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Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Clara Morris
Clara Morris - a terrible surgical operation - The wonderful surgical operation performed on the person of Clara Morris, the well known New York actress, in Paris, is described in a letter from a friend of that lady. "Miss Morris’ disease was curvature of the spine.Treated years ago, it could probably have been arrested, but it was a crisis in her profession, and upon success in surmounting many obstacles, her whole future seemed to depend, and she could not spare time for a medical treatment.
A sea voyage failed entirely to produce any change for the better, and a list of the highest medical authorities abroad confirmed her worst fears and condemned her to a horrible operation, the same which Charles Sumner submitted to, for the cure of the same disease. Its main feature is the burning of the flesh of the back from the neck down to the waist with red hot irons.
The operation was performed in Paris, in the presence of Mrs. Worthington, Miss Gabrielle Greeley and Sir William Belmore, the attending physician. Miss Gabrielle Greeley also writes a letter to a New Yorker in which she says "Poor Clara was obliged to sit on a low chair with her back bared, and she went through the operation with her face pale and rigid as marble. Dr. Belvin lit his furnace, and the roaring of the flames that was to heat the iron to a white heat in a few seconds was dreadful to hear, and while this was going on Professor Ball marked with a pencil the line the iron was to follow on either side of the spine.
Every touch of the pencil sent a thrill through the delicate frame of the poor victim, but the Professor had scarcely ended making the penciled marks when with a flash the iron was applied. It was dreadful. The white point seemed to sink an inch into the quivering form, and it was all over. The doctor said it was a wonderful exhibit of nerves."
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Mrs. Dr. L.F. Hagar
Mrs. Dr. L.F. Hagar, healing medium, has taken rooms at the house of D.G. Shaw on Wells Street, where she is prepared to prescribe for the sick or attend to calls if desired. Special attention given to chronic diseases and the diseases of children. References given if required. A liberal patronage is desired.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Diphtheria
Diphtheria - The best and simplest remedy - Make a salve of the ashes of burned corn cobs and take a little of it often. Also wet a bag of commercial ashes with rum and put around the neck. Experience has proved it a cure where other remedies have failed. From one who knows. Please put this in print to the benefit of the afflicted. [Oh, brother!].
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
August Flower
August Flower - The most miserable beings in the world are those suffering from dyspepsia and liver complaint. More than 75% of the people in the United States are afflicted with these two diseases and their effects, such as Sour Stomach, Sick Headache, Habitual Costiveness, Palpitation of the Heart, Heart-burn, Water-brash, gnawing and burning pains at the pit of the Stomach, Yellow Skin, Coated Tongue, and disagreeable taste in the mouth, coming up of food after eating, low spirits, etc.
Go to the Drug Store of Childs & Payne, Greenfield, and W.B. Andrews, Orange, and get a 75 cent bottle, or a sample bottle for 10 cents. Try it. Two doses will relieve you.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Obituaries
Died in Montague on Sept. 17, of diphtheria, Lizzie Taylor, wife of Henry H. Taylor, age 30; Sept. 18, of the same disease, Minnie Maria Taylor, daughter of Henry H. Taylor, age 7.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Obituaries
Died in South Deerfield Sept. 13, of cholera infantum, Frederick L. Clapp, son of Francis Clapp and Emma L. Clapp, and grandson of the late Cephas Clapp, age 8 months.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Deerfield
Deerfield - Edward C. Cowles lost his best horse last Tues. night. He had worked it during the day, not noticing that the animal was not as well as usual. It was sick but a few hours.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Conway
Conway - There is some complaint of the dry rot affecting some fields of potatoes - good crops on the average. Corn is being rapidly cut. New cider has appeared.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Conway
Conway - With the cooler weather comes rumors of the re-occurrence of diphtheria in some sections. Lottie Brown, oldest daughter of Addison Brown, Broomshire district, died on Sept. 13. The child’s mother is also seriously ill, and one or two other members of the family are also sick. Many hearts will ache at this sad intelligence.
[See p. 35 of Google Books "Sightseeking: Clues to the Landscape History of New England" to discover how Broomshire got its name].
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
The Coleraine Murder
The Coleraine Murder - As briefly stated in our last issue, Daniel Dwight, supposed to be one of the murderers of Joseph R. Farnsworth, was arrested Sat. night at the door of his father’s house on Catamount Hill, Coleraine, where he had come 5 days after the murder. There were 6 men, under Deputy Sheriff John Gould, stationed around the house, and between 10 and 11 o’clock, they saw a man coming up the road, which proved to be young Dwight.
