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Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 30, 1875
Shelburne Falls
(Shelburne Falls) We have received from Mrs. Jerusha King of Hawley a very ancient barrel made from a hollow tree. It was made by Thomas King in 1712 and was used for holding the first corn raised in the town. It holds just 8 bushels.
(Shelburne Falls) Calling on Samuel Flagg of Conway some days since, we found him, at the age of 70 years, able to dance a double shuffle. We also received from him a dirk and sword over 100 years old. They were carried through the Revolutionary War by Lieutenant Goddard. Mr. Flagg had carried out scripture as far as possible, and beaten his sword into a first class butcher knife.
[See Google Books "Descendants of Eleazer Flagg" by Charles Allcott Flagg for more information].
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 30, 1875
An old story
The following was told me by the late Theodore Hoyt of Bernardston, father of Richard Hoyt. Mr. Hoyt’s father was Jonathan Hoyt, born in the old Indian House at Deerfield and son of landlord Hoyt. He built a house upon his father’s land at West Deerfield, probably around 1760, where he lived to old age, and sent out into the world a large family of children and grand-children. Here Mr. T. Hoyt was born.
The family were obliged to cross the Deerfield river to attend the public meetings of the town, and to the post office and store. Much of the time the river was crossed in a wooden canoe, which was kept near the old cemetery , as the river at this time was making its way very near its sacred enclosure, and it was feared that it would disturb the sleeping inmates.
Mr. Hoyt was returning from the village, and had entered a ravine on the farm now owned by Salmon Chapman, when a raccoon started up and ran. Mr. Hoyt went for him. He said in those days they did not let any thing disturb them. The raccoon ran under some rubbish and roots of trees, which he began to remove, when he saw a large copper kettle, which he thought was taken by the Indians from the village of King Philip’s time, or in 1704, and buried there.
The old kettle was taken home, but a large hole was found in it, making it unfit for use; but neighbor Deacon Jehiel Jones, grandfather of G.W. Jones and Charles Jones, gave him an old kettle to mend it with, and it did good service for many years. Near where the kettle was found, the Indians had a cemetery and an armory, or a spot for burying arrowheads and other war implements.
The Indians were mostly buried in a sitting posture. This brought the head near the top of the ground. Mr. Hoyt said, when they plowed this land, the plows would cut off and turn out the Indians’ skulls. Oh, what a harvest Mr. Sheldon and Dr. Hitchcock would have gathered from that field! - enough to have filled several shelves of their cabinet.
This farm was then owned by Mr. Hoyt’s brother, father of S.B. Hoyt of Bernardston. The present owner, Mr. Chapman, found deposited in a cavity, 60 or 70 arrow heads, showing it to be a place of deposit. These, we are sorry to say, fell under the eye of Dr. Hitchcock a little too soon after they were found, and are now deposited in the Indian cabinet at Amherst College, with a promise to be returned to Deerfield and deposited in the Memorial Hall when completed. (N. Hitchcock)
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 16, 1875
A relic
James M. Crafts has a bullet that was picked up a few weeks since at the old battlefield at Bennington. He is to "cover" it into the cabinet of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association.
I have now in my possession a small churn which was made by my father at Abington, Plymouth County, in 1774. It was made of the best of cedar, in a workmanlike manner, and will hold some 7 or 8 quarts. As yet it shows no signs of decay, and with proper care will last for centuries yet to come. It is not valuable to me only as a memento of departed relatives. Who in Franklin County has an older churn. T.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 2, 1875
Shelburne Falls
We have received from N.S. Harris of Coleraine, an old Revolutionary musket and cartridge box, which was owned and carried by James White at the battle of Bennington. Up to the day of his death not a rust spot was to be seen on the gun, nor was anyone else allowed to use it. Also a powder horn, which belonged to Henry Babbitt; it is curiously carved and embellished and bears date 1777.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, July 12, 1875
Another mastodon found
A few days ago, while some laborers were at work on some excavations near Big Prairie in Monroe county, Michigan, they came upon a quantity of bones, forming the skeleton of a mastodon, which were examined and brought to Monroe. One of the tusks was 11 ft. in length and 7 inches in diameter at its smallest extremity, where a portion seems to have been broken off.
