I died at Hammond Hospital in Beaufort, North Carolina, from phthisis – you know it now as tuberculosis. My mother had the same disease, and we caught it from breathing the bad air near our house. There are stories of other soldiers running back into the fire at the battle of Newport Barracks to save the wounded, but I didn’t do anything like that. In fact Russell wasn’t even there at the time. He was in jail awaiting trial for leaving camp without permission just before the attack – AWOL I think it’s called now.

That sword was only ceremonial, useless in a battle. But in another version of Russell’s story, I suffered burns from running back to his burning tent and died in his arms. As the story goes, he was a cynic who mocked my avid Bible reading, but then my death revived his religious faith, and he determined he would work twice as hard for God – for both of us. It made such a good story I guess he couldn’t resist.

Not to boast, but Russell owes some of his fame and influence to me. There’s even a statue of me at Temple University, with my right hand resting on that sword and my left hand carrying an enormous Bible. I hear a young girl was the model. And those college professors who put up that statue think they are so smart!

Most of the military hospitals were filthy, and the soldiers taken there went through horrible surgeries or ended up sicker than before. But Hammond Hospital, where I died, was special and different. Hammond was the first hospital designed to help soldiers recuperate in a sanitary environment through rest and kind treatment. It was nicely located on the ocean in an old hotel, though I didn’t get to enjoy it long. I was buried quickly in the cemetery on the hospital grounds. My father made his slow way down to North Carolina and arranged to have my body carried home and buried with my family. I was glad my mother was already here, as I had to wait a long time to join my father, brother and sister – they never got the bad air and, like Russell, lived long, long lives.

I’m glad to be home but regret not seeing the world or having a wife and children. But as with many other Worthington boys, it was not meant to be.

I see we’ve reached the end of tonight’s visits, so speaking for all the resident wraiths, I want to thank you for coming, bid you farewell, and wish you a safe trip home. Be mindful of the roots and stones on your way out.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Pat Kennedy teaches English at Holyoke Community College and is the commissioner for Center Cemetery. She came by her interest in cemetery care and preservation by way of genealogical research. Most of the information about burials in Worthington was not online, so she started producing burial lists with the help of Diane Brenner and Ed Lewis of the Worthington Historical Society. The Worthington Cemetery Commission has undertaken the task of repairing and cleaning stones in our cemeteries and has made significant progress over the last few years, thanks to the generosity of the Rolland Cemetery Fund.

Diane Brenner has lived in Worthington with her spouse, Jan Roby, since 1994 and has been a longtime member of the Worthington Historical Society, serving on its board and as one of its archivists. As someone who loves the mystery and adventure of historical research, she has curated several exhibits and contributed articles and photographs to The Corners. In her spare time she works at her day job as a book indexer: www.dianebrenner.com.

Warm thanks to Madeleine Cahill, Diane Brenner, Sheila Kinney, Christopher Marzec, and Casey Pease for their sterling impersonations of the dead.

Posted September 15, 2018.

by George H. Bresnick

“Now I would ask you in the presence of the living, made solemn by the silence of the dead;- How could you! Oh!…How could you sit there and give uterance [sic] to such expressions as those which fel [sic] from your lips, under such circumstances, and your tongue not cleve [sic] to the roots of your mouth!”

This startling condemnation is contained in a letter dated May 28, 1866, from North Chester, Massachusetts, addressed to Edward L. Higgins, Esq., also of North Chester, and written by Nellie W. Smith, an aggrieved woman who could no longer hold her tongue or stay her hand in the face of an awful prior affront. I discovered the letter in a trove of documents kept in a trunk in the attic of the Old Methodist Episcopal Parsonage in South Worthington, Massachusetts.

Though the letter never specifies what Edward did to warrant this condemnation, the following article investigates the main characters and content in this explosive missive. The original letter is pictured below.

I

Standing on a small hillside cemetery near Kinne Brook Road at the eastern edge of Chester, Massachusetts, in May of 1861, Ellen (Nellie) Wise Smith was shaking to the core from what she had just witnessed. Her neighbor and primary school friend, Edward L. Higgins, had just buried his mother, Phebe, and turning to the nearby grave of Nellie’s recently interred little sister Addie, he uttered a falsehood that wrenched at Nellie’s heart. She could not bring herself to speak of this, and only years later, in May of 1866, did she finally write a letter to Edward, filled with anger and pathos, condemning him for his dastardly words, and beseeching him to repent for his duplicity. “I now commence the important, although unpleasant task of addressing you,” she wrote. “Receive it not as an Instrument of retaliation, but rather, as a subject of contemplation…for I have meditated long & fervently on the efficacy of informing you, in this manner, of your duplicity.”

Indeed five years had passed before Nellie, then 23 years of age, summoned up the courage to address a matter that traumatized her so deeply. Much had transpired in that five-year interim. A bloody war had been fought across the southern and western parts of the country, and virtually every New England family had young men in the War, losing lives and limbs in the pursuit of Union and justice. Edward Higgins was among the enlistees, serving in Company K, Massachusetts 46th Infantry Regiment, from October 1862 to July 1863.

The 46th Regiment Massachusetts Volunteer Militia was raised largely in Hampden and Hampshire Counties in response to President Lincoln’s call for short-term troops in August 1862. Company K was sent to New Bern, North Carolina, along with Company A, which was under the command of Russell H. Conwell of South Worthington. The 46th saw limited action during its assignment, losing 36 men, all but one to disease. Edward spent two weeks in the military hospital at Bern in the spring of 1863, most likely due to disease rather than war wounds. By the summer of 1863 the Regiment was back in Massachusetts, where Edward mustered out on July 29, 1863, at Hampden Park, Springfield.

The Smith and Higgins families lived on nearby farms along Kinney Brook (as it was spelled on an 1870 map) north of Chester Center. Nellie’s father, Amok Clinton Smith, came from a long line of Chester farmers. Her great-great-grandfather Captain Abner Smith emigrated from New Haven to Chester before the Revolutionary War, probably in the 1770s. Her mother, Sarah L. Belden, was also born in Chester and came from similar stock. Amok and Sarah married in 1839 and had a son, Henry, in 1841, two years before Nellie was born. Addie, Mary E., Marshall C., and Jennie followed over the next twenty years.

The setting for the drama in the letter of May 1861 centers on Nellie’s little sister Addie, who died from diphtheria in March 1861 at the age of 12. Just two months later, on May 22, Edward Higgins’ mother Phebe died. His father Barney predeceased her by six years. Both the Higgins and Smith families maintained burial plots in a cemetery off Kinne Brook Road in Littleville, Chester Township.

Nellie’s 1866 letter to Edward recalls the terrible events in the cemetery five years earlier. “How could you! Oh! How could you, sit there, where you were so recently seated beside the remains of that Dear Sister, whom memory made, & still makes, dear to us all;- How could you sit there and give uterance [sic] to such expressions as those that fel [sic] from your lips, under such circumstances, and your tongue not cleve [sic] to the roots of your mouth! …Standing by the grave of her [Edward’s mother], whom we all loved so well, and watching clod, after clod, falling into the narrow house, hiding her forever from mortal view – Then turning from the resting place, of Father,- mother, & Sisters, to speak premeditated falsehoods…” [underlining in original]

The “Dear Sister” is Addie Smith, and during her March burial Edward was seated close to her remains. Now, in May, he was standing next to the coffin of his mother Phebe, who was being buried in the family plot, which also contained his father Barney; his older sister, Martha Maria Higgins, who died at the age of 19 in 1848; and an infant sister, Nancy, who died in 1843. For Nellie, the cemetery was hallowed ground, from which both families would ultimately enter their eternal rewards or punishments. Her sense of shared fate was heightened by the intimacy of the cemetery, which had only 57 graves, of which one quarter belonged to Smith or Higgins family members. A place of transition from the earthly to the heavenly state was no place for “duplicity.”

Why did it take Nellie five years to come forward and confront Edward? Perhaps it was partly her youth at the time of the affront (18 years old) and her gender. Perhaps the intense pressures of the lead-up to the Civil War, followed by the disruptions of the War itself, also figured in. Edward’s having served in the War clearly earned her respect, and perhaps even heightened her concern for him and his eternal fate. She repeatedly affirms that her letter is inspired by concern, not vengeance. “Know, therefore, that I would not cause you that anguish of soul, more bitter than the grave, even, were it in my power;… Nevertheless, I am compelled by the imperative calling of duty, to perform this act. Thinking, perchance, you may yet listen to the exortations [sic] of a friend of former years;- that you may yet reflect on your double-dealings; that you may yet repent, & turn from the error of your ways, ere the star of your honor, sits in blackness of darkness forever.”

II

As an ardent churchgoer, Nellie believed in the salvation of repentant souls. Her family were prominent members of the First Chester Congregational Church. In 1772, her great-great-grandfather Abner Smith and his family held a pew in the front row next to the pulpit, a position reserved by tradition for congregants of the highest “dignity.” Repentance was the only route to salvation for sinners. Nellie ends her accusations thus: “A young man of your years, of your attachments, & your refined sensibilities, which, in your situation, God most generously bestowed upon you: Taking into consideration all these qualities, together with love of Character, which no one doubts, you in common with every true son of America, passes [sic]…to speak premeditated falsehoods, such as no villain would dare to speak, unles [sic] his honor was trampled in the dust, his tongue the avowed instrument of deceit – his heart the abode of universal wicked, while his dark, contaminate, feindis [sic] opperations [sic] were preparing him for an honorable situation, if not a crown in Ston’s [Satan’s?] infernal kingdom. Then, and not till then, let the act be forgotten and forgiven.”

There is a distinctly biblical tone to Nellie’s letter, suggesting inspiration or even borrowing from Bible passages. Consider the underlined in the following segment:

that you may yet repent, & turn from the error of your ways, ere the star of your honor, sits in blackness of darkness forever.

and compare to Jude 1:13 in the King James Bible:

Raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

Another excerpt from the letter:

How could you sit there and give uterance [sic] to such expressions as those that fel [sic] from your lips, under such circumstances, and your tongue not cleve [sic] to the roots of your mouth!

can be compared to Ezekiel 3:2:

And I will make thy tongue cleave to the roof of thy mouth, that thou shalt be dumb, and shalt not be to them a reprover: for they are a rebellious house.

Perhaps the borrowing was not conscious, but simply reflected the vernacular of the day, colored by the Bible’s ever-presence in the people’s daily lives and ministers’ exhortations.

By contrast, another passage in the letter suggests Nellie’s schooling in classic poetry. She writes of Edward observing his mother’s coffin as it was buried in the ground:

watching clod, after clod,
falling into the narrow house, hiding her forever from mortal view.

These lines evoke one of the most famous and revered poems of the English language: Thomas Gray’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard, first published in England in 1771:

Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The Elegy was included among other poems and classical texts in the Sixth McGuffey Reader, part of a series of textbooks widely used by grammar and secondary schools in New England and elsewhere during the 19th Century. It is likely that both Nellie and Edward read the poem in their little Chester schoolhouse. The rural setting of the Kinne Brook cemetery, although not attached to a church, may also have evoked Gray’s country churchyard burial ground for Nellie as she penned her jeremiad.

Another couplet in the Elegy reminds one of the context of this affair:

Some village Hampden, that, with
     dauntless breast,
The little tyrant of his fields withstood.

This reference is to John Hampden (ca. 1595-1643), one of the leading Puritan parliamentarians in England who challenged the authority of King Charles I. He and four other Opposition members of Parliament were unconstitutionally designated for arrest by the King, but the Commons refused to hand them over to the monarch’s henchmen. This was one of the signal acts that led directly to the English Civil War, and ultimately to the trial and execution of Charles I. (Hampden’s cousin Oliver Cromwell became the Lord Protector of England after the overthrow of the monarchy.) Hampden was killed during the English Civil War, and his life so inspired the Puritans of New England that they named a county of Western Massachusetts County after him – and the Town of Chester belongs to Hampden County.

Nellie Smith’s Puritan forbears were among those early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, most of whom migrated from England in the wake of the Puritan upheavals in the 1630s and 1640s. One of those migrants, George Smith, by 1644 had settled in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of a religious splinter group that moved from the Bay Colony up the Connecticut River to establish new communities. George Smith’s great-grandson, Captain Abner Smith, as we saw earlier, left New Haven for Chester, Massachusetts, in the 1770s, and Nellie Smith was a scion of that line.

III

Before writing the letter, Nellie was for a time a factory worker in Chester, where industries in the 1860s included the manufacture of bedsteads and emery grinding wheels, as well as mills for cotton and a carding factory for local wool. At the wool factory Nellie probably met the overseer, Robert Billings, who had moved to Chester with his wife, Hannah Gorton Billings, and their children around 1865 from East Providence, Rhode Island. Presumably Robert was recruited because of his experience in the mills of Rhode Island. Apparently the Billings moved back to the Providence area (Rehoboth, MA) a year or two later. In 1868 Hannah Billings died, leaving Robert a widower with three young children. One year later Robert married Nellie Smith, 12 years his junior, in Rehoboth where the family remained. Robert worked in a nearby factory as a wool carder. Robert and Nellie had no children together.

Robert Billings died in 1910, and Nellie moved back to Hampden County, living with her younger sister, Mary E. Smith, in West Springfield by 1920. Nellie died in South Worthington in 1927, apparently at the home of her youngest sister, Jennie Smith Freeman, who reported Nellie’s death for the town records. Anson and Jennie Freeman lived in what is now the Schrade/James house at 17 Ireland Street behind the Conwell Academy building in South Worthington.

Mary Smith had married Ptolemy Smith (a cousin) of West Chesterfield in 1866, and they lived for many years on what is now Ireland Street in South Worthington. Ptolemy and Mary were active members of the South Worthington Methodist Church, as were Ptolemy’s parents, Lucy Cole Smith and Warham Smith. Ptolemy and Mary had a daughter, Idella, and a son, Howard Clayton. Idella married Wilbur T. Hale, a minister of the Methodist Episcopal New England Conference, in 1896. They lived in many places around Massachusetts, settling finally in West Springfield after Wilbur’s retirement. Wilbur and Idella died in 1955 and 1959, respectively, leaving no immediate heirs. Howard Clayton Smith also moved to West Springfield as a young man, and had two sons: Rexford and Wayne C. Smith. In Idella’s obituary, printed in the Springfield Union newspaper, Wayne C. Smith is listed as executor of her estate. Nellie Smith’s letter must have come into his possession at that time. Wayne C. Smith bought the Old Parsonage in South Worthington from the Trustees of the New England Conference of the Methodist Church in 1960 for $1. In 1968 he sold the old Parsonage to Beatrice Mercer, who kept the letter along with other Smith/Cole family papers in a trunk in her attic. I acquired the papers from a local antique dealer who had recently purchased them from Bea Mercer’s estate.

Edward Higgins remained in Chester and farmed his father Barney’s land. He raised a family of four children, and, as far as we know, led a respectable life. Yet for some reason Nellie kept the letter for the rest of her life, and passed it on to her sister Mary. There is no proof she sent the letter, unless another copy turns up in the possession of Edward’s family. I suspect the letter below is Nellie’s original copy, with corrections and insertions, and from this original she copied a clean draft to send to Edward. In any case, one could imagine she was saving the evidence for some final Day of Judgment. Perhaps Mary felt the same, as did Mary’s daughter, Idella, who also retained the letter. I suspect that by the time it came into the hands of Nellie’s grand-nephew Wayne Smith, it had become part of the family legend, too memory-laden to discard.

The other retained papers in the Smith/Cole trove, aside from legal papers (deeds, wills, and a fire insurance policy), consisted of a Cole family genealogy; a copied treatise entitled The Political Struggle, originally published by Horace Greeley just prior to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln; two 18th-century documents apparently stolen during the Civil War from the courthouse in Union-occupied Stafford, Virginia; and a somewhat bawdy poem, entitled “The character of a young gentleman,” about a man from “Chestertown” who goes on a tryst to Sandersfield, losing his pants in the process. Nothing else in the collection compared in drama and gravity to Nellie’s letter to Edward Higgins.

IV

We will probably never know the content of Nellie’s accusation, nor its veracity. One can only assume that Edward’s “premeditated falsehoods” were directed at either Nellie or her dear departed sister Addie. Did Edward ever respond to the letter, in writing or in person? Given the proximity of their properties, they must have run into each other on occasion. Did Nellie leave Chester to marry Robert Billings a few years after writing the letter in part to escape the discomfort of her surroundings? Did Edward spread rumors about Nellie that could have been grist for the likes of a Hawthorne short story concerning the mores of a small New England town? Any suggested answers – or further research – would be welcome in the comments section below.

Nellie’s gravestone in Ringville Cemetery, Worthington, is shared with three of her siblings: Henry (H. H.), Fitch (who died in infancy), and Adda. Their other siblings Marshall, Mary, and Jennie are also buried at Ringville. Thus Adda and Fitch Smith each have two gravestones: one by Kinne Brook Road in Chester, and another at Ringville Cemetery, where their names remain united with their fiercely protective sister.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

George Bresnick has been researching Worthington history since moving to the village of South Worthington in 1999, and has continued his interest in the area even after relocating to St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2010. During his tenure as Chairman of the Worthington Historical Commission, the South Worthington Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places. As founding director of the H. Stanley Bresnick Foundation, George reconnects material objects of historical significance with people or organizations closely associated with those objects. In recent years he has returned stolen Civil War papers (found in the attic of the former Methodist Parsonage in South Worthington) to the Stafford, Virginia, Courthouse; an 1886 letter (written by a young Yankee steamboat traveler cum patent medicine salesman on Florida’s longest inland waterway) to the Florida Historical Society; and a Boston lady’s diary (1887-1893) to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Posted May 26, 2018.

by Evan Spring

The upcoming celebrations for Worthington’s 250th anniversary may seem a bit extravagant. Festivities will continue five days, from June 29 to July 3, with a pot luck dinner and dance, outdoor music, exhibits, art shows, a parade, fireworks. Are we dreaming too big for a small town? Not if we look back fifty years to the grandest celebration in Worthington’s history: the 1968 bicentennial.