They allowed him to approach near the house, when a signal was given, and they stepped from their hiding places. Dwight ran around the house in the direction of the barn, but he was then surrounded and forced to surrender. When taken into the house before his father, he fainted.
Dwight was confined in the lock-up at Shelburne Falls, and on Mon., Trial Justice Brainard of Greenfield held a court at the office of H.M.Puffer, Esq., and had the young man brought before him. A large gathering of people were in attendance, and among them Dwight’s wife, father and mother.
He pleaded not guilty, and the magistrate, without having a hearing of evidence, arraigned him on the charge of murder and continued the case to Mon. the 17th. Officers Swan and Gould then brought the prisoner to Greenfield,where he is now confined in jail. Dwight appears quite calm and is not disposed to talk much about the affair. He accounts for his absence and his whereabouts during the 4 days as follows:
"I had some trouble with my wife on Tues. aft., which had ended by my saying I was going off, and her replying that she hoped I would, and what was more, that I would stay away. She then started to go to father’s house, which is only a short distance from mine, and I started for a pasture where some of father’s cattle were grazing.
On the way I met Herbert Davenport, and together we went to Farnsworth’s house, and afterward went down the lane to the road leading to Shelburne Falls. Herbert wanted a cane, so we stopped and cut one, I bending the tree over while he cut it; but he did not carry it long before he threw it away.
From there we went through the fields directly to my house, where I changed my clothes and gave a suit to Herbert, as his were all patched and dirty. We left home about 5 o’clock, and went down the mountain to Heath, and then through Hartwellville down to North Adams, getting there on Wed. aft.
We walked all Tues. night.Wed. night we slept on the hills near North Adams, and on Thurs. morning, after staying a while in North Adams, we walked to Pownal on the railroad track. At Pownal we got on board a train which was returning with the firemen from the muster at North Adams that day.
At Petersburg Junction Herbert got left with some Salem, N.Y. firemen, because the train started so quick, and I could not get off, it was going so fast. That night I stopped at Greenwich, N.Y. and registered my name in the hotel book in full - Daniel J. Dwight, Coleraine, Mass. I remained there that night, but had nothing to eat, as I only had money enough to pay for my lodging.
[For more information on this area, see the Internet Archive’s "Williamstown, the Berkshire Hills, and thereabout"]
The next day I walked to Troy. I did not remain there long because I was hungry and sick, and thought I would go right home and go to work for father, and let my wife do as she chose. Coming back I got a ride part of the way on a freight train, and got to N. Adams Sat. aft.,and walked to central shaft in the tunnel, and from there I rode to the east end on the workmen’s train and walked to Zoar, where they let me ride on a hand car to Charlemont. From there I rode with a Mr.Wells as far as his house, and then went across the fields home".
A portion of Dwight’s story has proved to be true. Bradley Davenport and Wesley Woodard, sent to Petersburg Junction, sent back that two men answering the description of Dwight and Davenport had been there. At Greenwich, N.Y., Dwight’s name was found registered in full, as he had said, and there is nothing to show that Davenport was with him at the time.
The Davenport boy arrested - Search was continued for Davenport and finally he was tracked to Williamstown, and Thurs. aft. was found there by a Mr. White. He made no efforts to escape, but on the other hand seemed glad to give himself up.
He was brought through the tunnel to Shelburne Falls Fri. morning, and Trial Justice Brainard of Greenfield held a preliminary trial, arraigned him for murder, and continued the trial until the 27th. The Davenport boy’s narrative is substantially the same as that given by Dwight, but he does not deny that they killed Farnsworth.
He says their only object was to obtain money, that he had no enmity or ill will towards the murdered man. He and Dwight had made up their minds to go West and hoped to get enough money from Farnsworth to pay their expenses, but he says they only got about $4.
There were 2 sticks cut, he says, a walnut and a maple. It was with the latter that Farnsworth was knocked down. He says that he did not do the striking, though he was there. After he was left at Petersburg Junction, he wandered from place to place, working for something to eat when he could get employment, and was endeavoring to get back home.
Davenport is not of ordinary intelligence. He was dull at school, and has since been lazy and shiftless. Want of mental responsibility will be entered as a plea in his behalf. His mother says that he has always been a "strange boy". She has another son and a daughter who are bright, active and industrious.