Several teeth were found in a greater or less degree of preservation, which measured 6 inches in diameter, the largest weighing 5 pounds. One of the ribs was nearly 8 ft. long. and the entire skeleton must have been 20 or 30 ft. in length. The men were compelled to abandon the excavation on account of the water, but pumps have been procured, and an attempt will be made to recover more of the remains.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, July 5, 1875
Shelburne Falls
O.R. Maynard, Cashier, is daily adding to his collection of antiquities, and he is always glad to see those who have anything old and odd to sell or donate. A recent addition is a tea cup 150 years old, the identical one through which some of the tea which was thrown overboard into Boston harbor by the Revolutionary patriots, was put and secreted after it had been scraped out of the sand. These relics were obtained from Mr. Warriner King of King Corner, Hawley. He is about 87 years old and his sister is most 86. She is much spryer than many women of 60, and they are really the nicest old people in all the region round about.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, June 14, 1875
Deerfield
The old Ware store and lot which has been in the Ware family for more than 70 years, has recently been purchased by George Sheldon for the purpose of securing an eligible site for a Memorial Hall for the P.V.M. Association. This store stands upon a spot of high historical interest. It is located on the south east corner of the home lot granted Rev. John Williams, the first minister of Deerfield, by the town in 1686. On this spot he was living on the memorable 20th of Feb. of 1704, whence he and the surviving members of his family were dragged into a terrible captivity. His house, which was burned, stood about 6 rods in the rear of the store, the common being at that date 20 rods wide.
/ Major Elijah Williams, son of Mr. Williams, succeeded his father in the possession of the homestead, and from 1740 until his death, he kept a store on this spot. During the French and Indian wars, he was commissary for the military forces of this region, and from this store most of the scouting parties of the Upper Conn. Valley were fitted out, as well as the troops that marched to the front in the Canada campaign. On the death of Major Williams, the property passed to his son John, "Esquire John" as he was usually called. He continued in trade here with his sister and other partners until about 1802, when he sold the store to Orlando Ware, having previously sold the rest of the house and rest of the lot to Thomas Dickinson or his son Consider.
/ The Registry of Deeds for the northern Hampshire district was in this building as early as 1791. Esq. John, George Ephraim Hoyt and Elijah Williams (Uncle Josh) were successively Registers of Deeds here. Esq. John administered justice. And here were several lawyers' offices, and the social library was kept here many years. It is to be hoped a complete history of this spot will be given by the President of the P.V.M. Association, who is now occupied in selling off the stock in the store, preparatory to the transfer of the property to the Antiques.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, June 7, 1875
Mount Holyoke Seminary
The exercises attending the laying of the corner stone of the new art building [See the Wikipedia article on the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum]...were of a very interesting character. The trustees of the institution were well represented, including Prof's Tyler, Hitchcock and Julius Seelye of Amherst College, Sidney E. Bridgman of Northampton, A.L. Williston of Florence and Andrew W. Porter of Monson, while a goodly number of the general public were also present...Among the contributions already made to the new art gallery are full size oil portraits of Washington, Franklin and Webster from the studio of Joseph G. Chandler [Joseph Goodhue Chandler] of Boston.