The bicentennial celebrations lasted no less than eight days. (The 1868 centennial event was just a single day.) Planning began two years in advance, with Henry H. Snyder, age 73, as general chairman of the steering committee. Fundraisers included a dance, barbecue, benefit auction, two talent shows, and a fashion show. Renovations to spruce up Town Hall included refinishing the floors and stairs, paneling the town officers’ room on the second floor in mahogany, and installing new furniture, fire exits, fire escapes, and wall-to-wall carpet. Town residents were browbeaten to make their houses presentable. The town never had to appropriate public funds, though most events had admission prices and questions were raised about spending, accounting, and overcharging.

In any case, what was the payoff for all this effort? Let’s take a look, day by day.

 

Saturday, June 29: Anniversary Ball and coronation of the Queen

For the bicentennial’s opening gala, Town Hall was decorated in homage to the Lafayette Inn, the 75-room resort at Worthington Corners that burned down in 1931. A large mirrored ball was suspended from the ceiling. The side lawn held tables under a tent, with plant arrangements in sap buckets to be sold afterwards. Emerson “Emmy” Davis, the caretaker of Town Hall, played the part of innkeeper and asked guests to sign the register. Because of space restrictions, only 150 pairs of tickets were sold, plus a few single tickets. Dress was in period costume or semi formal. A posted notice warned that violators of decency, decorum and upright conduct were liable to be “visited with Stocking, Pillow, Whipping” for crimes including burglary, drunkenness, profaning the Sabbath, disorderliness, singing profane songs, blasphemy, idleness, malicious gossip, or unbecoming carriage in children, servants and apprentices.

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

At 9:30pm the five nominees for Bicentennial Queen, all just graduated from Gateway high school, each made their grand entrance with an escort. They carried nosegays of rosebuds across the stage and took their place on the red carpet. Emcee Chet Dragon detailed their interests and aspirations. A sealed envelope was opened and the Queen was announced. The judges, all from out-of-town to avoid favoritism, had chosen 17-year-old Kristin Majkowski. The runner-ups would serve as her “court” throughout the week.

Sunday, June 30: Church services, art exhibit, flea market, barbecue, game supper

A special commemorative service at the Congregational Church in Worthington Center brought three former pastors back to the fold. An additional service honoring Russell H. Conwell took place later at the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Worthington. An electric organ was brought in, and Conwell’s granddaughter Jane Conwell Tuttle introduced hymns sung by contralto Edith Hathaway and her daughter, soprano Charlotte Hathaway. Many attendees came in historic costume, and ushers took the collection wearing swallow-tail coats.

The art exhibit, antique flea market, and barbecue took place at Sena’s Sales Barn, with 40 local artists exhibiting over 200 paintings. The gate prize was airfare for two to Puerto Rico or the U.S. Virgin Islands. The game supper at the Drummers Club in South Worthington had a disappointing turnout, with only 32 of 100 tickets sold.

Monday, July 1: Conwell School exhibit and Bicentennial Concert

In the afternoon the Conwell School unveiled an exhibit of photographs, arts and crafts of old Worthington, and the evening event was a Bicentennial Concert directed by Robert and Rolande Young Schrade in Sena’s Sales Barn. Later that year the Shrades would inaugurate their renowned summer music festival, Sevenars, in South Worthington’s Methodist Episcopal Church.

Sena’s Sales Barn was used for auctions (and potato storage in winter) but the walls were freshly painted and the acoustics were reportedly good. The evening was hot, but a ceiling fan had been installed. A Steinway grand piano was loaned by Jane Conwell Tuttle, and the Queen and her court served as ushers. The program included works by Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Chopin, Rachmaninoff, Grieg, Edward MacDowell, and Debussy. At the intermission Rolande Young Schrade introduced her new composition The Worthington Bi-centennial March as a sing-along. Proceeds benefited the bicentennial steering committee.

 

Tuesday, July 2: House tour and theatrical presentation, The Quilting Party

A booklet with map was sold for a self-guided tour of 35 Worthington homes of historical and architectural interest. According to a newspaper preview, “many homeowners were reluctant to open their homes for public tours in view of the number of house-breaks here in recent years. None of the houses described in the book will be open and all will be viewed from the road.”

The Quilting Party, staged at Town Hall, was a three-act play written and directed by Eva Fairman, the 82-year-old chairman of the Worthington Historical Society, who also played the lead role of Dinah. The play imagines the backstory of an actual keepsake quilt made in 1917 by members and friends of the Worthington Grange and exhibited at the Conwell School during the bicentennial. Each block in the “autograph” quilt was embroidered with the name of its maker, except for one “mystery block.” In the play, a group of ladies convene in Dinah’s home to complete the quilt in a log cabin pattern. In the climactic scene, the maker of the mystery block is revealed as young Cora Bligh, an actual person. (In 1968 Bligh was living in Los Angeles and could not attend the bicentennial.) Nostalgic musical numbers were worked in, and according to one account, “The highlight of the evening came when Harry Bates, 83 years old, the last member of the old Worthington orchestra that played for so many dances here, sat down at the piano to accompany Jerry Robinson [on] ‘Yes, Sir, She’s My Baby.’”Attendance was standing room only, and afterwards Mrs. Fairman was presented with a bouquet of red roses.

 

Wednesday, July 3: Youth Day and Musical Revue

The children’s parade included the boy scouts, the girl scouts, the 4-H Club, and other youth groups. Children under six dressed as storybook characters, and children six to twelve dressed as historical figures, with prizes in each category.

The Worthington Bicentennial Musical Revue at Town Hall also went by “The Variety Show” or “Appearing Soon at the Casino,” a reference to the Casino dining and dancing hall that burned down in 1931. Pat Nugent and her committee supervised 22 acts, starting with a grand march to Rolande Young Schrade’s aforementioned Worthington Bi-centennial March. Jean Humphrey featured her ballet pupils. Sally Wood directed a minuet by girls in formal gowns. Adults joined in with a “can-can by some of the village matrons” and a “men’s ballet including some of the town’s leading citizens.” Demand for tickets was so intense that a second show was added on short notice.

Thursday, July 4: Beard contest, chicken barbecue, baseball game, fireworks

The beard contest, chicken barbecue, and baseball game were hosted by Worthington’s Rod and Gun club. 500 meals were served. Emmy Davis took home the statuette for best beard, while best trimmed beard went to Laurence L. Mason, longest beard went to Joseph W. Sena, and scantiest beard went to Arthur Q. Smith. For the baseball game, the bearded ones formed a team and handily defeated the clean-shaven.

The fireworks, described by a newspaper as “one of the largest fireworks displays in the history of Western New England,” attracted an estimated 10,000 spectators.

Friday, July 5: Horse draw and two dances

The horse draw (also known as a “horse pull”) took place at “Golden Horse Meadows” (near the Golden Horse restaurant) on Route 112 below Sam Hill Road. The event drew 23 teams from five states, though some teams were mired in soft ground. Generations divided for two dances that evening: an “Old Fashioned Square Dance” at Town Hall, and a “Teen Agers Dance” with rock ’n’ roll at Sena’s Sales Barn.

Saturday, July 6: Grand parade

Attendance at the Grand Parade was estimated by police at 18,000 to 20,000 people – more than 27 times the entire population of Worthington. The parade lasted more than two hours, with around 45 floats, several antique cars, and 17 bands, including the Westover Air Force Band. The route extended from the health center on Old North Road past the Corners to the junction of Route 112 and Radiker Road.

Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Francis Sargent headed the state delegation, which also included Secretary of State John Davoren. Other dignitaries included U.S. Representative Silvio O. Conte and Northampton Mayor Wallace Puchalski. Worthington’s three selectmen and Emmy Davis rode in a shiny black stagecoach pulled by two horses. Many viewers were impressed with the Connecticut governor’s high-stepping horse guard.

Scenes depicted on the floats included a smithy at his forge, women braiding rugs, an auction (Sena’s Sales Barn), a sugar house (Windy Hill Farm), an old schoolhouse, and a church with a marrying parson. Parade-watchers could choose between buffet lunches at the Drummers Club, the Golden Horse restaurant, and the Worthington Golf Club.

According to a newspaper account, “One neighbor of Mrs. Harry W. Mollison reports that the Mollison cows were quite moved by the music of the bands in Saturday’s parade. She tells of how they would kick up their heels and carry their tails high each time a band passed by.”

Sunday, July 7: The shave-off

The bicentennial officially concluded with the Saturday parade, but a Sunday “shave-off” for the beard contestants at the Drummers Club served as the epilogue. John Penn, a barber from Huntington, gave the beards a preliminary clipping, with Brooks Carpenter as timekeeper. Safety razors were furnished by Fred Emerson, and awards for cleanest shave in the shortest time went to Arthur Rolland (first), Ernest Nugent (second), and Albert Nugent Jr. and Courtney Wheeler (tied for third). Meanwhile, the townspeople turned to disassembling bleachers, returning the portable toilets, and picking up litter.

All of this was accomplished fifty years ago, when Worthington’s population was just 658, half what it is today. Surely this year, for Worthington’s 250th anniversary, we can once again rise to the occasion. After all, the next parade will probably have to wait until Worthington’s 2068 Tercentenary. I was born in 1968, and don’t plan to stick around that long.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Evan Spring, a jazz historian and freelance editor serving as WHS president, lives on West Street with his wife Zoë and son Perry. He was an editor of the Annual Review of Jazz Studies and Journal of Jazz Studies, and for 23 years hosted a jazz radio program on WKCR-FM New York. His research focus is the New York jazz scene of 1955 to 1964.

 

Posted March 17, 2018.

The following transcript, from the WHS Annual Meeting of 2014, has been lightly edited for readability, with some contextual information added in brackets. We thank Pat Kerouac and Jared Jordan for their help assembling materials for the accompanying exhibit, which was prepared by WHS board member Diane Brenner.

Diane Brenner: Florence Berry was born in 1892 in Abington, Massachusetts, which is near Plymouth. Her family were shoemakers, they worked in shoe factories. And her mother, of the Moseley family, had been born in Brazil, of all places. I have a suspicion they were missionaries, but I’m not sure. But she went to nursing school at Cooley Dickinson Hospital [in Northampton, MA] by 1917, and then her life morphs into the life of the Health Center. She was in school during World War I and the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, and she became very involved with the Red Cross right after she graduated. In the 1920s she had a number of jobs, but her main commitment was to the Red Cross.

After the war, in 1922, the Red Cross set up rural health programs. Their mission of taking care of the war-wounded had wound down, and they rededicated themselves to providing services in underserved areas, including our area, the Hilltowns. They set up a rural nursing service, with one nurse serving Cummington, Goshen, Plainfield, Chesterfield, and Worthington. Actual practice extended to Peru and Ashfield as well.

And the job of that one nurse was – everything. She traveled around, she provided help with prenatal care, postnatal care, deliveries. There were doctors in every town, and she would assist the doctors. She would educate people on home care, chronic illness. She would help people who were dying. Nurses received a small stipend, but often were paid in produce or other forms of barter. No one nurse lasted more than two years at this job. Florence was the tenth nurse, and she also lasted two years. She came in 1930, and she soon recognized this was really an impossible task. And in 1932 she convinced the town of Worthington to get out of the Red Cross nurse service and hire her as the town and school nurse for a stipend of $500 per year.

The town nurse was also the school nurse. But there wasn’t one school, there were five. Lyceum Hall was the big school, with two classes in it, and it was the only school with running water and electricity. Florence served as town nurse for twenty years basically, and she hooked up with somebody named Dr. Mary Snook. Dr. Modestow, did you know Dr. Mary Snook?

 
 

Dr. Modestow: Yes.

Diane Brenner: She sounds like quite an important and interesting person. She was the town doctor for Chesterfield-Worthington. She lived first in Chesterfield, then in 1943 she and her family moved into the Rice house here on the corner [1 Old Post Road], and she was Worthington’s doctor. She and Florence Bates were kind of a partnership. They worked very well together, they admired each other, and they essentially provided the medical and nursing care for the town.

Mary Snook was also the first female medical examiner for Hampshire County in 1932. In 1948 she left to work with the Northampton Hospital – the mental hospital – leaving Worthington without a doctor [for the first time since its incorporation in 1768]. And that was the impetus for the founding of what was called, at that time, the Worthington Health Association. That was established in 1950, and Florence was the spearhead for that. There was a town meeting, and the need for a doctor was brought up. The town said, “Well, we can’t authorize this at town meeting,” so they set up a committee. And that committee basically established the Worthington Health Association, which was located in the Lyceum Hall.

They took over a former classroom and fitted it through as doctors’ offices, and they had arrangements with a doctor to come up from Northampton from time to time. But most importantly, there were two principal ideas behind the new Health Center. One was that everybody would be served, no matter what their ability to pay was. And the second idea was to attract young doctors, dentists and practitioners to the area by providing the overhead, paying the administrative costs, and providing an office and equipment – because this was not an easy place to bring doctors to.

That model kind of worked for a while, though there was quite a bit of turnover. They renovated Lyceum Hall, but by 1964 it had outgrown its capacity. The idea was to expand into the second floor, but this was too expensive, and the building was falling down. Then an opportunity arose, courtesy of the McCann family. The McCanns owned The Worthington Inn [27 Old North Road], which was called Elmsted at the time, and huge amounts of land. They donated the land as well as money, and in 1964 construction started on a building that opened in 1966. And that became the Worthington Health Center. The McCanns also donated land and money for The Maples [48 Old North Road].

As the program expanded, the original conception started to fray. Membership around that time was $2.50 per person, and even with the goal of a thousand members, the operating costs mounted.

Arlo Guthrie gave a fundraising concert in 1975, and that was an important source of income, but donations and memberships were not sustaining the Center. So they had to go back on their promise to the doctors and dentists, and asked them to contribute to the operations at the rate of $1 per patient visit. There was some agreement to that, and some reluctance. But again, it wasn’t enough. Florence Bates was very much against any kind of state, federal, or other outside money – she felt extremely strongly that the people had an obligation to pay for their services. But the people paid the doctors, and the doctors kept the money, and the Health Center maintenance was mostly based on outside contributions. And this just wasn’t sustainable as time went on.

Eventually various people quit, various people were hired, the board fell apart. There was an “insurrection” with lots of drama, where new people in town basically ousted some older board members by packing the annual meeting [of the WHA]. Pete Packard was the President of the Board at that time, and he was ousted by a vote that he felt was unfair. He went to court to stop the new board members from being placed, and in the end he partly won his court case.

By 1978 the original concept had changed significantly. There was an application to the HEW – The U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, now Health and Human Services – for a grant to fund operations and expand. The grant was received, which required the hiring of an administrator and extensive financial changes.

Dr. Modestow resigned around that time. He had come to the Health Center in 1957, so he remains the longest-serving provider (doctor or dentist) at the Health Center, I believe – administrative people have served there much longer. But the real goal here is to hear from Dr. Modestow, and to hear everyone’s reminiscences of both Florence Bates and the Health Center. So, I will turn it over to you. [applause.]

Dr. Modestow: It’s very true what she was talking about. In the army there’s a saying that the generals are the head of the army, and the colonels run the army. It’s the same thing here. The Worthington Health Association was the spearhead, but Mrs. Bates was the colonel. She was always there promoting the whole health concept which you discussed – the basic health of the school, the children, individuals. That was her goal, and it was instilled into her at an early time.

She was educated at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital, and at that time nurses were trained 12 hours on, 12 hours off. First they had to wash the floors of the entrance to the hospital, then they had to do the regular duty in taking care of patients and their bedding, the regular nursing things. But it was 12 hours straight.

She said we had to wash those floors every day, because that’s the entranceway where people walk through. There couldn’t be anything out of order. These days we have people that are specialized. They just wash the floors of those patients. Other ones specialize in caring for the patient rooms. Then you have assistant nurses taking care of patients. And then the nurses have secretaries, they don’t have to do the charts. Back then Mrs. Bates did everything, and when she came here, she did the same thing at the Health Center. When I got there she did all the sterilizations, all the cleaning of instruments.

At that time the needles were reused and had to be sharpened and cleaned in the autoclave. Now you would never reuse a needle. They’re thrown away, and addicts are out there ready to grab one because they like to have a good, clean needle that’s not dull. And sharpening a needle is rough. Us oldsters remember getting shots with big needles, because they didn’t know how to make real fine needles. I had some blood drawn the other day, and gee, you could hardly see the needle. They reach in, they draw your blood, and there’s nothing to it. But they used to use a 20-gauge needle. You had to give shots that way, and I had to give novocaine that way. The instruments were sterilized, and you had to use it for the next patient after it’s sterilized. Now you’d never do that.

Things used to be wrapped in cloths and put in the sterilizer. I remember we had the sterilizing area in the Lyceum building – sort of like the old kitchen or something. I would go back there and she was doing gloves. Gloves were reused, so they had to be washed and sterilized. Then you had to put talc on them so that you could put them on, because rubber when it’s washed becomes very sticky, and you couldn’t get your hands into it. So this she had to do in that back room, which I’d visit occasionally. When I was working we were in different rooms, so we missed a lot of being able to get to know each other.

She would throw nothing away, so you can imagine how she would see the oncoming of disposable gloves. [Someone would want to] throw used gloves away, and she’s there, “I could reuse that.” [laughter] Medicine just kept progressing, and she did change. Anything that’s better sterilized, better working and such, she was in favor of. So Mrs. Bates was just a wonder woman. All these things, like doing the gauze – you’d make gauzes and sterilize them, and have them ready for the doctors. Then the examining table had cloth and everything. Now, when’s the last time you were on the examining table with your doctor? You’re sitting on paper; you don’t have cloth. She would make the appointments, too, for the doctors. One day I answered the phone and a patient said, “Is this Florence?” I said, “No, this is Worthington.” [laughter] And then she hung up on me. I said, “I blew that one.”