Davenport was brought to Greenfield and lodged in jail on Fri. by Deputy Sheriff Swan. Both boys, who are allowed to be together when not locked in their cells, do not appear to be cast down or afflicted much with remorse. They will be brought before the Grand Jury at the November Court and if bills are found against them the trial will be before a special session of the Supreme Court.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Hampshire County items
Chauncey Wright, a native of Northampton, and an instructor of physics at Harvard college, died suddenly of heart disease Sun. He was a graduate of Harvard in 1852, at one time lecturer on metaphysics at Agassiz school at Cambridge, and was a well known writer on Darwinism and kindred topics in the North American Review, New York Nation, etc.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Oration of Hon. George B. Loring at Bloody Brook, Sept. 17, 1875
Oration of Hon. George B. Loring at Bloody Brook, Sept. 17, 1875 - Fellow citizens: 200 years ago an event occurred on this spot, which on account of its significance and its touching details, has passed into that long heroic line over which the mind of man is compelled to pause and ponder...At the name of Bloody Brook the men, women, and children of New England started and held their breath in horror, in that primeval time when the sickening tidings were borne on the wings of the wind as it were from hamlet to hamlet...
The sad event of the 18th of September 1675, calls upon us still to remember the trials through which our fathers passed and to rejoice over that fraternal spirit which bound them together in their day of sorrow, and watered the soil of this charming valley with the choicest blood of the sons of Essex. I stand on ground made sacred to you by the sacrifices of your hardy and devoted progenitors; but I meet here the names of Lothrop and Stevens and Hobbs and Manning and Dodge and Kimball and Trask and Tufts and Mudge and Pickering, of the three-score braves who died that you might possess this goodly land and these pleasant homes...
How would they who were familiar with the cruel warfare of the savage; whose ears had heard the shrieks of the tortured mother mingling with the groans of her dying child, and whose eyes had beheld her fear, her patience and her despair; whose highway was an Indian trail, and whose home was a frontier block-house - how would they rejoice over these sunny fields, these laughing harvests, these busy towns, these tasteful homes, this cultivated landscape adorned with these institutions of learning and religion; and how would they count their own sufferings but small when compared with the manifold blessings which have descended upon the spot made sacred with their blood?
...Deerfield two centuries ago, was on the very confines of civilization - one of the outposts of a feeble Christian people, who had hardly a foothold on this continent, and between whom and the strongholds of power and wealth and learning, rolled 3000 miles of stormy and almost unknown sea. The fate of a great and wide spread empire rested then in the hands of a few colonists scattered along the Atlantic seaboard, divided in interests and tastes, perishing continually from exposure and want, not all actuated by the highest motives, but all recognizing, as by an unerring instinct, the fundamental principle out of which was to grow the American government, and all in danger of being exterminated at any time by the "pestilence which walketh in darkness and the destruction which wasteth at noonday".
Scattered up and down the great extent of territory stretching from the Passamaquoddy Bay to the capes of Florida were but about 200,000 souls, of whom Massachusetts, with Plymouth and Maine, may have had 44,000; New Hampshire and Rhode Island, with Providence each 6000; Connecticut from 17,000 to 20,000; that is, all New England, 75,000...
These people had come largely from that "Germanic race most famed for the love of personal independence". They were not men of high estate, but they were men who possessed an inherent love of land, with all the individual honor and freedom which go along with it...
Of one colony said "Spotswood, a royalist, a High churchman, a traveler", "I have observed here less swearing and profaneness, less drunkenness and debauchery, less uncharitable feuds and animosities, and less knaverys and villanys than in any part of the world where my lot has been"...
In all their customs they were obliged to exercise the utmost simplicity and they voluntarily regulated their conduct by those formal rules, which, in their day, constituted the Puritan’s guide through the world. We are told, as an illustraton of their character and manners, that by the laws of the Plymouth Colony, in 1651, "dancing at weddings was forbidden". In 1660, one William Walker was imprisoned one month for courting "a maid without the leave of her parents".
In 1675, because "there is manifest pride appearing in our streets", the "wearing of long hair or periwigs", and so "superstitious ribands, used to tie up and decorate the hair were forbidden under severe penalty"; the keeping of Christmas was also forbidden "because it was a popish custom". In 1677 an act was passed "to prevent the profaneness of turning the back upon the public worship before it was finished and the blessing pronounced".
Towns were directed to erect a cage near the meeting house, and in all this all offenders against the sanctity of the Sabbath were confined. At the same time children were directed to be placed in a particular part of the meeting house, apart by themselves, and tything-men were ordered to be chosen, whose duty it shall be to take care of them. So strict were they in their observance of the Sabbath that "John Atherton, a soldier of Col. Tyng’s Company", was fined 40 shillings for wetting a piece of an old hat to put into his shoes, which chafed his feet on the march; and those who neglected to attend meeting for 3 months were publicly whipped.