Dr. William Clark, paleontologist of the Smithsonian Institute for Tennessee, has found, 16 ft. below the top of some mounds near Franklin, some chalk beads, once glazed red, two copper bobbins with hempen or flaxen thread around them, and the representation of an idol indented on copper plate metal, much corroded. He says they must have been the work of Aztecs, or at least, of civilized people.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, May 10, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
No play has ever been put on the stage, which has had a longer and more popular run than the drama from Mrs. Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". As will be seen from an announcement elsewhere, this play is to be presented here Wed. eve., by Wood's Museum Combination from New York. The part of Little Eva is personated by Mabel Leonard [a very interesting article about Miss Leonard appears in the New York Times of July 1, 1879]. The Elmira Gazette, speaking of her, says "Never have we seen such a wonderful performance as this beautiful child gave at the Opera House last night. Her acting is perfect and her singing sublime - especially her song to her papa, which elicited not only rounds of applause but drew tears from the ladies present and also some of the sterner sex". Reserved seats for sale at Moody's.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, May 3, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
Solon Newton has a strong desire for obtaining articles used in housekeeping by our great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers, and other relics of the past ages. We doubt whether even the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association can show as many specimens in that line. His sleeping room and the garret of his father's house are filled with them, and he even sleeps upon a high post canopied bedstead of the past ages. It is a great treat to examine these articles. [Solon did bequeath his entire collection eventually to the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association. He was known as an "antiquarian" and a Newton Room is now housed in the Memorial Hall Museum. Check out some of his treasures at .
Gazette & Courier - Monday, March 22, 1875
Old relics
George Sheldon, cabinet keeper of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, has just received from Miss Olive Winter Anderson http://archiver.root...L/2001-10/1004233660 a bible printed in 1741, containing a record of the Winter family from which she descended; also an almanac, printed in 1754 and another in 1755, and a Thomas almanac of 1784, being the 7th number of that series. Miss Anderson has promised him beside her grandfather's old arm chair, some 175 years old.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, March 15, 1875
Married in Peru
Married in Peru, Prof. David S. Jordan [David Starr Jordan, an ichthyologist who worked primary for the Smithsonian http://www.davidstarrjordan.org/history.html ] of Indianapolis to Susan Bowen, a teacher in Mount Holyoke Female Seminary.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, February 15, 1875
Washington City during the Rebellion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington,_D.C. Washington City during the Rebellion - Not one street was paved for any great consecutive distance; there was not a street car in the city, the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Capitol Capitol was without a dome, and the new wings were filled with workmen. No Fire Department worthy of the name was to be seen, and a mere constabulary comprised the police, which had to call on the http://www.dcmilitar...hall/hh_history.html United States Marines , as in 1857,when the latter fired upon a mob, and killed and wounded a large no. of people. The water supply was wholly afforded by pumps and springs. Gas had been in partial use for several years, but little else was lighted except Pennsylvania Avenue and the public buildings. Not one of the departments was half finished. The President's house was beleaguered with stables, wooden fences, and patches of bare earth. Nearly one half of the city was cut off from the rest by a ditch, and called the Island, while an intervening strip of mall and park was patrolled by outlaws and outcasts, with only a bridge here and there for outlet. The river side was a mass of earthen bluffs pierced by two streets, and scarcely obtainable for mire and obstructions. Georgetown communicated with the capital by an omnibus line, and there was no ferry to Alexandria to be remembered as such, except in the sensitive traditions of the oldest residents. There was a show of hotel accommodation, on which we need not linger in memory of a http://history.furma...ocs/papgsu56611a.htm Congressman shooting a white waiter dead in the dining room at Willard's, of a President welcomed to his inauguration with the http://en.wikipedia....tional_Hotel_disease National Hotel disease . Slavery seemed to take delight in pressing its exposures