I remember one night – I had evening hours on certain days of the week, and I was working late. It got to be nine o’clock or so, and a person came in, a real gruffy guy, and all my patients had left, I was the only one in the room. So I got nervous, I said, “Gee, I don’t know, this guy could rob me or kill me or something.” I’m not usually that way, but some people just strike you that way. Well I saw what he wanted, and actually I treated him and he left. Well, the next morning, Harry Bates, who was Florence’s husband, comes smiling at me and he says, “Look what I found in the wastebasket. It’s a wallet, and it’s yours.” I had done that that night, and I had forgotten and went home. I’d thought, “Gee, if this guy’s gonna rob me, he’s not gonna get this,” so I threw it in the wastebasket. [laughter]

Another year there was this hot book going on down in the Valley, and everyone wanted a copy of it, and nobody could get one. So one of the people in town knew some book dealer and he got a copy of this book, and he brings it up to the library. And Arthur Capen perused it, and Florence Bates. They were on the library committee, and they decided this book is too risqué. They took it off the shelf and put it in the back room. So I’m wondering if anybody ever sees that book, on the flyleaf, to see who it was that donated Lolita to the library. [laughter]

Pat Kennedy: I’ve got a question. Why did you decide to come to Worthington?

Dr. Modestow: Well, in my senior year of dental training, the Korean conflict was in full force, and there was a question of whether China would enter in. So with that in mind, the United States starts building up its Armed Forces, and they put in a doctor/dentist draft. So in February, I decided – I don’t know why – I joined the Navy. In June, the end of all my training, I have to go down to Boston Navy Yard and got my physical, and they swore me in, and I was in the Navy. And I said, “Fine. What do I do now?” They say, “Well, we’ll call you when we need you.”

What had happened was, the Korean conflict ended, and all of a sudden they didn’t want extra dentists. And I’m out there hanging in the summer, and I said, “Well, I got nothing to do. I better start checking out what I can do.” And I found an ad in the dental journal that the Worthington Health Association would like a full-time dentist, and that’s how I came. I gave them the parameter that I wouldn’t be able to commit to a lifetime or anything, because I was on call. But it didn’t come, the Korean conflict ended. Well, it didn’t really end, because I guess they’re still fighting, in a way. [laughter] Do you have any other questions?

Janine Modestow: Just to clarify, for my own children and grandchildren – so you worked in the Lyceum Hall for how many years?

Dr. Modestow: ’Til the new building was built.

Janine Modestow: That was seven years?

Diane Brenner: Well, ’57 to ’66 actually. Late ’65 to early ’66 is when it became operational. So, almost ten years.

Dr. Modestow: The thing is that there was some stability. In other words, I think Worthington got into my skin, and I really didn’t want to leave without a cause. And as such, having some stability, I think people came forth, and built the new Health Center.

Diane Brenner: Dr. Modestow represented some of the most stability. And Florence Bates. The two of you were probably the most stable forces for many years. And that was always the goal, to find a resident physician, a resident dentist, people who would live in the community if they were given the tools they needed to live here, and could practice without the costs associated with running a practice.

Dr. Modestow: Yeah. Before I came there were a few dentists that worked here. One was a retired dentist from Greenwich, Connecticut, who had retired to Worthington – Dr. Stone. And he did children. But when you get old, you don’t relish working on kids. [laughter] He did it as a duty, so that’s why he says to the Selectmen, “I’ll keep doing this, but I don’t want to.”

Kate Ewald: Did you see any major changes in the art of dentistry, through the time that you worked here in Worthington?

Dr. Modestow: Yes. I’ve been retired for about six years, I think, and I feel right now that I couldn’t go back. It’s changing consistently. I just saw an ad in the Sunday paper that says, “See your dentist for Botox.” [laughter] I’m like, “What the hell?” This has come along since then.

Diane Brenner: When you were practicing here, did you have the kind of equipment you needed?

Dr. Modestow: At the time I started, yes. But when the new Health Center was built, I got all up-to-date equipment in there. Because at the time I started, high speed was the important thing. And to get high speed, you still had belt-driven. Now nothing’s belt-driven – everything is these small hand pieces with things that twirl. It was the development of ball bearings – these minute, small ball bearings – that allowed these high speeds to work. They were just coming in when I was first starting.

The Lyceum building wasn’t the most attractive. I had an office where I could work on a patient, reach the phone, the automatic answering machine. Everything was within reach, I didn’t have to move. That was the only office I had at that time. So moving up to the Health Center, I had two chairs plus a hygienist’s chair, and a laboratory and a personal office. So it was nice moving into what the Worthington Health Association provided. One of my personal patients had a decorator come in and do my office, but that’s beside the point. The community is what grabbed me, and I stayed until – I don’t want to be dumping on the federal government coming in, but that produced a whole different way of financing and such, and it was just something I couldn’t take.

Julia Sharron: I have memories of Mrs. Bates, who was our neighbor. She and her husband were just wonderful people. And Mrs. Bates reminded me of Florence Nightingale, because she was always dressed perfectly in a white dress, and she had her apron. Her hair was grey, and it was always in a pug. She always, always had a smile, and was very pleasant. And if I was visiting with her outside as we walked by, people would come, and they would have a rash or something, and she would tell them what it was, what to do. If they had, say, a headache or something, she would take care of them, she was always that way. And she would be so wonderful to my girls, because at that time, girls got dressed up with high heels and hats and all that. I would allow my girls to walk to the library and back home. She would get on the phone, and she said, “Julie, your girls went by, and I’m so excited.” She was just such a wonderful person, and you could disturb her any time of the day or night if you had a medical problem. I thought that was so marvelous of her, and she never, never complained.

Diane Brenner: I had a very hard time, Julie, finding a photograph of Florence not in uniform. There’s one that I found of her with Harry, shortly after they were married, in a dress. She married Harry in 1936 – she was 44, he was 51 at the time, and it was a second marriage for him. But in almost every photograph she’s dressed in her nurse’s uniform. Part of how she supported herself – she was paid for all of these services Dr. Modestow was talking about, but basically a pittance – was by providing a home for people who needed extra care, and often who were dying. When she first moved to town as a Red Cross nurse, she rented the WBS [Women’s Benevolent Society] parsonage across from the church. So both at the parsonage, and then continuing at her house with Harry Bates [11 Buffington Hill Road], she continued to provide long-term nursing services.

Janine Modestow: I remember she used to send Dad home with banana bread every year. I think it was probably Christmas. I also remember riding my bike up to the Health Center, and Dad’s office was around the back. That’s the way I entered because I got special privileges. What you see as the Health Center now, his offices were at the far right-hand side, and had a door out the back. There was that long walk down the hall to the waiting room, and in the waiting room were – I feel stupid telling this, but remember those blocks? After they were used by the Health Center they were used by play group, and after they were used by play group they went over to R. H. Conwell – the same orange and brown blocks made of cardboard. And that thing you rolled marbles down. ’Cause as a kid that’s all you think about, how good were the toys in the waiting room. I used to love going to the dentist. I would get welcomed in, everybody would be nice, I’d be treated well. Sometimes, when I got to be a teenager, I’d say, “Can I have some money?” [laughter]

[unidentified]: I remember the drills. [laughter]

Ed Lewis: I just remember Dr. Hutchinson had that great big wheel. The big wheel would spin through a gear drive, drilling away screams, it hurt so much.

Dr. Modestow: One of my friends got drafted, and they sent him to Korea, and they sent him to the front lines where there was no electricity. He had one of those big spinning wheels that you had to keep running. You had a drill attached to it, and you could work on a patient on the front lines. But I don’t advise that. [laughter]

Diane Brenner: Electricity came to Worthington in 1928, but before that there was a traveling dentist, and I have a picture of the kind of chair that was used. It was like a sewing machine treadle. It was steam-powered, that was what got the drill moving. So the arrival of electricity meant a great deal.

Suzanne Kulik: I wanted to share a different memory of the Health Center, from my first years here in the late ’70s. We had a family planning clinic then, on Thursday nights, a walk-in clinic. George Scarmon, who had hair down to here, was the doctor. Peter Siersma, who also had hair down to here, was the lab tech. And I volunteered there. Women came from miles around – not just Worthington’s people, because it was a place where, on a sliding fee scale, you could get birth control. And my greatest contribution to it – you talked about the cloth on the tables being replaced with paper? Well, we wanted to make flannel gowns to use instead of the paper ones. So I met with the Coffee Hour, which had a small treasury, and supported worthy causes, for money to buy the flannel. And I bought all this beautiful printed flannel and made flannel gowns. And this motley collection of young women would be lined up in the hallway of the Health Center, waiting their turn, wearing my flannel gowns. Bonnie Rhodes was the nurse, and she would take the gowns home and wash them from week to week. Well of course we carried them in a black plastic trash bag, and eventually the day came when her husband just assumed it was a bag full of…[laughter]…and we lost the whole bag.

Diane Brenner: That family planning thing was actually one of the programs already in existence that allowed the Health Center to get that HEW grant. It was to run these kinds of extra services, special services. There was also a weight-loss clinic. (The family planning clinic, by the way, was defunded in the ’80s under Reagan.) Dr. Scarmon seems to have been quite a person. And the whole organization really changed a lot – well, it was the ‘70s, and it reflected that. That was the period of the so-called “insurrection,” which was framed as newcomers versus old-timers in town. You were one of the newcomers.

Suzanne Kulik: Right, but I opposed the insurrection.

Diane Brenner: There was a conceptual change, too, where people saw the Health Center as having not just traditional nursing and medical care and dentistry, but also a larger function in the community.

Suzanne Kulik: And in the ’60s the community health centers were conceived of as being more than just doctors. And so it does seem like the newcomers really did change it to be more like what the conception of community health centers were nationally. It made sense, then, that we had the grant, because we had become what community health centers were meant to be.

Diane Brenner: The Worthington Health Association was always an independent, nonprofit, incorporated group. It gradually got board members, much like it is now, with members from communities served. It was barely funded by the town. The town at one point voted a grant of $3,500. That was a big deal for a town that previously never provided town funding. Chesterfield and Cummington both added $2,000. This was during the crisis, the place was going bankrupt. And the town did that for one more year, I think. But then although they agreed to the concept of supporting it financially, I don’t believe it received any town funding. And it hasn’t for a very long time. So it was never the “Town of Worthington Health Center.” It was the Worthington Health Association’s Worthington Health Center. And then part of this HEW grant was intended to explore expansion, and because of that, the Huntington Health Center –ultimately, though not immediately – became possible.

Janine Modestow: About the Arlo Guthrie [benefit] concert, how much did that help?

Diane Brenner: It made $18,000. At the time, 1975, that was a fair amount. They had predicted something like 30,000 people, and they would make $30,000. But there were only 6,000 to 8,000 people, and after all the police and whatever, the net was $18,000, which was substantial and really got them out of a hole.

Janine Modestow: I just remembered the concert, and it was a big deal, as a very sheltered, small-town girl. I was all of 13 years old, and I remember being exposed to a lot of things I shouldn’t have seen – a lot of free love going on. [laughter] I remember my mother avidly turning me in other directions as we’re walking by. Luckily we were very close to the stage, because a lot more was happening out back that I probably shouldn’t have seen.

Diane Brenner: Guthrie’s group were apparently users of the Health Center at that time, which is one of the reasons it happened.

[unidentified]: He [Arlo] was also friends with George Scarmon. I was going to say, when you were talking about the budgets, that they operated under Dot Cole. Some of you will remember her as a long-time nurse at the Health Center. I remember her telling me that when she wanted to take time off to have a vacation, she had to pay that person herself.

Diane Brenner: There’s very little actually written by Florence – no diaries, no letters, nothing like that. But there are some pieces of writing in the newspapers. And one thing that seemed to really upset her – besides the fact that people used the Center and didn’t pay their membership dues – was that the providers didn’t give of themselves. As Doctor Modestow said, a twelve-hour day was a short one for her. And as Julie said, she’d be going that extra mile, not keeping hours, doing half of this enormous amount of work essentially as a volunteer. Keeping all the books, running the Health Center, making sure everything was sterile, all of that stuff. That was part of the job. And as time went on, other people did not see it that way, and that was very hard for her.

_________

Florence Bates officially resigned from the Health Center on July 1, 1969. Harry Bates died in May, 1971, at the age of 86. Florence died of “respiratory insufficiency/pneumonia” on July 18, 1978, at the age of 86, after a long illness, possibly chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She is buried in the Bates family plot at North Cemetery.

The following is from “Florence Berry Bates, An Appreciation,” by Carl S. Joslyn, published in Stone Walls 3/2 (1977); the quote read by Florence is from the novel Hempfield, by David Grayson, serialized in American Magazine in 1915, when Florence was 23 and had just entered nursing school:

“Several years ago, Florence read to me a favorite quotation of hers and asked me if I knew who wrote it…I did not…it struck me as something that might have been written by Florence herself…

Posted August 29, 2017.

 

By Diane Brenner (with contributions by Pat Kennedy and Mark Clinton)

 

A previous version of the following exhibit was mounted at the Worthington Historical Society building in June 2015 to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. The exhibit was accompanied by a presentation by David Pollard on Worthington’s hero at Gettysburg, Brigadier General James Clay Rice. (Pollard’s presentation is not yet online.)

 

This exhibit is divided into the following eight sections:
1. The Election of 1860
2. The Draft
3. The 27th Mass. Volunteer Infantry Regiment
4. The 46th Mass. Volunteer Infantry Regiment
5. The 2nd Regiment Mass. Volunteer Heavy Artillery
6. Letters Home
7. The Home Front
8. The True Story of Russell H. Conwell and John Quincy Ring

 

THE ELECTION OF 1860

The Republican ticket of Abraham Lincoln and running mate Hannibal Hamlin won overwhelmingly in Worthington, along with John A. Andrews, Republican candidate for Governor. John Bell and Edward Everett of the new Constitutional Union Party came in a distant second. Stephen Douglas, the Northern Democrat, got only two votes.

Before Lincoln was inaugurated, seven Southern states seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy, sparking the Civil War.

THE DRAFT

 

Draft age men from Worthington exempted for disability, with age and occupations:

Bates, Graham E. (26, farmer) deaf (partially)
Crosier, Reuben (37, farmer) missing finger, right hand
Cole, Henry A. (38, physician) hernia
Coy, Erastus C. (32, physician) epilepsy
Drake, Edward B. (33, mechanic) lost 3 fingers of left hand
Drake, Martin A. (35, farmer) right eye sight nearly gone
Geer, Austin (42, farmer) hernia
Hatch, Fordyce (42, mechanic) insane pauper
Hewitt, Cyprian P. (40, farmer) deficient teeth
Ladd, Alfred E. (27, farmer) consumption of lungs
Miller, Ira (43, farmer) broken ankle
Mayhew, Leyman (42, farmer) bad leg
Pease, James M. (25, mechanic) bad leg
Robinson, Calvin C. (27, mechanic) right eye gone
Sanderson, William D. (21, postmaster) asthma
Smith, Charles 2nd (25, mechanic) asthma
Stone, Sumner W. (34, farmer) bad teeth
Thayer, George (27, farmer) bad leg, stiff knee
Thayer, Cephas (40, farmer) deficient height
Thrasher, Charles (36, farmer) hernia
Tower, Henry E. (31, basket maker) deficient everywhere
Weeks, John M. (36, mechanic) bad leg

Draftees from Worthington exempted or opted out, with age and occupation:

Allen, Walter F. (44, farmer)
Bartlett, Calvin (22, farmer)
Bosworth, Lorenzo (28, clergyman) exempted
Cole, John S. (32, farmer) paid $300
Drake, William W.(32, farmer) exempted
Drake, Henry A. (29, farmer) exempted
Gleason, Solomon (38, farmer) exempted
Granger, Abraham W. (28, farmer) exempted
Knapp, Fordyce M., Jr. (26, farmer) paid $300
Leonard, David M. (22, farmer) exempted
Porter, Edward (43, deputy sheriff)
furn’shd subst.
Porter, Levi P. age (27, farmer) paid $300
Perry, A. Dwight (37, farmer) paid $300
Sanderson, Franklin A. (20, farmer) exempted
Thayer, Alfred M.. (28, farmer) exempted
Tower, Russell (38, farmer) furn’shd substitute

THE 27th MASS. VOLUNTEER INFANTRY REGIMENT

In late August of 1861, Governor Andrew asked Horace C. Lee, Springfield’s City Clerk, to form a new regiment. Lee recruited throughout the four western counties to form the 27th Mass, which began training in September at Camp Reed, about a mile from the armory in Springfield. It was the second Western Massachusetts regiment to form.

On November 2, 1861, the 27th left Springfield to join the Burnside Expedition in Annapolis, Maryland. As reported in the Republican of that date, “Baggage wagons snaked through the camp laden with tons of supplies, including hundreds of items ranging from blankets, pillows and bandages, to pin cushions, lemons and jars of pickles.” The newspaper verbosely thanked the local citizenry for donations to the regiment, including a “pot of preserved ginger” from a Mrs. Wasson. Nine hundred men traveled by train to Annapolis, where several died from measles. (For a sense of life there, see James Thayer’s letter from Annapolis in the Letters Home portion of the exhibit below.) In January 1862 the 27th Mass traveled by boat to North Carolina, and some of the men met with violent storms.

The 27th Mass spent much of the war in North Carolina, avoiding some of the major battles in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, but fighting in many smaller skirmishes and battles, including Roanoke Island, New Bern, and the Goldsboro and Gum Swamp expeditions. They faced their greatest trial at Drewry’s Bluff in May of 1864. Surrounded by Confederate soldiers in a dense fog, they were forced to surrender, and roughly 250 men were taken prisoner, including Horace C. Lee. Two of the regimental flags were also captured, a significant blow to morale. Lee and some other officers were eventually exchanged and returned to duty, but many of the men were taken to Andersonville Prison in Georgia. Fewer than half of them survived the prison’s notoriously inhuman conditions. In the four weeks ending June 3, the regiment suffered 488 casualties, 62 of them killed or mortally wounded. Additional casualties followed throughout August.

In September, 179 men whose term of service had expired were sent home to Massachusetts. The rest of the regiment was returned to North Carolina where, early in March, 1865, the regiment was surrounded by Confederate troops near Kinston. Seven were killed, forty wounded, and the remaining 200-plus were captured and taken to Libby Prison in Richmond, Virginia, and soon paroled and sent home. A fragment of the regiment still performed guard duty at New Bern until June 26, 1865, when it was mustered out and sent home. The survivors reached Readville, MA, on July 7, and on July 19 they were paid off and discharged. Of the members of this regiment who were taken prisoner, mostly at Drewry’s Bluff and Southwest Creek, 142 died in Confederate prisons.