Even in Harvard College students were whipped for gross offenses in the Chapel, in presence of students and professors, and prayers were had before and after the infliction of the punishment. As the settlers of Deerfield are described as being of "sober and orderly conversation", we may suppose that these laws and customs were here rigidly enforced.
[Here follows a section on "subsistence and diet of your ancestors". Also talks about how they were good farmers, fishermen and readers]...
...Possessed evidently of a common origin, for "between the Indians of Florida and Canada the difference was scarcely perceptible", they were divided into tribes, which differed from each other mainly in their fighting capacity, and the vigor with which they roamed from place to place; and they were liable at any time to be swept off by disease, or exterminated by war, or absorbed by other and more powerful tribes.
In language, the North American Indian was limited by the material world, an abstract idea finding no birthplace in his brain and no expression on his tongue. "In marriage the Indian abhorred restraint, and from Florida to the S. Lawrence polygamy was permitted". Divorce meant merely desertion. The wife was a slave. Domestic government was unknown. The Indian youth grew up a warrior, adorned with vermilion and eagle’s feather, as fleet of foot as the deer, and as tolerant of hunger as the wolf; the Indian girl grew up a squaw, degraded and squalid and servile.
A rude agriculture, resulting in a weedy corn crop, and a few squashes and beans, was the Indian’s, or rather the Indian woman’s occupation; he had neither trade nor manufactures. "There can be no society without government; but among the Indian tribes on the soil of our republic, there was not only no written law - there was no traditionary [sic] expression of law; government rested on opinion and usage and the motives to the usage were never imbodied [sic] in language; they gained utterance only in the fact, and power only from opinion...
The Indian had a government without laws; a State without institutions; a church without faith, or creed, or head; a town without schoohouse or meeting house; a punitive system without jails or gibbets; a history based on tradition; a religion based on superstition; he was ignorant of the ownership of land; and knew nothing of a system of inheritance.
As in peace he was an idler - so in war he was a marauder. An organized army was to him unknown. He fought in small bands, seldom over 50 in number, to surprise and slaughter. He pursued, and killed, and scalped. He had neither commissariat nor hospital. He fought his enemy in the rear and in ambush; and he tortured and roasted and devoured his captives. These were the national characteristics which our fathers found on this continent.
Nor did their attempts to modify and humanize and Christianize them meet with much success. The Indian could be tamed, but he was the Indian still...Neither John Eliot nor Roger Williams was able to change essentially the habits and character of the New England tribes..."They are unspeakably indolent and slothful; they deserve little gratitude; they seem to have no sentiments of generosity, benevolence or goodness".
The Moravian Loskiel could not change their character...In New Hampshire and elsewhere schools for Indian children were established; but as they became fledged they all escaped, refusing to be caged. Harvard College enrolls the name of an Algonquin youth among her pupils; but the college parchment could not close the gulf between the Indian character and the Anglo American.
The copper colored men are characterized by a moral inflexibility, a rigidity of attachment to their hereditary customs and manners. The birds and brooks, as they chime forth their unwearied canticles, chime them ever to the same ancient melodies; and the Indian child, as it grows up, displays a propensity to the habits of its ancestors...
The trouble lay deeper. Year after year the Indian discovered an irreconcilable difference between himself and the stranger...When he entered the home of the settler, he discovered that the joys of the fireside could never be found in the group squatted beneath the shelter of the wigwam. He felt the antagonism - and his soul burned within him. The strife was not for land...It was for supremacy. And as revenge is stronger than ambition, and hate is stronger than avarice, so the war raged with unspeakable fury, and was as cruel as the passions of a desperate savage could make it.
The great contest which grew out of this antagonism, and lasted more than a year, unabated either by the heat of summer or the frosts of winter, threatening destruction to the New England colonies, was known as Philip’s War. With the story of this conflict you are all familiar. The peaceful death of Massasoit at a good old age, after a long life of friendly relations with the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies; the sadder death of his son Alexander, worried out of life by the failure of his intrigues against the colony, and the exposure of his meanness and his crimes; the gradual development of the worst of passions in the breast of Philip, and his passage from treachery to war are all fresh in the memory of all who have traced the hard path which our fathers traveled in the work of settling these shores.