upon the notice of Northern men and foreigners. There was a http://query.nytimes...3BA2575BC0A9629C8B63 slave pen under the eaves of the Smithsonian Institution. Manacled men were marched down the avenue handcuffed together. To take a Northern paper was a stigma; and for an abolitionist to lecture would have been to revive the riots around the http://www.washingto...izon/aug98/pearl.htm National Era office. There were good and bad elements in the place, but society had its depths and heights. To bear arms was common and they were used on quick occasion. In short, the city was relatively in embryo as much as when Moore, Weld, Janson and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Hall Basil Hall described it early in the century. A comparative description of the cities of Washington and Richmond during the Civil War would epitomize the relative vigor, constructiveness and confidence of the embattled sections. Nothing was built in Richmond which commemorates the Confederate government at this day except earth works and the State Capitol, designed by Jefferson, which was finished the year the National Capitol was commenced, fell in only a few years after the close of the war, burying court, legislature and spectators in a charnel of smoke and wailing. But the civic portion of the national capital never grew with the rapidity which it showed when menaced by the public enemy. At an expense of $1,5000,000, 68 ports in a circuit of 37 miles were thrown up, connected by 32 miles of good roadway, all of which is still available to the tourist and the teamster. The long bridge, which had been opened in 1835, was rebuilt, the railroad bridge beside it constructed; the railroad from New York doubled in truck, the aqueduct, which has cost about $3,000,000 was steadily carried on within fire of the enemy; the dome was raised on the capital, and saluted by the guns of all the forts as the statue of Freedom took its place on the summit; the Treasury was all completed except one wing, and has cost almost $6,000,000; the Post Office was almost all built during the war, and the Patent Office, which cost $2,200,000 was completed in 1867. The first street railroad was opened in 1862. The fortune of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was made by the war, and its $13,000,000 of debt had become a vast surplus by the time it distributed the Federal armies to their homes. Common schools followed emancipation. Every facility of modern comfort had been either supplied or suggested, and the private property which had been deserted in hundreds of cases by the owners, and offered for sale at little more than the expense of [?] in 1861, more than recovered its value a year before the surrender of Lee (Collier's Magazine).
Gazette & Courier - Monday, February 8, 1875
Death of the Hyde Park hermit
Death of the http://en.wikipedia....ark%2C_Massachusetts Hyde Park hermit - Two gentlemen from Dedham who were driving around Hyde Park Tues., visited the hut occupied by James Gately, the well known http://www.bostonfamilyhistory.com/neigh_hyde.html 'Hyde Park Hermit' . The snow leading to the hut was undisturbed, and arriving at the door they found it locked. Peering through the window, they saw the hermit curled up behind the small stove he used. Attracting his attention they asked him if he was sick, to which he responded by an affirmative nod. They asked him if they should break open the door and send for a doctor. He responded negatively, but they thought it best to send for a physician, and Dr. Edwards was called, and the door broken open, when a sickening spectacle presented itself to the visitors. The snow had leaked through the roof; every article was completely frozen, there was no fire in the stove, nor had there been apparently for some time, and the hermit himself was in an emaciated and filthy condition. The room was about 5 feet square, and neglect was everywhere apparent. The doctor, after an examination of Mr. Gately, saw that he was past all human aid, but did all he could to alleviate his suffering by administering restoratives. The hermit rallied a little, and as he was an Episcopalian, http://memory.loc.go...r?ammem/calbk:@field(DOCID+@lit(calbk062div75)) Rev. Dr. Van Kleek , [also seen as Van Kleeck] Dector of Christ church was sent for, and spoke consoling words to the dying man, but he apparently did not realize his situation. He said that he had been physically prostrated for 5 days from a severe cold, and during that time he had been unable to assist himself, nor had anyone come to his aid; he had not even had a drink of water, and it was suggested to the hermit that the hut be cleaned up, as some ladies would call and take care of him, but he strongly objected, and he gradually sank away and died in a few hours, and his inanimated body was left surrounded by the remains of birds, reptiles and animals, by stuffing which he had earned a living. The body ws taken in charge by the town authorities. The rags that covered his body being searched, sewed up