In May of 1880, a veteran of the regiment visited Washington, D.C. and discovered, in a government building storing war relics, the regimental flags taken at Drewry’s Bluff. He reported the find to the 27th Mass Regimental Association officers, who were able to reclaim the flags with help from their congressman. The flags were received by Horace Lee at a celebration at Springfield’s Opera House on September 22, 1881 and given to the city’s library for safe keeping.

by Pat Kennedy and Diane Brenner

On the evening of Saturday, August 29th, 2015, as the full moon rose, dozens of onlookers strolled through Worthington’s North Cemetery and encountered six of its permanent residents standing by their graves. These dead Worthingtonians were in a talkative mood, and their memorable words are chronicled here below.

North Cemetery, on Cold Street near its eastern junction with Rte. 143, is Worthington’s largest cemetery at 3.5 acres. In 2004 it was listed on the National Register of HIstoric Places. Its date of establishment is uncertain, though its earliest grave marker dates to 1790. Three of the cemetery’s four sides are lined with stone walls, and the eastern breaks in the wall are marked by four-foot-high granite posts, suggesting that gates were formerly mounted on them. Remnants of a vault for storing caskets in winter – when the frozen ground made burials impossible – can be found in the southeast corner.

North Cemetery has over 700 markers, mostly of granite or marble. One of these markers – broken in half, unfortunately – belongs to a prominent Worthington citizen, Samuel Buffington, who took a break from his eternal rest to tell us his story.

Samuel Buffington (1752 – March 17, 1830)

Good evening, fellow citizens, and welcome to my cemetery! Well, it’s not really mine, but I am one of its earliest and most prominent residents. I’m sure you’ve all heard of me, Major Samuel Buffington, Esquire. Surely my many achievements have left a mark on the little hamlet of Worthington, including the magnificent home I built, Buffington Place, at the top of what the town named Buffington Hill Road, undoubtedly in commemoration!

My Federal style home was built in 1806 on 120 acres of land that I purchased from Alexander Miller, the tavern owner, for 400 pounds sterling as a favor to help him get out of debt. Although it was really beneath me, I ran the tavern for a while. I already owned several large Worthington properties that I purchased when I first arrived in the 1780s.

Two houses similar to mine were built at the same time, but neither has the superior aspect and healthy hilltop location of my home. Both are down the hill at the Corners, and stand across the road from each other. One belongs to Judge Jonathan Woodbridge, and the other to William Rice, a mere trader. Some said they were competing with me. But my house remains a beautiful and elegant testament to my wisdom and good taste. That Woodbridge house shouldn’t be worth more than a shilling by now, and the Rice house probably crumbled into dust long ago!

I have to apologize for the condition of my headstone. “How the mighty have fallen!” That’s 2 Samuel 1:25, in case some of you are not so familiar with the Bible. So many other stones, even those for the lesser devoted, are standing tall. But the stone for poor Lucy and me has been allowed to break up and fall to the ground! I have to wonder who’s in charge of things now?

My Lucy was a good, obedient wife. She was the daughter of John Parlin and came from Cummington. As I said, we arrived in Worthington in the 1780s to take up farming. When her father died, she received her portion of his Cummington estate. Of course her property became mine because the law does not permit married women to own property independently. It’s only fitting and proper that the husband take charge of worldly affairs while women remain at home, working as the helpmeets they were ordained to be. I used that farm to breed fine Gordon horses. One of my best was a bay horse called Bay Richmond. He earned me a tidy sum with stud fees.

I regularly loaned money to neighbors less well off than myself, to help them make investments or pay taxes. I already mentioned Alexander Miller, but there were many others. Although Mr. Miller and I both expressed loyalty to King George, I saw which way the winds were blowing and became a lieutenant in a Massachusetts regiment. I acquitted myself honorably, receiving a pension for my service.

In 1787 I was called out again – along with my friend, Elisha Brewster – to aid General Shepard as he put down the insurrection known as Shays’ Rebellion. On Shepard’s order, I confronted Daniel Shays at the arsenal in Springfield. I can still remember what happened that day. Shays advanced with his sword drawn in his left hand, his pistol in his right, and familiarly asked me, “How are you Buffington?” I replied, “You see I am here in defense of that country you are endeavoring to destroy.” He rejoined, “Well if you are, we are both defending the same cause.” I assured him my men would successfully defend the arsenal against him, and of course I was right. Later, as befitting someone with my military background, I had the honor of watching General Lafayette pass directly by my house when he arrived in Worthington in 1825.

In 1797 I became part owner of the Third Turnpike, which ran from Northampton to Pittsfield. The roads were impassable at those times of year we lovingly call the “mud season,” and without private investors to maintain roads, all commerce would have ground to a halt. The turnpike had many tollgates, including one right by my property. Ridge Road in those days was an extension of West Street, one of the major thoroughfares in the town.

I was named a Justice of the Peace, which meant I served as a local judge, a position that afforded me much power and authority. Mostly I adjudicated petty neighborhood squabbles involving property boundaries or money. Some thought of me as haughty or arrogant, but I always tried to maintain the righteous demeanor appropriate to a wise and wealthy man such as myself.

My wife and I had only one grown child. Laura purportedly “fell in love” – as if that matters – with a young upstart named Gideon Lee, and had the temerity to marry against my wishes. Lee made his living as a tanner and shoemaker at the Clark factory in West Worthington. I threatened to cut her off without a shilling and told her never to darken my door again! It’s true that after they moved to New York State, Lee became quite prosperous as a leather merchant and eventually was elected Mayor of New York City as well as a representative in Congress. But Laura disobeyed me and that cannot be undone. Eventually she named her youngest child after me, probably a sign of her remorse. Grudgingly, without other heirs, I left my entire estate to Samuel Buffington Lee. My namesake grandson must have taken his rightful place in my impressive house, where his descendants must live today.

 

Horace S. Cole I (June 10, 1799, Chesterfield, MA – October 9, 1887)

Welcome, dear neighbors! How kind of you to visit me. I am Horace Cole – the first! Did you notice that our family memorial is unique, constructed of zinc? I’ve always enjoyed trying new things, and this is guaranteed to last more than a lifetime! You’d see other zinc memorials, but the only company that made them was forced out of business by the stone cutters!

I’m joined here by my first and second wives and many of my children. I married Sarah King from Brooklyn, New York, in 1820 and she eventually birthed eleven children. Sadly, all but one died before adulthood. The only survivor was Samuel, born in 1835; his twin, Isaac, died at birth. Sarah and I had 37 years together, but the poor woman was worn out by all that birthing and died in 1857. I had to marry again – a man alone cannot run a household and manage a business. My second wife was John Kinne’s widow, Maria. We had 16 good years together but she did not bear me any children. She died in 1873. While some might say a man of 75 is too old to need a wife, I then married Almina Hall Gunn of Pittsfield, also a widow. She chose to be buried near her first husband.

I was born in Chesterfield in 1799, and in 1815 I left home to seek my fortune in New York City. To this day I’m not sure how I made it there. I was only 16, and I walked the whole way along with some neighbors. I got to work building stone walls and the dock at the new Brooklyn Ferry. A year of that was enough for me, so I returned to Chesterfield. But farm work didn’t suit me either, so I walked back to New York, expecting to work grading roads. When I discovered that the company that hired me had failed, I couldn’t decide whether to stay or return home again. I determined to let the cane I carried decide. I dropped it. If it had fallen towards home, I would have started walking there. But it fell towards New York, so I stayed and got a job with a leather merchant in the Lower East Side. I was good at this, and honest, so I was rapidly promoted from a laborer earning $1 a day to a salesman earning twice that much. I was able to buy some skins, and then a horse and a dray, and set myself up as a leather trader. I managed to make a small fortune, and married Sarah during this time.

In 1828, fearing I was losing my health, I turned toward home and bought a large farm on Ireland Street. We had 30 dairy cows and sheared upwards of 1,600 sheep a year. I also traded wool for the Northampton Woolen Company. But I was a restless type, so in 1845 I bought the general store that Hiram Bagg operated at the Corners. Bagg had just been declared an “insolvent debtor,” so I only had to pay $495 for the store along with his house and barn. Sarah and I moved into Bagg’s house. The store also housed the post office at Worthington Corners, and I served as postmaster. (Worthington had six post offices at that time.) In 1867, my son Samuel joined with me as a partner, and we renamed the store “H. Cole & Son.” In 1875 he took it over completely. The building burned down in 1859, but I rebuilt it in the fine Greek Revival style you can still admire.

In 1855, I invested $20,000 to build a boot and shoe factory up on Buffington Hill, employing over 50 men. I also had a contract with the House of Corrections in Northampton to employ inmates. I built several large houses on the Post Road (now Old Post Road) to shelter all these workers. That worked out pretty well, especially during the War, but I eventually sold the business. For a spell I owned the pen factory down in South Worthington, plus I bought and sold real estate. I liked to keep myself busy.

In 1875, at the age of 77, I had some time on my hands and decided to build a cheese factory that came to be known as “The Spruces.” It could handle milk from upwards of 150 cows. The Magargals came to own it. I also tried my hand at tobacco, but it didn’t grow well in the clay that passes for soil here in Worthington.

One thing people don’t know about me is that I became a very accomplished wrestler, able to carry very heavy weights. Three times each year, on “training day,” I hosted and refereed matches between men from Worthington and Chesterfield. Training day is when the men gather to practice in case a militia is called up. We would train in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon. I’ve learned through experience that I can always do more than I think I’m capable of. My son Samuel might look slight, but he too is very strong. As a young man he could lift a barrel of sugar, weighing near 300 pounds, up onto a counter. I was always proud of Samuel and prouder still that he named one of his fine sons after me.

Among my other achievements, I was instrumental in getting our district #1 school, Lyceum Hall, built right next to my shoe factory so that the children would have a warm and spacious room for studying. And since I had a little extra time, I got elected a selectman. I served in both Chesterfield and Worthington, though not at the same time!

I am particularly proud of my role in building the fine, white Methodist Society Meetinghouse in South Worthington. I had joined the Methodist congregation after my return to Chesterfield in 1828. In 1848 I helped organize the building effort and contributed $100 to get things going. Then in 1865 I was among the voters who argued that the Congregational Church should be funded by members of that congregation, not by all the Worthington taxpayers regardless of religious affiliation. Deacon LaFayette Stevens, who is standing over there, surprisingly joined me in that opinion. And through our efforts, separation of church and state finally came to our town – admittedly a little late. In Chesterfield that happened in 1828.

I died of dropsy at the age of 87. I’d had a long and interesting life for a self-taught man. I believe my success was due to a willingness to fully engage in everything I did and to try new things. I guess few people here remember what I looked like, but at least these zinc gravestones will stand as a reminder of me and my family for a long, long time to come.

Lafayette Stevens (November 30, 1824 – December 24, 1895)

Well, well, well, what a fine crowd! My, how our town of Worthington must have grown from its small population of 1,134 souls in 1850! And look! Over there the cemetery is expanding, so I’m sure the town is now bustling with farms, mills and factories!

I’m Lafayette Stevens, born here in 1824. My parents arrived in 1811. I was the youngest of seven. My father built the Aaron Stevens and Sons saw mill and hoop factory on Stevens Brook, near the border with Chesterfield. My brothers and I helped him run these operations. Besides sawing wood, we made drum, tambourine, and embroidery hoops. The work was monotonous and exacting, and we could only work during daylight hours, but it was a successful business. When the mill burnt down in 1837, we rebuilt a larger one. But that burned down too when stoves were left unattended. Of course we rebuilt again. We also had to rebuild those dams we needed for power every time they washed out, which was not infrequently. Eventually my brothers Aaron and Nathan bought the family mill and operated it for another 37 years.

In 1845, when I was 21, my father deeded me the family homestead across from the mill, with the understanding – written down in a mortgage – that I would care for my parents in their old age. That I have faithfully done. I lifted the original house and added a first floor to make a very respectable Federal-style home. It’s in Stevensville, of course, and still standing.

By 1857 I was in business for myself, and I built a grist and flour mill adjacent to our original mill, just across the Chesterfield line, for grinding corn, wheat, and buckwheat. Eventually I turned it into a woodworking mill, where we made embroidery hoops, drumsticks, and mousetraps, all necessary items in a farm house – well maybe not the drumsticks! We produced and shipped out these items by the thousands each year. We also made picker sticks for cleaning out the grooves in mill stones, and tree taps for maple sugaring. Every household with a maple tree needed those. We were pretty self-sufficient in Worthington back then, with many of our needs provided by local businesses such as ours.

I’ve kept a diary almost every day of my life, so people often ask me about the weather. I remember once in 1873 there was five feet of snow in April on top of the gravestones. When Mrs. Burton died, we had to draw her body by hand from the Corners to the tomb here in North Cemetery. The most terrible thing I ever saw, though, was when that dam collapsed in June of 1874 down in Williamsburg. The reservoir behind it gave way, and the Mill River flooded all the way down to Northampton. About 200 people were carried away by the torrent and drowned. I went down there with a lot of other folks to look at the awful destruction and it was hard to believe! Worthington’s Mr. Brewster was Hampshire County Commissioner and an overseer when that dam was built; it was rumored that he and the other commissioners allowed the builders to cut some corners.

I was a faithful congregant in the Congregational Church and was made a deacon in 1870, collecting taxes and helping to organize the Sabbath School in 1872. The worst fire I remember was when our church burned in 1887. A stove had been left unattended. Nothing was saved but the big Bible and the hymn book. The Sunday after the fire, the reverend was away and it fell to me to deliver a sermon. I chose for my text Isaiah 64:11: ”Our big and beautiful house where our fathers praised Thee is burned up with fire, and all our pleasant things are laid to waste.” Luckily we had some insurance and started rebuilding right away.

I was fortunate in my family life. In 1846, aged 22, I married Laura Packard from Cummington. We had six fine children, three boys and three girls. Only dear Ella died, when she was only four. We all worked hard and got ahead in the world. Of course we didn’t have much cash – country people like to barter goods and work. Laura knits mittens to trade for calico fabric.

I always took a keen interest in affairs of the day. I was strongly opposed to slavery, attended abolitionist meetings, and always voted Republican. I once heard Henry Ward Beecher speak in New Haven. In 1863 I registered for the draft, but luckily I never got called to serve. Not that I wouldn’t have been glad to go, but by then I was 38, and I had a family and a thriving business, and millers were considered important to the well-being of the town.

In 1874 I was elected as a state representative from Worthington. While in Boston, taking the oath of office, I shook hands with President Ulysses S. Grant. And he wasn’t the only famous man I’ve had the pleasure to meet. When just a babe of seven months, I was introduced to General Lafayette as he made his tour from Albany to Boston to lay the cornerstone for the Bunker Hill Monument. My father held me up and the General declared me “a promising child”!

By 1883 I was one of the four richest men in Worthington. I paid $190 in taxes. Our tax rate was $28 per $1000 valuation of our property. It would have been only $16, but the state stopped supporting the schools and forced the towns to take over. My son Alfred and his son, Eugene, eventually took over the mill work. The youngest, Flora, stayed at home to take care of the old folks, so she inherited the house the same way I did.

 

 

I kept up my diary until a week before I passed at the age of 71. I had a stroke and Laura had to take over, since I could no longer write. She kept it up till her death two years later. Alfred also kept a diary, and he lived to be 87. And so did Flora. So between us Stevenses we covered a lot of years in Worthington. You can read our diaries at the Historical Society if you’d care to.

In 1980 a student at Tufts read my diaries and concluded that I was the perfect example of the rural nineteenth-century New England male: an honest family man and a hard-working Christian. I wonder who will be interested in what I’ve written, and whether the good people of Worthington will continue to honor the Stevens of Stevensville?

Anna Huyck Stone (May 27, 1849 – June 18, 1929)

Hello, everyone. I am Anna Huyck Stone. Everyone calls me Annie. I’m not used to speaking like this in public, so let me know if you can’t hear me. Actually, I’m not sure why I was invited tonight. You’d think that standing here I’d be someone important, but I’d bet none of you ever heard my name before. I did suffer a lot in my life, but I survived my 81 years thanks to lots of hard work and the help of my family. Well in truth, the family didn’t help all that much.

I was born Anna Elizabeth Mattoon in 1848 in Canaan, New York, the eighth child of William Mattoon and Margaret Short. My father was a carpenter and a mean man. We youngest children learned to stick together to protect ourselves. We all had to go to work when we were very young. The next oldest, my brother John, was sent to a farm in Connecticut when he was thirteen to help out three maiden ladies. They treated him nice, but as soon as the war to save the Union started, he joined up – he was full of war fever and foolishness. We weren’t abolitionists or Republicans. We were Union Democrats and determined to save the Union, even if it meant the folks down South got to keep their slaves. John joined the 21st New York Cavalry and loved soldiering so much he went out west to help fight the Indians in Colorado.

At the age of 14 I was sent to serve at a house in Pittsfield, and the work was hard. I wrote John about how my back was always feeling sore, and how unwell I was. John wrote back, mostly about soldiering, but at least he wrote. I was rescued by my married older sister Charlotte, who brought me to her home in Chatham, New York, to help care for her growing family. I liked helping her out but wish she had listed me as her sister, not her servant, when they came to take the census in 1870.

No matter, by 1877 I was 28 and had married Edwin Huyck from Stockbridge. He was six years older, a carpenter like my father, and we had a small farm in Springfield. Well I can’t exactly swear we were married legally, but we lived like we were. I was Mrs. Huyck and nobody cared one way or another. I enjoyed the farm life and things were looking better for me, especially after my daughter Jennie was born in 1881. Ruby followed four years later.

Springfield was too expensive, so Edwin and I looked for someplace cheaper. In 1889 we bought a nice little farm from Howard Bartlett, right up the road here on Cole Street (now Cold Street), where it connects with the Ridge Road – a house, barn, and 83 acres for $1,600. I owned it in my own name. Edwin was never very good at managing money. Jennie and Ruby went to school down at Lyceum Hall. Things were going pretty well.

Then at the age of 54, Edwin hanged himself in the barn, right in the middle of a beautiful June morning. I’d always worried about his dark spells. There was a big article about it in the 1897 Springfield Republican, which you can go read for yourself. I can’t bear thinking about it. At least they didn’t have to bring him far to be buried – he’s lying right here near where I’m standing.