The war which began in Swanzey on the 24th of June, 1675, reached this spot on the 18th of September - three months of murder, and fire, and all the bloody horrors of savage warfare. At the time the war broke out Deerfield had been settled 10 years, or had been deeded for the purposes of settlement to John Pynchon that length of time. It was then, as it is now, one of the most delightful spots in New England...
And here in the luxurience of that natural beauty, and in the wealth of wood and stream, the Indian found his favorite resort. In this town and in the towns of Hadley and Hatfield he mustered a numerous and a powerful tribe. And upon these lands purchased by the settlers, with titles confirmed by the court, the whites and Indians lived together in peace for years. It is amazing with what rapidity the war, once opened, spread from village to village, and from tribe to tribe in this wilderness...
The Pocumtucks had received their orders - and in a day had stepped from the blessings of peace to the misery of war. having promsied to deliver up their arms, on suspicion that they might misuse them, they broke their promise, fled to Sugar loaf Hill, engaged with Captains Beers and Lothrop commanding the English here, lost 26 of their number, and then sought shelter under the standard of King Philip...
Deerfield too was abandoned; and the attempt to secure a quantity of wheat which had just been partially threshed by the farmers there before their flight, resulted in the massacre which still thrills me with horror, and the anniversary of which we have met to commemorate...From behind hundreds of trees the savages poured their deadily [sic] fire. At the first volley many were killed, and the remainder were panic stricken...Lothrop...was among the first to fall. The savages, numbering nearly 700, "rushed upon the defenceless men, and the work of slaughter was soon complete.
But 6 or 7 Englishmen escaped to tell the tale, of whom one had been shot and tomahawked and left for dead, and another forced his way through the yelling ranks of the savages with the but [sic] of his musket...
While the Indians were employed in mangling, scalping and stripping the dying and the dead, Captain Moseley, who, as has been observed, was ranging the woods, hearing the report of musketry, hastened by a forced march to the relief of his brethren. The Indians, confiding in their superior numbers, taunted him as he advanced, and dared him to the contest. Moseley came on with firmness, repeatedly charged through them, and destroyed a large number with the loss on his side of but 2 killed and 11 wounded...
A quantity of bones lately found in that quarter is very probably the remains of the Indians who fell there at the close of the action. The united English force encamped for the night at Deerfield. They returned in the morning to bury the dead and found a party of the Indians upon the field stripping the bodies of their victims. These they quickly dispatched, and the remains of the brave young men, or some portion of them, were committed to the earth near the spot which we have this day consecrated anew to their memory.
The stream on whose banks they fell, and whose water ran red with their blood, has been called from that day, in memory of the disaster, Bloody Brook...[Two more entire columns follow, but they are quite blurry and unreadable].
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 13, 1875
Died
Root, Mrs. Adaline B., age 69, died in Erving Aug. 12; Maynard, Alice Estelle, age 1, only daughter of Myron Maynard and Abbie C. Maynard of Montague, and grand-daughter of L.L. Perry of Erving, died of cholera infantum in Erving on Aug. 29.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 13, 1875
South Deerfield
South Deerfield - Loren Hayden, who was prostrated by heart disease in consequence of excitement during the fire Sun. morning, was better Mon. morning; but in the aft. was taken with a fit and died Mon. night.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 13, 1875
South Deerfield
South Deerfield - The week just passed has been one long to be remembered by the citizens of our little village. Seldom are so many stirring events crowded into one short week. Three deaths - one of threescore years, one in the prime of life and one in infancy. The two first, George W. Bardwell and Loren Hayden, prominent citizens of the place for years.
These, together with the disastrous fire of Sun. morning, with its many hairbreadth escapes and exciting incidents, not the least of which was in caring for and removing the sick who were unable to care for themselves, and lastly, the startling developments of dishonesty in one, who in his lifetime enjoyed the general confidence of the people, creating an intense excitement throughout the entire community.
The funeral of Mr. Bardwell was attended at the Congregational Church on Sun., that of Mr. Hayden from the residence of D. Bryant on Thurs., Rev. Mr. Brooks officiating on both occasions. The attendance on Thurs. was very large, many coming from the surrounding towns.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 13, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
Greenfield - Spencer B. Root and Frank J. Pratt returned Fri. night from their trip in the Indian country. Their party went on to the Pacific Slope of the Rocky Mountains, and shot such game as bears and deer, without getting into any trouble with the Indian tribes. They saw W.L. Jenkins, the former Cashier of the First National Bank at Denver, Colorado. Mr. J., who went out there for his health, has greatly improved, having grown quite fleshy, and is looking tough and rugged enough.
- Sun, Feb 21, 2010