in different parts were found, in greenbacks and coppers, the sum of $103.92. This money was deposited in the Hyde Park savings bank until called for by his heirs, if he has any. His funeral services will be held at Christ church on Friday. The body will be clad in the same coat which he wore when at college in England. A rumor was prevalent that he had left a will, but a strict search has thus far failed to bring it to light. Mr. Grew [ http://geneasearch.c...unkerhillmembers.htm Henry S. Grew ], the owner of the http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/2aa/2aa610.htm woods , excepting the strip the hermit occupied and owned, says he does not know of any will being made. He has left a large collection of stuffed animals, quite a museum in itself, which will probably go to the town of Hyde Park. The cause of his death was simply self neglect, which brought on congestion of the lungs. Gately was 64 years of age, a native of Cheshire, England, and was the eldest of a family of 6. His father was the owner of a vast tract of land in Cheshire, and his wealth was fabulous. He is still living, so far as is known. At an early age James showed a strong taste for ornithology, and became a careful and proficient student, receiving a liberal education. But his mind appeared to have been dimmed by some cause. At one time he was at the head of a prosperous school. Resolving to come to America, he landed in Boston, and subsequently boarded with a family in Roxbury. The turning point of his life was when one day, while visitng Charlestown and stepping into a saloon to get a glass of ale, he lost his pocket book and contents, all the money he possessed. Being treated with contempt on making known his loss, he returned to his boarding house, and taking his gun and ammunition, started for the woods with no definite idea. He enamped and lived in a place called Salley's Rock, West Roxbury. But the march of civilization drove him after a while to Hyde Park, which was then a wilderness, where he remained until his death. He received letters and papers from England regularly. A gentleman named Nadin from Philadelphia, visited Gately last summer, and recognized him as a companion in England. The meeting was very affecting. The hut he lived in was a small rude structure divided into two rooms. He divested himself of all the comforts and even necessaries of life, and gained a living by stuffing birds and reptiles. He was formerly a hard drinker, but latterly reformed.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, December 14, 1874
The Book of Kells
The Book of Kells - There is some excitement in Ireland at present owing to the disappearance from the http://www.tcd.ie/Library/heritage/index.php library at Trinity College , Dublin, of the Book of Kells, the oldest book in the world, and the most perfect specimen of http://www.irishclan...les/bookofkells.html Irish art of the olden times. It is alleged that the book has been taken to the British Museum for the purpose of being bound, but its removal was effected without authorization, wherever the book may be. The http://12koerbe.de/euangeleion/kells.htm Book of Kells is a manuscript copy of the Gospels, richly illustrated and written by St. Columbkille [or http://www.irishclan...irish/stcolumba.html Saint Columba ] in 475. It is imperfect at beginning and end, the existing portion comprising 339 numbered leaves. The value of it is placed at $60,000. The name by which it is known is derived from its having belonged to the Columban Monastery of Connanus, or Kells, in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells Meath . According to the Irish annalists, the book was stolen in the year 1066 from the great church at Kells - At that time it was considered the greatest relic of the Western world on account of its singular cover. It was found a few months after the theft, covered with sods, the gold with which it had been adorned stripped from it entirely. The version of the Gospels in this manuscript is mainly that of the vulgate, but with many peculiar readings.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, November 23, 1874
Col. Harlow [
Col. Harlow [ http://www.cr.nps.go.../liho/sectiond-f.htm George H. Harlow ], the http://www.ilstateho...ryofStatesOffice.htm Illinois Secretary of State , occupies the house at Springfield formerly owned by Abraham Lincoln, and is trying to preserve it and the premises much as they were during Lincoln's life, but relic hunters have carried off nearly all the picket fence.
Gazette & Courier - Tuesday, November 10, 1874
(Turners Falls) T.M. Stoughton of Gill has just taken out a new pattern of fossil track from his quarry above the
(Turners Falls) http://www.ldeo.colu....al.science.supp.pdf T.M. Stoughton of Gill has just taken out a new pattern of fossil track from his quarry above the Falls, which is unlike anything yet discovered there. He has several men at work all the time taking out those tracks, which he supplies to cabinets at high prices.
- Wed, Feb 4, 2009