So there I was, 49 years old, a widow with a bad back and two school-age children. By auctioning off the land and all the farm animals and tools, we were able to hold on to the house. As you can imagine, our life was pretty hard.

But life keeps changing, and soon my Jennie, almost 18, married Arthur Witherell from South Worthington. He was 23 and a good man with industrious, hardworking parents. Jennie and Arthur settled down on Ireland Street. And a few months after Jennie married, I remarried. My new husband was Sumner Stone, of the wealthy Stone family of Worthington. He’d had two wives before me, but I didn’t care. I had to provide for my Ruby, didn’t I? Sumner was 70 years old and rapidly turning into an invalid from what they called a “creeping paralysis,” but I had promised to take care of him and I keep my promises. Ruby and I moved into Sumner’s house in Worthington Center. I sold the Cole Street farm for $1,000 and gladly shut that door behind me!

In August 1900 Jennie’s son, Harold, was born – my first grandson. Two years later my first granddaughter, Frances, arrived. Unfortunately she was Ruby’s daughter. Ruby was barely 17, and only 16 when I had to give her permission to marry George Vebbers, a ne’er-do-well who lived down the road. Of course he couldn’t support a wife and daughter, so young Frances ended up living with me while George and Ruby moved around trying to find work. Sumner died four years after we married, so there I was, a widow again at 56, with a bad back and an infant to care for!

By 1909 I could no longer afford to live in Sumner’s house, so I sold it to Mr. William Granger for $1,400. Frances and I were forced to move into a rented apartment. We called them tenements. I was miserable. Luckily I could share my misery with my sister Charlotte, who saved the postcard I wrote her in March 1910.

But things do change. And two months later I was able to buy a house on Basket Street in Huntington. Ruby, George and Frances moved in with me. Jennie was happy raising her four children over on Ireland Street and working for that Reverend Mr. Conwell during his summer visits.

In 1914 Ruby’s husband George finally found steady work at the quarry in Becket. But a week after he started, he fell 80 feet off the ledge – crushed his skull and died instantly. No one was very sad. And pretty soon Ruby remarried Ernest Burke, a solid Canadian who worked building bridges in Huntington.

Frances at age 17 married Milton Agard, also a construction worker, and they had a son right away. So there were six of us in the Basket Street house together. Sadly Milton died untimely too – he was crushed during the demolition of the gym at Williams College. By then I was a great-grandmother twice over.

My own death was a quick one. I’d gone for a drive with Ruby and Ernest in their motor car. It was another lovely summer day. We were passing through North Chester when I felt the need for a drink of water. So we stopped at the store, and when they got back to the car I was dead. Heart attack! To bury me, they had to carry me a lot further than Edwin here, but I’ve never minded a bit of trouble. At least my back doesn’t hurt anymore!

 

Katharine McDowell Rice (1859 – 1945)

Ah! Just a moment, my friends, let me finish writing this down. I’ve heard so many good stories today! Welcome everyone, welcome. For those of you who don’t already know me, I am Katharine McDowell Rice. I am a playwright. During my 86 years I wrote many plays, mostly in the comedic vein.

I was well ahead of my time. There were very few women playwrights. And I was also a careful businesswoman. I never gave away the rights to my plays, but charged royalties or fees – always reasonable – depending on how the play was being used. I kept careful track of every inquiry and payment, every manuscript sent out, every response I wrote back. Any profits I donated to a worthy cause. It is my belief that women can excel in anything if determined enough and given a chance.

Have any of you seen my plays? “Dr. Hardhack’s Prescription”? No? “Mrs. Bagg’s Bargain Day?” No? “Uncle Joe’s Jewel?” How disappointing. Well, maybe you will someday. My plays were called “farces.” They were always well received by the audience as well as the press. We produced many at Lyceum Hall, and I either acted in them or directed. My younger sister Susan, always the helpmeet, often served as stage manager. Opening nights in Worthington were gala events, attracting people from near and far, all dressed in their finest.

I could attract such a glittering audience because, simply put, I was a “Rice.” We were a distinguished family. My grandfather William A. Rice Sr. arrived here in 1806 and married Miss Wealthy Cottrell. They had twelve children. The house they built at the Worthington Corners was kitty-corner from the Pearce Tavern, Mr. Cole’s store, and the Woodbridge House. When my sister Susan and I lived there, it was the oldest house in Worthington still occupied by its original family. My grandfather, a trader who served in the War of 1812, headed the delegation when General Lafayette visited Worthington in 1825. The town celebrated the centennial of that event in 1925 with much fanfare, and you can still read my interesting article about it.

Many of my relatives moved to Albany. You’ve probably heard about my uncle James Clay Rice, who acted with such humble bravery at Gettysburg and later died of wounds received at Spotsylvania Courthouse. My father, William A. Rice Jr., attended Worthington’s Mountain Seminary and later became a successful druggist in Albany, where I was born. My mother was Hannah Seeley. We were four children: me, then Susan, then William Gorham and finally Josephine. We three girls attended Mme. Charlouis’ Select School in Albany. That was the extent of our formal education. Most women didn’t go to college, though we did get to travel.

We summered in Worthington and then moved her permanently when my father retired in 1883. My dear father was a cultured man who loved literature and could quote Shakespeare extensively. He helped found the Worthington Library, and in 1888 he served on the building committee for the new Congregational Church, influencing its elegant European design. He learned French at the age of 60 and helped me become a woman of fashionable good taste, as you can tell from my elegant clothing.

I was a late bloomer. I was 36 when my first book, Stories For All the Year, was published by Harpers in 1895. For a while I tried to develop a career writing children’s stories. Luckily I was financially independent, so in 1898, seeking new inspiration, I embarked on a year-long trip to Europe. That voyage started dramatically when the ship caught fire and had to return to New York. Those of us in first class were only a little distressed, but those below were inundated by smoke. I returned from Europe the following year invigorated and ready to commit to my true love – the theatre.

Susan and I happily shared a home in Worthington that we called “The Maples,” and I never saw the need to marry. Luckily Susan – buried right here by me – was very sociable and we were never lonely there. She was an excellent cook, and also wrote and edited stories and verses for children. She was quite religious, and we often hosted guests of all ages from her many mission projects.

I became very involved with the Worthington Library, serving as its librarian for two decades until Mr. Capen took over in 1926. The library had outgrown its location in Lyceum Hall. We formed a corporation to erect a new building and I served on the board. I had quite a fight with my neighbor Dwight Stone, over at the Woodbridge House, about who would donate the land for the building and which way the door would face. Of course the Rices won out, and the new library building, dedicated at a very gala event in 1915, now faces the Rice Homestead.

During those years I wrote upwards of 20 plays, nearly all of which were produced, some in Boston! My “Guilty O’Trespass” played four times daily at the Bijou Theatre in 1912. I always made sure to include strong and clever women characters. When I was 50 I determined to study with professor George Baker, who taught dramatic literature and theatre at Harvard and Radcliffe College. He was a renowned supporter of the modern theater and writers like W. B. Yeats, and a mentor for female dramatists. I was admitted to Radcliffe in 1909 as a special student, graduating in 1912. So I got to attend college after all, and an excellent one at that.

The Great War and the Spanish flu epidemic proved a dark time for the theater; many stood empty. And I had other concerns as well. In 1915 I helped found the Boston branch of the Women’s Peace Party, working to bring an end to the Great War through direct action. Jane Addams of Chicago’s Hull House headed the organization. We were among the first to use public demonstrations to get our points across. I later created the Worthington League of Nations group and continued to actively work for world peace. I was a supporter of prohibition and proud to register and vote as a Democrat.

After the war there was little demand for my style of playwriting – people wanted longer, more serious plays. Instead I wrote articles for the newspapers and focused on distributing my comedies. Schools and dramatic societies continued to find them appealing and excellent for fundraising events. I returned to Europe several times and worked on the parsonage project of the Women’s Benevolent Society. And of course Susan and I kept up our busy social life.

Susan died in 1937 and I felt her loss keenly. I continued to live in our Worthington home, but it was unheated and hard to maintain. After a few years I agreed to move to a nursing facility in Altamont, New York. I died in December 1945, the first born and the last to go. But time means nothing to us and I flourish here, reveling in the endless comedy of the afterlife. I applaud you for joining me.

 

Eurma Eddy Tower (June 12, 1900 – June 10, 1990)

Good evening, friends! How nice of you to visit with me here on this lovely evening in this beautiful place! I’m Eurma Vashtie Eddy Tower, and I’m happy to lie here next to my dear husband, Walter. It says Walter on the stone there, but everyone knew him as ”Walt.” We married in the summer of 1918, when I was 18, at the Congregational Church right in the middle of town. My Walt is descended from Samuel Tower who first came to Worthington in 1781. Samuel served in Captain Cushing’s company during the Revolutionary War, and his son, Samuel, Jr., was among the first Towers to be counted in a Worthington census in 1798. Walter’s family continued in Worthington for many generations. I was born and raised in West Chesterfield, but was happy to live my whole married life here in Worthington. I know I will never be a native, but I do feel like one.

Our home was built in 1777 by Jeremiah Prouty. It was passed down from William Tower to Walt’s father, Henry, until it was Walt’s and my turn. The house is just down the road on the left going toward Williamsburg. It’s a dark red color and hasn’t changed much. What did change was the road, which used to pass on the other side of the house, so what you see now from the road is actually the back side of the house. Sometimes I miss the slow, curvy dirt road we had before – except, of course, during mud season.

My husband and I were famous for our maple sugar business. The Tower family has sugared on our 100-acre farm for more than 130 years, and Walt and I kept it going for sixty of them. He was proud to use wooden buckets, taps and other tools made by his father. Wooden buckets keep the sap cooler, and cool sap doesn’t grow as much bacteria, so it makes a better syrup. In the early days we used horses and oxen to get back into the sugar bush, though eventually it was cheaper and easier to use a tractor. Don’t have to raise the hay to feed a tractor.

In the years before lumbering got so big around here, everybody had a maple sugar bush and tapped a few trees for their own use. Our syrup and sugar was especially good for spreading on toast or waffles or just putting in your coffee. Many people stopped to buy it or sample the sap as it boiled. During boiling season the school kids would come and help collect sap, which had to be collected three or four times a day and immediately boiled so it wouldn’t go bad. Many of them spent their school vacations here helping out. They loved to gather eggs and then hard-boil them in the hot sap. Sometimes we had ”sugar in the snow,” where the kids would drip hot syrup on clean snow and make maple candy. And the Grange hosted an annual sugar eat at the Town Hall, where the syrup was served on shaved ice. That was a big social event during the sugaring season.

In 1908 you could buy a gallon of syrup for $1.85. By the 1950s, the price was up to around $12. We helped found the Berkshire Pioneer Maple Producers Association, which organized us together to buy supplies at wholesale prices and get a fair price at market. Sugaring is so dependent on the weather that you need all the help you can get! In the 1950s, photographs of our sugaring operation were included in The Face of America, a book put out by the publishers of the Saturday Evening Post.

In the summer I grew a beautiful field of gladiolas next to Walt’s vegetables. People drove by just to see the colors!

Sometimes we women needed a moment to ourselves. I was one of the ladies who started the Thursday Morning Coffee Hour in 1963. We met every week at someone’s house for almost twenty years. It was our way of welcoming new women to town. We kept the meeting time to one hour, and children were welcome. Whoever came put 35 cents into our kitty, and it added up. In 1981 we donated $8,000 to the Health Center to buy equipment. We donated to other worthy causes in town as well, and even got an award from the Grange for public service!

The Grange was important to farmers throughout the country, allowing them to organize, find the best deals on seed and equipment, market and advertise their goods, learn about farming methods, and – very important when you lived far from your neighbor – socialize. Walt and I were active in the Grange and helped run the Cummington Fair, which was the big summer event around here; I saw in the paper today that it still is!

Many of us women also ran the fair at the Congregational Church every summer. I sewed and sold aprons and baked cakes for the cake walk fundraiser. You may not remember how the cake walk worked. It was like “musical chairs.” We’d sell numbered tickets and mark off a grid with squares that matched the tickets. Then someone would play music and everyone would march around, until the music stopped and a number was called. The person standing on the square with the number won a cake! The bakers competed to see who could make the most beautiful cake.

In my fifties I began to feel very ill. I started going deaf, then grew confused. I couldn’t stand to eat anything, my stomach hurt so much. I just got weaker and weaker, and couldn’t keep up with chores. The doctors were stumped, so I was sure I was going to die. But luckily a doctor finally figured out I had lead poisoning from the water pipes in our house. A lot of old houses had lead pipes then, and some probably still do. We replaced the pipes and I gradually got better enough to live another 35 years or so.
Walt and I had one child, our daughter Dot, who married Howard Beebe of Chesterfield. She had two girls of her own.

Walt and I were married for more than 60 years. He passed a few years before me, but now we’re here together, enjoying each other’s company again. I had a wonderful life here in Worthington, where people work hard and are good to each other. I think I’m the last person you’ll hear from tonight, so thanks to all of you for stopping by and listening to us chatter for so long. We appreciate being able to share our stories. And be sure you drive carefully on your way home.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Pat Kennedy teaches English at Holyoke Community College and is the commissioner for Center Cemetery. She came by her interest in cemetery care and preservation by way of genealogical research. Most of the information about burials in Worthington was not online, so she started producing burial lists with the help of Diane Brenner and Ed Lewis of the Worthington Historical Society. The Worthington Cemetery Commission has undertaken the task of repairing and cleaning stones in our cemeteries and has made significant progress over the last few years, thanks to the generosity of the Rolland Cemetery Fund.

Diane Brenner has lived in Worthington since 1994 and has been a longtime member of the Worthington Historical Society, serving on its board and as one of its archivists. As someone who loves the mystery and adventure of historical research, she has curated several exhibits and contributed articles and photographs to The Corners.

 

SOURCES, CREDITS, AND IMPERSONATORS OF THE DEAD

Much of the material presented in these scripts was drawn from the WHS publications Papers on the History of Worthington and Forty Worthington Houses, along with newspaper articles, obituaries, advertisements, census records, deeds, probate records, church records, and other sources.

A paragraph on Samuel Buffington’s service in the Revolutionary War is found in the 1896 book Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War.

A one-page biography of Horace S. Cole I is found in the 1879 book History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, Volume 1, by L. H. Everts.

The diaries of Lafayette Stevens are held in the WHS collection.

The interest in Anna Huyck Stone was sparked when a postcard she wrote to her sister (seen above) was purchased by Diane Brenner on eBay. Letters from her brother John Mattoon were published in the 2008 book Manhood and Patriotic Awakening in the American Civil War: The John E. Mattoon Letters, 1859-1866, by Robert Bruce Donald.

Materials on Katharine McDowell Rice – including account books, scrapbooks, Radcliffe College yearbooks, plays, and photographs – were donated by the Rice family to the Worthington Library’s Rice Room, and are on loan to WHS for storage.

The article “A Conversation with Walt Tower,” by Glenda Laubeck, appeared in the journal Stonewalls, Vol. 5 No. 1 (1978), p. 22. Lorraine Kerley also provided Pat Kennedy with information about the Towers.

The dead Worthingtonians were played by Cornelius Dineen (Samuel Buffington), Jim Bebee (Horace S. Cole I), David Madden (Lafayette Stevens), Diane Brenner (Anna Huyck Stone), Madeline Cahill (Katharine McDowell Rice), and Helen Sharron Pollard (Eurma Eddy Tower). Their photographs were taken by Evan Spring.

Posted September 7, 2016.

By Dave and Cath Whitcomb, with photographs by Kate Ewald

On September 28, 2014 – a glorious fall day – a contingent of amateur historians and interested residents followed David Whitcomb of Witt Hill Road on a tour through industrial ruins of the Ringville section of Worthington, Massachusetts, at the convergence of Watts Stream and Ward’s Stream.

The headwaters of Watts and Ward’s streams spring from the foot of Knowles Hill, the second-highest point in Worthington, at an elevation of 2,011 feet. By divergent routes the streams flow to Ringville, where they merge to become the Little River. These waterways were critical resources to the Ringville hamlet, providing both power and potable water. Water privileges for dams and mills could be sold independently by property owners.

The Ring brothers, Elkanah (1809-1899) and Thomas (1812-1863), saw the hamlet’s industrial potential and bought an old oil mill (perhaps linseed oil). The Rings added floor space and began manufacturing window shades (resembling venetian blinds) in 1830. Later they entered the lucrative business of manufacturing “Ringer” wagons, forerunners of Conestoga Wagons. They also made baby carriages and children’s sleds, sold nationally. The brothers were active in town affairs, developing houses in the area and starting a mail route between Worthington and the railroad’s mail drop in Huntington. It was around this time that the hamlet became known as Ringville. (A joke ran that Elkanah had three wives, thus three rings, thus “Ringville.”)

In 1858 the Ring brothers’ operation in Ringville, which employed nearly 50 people, was destroyed by a fire. (By this time the Ring brothers had expanded their operations to Knightville.) After the fire, the Ringville mill site was sold. A new mill was built and then sold in 1878 to Hayden & Sons, sled manufacturers. By this time Ringville was considered the industrial heart of Worthington, supporting a number of mills. Ringville had its own post office (one of four in Worthington) and one of the Town’s twelve schools, located on property currently owned by the Rida family.

 

Another lucrative business of the late 1800s was the harvesting of pond ice to cool milk and cream in summer. Traces of an ice pond can still be seen in Ringville, on Watts Stream, just upstream from the Ring brothers’ factory dam. Axe handles, sledges and buggy whips were also manufactured at various times in Ringville. The hamlet’s last viable manufacturing operation was a creamery whose 1903 output was 6,500 pounds of butter. The Ringville Cemetery, established in 1866 on Witt Hill Road, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.

 

 

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Dave Whitcomb has been making summer visits to “Aunty Flo’s” house and exploring the Ringville property since his childhood in the 1950s. He and Cath have been Worthington residents since 1974.

Kate Ewald, an amateur photographer and assessor of human health risk for hazardous waste site cleanup, lives in Worthington with her husband, Evan, and serves on the WHS Board.

 

Posted January 19, 2016.

by Pat Kennedy and Diane Brenner

On the evening of August 9, 2014, as the full moon rose, WHS vice president Pat Kennedy led about 30 onlookers around Worthington’s Center Cemetery on Sam Hill Road. As the group would shortly discover, several residents of the cemetery had taken a break from eternity to tell their stories to the living.

Pat began with some background:

“In 1765, when Worthington began the process of incorporating, there were about sixty settlers and their families living here. The center of town was around what is now the intersection of Sam Hill Road and West Street. Worthington’s first parsonage still stands at that corner, and the first meeting house and burials were on the north side of Sam Hill Road, where the Mollison pasture is now.”

“There were probably lots of private, family burial plots from the time of earliest settlement, but the locations are mostly lost to us. In 1769, town meeting voted to establish three burial places, including Center Cemetery. The earliest burials associated with the church were moved to the present location from up the hill. The earliest recorded death date here is that of Ashel Rowe in 1790, but there may be older dates that can no longer be read.”

“In 1801, town meeting voted to look into future burial ground needs. In 1803 it was decided to raise money to ‘fence the grounds,’ and in 1831 to ‘procure a hearse, a harness, and a place to house’ the hearse. Elijah Gray was hired to ‘handle the hearse at 50 cents per funeral for anyone over the age of six.’ In 1842 the town decided that the hearse could be used for ‘any deceased person of any age that it may be called for.’ Each cemetery had a commissioner, who often acted as undertaker, hearse driver, gravedigger, and record keeper. As we’ll see in the case of Ella Crosier Burr, the commissioner’s wife might also be called upon to assist.”

“Although the last plot in Center Cemetery was sold in 1969, the burials continue.”

“We ask that you follow us as we visit some of the stones in a certain order and try not to trip over anybody. We will go a little out of chronological order to avoid having to walk back and forth around the cemetery. But I see in the distance that our first minister and his wife are waiting for us!”

Note: Some of the following text for Jonathan and Sarah Huntington is taken directly from Jerilee Cain’s 2007 paper, “Sarah Huntington: 1738/1790.”

Reverend Jonathan Huntington (1734?–1782)

Welcome everyone to my cemetery. Well it must be mine, I was one of the earliest people buried here. My name is Jonathan Huntington, and I was the first minister of Worthington. Don’t ask what Church, that goes without saying. There was only one Church.

I accepted a call in 1771 to minister to the early settlers of this beautiful wilderness because, well, I had a wee bit of trouble with the Congregational Church hierarchy back in Connecticut. Plus here they were willing to pay me 40 pounds a year to start. Even as a child, I loved to think about theological questions. My father’s friend, the Reverend Ebenezer Devotion, came to visit often and we discussed many new ideas that turned out to be disturbing to the elders of the Congregational Church.

Our home in Connecticut was light-hearted and fun-loving and famous for its parties. My mother was bright and creative and known for her intelligence and sense of humor. People say I took after her! Of course I liked to have a little fun, but my reputation for revelry and drinking was overrated. My dear wife, Sarah Huntington, brought me stability and direction. She encouraged me to apprentice so I could learn medicine, which she thought was more suitable to my temperament, so I did that for awhile.

However, I couldn’t resist arguing about theology – it was such an exciting time and we were talking about such revolutionary ideas! For example, I believed that no matter how sinful a person had been, he could still enter the Kingdom of Heaven if he were truly sorry – even without the blessing of the Church! My free thinking, love of music and jokes, and my occasional fondness for libation meant it was hard for me to find a congregation in stuffy Connecticut. Plus I wanted to experience some adventure. So I ended up in the “wilds of Worthington,” preaching to this growing community of about 650 folks. Of course, not all of my parishoners agreed with my way of thinking, especially that Nathan Leonard and his kin from down along the Kinne Brook, who got themselves elected selectmen. Deacon Leonard thought I was too permissive and didn’t hesitate to say so.

As well as preaching, I had a farm and built a grand house where I saw patients. And the children kept coming! But we weren’t wealthy; our fortunes depended on the fortunes of the town, and sometimes the farmers can spare neither corn nor labor. I’ll admit, I sometimes got away from the domestic side of my life by partaking in spirits and lively conversation at the tavern of my good friend, Timothy Meech, over on the Post Road.

My brother Samuel, who championed the colonists’ cause, kept us informed of the troubles brewing with England. I believed in our cause and to prove it, I invested my money in the new Continental currency. Overall, life has been good in Worthington. My most fervent wish was that the good Lord grant me a long, peaceful life here, free of debt and worry, as I watch my liberal ideas blossom and my children and their children grow up in optimism and prosperity.

Sarah Huntington (1738–1790)

My name is Sarah Huntington. I was born in Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1738. My father, Simon Huntington, was a poor farmer who died when I was fifteen. My mother, left with seven children, remarried. You may be wondering why my married name is also Huntington. I married my cousin! This happens often in the colonies. There aren’t a lot of people to choose from, and most marriages are arranged anyway. It’s one way of knowing something reliable about the person you marry.

As it turned out, I grew to love my husband, Jonathan. We married in 1757 and our first child, Sarah, was born nine months later. She died within the month. But we were blessed by the arrival of Lucy in 1759. I knew Jonathan wanted to do something other than farming, so I encouraged him to study medicine. But I soon realized that Jonathan’s true inspiration came from those new and revolutionary ideas that were threatening the cohesion of our Congregational Church!

We were not wealthy and the babies kept coming, so I was relieved when Jonathan finally became a doctor. As a doctor his rebellious, fun-loving wit might be acceptable. But his heart was never in it and he just had to become part of the Church controversy, so he entered the ministry as well. I had hoped my husband would be appointed to a wealthy, prestigious church in Connecticut. Instead, he accepted the offer of a new church here in Worthington. We arrived here in 1771, not long after the town was incorporated.

I insisted on at least having a nice home, so Jonathan acquired a beautiful house, which he had moved to West Street. You can still see my lovely home if you look up the road to the corner. The church was built across the street. What a poor thing that church was – not much better than a barn! And it was never finished! Birds flew in and out and roosted in the balcony! But Jonathan believed that the physical structure of the church was not so important, as long as the spirit flourished. Although the town promised to pay him at least 40 pounds a year in coin and produce, he was never paid regularly.

I did manage to keep him respectably clothed in a black wool suit, which I made out of wool I had spun and dyed myself. He even had silver buckles on his shoes! The children were well-dressed too, and as they got older they helped farm; eventually some married and settled nearby.

Meanwhile, Jonathan continued to involve himself in Church and governmental controversies. He spent a bit too much time at the tavern of Timothy Meech, where revolutionary ideas were being discussed. As he mentioned, we ended up getting into fights with the Leonard family, who were pretty powerful in both the Church and the town (which really were the same thing in those days). They just couldn’t appreciate Jonathan’s friendly and relaxed style, but my dear husband was so well loved that his congregation remained loyal to him.

Then we lost our money! My husband had invested in Continental currency, which became worthless. And the people of Worthington couldn’t pay Jonathan with cash or goods. My dear husband, harried by the Leonards, was heavily in debt, preaching in that awful, drafty building, and worrying about how to feed his family. He caught sick and died, imagine! He was only forty-eight. My children and I were penniless and our creditors and the Leonards were our ruination.

After our debts were paid I was left owning a one-third share of my house as my “Dower Rights.” My son Simon inherited another third, and my brother-in-law Samuel bought the last third so that I did not have to share my home with strangers. But I was only allowed to use the back stairs, and only at certain times of the day. I was given a portion of the barn so that I might keep a cow. And my boys were given one suit apiece from my husband’s belongings.

Those Leonards took control of the church and had it moved over east to Harvey Road. They also hired a new minister, that boring and pompous Jonathan Pomeroy. My heart broke when they moved the graveyard to a place halfway between the new church and the old one on Sam Hill Road. My baby Sybil’s stone was lost!

But as my children grew up and married – and some married very well, like my namesake Sarah, who married Elisha Brewster – my life improved. I didn’t remarry and died ten years after my husband. But here we are in this lovely spot, facing the setting sun every day, in the beautiful town of Worthington.

Ella Crosier Burr (September 1860 – May 21, 1930)

Oh! There you all are, I was waiting for you to get over here. Just standing here counting gravestones to pass the time. There are a lot more now than I remember from the last time I was here. I am Ella Crosier Burr, though I was a Burr for many more years than I was a Crosier. I was married to my Clement for nearly 60 years at the time of my unexpected passing.

He was from an old Worthington family, as you can see from all the Burr gravestones around here. I was an outsider, from Chesterfield. We had five sons, and two of them, Frank and Joe, lived here in Worthington, too. They were all born in our farmhouse on Kinne Brook Road. It’s still owned by a Burr and standing proud for all to see. The boys were a bit wild. I remember the day they were brought a gift of a doll, and when I next looked out the window they were shooting arrows at it. We sent them to be educated at the Conwell Academy down in South Worthington.

My Clement courted me for several years before I agreed to marry. He kept on pestering his “Nell” with letters and asking me to write back, even when he was sent away to see if he liked life in Illinois, which he didn’t. Then he came back just to be with me, and since I really liked him anyway, I gave in. His father had just died and someone was needed to take over the Burr family farm. That was back in 1870.

Mostly I spent my life as a farm wife. You know what that means – working from dawn to dusk. I was always good with numbers so I kept the books, not just for the farm but also for Clement’s business as an undertaker. (That was one of several Burr family businesses.)

I was also Secretary-Treasurer of the Church’s Women’s Benevolent Society for decades. I was one of the original members in 1888, and one of the original incorporators in 1894. Mrs. Chauncey Pease loaned the WBS the money to build a parsonage, and I was especially proud, in 1920, to deliver our final payment to her. We were grateful that she only charged interest every other year! And I am proud to say that my son Frank’s wife, Harriett, eventually took over from me as treasurer of the WBS.

But really I am not here to tell you about myself. I want to tell you a sad story not too many people know about.

There used to be a lot of small factories in Worthington making things mostly from wood: sleds, tools, drums for banjos, pen holders, you name it. Pen holders – you know – the handles for metal pen nibs! Many of these factories hired young men in the summer to help out.

During the summer of 1912, three German boys arrived to work at Bradley’s pen factory in South Worthington. On September 12 they all went for a swim in Russell H. Conwell’s Little Galilee Pond – you can still see it off Ireland Street. Hermann Sachtleben, poor lad, drowned. He was only 18! He was buried two days later in Ringville Cemetery. The boys who were with him came to the funeral. They spoke little English but Mr. Willard, the preacher, said a prayer in German and at least they understood that.

Now I’ve had five children, and can only imagine what a grief it would be to lose a grown son, especially one so far away. So I wrote to Hermann’s mother, Bertha, telling her of his death and including a photograph of his grave. And she wrote back – two letters in fact – with a photograph of her family, including Hermann.

Such a fine young man he looked to be, and his mother’s heartbreaking grief was terrible to read. She wrote in German, but I was able to get Mr. Williard to translate. Here’s what she wrote:

We are honored dear Mrs. Burr, and deeply grateful that you have told us that you yourself had a share in preparing our dear child for his last rest. We know now that he sleeps quietly and softly, and this is a great comfort for us. For my mother-heart would not otherwise be quiet. May dear God richly repay you, Mrs. Burr, your great love and goodness which you have done to our child and so to us…And I venture to…make another request. On the second of December is the birthday of our Hermann, when he would have been 19 years old. We would be very pleased if on this day we might know that there was a wreath on his grave. Would you, my dear Mrs. Burr, be willing to undertake this?

I wrote to assure her that we would do as she requested, without cost to her. A year later I got one more letter:

My dear, most honored, Mrs. Burr –

Surely, you must have been surprised to remain without a message from us for so long. I will soon explain…accept our most heartfelt thanks for your loving endeavors concerning the grave of our beloved Hermann. We are comforted to know that…our poor child, who has gone so far away from home, does not lie abandoned on his birthdays…Oh, dear Mrs. Burr, the painful wound is not yet healed…

Now I will finally tell you why my letter has been so delayed. Our uncle in America, Klocke is his name, lives in Mayville and he wanted to talk with you about erecting a tombstone for our son. We have waited a very long time for news from our uncle about this visit, and it seems a letter must have gone missing; otherwise we cannot understand what happened…Please do not think…we wished to refrain from attending to the care of the tombstone – we were waiting until our uncle appeared in Worthington with you. Should he be further delayed, then I ask you, dear Mrs. Burr, to once again decorate the tombstone of our beloved son on the anniversary of his death, the 8th of September. We are regretful to hear that you, dear, honored Mrs. Burr, have suffered so in your eyes. We hope wholeheartedly that you are once again in good health.

Uncle Klocke never showed up and this was the last letter I received from Hermann’s mother. Sadly, Hermann’s grave in Ringville Cemetery remains unmarked, his memory in Worthington mine to keep and share now with you. Ach! My heart breaks for those people.

My health started to get worse and by the late 1920s I couldn’t do most of the things I once could. I was often bedridden, besieged by headaches and painful joints. I lost a lot of weight. I didn’t go to church or go out to visit. I couldn’t go upstairs or wash dishes or do any housework for nearly a year. While I was ailing, my husband, Clement, along with some of the boys, did the cooking, laundry, cleaning and washing up, and the repairs as well as all the farm chores. I could talk with folks on the telephone we had put in – other folks from nearby houses could listen in on the party line, but that didn’t matter. I also went out on automobile drives from time to time, and got to watch Lindbergh’s mother fly over our house in an aeroplane.

We also had one of those new radios, and while I couldn’t move much out of the house unless someone helped me, the whole world opened before me. Who’d have ever thought I could listen to the speeches of both Herbert Hoover and Al Smith after each was nominated for president, or that I would get to hear the election results as they were happening? (By the way, Clement voted for Mr. Hoover, but Smith won handily in Worthington.) Then there were Douglas Fairbanks and John Barrymore speaking right to me, and Gene Tunney’s knockout fight, sounding like it was happening right in our living room.

We read a lot too, although those electric lights were a bit too bright for our taste. Each Thanksgiving, Clement and I would think and talk about the things we were grateful for. We never lacked. Just sitting there with him, after all those years together, always seemed enough. I am glad we can continue to be together here.

Samuel Follett Hills (1846–1930)

Greetings folks! I was born back in 1846 in my house up the road, built by my great-grandfather, Sam Follett, in 1783. He was a Revolutionary War hero who fought at the Battle of Bunker Hill and voted for George Washington. In his time there were half a dozen houses up there, and the church, parsonage, and burial ground were just down the hill near West Street. It was pretty much the center of town at that time. Follett is my middle name, and I am sure proud of it! When my great-grandfather died, the property was left to his granddaughter, Elizabeth Follett Hills, my mother. She had married Julius Hills some time before and had two sons. My mother wasn’t allowed to own the property because she was a woman, but she could keep it in trust for me and my brother Daniel until we came of age. My house isn’t there anymore, but parts of it can be found in other houses all over Worthington.

The farm contained 100 acres, much of it cleared, and we raised cows and sheep. We also had a large orchard. The road ran from West Street past my house and continued west over to the middle branch of the Westfield River. The part that ran through Horace Bartlett’s property had gates across the road at the start and end of his pasture to keep his cattle from wandering too much.

Every time I came or went I had get down from my wagon and open and close them. What a pain! Well, I went to town meeting and tried to get those fool selectmen to help me change this, but to no avail. I finally had to sue the town. They knew they were in trouble because I was already famous for taking my law books to town meeting. One day in court the judge asked me if the gates were “pretty fair gates, as gates run?” I replied that I “never saw a gate run,” so I couldn’t really say.

The case cost the town several hundred dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. It took a couple of years, but it was finally settled in my favor when Deacon Bartlett agreed to fence the fields and remove the gates. This solution cost $15 and that was that. Eventually they named the road for me, but of course they got my name spelled wrong. It’s “Hills” with an s, Sam Hills! Any fool would have known that. But I guess Sam Hills Hill Road would have sounded strange.

I was just a boy when the Town Hall was built in 1855. It was built on land donated by Mr. William Coit. He stipulated that a four-and-a-half-foot fence be built around the building – folks were big on gates and fences in those days. Anyway, Mr. Coit lived up on the Old Post Road, near the Bartlett place, which became the Bartlett Hotel and then the Worthington Inn. He made such a fuss when they built the new Town Hall, making them move it just south of the church so he could have an unobstructed view of the church from his home. There were a lot fewer trees in those days. That was the church that burned in 1887.

Speaking of the old days, another thing you young folks might not remember is what we called a “turkey shoot”. They were held near the basket shop at the Corners. The hen was placed on top of a barrel and weighted so it couldn’t get away. The fee was 10 cents a shot, at a distance of 8 or 9 rods (40 or 50 yards for those of you who don’t know anything). I brought my great-grandfather’s flintlock gun. They laughed at my old-fashioned gun, but I didn’t let that bother me. I succeeded in shooting several hens. When Mr. William Ward tried out my gun he got his hen all right, but the gun kicked him over and his wig flew off! We got a good laugh out of that.

I was around long enough and was enough of a bother that I eventually was elected as a selectman myself, a couple of times if I recall correctly. Loved to debate any chance I got, and especially loved showing off those law books at the annual town meeting.

In 1871 I married Josephine Mayhew, who had grown up on the next farm over, and we had a son and two daughters. We had a good life here in Worthington without hardly ever having to leave town. And I lived to be eighty-four!

John Adams (May 4, 1804 – July 29, 1873)

Good evening, kind folks. My name is John Adams. I was born right here in Worthington on May 4, 1804. Although my father was from Connecticut, my mother, Elizabeth Watts, descended from one of Worthington’s earliest settlers. After my father became president of the Union Bank in Boston, we moved there and that’s where I spent my childhood.

I married Mary Ann Bryant of Chesterfield on New Year’s Day in 1838. I was 34 and she was 24, and we came back to live in Worthington. I set up as a hardware merchant, as well as a farmer. My first house was near the town’s first schoolhouse, about a mile south from what was called Worthington Center.

Just before I married, I bought a 146-acre farm off of Luther Higgins for $5,300. It stretched on both sides of what is now Huntington Road. That house was too small and mean for a growing and prosperous family like ours was going to be, so I had it torn down and by 1843 had replaced it with a modern house in the Gothic style with a two-story entry porch, board and batten siding, and those beautiful bay windows. The kitchen and carriage houses were conveniently in separate wings on the back. People whispered that it was just too modern and not like the other houses around here, but I didn’t care. I thought it was handsome and so did Mary Ann. You can still see it up there on what they now call Radiker Road, though it has suffered some over time.

I was voted selectman from 1842 to 1844, which shows not only my commitment to the town, but that I commanded respect and was viewed as a man of influence.

In 1852 I joined with my neighbor Elisha Brewster to start the Agricultural Society. We got 150 members just like that. Three years later, we changed our name to the Green Mountain Agricultural Society to include other towns. For a decade or so we held big cattle, sheep and horse shows every year on the Town Commons surrounding the church. That was a highlight of the summer’s activities. Eventually we became The Grange. By then I was a prominent member of the Church, and in 1856 I was elected representative to the general Court of Massachusetts. An honor, of course, but it meant I had to undertake the difficult trip to Boston more than I wanted to.

My wife and I farmed and were lucky enough to have five children, three boys and two girls.

You may not know this, but from the time the town was first settled, the town government and the Church government were intertwined, like peas in a pod. The community was officially called the Parish of Worthington. Each year when we got a tax bill, half would go to maintaining the town – the roads and schools and the like – and half went to the Church. The idea of separation between church and state was not appealing to many of the citizenry of this fair community. At the annual town meetings, parish as well as secular business was the order of the day. The elected town officials managed the day-to-day operations of both town and Church, although the Church retained the exclusive right to discipline its members. By 1862 I was back to being selectman, and two of us (I won’t name names) felt that the town and Church should be independent of each other. We spoke up about it until the state, in 1865, ordered the town to call a meeting and separate town and Church – separate money, separate management. Needless to say, some of the powers-that-be were not so happy about this and it might be said they knew how to hold a grudge.

These particular years may not have special meaning for you folks any more, but the nation had splintered following Lincoln’s election in 1860 and was then at war. The War of the Rebellion was what we called it. The President called for 75,000 volunteers, and in 1861 the Worthington selectmen voted to pay $50 for each volunteer, and to pay families left needy by the departure of a loved one up to $2,000 to help them get through. We didn’t think the war was going to last much longer than three months.

My son was one of the first volunteers, though he did not sign up in Worthington. William enlisted in the New York 61st Regiment in October 1861, but he never made it into battle. He died in an Army hospital in Alexandria, Virginia, on December 26, 1861. For him the war did only last three months! Volunteers weren’t very easy to find in Worthington, even after we upped the bounty to $125. In 1862 my other son and namesake, John, enlisted with the 86th Illinois Regiment, Company H, and was made quartermaster. He died in Nashville, Tennessee, in February of 1863, of a fever. Imagine how my poor wife felt when she learned that her boys lay dying in distant field hospitals, and she unable to get to them. In John’s regiment more men died of disease than were killed outright in battle. This was, unfortunately, pretty typical.

The call for a volunteer army didn’t work out and in 1863, President Lincoln instituted a draft. Many of Worthington’s young men went to serve, but not a few found themselves paying the nice sum of $3,000 for someone else to go in their stead. This was perfectly legal and pretty common at that time.

Although I remained an active selectman, in my personal life I despaired and became a recluse, refusing to leave the house to attend church or to pay my Church taxes. It was compulsory in those days to attend church, and the Church retained the authority to strictly discipline anyone who failed to abide by its requirements. To be named someone “who walks disorderly” could spell financial and personal ruin. I was visited by a committee of my former friends and “warned” to mend my ways. Ha! I didn’t want to have any further concert with those hypocrites who couldn’t understand my grief! I went so far as to apply for permission to join the Methodist Church in South Worthington, though I never went through with it. In the end I was suspended from the Church by a vote of 18 to 1. Discipline triumphed over compassion.

I eventually returned to the Church. In 1868 I wrote a nice letter to Deacon Lafayette Stevens, agreeing to let bygones be bygones and pursue the path of peace.

Peace had come to our reunited country three years earlier. Our sons were two of over 700,000 boys on both sides to give their lives in that terrible conflict. Imagine how I felt in 1866, when I was part of a committee asked to study a proposal to “see if the Town [would] raise money to refund to individuals the money paid by them for substitutes.” The men who could afford to pay another man to take his place in the draft – and quite likely take his place in a shallow grave – wanted to be reimbursed! We voted no!

I lived ten years longer than my two boys, which just isn’t natural or expected. And I never really got over the loss of them. A farmer needs many sons to build a future for. Well, thank you for your time. It looks like there’s a lady over there beckoning, so you best hurry along.

Bessie A. F. Ames (1856 – 1951)

Over here! I am Bessie Anne Fletcher Ames, born in Marshfield, Massachusetts, on March 26, 1856. Let’s see, that makes me 158 years old! I don’t look at day over 95, do I? And I lived through three great wars and a few lesser ones!

I’ve always been Bessie Ames, never Mrs. anybody, so you can call me Miss Ames, if you please. My father, Luther, was a shoemaker, and my mother, Mary Spinney, kept house. We were five children. By 1880 my family had moved to Cheshire, New Hampshire, so my father could farm. At that time I was 23 and a certified bona fide nurse – one of the first graduates of the Boston Training School for Nurses, established by the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1873. I spent the winters nursing in Springfield and the summers farming in New Hampshire.

By 1883 I had saved enough money to buy my own house. Worthington seemed like a fitting town for a young woman making her own way in life, and I was able to buy a house on Harvey Road that was originally built by Sidney Brewster. I paid the grand sum of $1,500. I was surrounded by Brewsters in those early days. I joined the Congregational Church in 1888, the same year the new church building was completed, and became one of the earliest members of the Women’s Benevolent Society – just like my friend Ella Burr over there.

But then – oh, it was horrible! – the house burned to the ground. Luckily, with a little help from my friends and some hard-working neighbors, I was able to rebuild a very large, commodious Colonial Revival house. You can still see it. Very tasteful and well-built, don’t you think? It meant I could take in boarders, and by 1900 my aging father, his second wife, four boarders, and a lovely young Swedish servant named Frederika were all living with me. I continued to do winter work as a nurse at my office at 68 Court Street in Springfield. The house was too cold for winter boarders.

I had quite a lot of land, and rented it out to the neighbor farmers. Besides overseeing all my tenants and rebuilding the house, I became active in the Women’s Benevolent Society and served as president for six years, starting in 1912. Those were exciting years, when all sorts of new ideas were getting discussed – especially about what women could or could not do!

I can still see the audience at the WBS meeting in Lyceum Hall that day in August 1913 when, as president, I introduced Miss Amy Wren. She had come from Brooklyn, New York, to talk about the legal status of women (which wasn’t very good, I can tell you). The front of the stage was covered with masses of green foliage and yellow flowers, and large yellow “Votes for Women” banners were draped all around. Miss Wren was a commanding speaker and the audience was rapt. She told of how women had been considered property throughout most of our history, and how things were changing – mostly due to women’s own efforts, but thanks in part to those brave men who were willing to put themselves on the line. The applause was so loud – too bad there were so few men there to see and hear her.

I finally did get to vote seven years later, in 1920. I was lucky that I was already thirty, which was the legal age for women. There was a presidential election that year, and I chose between Warren Harding (whose running mate was our neighbor from Northampton, Calvin Coolidge) and his opponent, James Cox (whose running mate was the handsome and youthful Franklin Delano Roosevelt). By the way, men could vote when they were 21. I won’t tell you who I voted for because my vote was secret. But I did vote!

By this time I was getting older, and spending time as a nurse every winter was getting harder. So I decided to turn my home, which I had named Hilltop Farm, into a summer guest house. My nephew John Ames had been living with me since after the Great War, and he helped out. He complained when I asked him to sleep in the barn during the summer, but really, there wasn’t enough room and I needed every penny I could get. During this time Worthington became what you folks now like to call a “destination.” There was the grand Worthington Inn run by the Trows at the Corners, that lovely new golf course, a casino, and many other attractions. Several of my neighbors took in summer guests as well.

My house was special. I could serve lunch and dinner in the dining room, and many folks from around town came here just to eat. I charged $10 a week for the rooms and most of my guests were lovely people, up from the cities – Springfield, New York, Boston – women who came with their children for a week or for the whole summer while their husbands visited on the weekends. Some came from as far away as California and England.

Of course there were always a few complainers, especially the man who told me I should get running water piped in from the new water system that was built in 1911. I had a perfectly good well. I told him the hand pump in the kitchen was good enough for him if it was good enough for me, but he made it clear that if I wanted to keep my customers, I needed to get more modern. I wasn’t against being “modern” – it was the cost! Everything was so expensive and running a guest house isn’t cheap, I can tell you that. I did put in the running water, and made a private bathroom, but I put a box on the top of the tub so that anyone who wanted to use the water could pay me 10 cents a bath. Water doesn’t grow on trees, you know. But I admit, it was nice to be able to take a hot bath once in awhile.

While I have your attention I want to let you know that there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that on weekends I rented rooms to working girls who came from Springfield. Of course since I’d been a nurse down there I knew quite a few girls of all kinds. And even if I did rent out the occasional room, whatever they did in there with their gentlemen friends was their business. I ran a respectable guest house and many of my customers returned year after year.

By the 1930s, though, things were not so good with the economy. The Lafayette Lodge (the name the new owners gave to the old Worthington Inn) burned. People found it hard to find the money for long summer vacations, or even for the gas to come up to the hills. The air and food might be good up here, but not worth spending the rent money for.

Also my nephew John had fallen for one of those tubercular girls who were recovering in that sanitarium across the street (I think someone named Gerrie Kennedy lives there now). He wanted to marry her! So he built her a house across the street from me, with lots of windows and no screens anywhere, so it could be full of fresh air and breezes. He moved in with her, but then a few months later she died! What was he thinking? He eventually married another woman, Hildy, and we got along just fine. She was a churchgoing woman and into good works, and eventually she and John helped me as I had helped John when he was younger. I lived through another awful war and didn’t die until I was 95, but those last ten years are a bit of a blur – I was told I could be quite a hoot! I guess I always was.

So that’s some of my story. Glad you could come visit us all today. If you stick around for a bit we’ll be glad to share a toast to the living and the dead!

 

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Pat Kennedy teaches English at Holyoke Community College and is the commissioner for Center Cemetery. She came by her interest in cemetery care and preservation by way of genealogical research. Most of the information about burials in Worthington was not online, so she decided to start producing burial lists with the help of Diane Brenner and Ed Lewis of the Worthington Historical Society. The Worthington Cemetery Commission has undertaken the task of repairing and cleaning stones in our cemeteries and has made significant progress over the last few years, thanks to the generosity of the Rolland Cemetery Fund.

Diane Brenner has lived in Worthington since 1994 and has been a longtime member of the Worthington Historical Society, serving on its board and as one of its archivists. As someone who loves the mystery and adventure of historical research, she has curated several exhibits and contributed articles and photographs to The Corners. The original owners of the 19th-century home she shares with her spouse, Jan Roby, are buried in nearby Center Cemetery. Her other main focus is public health, and she serves on the Worthington Board of Health and as president of the board of the Hilltown Community Health Center.

SOURCES, CREDITS, AND IMPERSONATORS OF THE DEAD

As mentioned above, some of the text for Jonathan and Sarah Huntington was taken directly from Jerilee Cain’s 2007 paper, “Sarah Huntington: 1738/1790.” Information on Sam Hills and John Adams came from various papers in the book Papers on the History of Worthington. Additional information on Sam Hills, John Adams, and Bessie Ames came from the book Forty Worthington Houses, by Daniel R. Porter III. For Bessie Ames, Pat Kennedy interviewed Ted and Shirley Porter, and Diane Brenner found newspaper articles documenting the women’s suffrage meeting in 1913 and Ames’s involvement with the Women’s Benevolent Society. Newspaper obituaries were found for Sam Hills, Ella Crosier, and Bessie Ames. We’re very fortunate to be able to consult the work of other researchers who’ve contributed to telling the story of Worthington, including Elizabeth Payne, Carl and Ida Joslyn, Lois Brown, Kathy Baker, and Beverly Smith.

The material on Ella Crosier Burr came mostly from the Burr Family Archives, including the Sachtleben letters and Clement Burr’s diaries from 1868-1869 and 1929. The second Sachtleben letter was translated from the German by Shannon Godlove.

The idea for a series of WHS walks was proposed by Rose Cherneff of Worthington’s Sawyer Farm. It was also Rose’s idea to invite some deceased Worthington residents to visit with us.

The dead Worthingtonians were played by Lincoln Fishman (Jonathan Huntington), Judy Babcock (Sarah Huntington), Rose Cherneff (Ella Crosier Burr), Jesse Rothman (Sam Hills), Sam DeBosky (John Adams), and Lila Cherneff (Bessie Ames). Their photographs were taken by Evan Spring.

Posted August 8, 2015.

by Diane Brenner, with photos by Kate Ewald

Ben Brown grew up in Worthington and has been collecting old bottles since he was five. His enthusiasm encouraged his father, Harold (“Brownie”) Brown, to begin collecting as well. The photographs below show only a part of Ben’s collection, which was catalogued for a 2007 exhibit at the WHS building.

The Brown bottle collection – all excavated from Worthington soil – includes some marvelously beautiful objects that provide a window on our daily lives in the not-so-distant past. These bottles held patent medicines, beauty products, food and beverages, and other household items – some whose names remain familiar, and others that have, often deservedly, been forgotten.

Until relatively recently, composting was so much the norm that it didn’t even have a name. Every Worthington home not only composted but also had one or more dump sites for uncompostable materials: old cans and bottles, broken dishes, unrepairable shoes, bent nails, rusted carriage parts, you name it. These sites were often pits located away from the house and eventually covered over with dirt. Often they were located near streams, whose steep banks were convenient for moving materials out of sight. Some dump sites still exist, but they are ever harder to find and their contents are increasingly broken and decayed.

In the photo above, the five-inch-tall bottle on the far left, from the Williams & Carlton Co. in Hartford, held root beer extract and dates from the late 19th century.  The third bottle from the left, which reads “USE RENNE’S PAIN KILLING MAGIC OIL,” is from the early 20th century and the “magic oil” probably contained an opiate.

Among the Brown Collection are many other questionable home remedies. One patent medicine bottle from the late 19th century, embossed with “DR. KING’S NEW DISCOVERY FOR COUGHS AND COLDS,” contained a mixture of morphine and chloroform that was both seductive and toxic. The “New Discovery” brand was marketed starting in 1885 as a cure for consumption.

Another curiosity in the collection – found near Elderberry Lane, just northeast of the Corners Grocery – is an amber, pear-shaped bottle embossed with “VALENTINE’S MEAT JUICE.” This combination of glycerin and meat extract, prepared by Mann. S. Valentine of Richmond, Virginia, was promoted in the late 19th century as both a restorative food and a medicine, achieving popularity among prostitutes as a supposed cure for sexually transmitted diseases.

 

This faceted, amethyst-tinged bottle stopper from the mid-19th century was Ben’s first find at age five. The stopper was partially exposed above ground near 43 Witt Hill Road.

The second bottle from the left, from the early to mid-19th century, was found at the same spot and reads “DR. LANGLEY’S ROOT & HERB BITTERS, 76 UNION ST., BOST.” Bitters is an alcoholic herbal preparation, still used today.

The taller bottle in the middle reads “DR. D. KENNEDY’S FAVORITE REMEDY, KINGSTON, NY.” This patent medicine from the late 19th or early 20th century was a cure-all for kidney, liver or bladder trouble, not to mention – according to their advertisements – “all weaknesses peculiar to women” and “all the unpleasant and dangerous effects on the system produced by the use of whiskey, wine or beer.”

Second from the left is a hexagonal, late 19th-century ink bottle, 5.5 inches tall, with fluted panels, and embossed with “NOT TO BE TAKEN.” The tall cobalt bottle in the middle is an apothecary jar from the late 19th century, possibly used as storage for tablets, cotton balls, and so on.

 

 

In the late 19th century, Carter’s Cathedral Ink was sold in these dramatic cobalt bottles with gothic arches embossed on hexagonal panels. This special edition bottle is eight inches tall.

 

Many older bottles can be dated or identified by their “pontil scars,” the marks formed on the bottom where the glass-blowing rods were removed. Later bottles tend to be blown into molds and do not have pontil scars.

The second bottle from the left, from the mid-19th century, is almost two inches tall and once held ink for dipping a quill or steel-nib pen. The third, octagonal bottle is also an ink holder, flanged out at the base, from the early 19th century.

The four-inch-tall bottle on the left, found near Conwell Road in South Worthington, contained liquid soap or glycerin. “J.D. Larkin, Manufacturer of Plain and Fancy Soaps” started his company in Buffalo, New York in 1875, and soon expanded from laundry bars into soap powder, harness soap, and oatmeal soap.

The bottle on the far right is embossed “STEPHEN SWEET’S LINIMENT INFALLIBLE.” Sweet’s Liniment, an oil-based pain-relieving lotion, was manufactured by Richardson & Co. in Norwich, Connecticut. As noted in an 1861 history, Dr. Sweet “was most remarkable for his skill as a bone-setter, and a preparation made in accordance with his prescription has been advertised by this firm wherever newspapers are printed.” This bottle was blown in a mold, and then the top was reheated and an “applied top” was added.

The teal-green bottle resting on its side, found at the Witt Hill Road site, is from the mid-19th century and reads “GARGLING OIL, LOCKPORT, N.Y.” The brand name was Merchant’s Gargling Oil, manufactured from 1833 to the early 20th century. This topical ointment treated humans, horses and other animals for ailments ranging from burns, sprains and bruises to hemorrhoids, piles, toothache and sore throat. Other veterinary applications included garget, mange, roup in poultry, horn distemper in cattle, foot rot in sheep, and ringbone, poll evil, and foundered feet in horses!

The green bottle on the left likely held a liqueur in the mid-to-late 19th century.

The quart-size amber bottle with a coat of arms reads “DUFFY MALT WHISKEY COMPANY, ROCHESTER NY.” This company was founded before 1881 by Walter B. Duffy and closed down after 1925. Though basically whiskey with a high alcohol content, Duffy’s was also marketed as a medicine and the company was a member of the Proprietary Association of America, an early lobbying group devoted to preventing regulation of patent medicines. In any case, the people of Worthington went for it – Ben found this bottle at several different sites.

The bottles resting on their sides have rounded bottoms and were known as “ballast bottles,” because they were used as ballast in ships traveling to and from Europe and the Caribbean. These specimens are from the mid-to-late 19th century and likely held beer or rum.

The somewhat uneven bottle on the far right, with the applied top, reads “THIS BOTTLE NOT TO BE SOLD” and was used for soda or beer around the late 19th century. Though such bottles were indeed sold, the warning was intended to discourage people from taking or not returning the bottles, or, even worse, selling them to rival bottlers. This bottle was found near 343 Huntington Road.

 

 

This amber bottle, almost eight inches tall, with its original stopper, dates from around the late 19th century and probably held peroxide. The bottle was found near the Corners Grocery, and still contains some of its original contents.

 

The second bottle from the left is 6.5 inches tall and reads “ATWOOD’S JAUNDICE BITTERS, MOSES ATWOOD, GEORGE-TOWN, MASS.” Atwood manufactured this product from 1840 to 1850, when he left for Iowa.

The bottle on the far right reads “NERVINE” in an arc just below the neck. In the late 19th century, nervine was a popular sedative made from inorganic bromides and used to treat any case of “nerves.”

The narrow-necked bottle in front held ammonia.

The bottle with the embossed floral pattern held lime juice manufactured by L. Rose & Company, founded in Edinburgh by Lauchlan Rose in 1865. To prevent scurvy, the disease caused by vitamin-C deficiency, sailors on long trips were supplied with lime or lemon juice preserved in 15% rum. Rose, who was born into a family of shipbuilders, patented a process that prevented fermentation and preserved fruit juice without alcohol. The signature “lime leaves & fruit” pattern adorned the bottles from the beginning. Rose’s Lime Juice is still sold today.

The bottle on the right, found near 343 Huntington Road, is embossed “GREAT BEAR SPRING, TRADE MARK, FULTON, N.Y. THIS BOTTLE IS LOANED, NEVER SOLD.” The Great Bear Water Works Company was founded in Fulton, New York in 1884. The business expanded rapidly and for decades sold and distributed water throughout the Northeast.

In the photo below, the pinkish bottle in back held olives (or perhaps oysters) and was probably dumped by the Worthington Inn/Lafayette Lodge, the large resort hotel that burned down in 1931.

Almost all the bottles in the Brown Collection were gathered in the 1960s. Ben says there was always some surface clue to a dump site, and he never had to dig around with a shovel to locate them. He would excavate the sites carefully with a potato hook or some other tined implement. Bottle collecting for fun and profit caught on in the 1970s, and all the visible sites were soon picked clean.

You may still have a concealed dump site containing beautiful bottles on your property. All you need is a little luck.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Diane Brenner moved to Worthington in 1994 and shares her large white house with her artist spouse, Jan Roby. She is an indexer with a background in public health and an avid interest in historical research and genealogy. She is a longtime member of the board of the Worthington Historical Society, and has been active as one of the society’s archivists, helping to create many recent WHS exhibits including the one discussed in this article. She also serves on the Worthington Historical Commission and Worthington Board of Health, and is president of the board of the Hilltown Community Health Centers. At her home she has found a few tantalizing pieces of old plates and one or two bottles, but she is still looking for the main dump.

Kate Ewald is an amateur photographer living with her husband, Evan, in Worthington, MA and serving on the WHS Board. She received her PhD in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Massachusetts, so when not photographing she assesses human health risk for hazardous waste site cleanup.

WHS board member Evan Spring provided supplementary research for this article.

Posted January 28, 2015.

by Richard Mansfield

The Declaration of Independence stated, “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.” For the first ten years after the Declaration, it would be the job of the state government in Boston to protect the “forms” which generated evils for the rural part of Massachusetts. These “forms” were the courts, an unimproved relic of British rule, and the evils were a result of a war-ruined economy that turned the majority of rural Massachusetts residents into debtors. The efforts of the debtors to “right themselves” began with peaceful petitions and a broader understanding of the new word “democracy,” and ended in a short-lived armed conflict called Shays’ Rebellion.

The land in Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River was frontier land. The Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, ended hostilities between the colonists and the French and provided the safety and time needed for breaking new land. Most of the land on which the “hill towns” were to be built was owned by a few of the richer residents of the valley. These men, according to historian Robert Taylor, were nicknamed “river gods,” and the towns they lived in, such as Springfield and Northampton, replaced Boston as the center for decision-making and trade.

The river gods (John Stoddard, Israel Williams and John Worthington among them) were well connected with the royal government in Boston and were mainly lawyers who used their connections and legal knowledge to enrich themselves through land speculation. With the exception of Joseph Hawley, all the greater and lesser river gods were of a conservative nature and found that business with England was much more desirable than war. Their link with England and other foreign markets was the river, and the chief crop of the surrounding hills, flax, could be traded for foreign items such as wool, molasses, sugar, indigo, and tea.

The people who occasionally left their newly built homes in the hills to bring down their crops for trade along the river were of a very different nature from the residents of Boston. These hilltowners were a mixed group (one of Worthington’s enlisters in Shays’ army was a Negro, according to Marion Starkey) who were beginning a new life for different reasons. What little time that remained after subsistence farming was spent in church, or maybe just rest. Education was a luxury.

Boston, on the other hand, was a well-established international city. One of the things that inflamed Boston against the British was the British attitude of superiority, and Boston could ill conceal this same attitude toward her Western subjects. Boston was a far distance from the towns west of the Connecticut, just as she was far away from London. The hundred miles overland was tiring and hazardous, and traveling down the river and by sea to Boston took as long as 18 days.

The Intolerable Acts of 1774 did much to bring Eastern and Western Massachusetts together. Boston Harbor was closed and the city was charged with billeting British troops sent to control the local residents. These same troops were given immunity from local courts. Town after town in Western Massachusetts assembled committees of correspondence, joined in the boycott of English goods, and sent food and clothing to suffering Boston. Soon political awareness had spread to the extent that a session of the Royal Court scheduled in Pittsfield was blocked by a group of about 200 people.

During the Revolutionary War, residents of Western Massachusetts weighed in on the most pressing legal matters. They donated their lives and materials in hopes that the courts and other symbols of British rule would never be reinstated.

Those who came home to their farms in the hills returned to a shattered economy, with only vouchers for their services in the war instead of money. The new government had paid the soldiers in vouchers or “continentals,” with the understanding that this substitute currency would be backed by gold or silver after the war. The vouchers were traded among soldiers, many of whom would end up in court for matters concerning debt.

These courts the debtors stood before seemed little different than the British courts, except that the judges and officials were appointed by the governor in Boston instead of the King of England. Once a debtor was found guilty he was imprisoned at state expense for the first 40 days. After this period, if the debt was still unpaid, the creditor could keep the debtor in jail by providing for his keep. Court costs, inflated by the salaries of a heavy bureaucracy, were added to the sum of the debt.

These courts met first under the authority of the Continental Congress and would then be maintained by the state constitution of 1778. This constitution was rejected by the majority of representatives from Massachusetts towns, because it lacked a Bill of Rights and did not provide for separation of powers of the various facets of government. Until a new constitution was approved in 1780, the courts continued to try and jail debtors with absolutely no democratic approval.

There were many different courts, ranging from the hearings held by the justice of the peace to the Superior Court of Judicature. The Superior Court was comprised of a chief justice and four associates who heard appeals from the lower court and had original and concurrent jurisdiction in land title cases. It traveled on circuits and met once a year in Springfield for its Western Massachusetts session. This was a high court complete with wigs and gowns and was led to its sitting by a formal procession. The justices of the peace handled small disputes over debt and tavern brawls. These justices were appointed by the governor, and the court met four times a year, dealing with crimes of a moral character as well as assessing the county taxes and directing how they were spent. The other court of the county was the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, which heard only civil cases, mostly involving debt. Appeals were not only granted, they were expected, and the normal case started in the inferior court and worked its way up at considerable expense to a superior court. Debt could rarely be settled out of court since there was no legal recognition of debt other than through the courts.

Soon the veteran-debtors were meeting with each other and drawing some conclusions. The obvious question before them was: If it had been an act of patriotism to close courts in 1774, and these new courts had sprung up without the consent of the people, and in the same form they had taken under the king, was it now an act of treason to block them?

Block them they did. Groups of up to 300 stood in front of the court doors and refused entry to judges. This was not treason, because the courts were meeting without authority.

The constitution of 1780 gave the necessary approval to the courts. This constitution was much more conservative than the one rejected in 1778. It was approved not because of support from the rural West but because of apathy and cynicism. Many Western Massachusetts towns sent no representatives to the convention. This constitution reinstated property qualifications for voters, and the governor was given more appointive powers over judges, justices, and petty officials.

The legality of the courts hardly improved their reputation among the general populace. In Berkshire County, the buildup of opposition to the courts became quite clear. A large group assembled to block the meeting of the Court of Common Pleas, and the local militia was marched to dispel the crowd. There was an uncomfortable standoff until some democratically minded person in charge of the army suggested that those in favor of the court meeting step to one side of the street, while those against step to the other side. Only a handful showed their approval of the courts, and so the court’s meeting was cheerfully abandoned.

This shared feeling by the majority of residents in Western Massachusetts was the main reason why there was so little bloodshed in what came to be called Shays’ Rebellion. Officers of the army often saw their ranks defect, and never dared order the remaining loyal troops to fire on the other side. As for the Regulators (as opponents to the courts referred to themselves), they were always poorly armed and preferred to use the superiority of their numbers to win their objectives. The early Regulators were sincere believers in the democratic system and were confident that the justness of their cause would be enough to win their demands. As the dispute became more intense, both sides came to rely increasingly on shows of force and the reform of democracy fell by the wayside.

The whole problem in Western Massachusetts was glossed over by the Boston newspapers, and readers were led to believe that any trouble out there was a result of Tory influence and the residents’ taste for luxuries.

In Northampton in 1782, Samuel Ely led a mob to the door where the Common Pleas court was meeting. His group was rowdy and armed with wood found nearby. They said they were after the judges and wanted to “knock their gray wigs off.” Ely was later arrested and jailed in Springfield. A group of 120 forced their way into the jail and released him. This group was pursued and a fight broke out, but negotiations somehow occurred in the midst of this, and in place of Ely, who had already escaped, three hostages were given up to the Sheriff. After it became clear that there would be another attack on the jail to release the hostages, they were freed on the condition that they secure Ely at the demand of the General Court.

When word of this reached Boston, reaction was strong. At the meeting of the General Court the right of habeas corpus was revoked. The court also made some compromises, lowering some court fees and forming a grievance committee that was led by Samuel Adams and sent to a convention of Western towns in Hatfield. The delegates complained of the burden of taxes and debts, but said that they didn’t support the radical actions of Ely. Adams and his fellows heard them out and returned to Boston certain that things would improve.

But no sooner had the committee left than the noise began to rise again. Local papers in Western Massachusetts were full of protest, such as the following written by Justus Wright of Chesterfield in the Hampshire Herald of 1784: “Are we not governed by aristocracy, only allowing one word to be transmitted, noble to ignoble; and are not officers in the state, even those who partake of the smallest share of the spoils, and those who only receive a special deputation, as great tyrants as Louis the fourteenth – judge.”

The courts continued, oblivious to objections. The state passed a Stamp Act for newspapers and agreed finally to redeem vouchers given to the war veterans at face value. These vouchers had long since been sold at considerable discount to wealthy speculators, and now these speculators – many of them in positions of influence in the government – stood to make considerable profit.

Reason had failed with England, and now it was failing with Boston, so the many dissatisfied veteran-farmers began to look for a leader. Daniel Shays, because he was a military man and not a politician, came forward. He had served in the Revolutionary Army and had worked his way up to Captain. Lafayette had found him a brave soldier and gave him a sword as a reward. Shays sold the sword while still in the army and came under heavy criticism. (It was not an unusual occurrence for American soldiers to sell things; a young officer of the British army, taken captive, reported that he saw a Massachusetts brigadier pull the boots off his feet when a prisoner offered a guinea for them.) Selling the sword, coupled with the fact that he came about his commission by enlisting a detachment of soldiers to serve under him, made him something less than a gentleman in the eyes of his fellow officers. Shays resigned his commission after the war.

Shays wasn’t among the first to enter the battle against the courts, but when he did, he entered as a military man, a position he knew and loved. He took the lead of a group of men, organized them into military ranks, and marched to Springfield where he confronted General William Shepard, who was in charge of defending the court meeting there. Shays paraded his men, and Shepard watched many of his soldiers discard the slip of paper they wore as a symbol of their support for law and don a sprig of hemlock, the symbol worn by the Regulators. The court was unable to meet, and the new military nature of the Regulators alarmed Boston.

The governor, from Boston, ordered that a riot act be read to future demonstrators. This act augmented the denial of the right of habeas corpus and stated: “All offenders who should continue for the space of an hour, their combinations after the act was read to them, with the confiscation of their property, the infliction of thirty-nine stripes, and imprisonment not more than a year with thirty-nine stripes every three months during the term of their imprisonment.”

These no-nonsense government policies gave the Regulators the feeling that the die was now cast. As an anonymous Regulator wrote in the Hampshire Gazette, “…we have advanced so far, and know that there is no safety but in completing the business, and leaving not one stone upon another.” A letter signed by Daniel Shays and widely circulated and printed in the Northampton newspapers read: “Gentlemen, By information from the General Court, they are determined to call all those who appeared to stop the court to Condign punishment. Therefore, I request you to assemble your men together to see that they are well armed and equipped with sixty rounds each man, and to ready to turn out at a minute’s warning; likewise to be properly organized with officers.”

So that each man would be well armed, Shays decided to lead an attack in unison with Luke Day on the Federal Arsenal in Springfield. He sent word to Day as to the time of the attack, and Day replied by messenger that the attack would have to wait until the following day. This message was intercepted, and Shays marched to the Arsenal to find it well-protected with troops and cannon, with Day’s troops nowhere to be found. Nonetheless, Shays drew his men up close to General Shepard – who was again in command of the defense – and demanded access to the Arsenal.

Up to this point the conflict had inflicted nothing more than bruises, and neither commander was sure of his troops’ willingness to take aim and fire upon their fellow countrymen. But the cannon on the government side was more impersonal, and it fired twice over the heads of the Regulators, and then into their midst. At that point the Regulators threw down their weapons and fled with the cry “Murder, murder!” Three Regulators were killed, and one of Shepard’s soldiers lost his arms when he stood in front of the cannon after it was lit.

This was the last aggressive act on the part of the Regulators. From then on it was retreat, first as an army and then in disjointed groups. Shays and his army were pursued by General Lincoln, who had been dispatched from Boston and arrived in time to take over the final dispersement.

The Regulators first retreated to New Salem, and when they heard that Lincoln was in pursuit, they proceeded to Petersham. Communication between the two armies at this point was limited to the terms of surrender, which revolved around the question of amnesty. Shays’ men had been largely unaware of a general amnesty offered to anyone who would take a loyalty oath after the closing of the court session in Springfield, or else they did not think it would apply to them. Lincoln told Shays’ army that all he could do was accept their surrender, and that he would ask for their pardons as they were brought before the hated courts to face “condign” punishment.

When Lincoln surprised Shays’ troops by making an all-night forced march through a severe blizzard, what was left of the Regulators fled across the border into Vermont. From that point the army of Shays was disbanded and each man had to look out for himself. Vermont was a nation unto itself and offered a haven for the Regulators who hadn’t already gone back to the farm. From the Berkshire and Hilltown areas, many fled to New York where they made a few unorganized and non-political raids back into Massachusetts.

All that remained was to deal with the Regulators who were captured or had turned themselves in. The scene turned from the rural hills to Beacon Hill, where the Senate and House had to reach agreement on just what punishment was necessary and who would receive it. Most of the legislators were aware that the Regulators were respected by the general populace and that their cause was still considered just. Most legislators were anxious to have the whole affair peacefully ended by granting pardons to everyone who would pledge to uphold and respect the constitution. Sam Adams led a faction that was anxious to brand the Regulators with treason, and he insisted that they be hanged, just as Britain had hoped to hang him for the same offense.

 

 

 

Only two hangings actually happened, and they were for charges other than treason. The reward for the capture of the leaders of the rebellion was dropped, and later they were pardoned. Shays himself moved to New York and ended his days in obscurity.

What would have happened had the rebellion been successful? A military man given a little momentum can never rest, and if the rebellion had succeeded, soon another would have followed and our democracy might have suffered the same chaos and bloodshed endured during the French Revolution.

A poet of the times summed up the aftermath as follows:

There Chaos, Anarch old asserts his sway,
and mobs in myriads blacken all the way;
See Day’s stern port, behold the martial frame
Of Shays’ and Shattuck’s mob-compelling name…
Thy constitution, Chaos, is restored,
Law sinks before thy uncreating word,
Thy hand unbars the unfathom’d gulph of fate,
And deep in darkness whelms the new born state.

 

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Richard Mansfield, a romantic dreaming of grassroots rebellions, is a Worthington resident.

 

Bibliography for this article

Minot, George Richards. The History of the Insurrections, In Massachusetts, In the Year MDCCLXXXVI, and the Rebellion Consequent Thereon. Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas, 1788.

Smith, Edward Church, Philip Mack Smith, and Theodore Clarke Smith. A History of the Town of Middlefield, Massachusetts. Private printing, 1924.

Starkey, Marion L. A Little Rebellion. Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.

Taylor, Robert J. Western Massachusetts in the Revolution. Brown University Press, 1954.

Other books of interest

Gross, Robert A., ed. In Debt to Shays: The Bicentennial of an Agrarian Rebellion. University Press of Virginia, 1993.

Kaufman, Martin, ed. Shays’s Rebellion: Selected Essays. Westfield, MA: Westfield State College, 1987.

Richards, Leonard L. Shays’s Rebellion: The American Revolution’s Final Battle. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Links

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion

Posted January 25, 2015.