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Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Bummers in San Francisco
Bummers in San Francisco ... San Francisco has a ...full ... of bummers. Nowhere else can a worthless fellow too lazy to work, too cowardly to steal, get on so well. The climate befriends him, for he can sleep out of doors 4/5 of the year, and the free lunch opens to him boundless vistas of carnal delights. He can gorge himself daily, for a nominal sum get a dinner that a king would envy for 50 cents.
There are two classes of saloons where the midday repasts are furnished - two-bit places and one-bit places. In the first he gets a drink and a meal. In the second he gets a drink and a meal of inferior quality. He pays for the drink, 25 or 15 cents, according to the grade of the place, and gets his meal for nothing.
This consists of,in the better class of establishment, soup, boiled salmon, roast beef of the best quality, bread and butter, potatoes, tomatoes, crackers, and cheese.
Many of these places are fitted up in a style of Oriental grandeur. A stragner entering one of them casually might be under the delusion that he had found his way by mistake to the salon of a San Francisco millionaire.
He would find mirrors reaching from floor to ceiling, carpets of the finest texture and most appropriate patterns, massive tables covered with papers and periodicals, the walls embellished with expensive paintings. A large picture which had adorned a famous drink bar and free lunch house was sold the other day for $12,500. Some of the keepers are men of education and culture. One is an art critic of high local repute, who has written ...very readable...San Francisco. Scribner’s.
[After struggling to read this, I found it to be an excerpt of Scribner’s Monthly, July 1875, "The city of the Golden Gate", by Samuel Williams, p. 274].
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Shelburne Falls
Shelburne Falls - The ladies of the Baptist Society will give us an oyster and pound party at the vestry on Wed. eve. Many novel and interesting entertainments will be introduced. All members of the Society will each carry a pound of something which will be sold at auction. Let everybody attend.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 20, 1875
Greenfield items
Greenfield - See Richardson's advertisement for oysters, ice creams, and all the delicacies you want. Give him a call. Parties supplied with all refreshments needed.
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
News about home (Greenfield)
Greenfield - Register Thompson and Town Clerk Pond had rare sport fishing, down near Sherbrook, Nova Scotia, where they were guests of Newell Snow for some 3 weeks. What would some of the fishers in our local streams think of 75 pounds of trout as the result of half an hour’s piscatorial effort.
That is what THEY did down there. Mr. T. outlined one of the speckled treasures which he caught, and shows the profile to his credulous friends. The fish was about a foot and a half long, and weighed a good 3 pounds. They camped out nights, waded through swamps and bogs, fished, ate, and were happy, and came home browned and toughened, in prime condition, to resume the cares and troubles of every day life.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 6, 1875
Shelburne Falls
Shelburne Falls - The Shelburne Falls Cornet Band will give a picnic and clam bake at Lamson's grove on Fri. aft. Ice cream, soda, and other refreshments will be served. The picnic will be run without any intoxicating beverages.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 6, 1875
Shelburne Falls
Shelburne Falls - Little Mamie O'Connell, 6 years old, daughter of James O'Connell, is very fond of oysters, but she won't eat them only in the months which have an R in them. One year ago on the 1st of September, she was the first one in the village to get a quart of oysters, and this year she was right on hand the 1st day of September, and again received the first quart of oysters.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 6, 1875
Turners Falls
Turners Falls - Black bass are more than usually abundant in the Connecticut River this season, and several of the business men had a bass dinner at the Farren House Thurs., from a big bass caught by one of them.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, September 6, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
(Greenfield) September fortunately requires an R in its orthography, and Hunter, of the School Street fish market, is happy. He has commenced a vigorous oyster campaign, and lovers of the same are sure of having them served promptly and in good condition from his hands.
The union camp fire and picnic of the Grand Army posts of Athol and Orange, near the town line, is announced for September 8. The Athol and Orange cornet bands will attend, and the former will appear in their new uniforms for the first time. Base ball [i.e. baseball] and a clam chowder will be among the features.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 30, 1875
News about town: Greenfield items
Our people experienced a genuine water famine for about 24 hours on Tues. and Wed. The shut-off came without previous warning, and of course there was more or less scolding by those whose sole dependence was upon the Glen reservoir. It seems the water board did not intend that the village should be deprived of its usual supply but a few hours; but the temporary dam that had been erected gave way, causing the delay. 400 ft. of wooden spouting had been provided, which was to convey the water from the brook that distance above the dam to the supply pipe, but some thief carried off 50 ft. of the spouting during the night, and so a dam had to be placed further down the stream.
The apparatus was finally adjusted, and water is furnished in sufficient quantities for all ordinary purposes. In fact it has pressure enough to do tolerable good service in case of fire. It will take about 2 weeks to complete the work at the dam when the pond will be again filled up. Not a great deal of debris and sediment was found to be collected in the bottom of the reservoir, and this, after it is well dried by the sun, will be thoroughly cleaned out.
A large quantity of horn-pouts were found when the water was drawn off, and boys had a fine time in catching them [also known as the brown bull-head or catfish]. It is well to have these fellows disposed of too, because they multiply very rapidly and might sometime be the cause of trouble. We trust that when the repairs and alterations are completed, our water will come to us in its natural purity, and that we shall be well repaid for the vexation and expense incident to the changes.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 30, 1875
News about town: Greenfield items
Sportsmen should be aware that the law prohibits the catching of trout between the 20th of August and the 20th of March, and anyone violating the statute is liable to a fine of $5 for every fish so taken. The killing of partridges is permitted from the 1st of Sept. to the 1st of Jan., and any violation at other times is punishable with a fine of $25.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 30, 1875
A facetious tramp
A facetious tramp stopped at Widow H's. in Brookfield a few days since, and asked for food. She replied she had none. Mr. Tramp then went across the road to a neighbor's, and asked if they were aware the woman living on the other side was starving. He then requested the loan of a fishing rod lying close by, which was granted to him. With it he went to a pond a short distance off, fished or several hours, catching a good string, returned to the Widow H. and made her a present of them.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 23, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
The Stratton Brothers of this town, with a relative from Keene, N.H., spent several days fishing last week, above Stoddard, N.H. They camped out in genuine backwoods style, built their own boat, caught an abundance of fish, and notwithstanding the frequent rains, had a very pleasant time.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 16, 1875
Coleraine
The bee man, extensively known among those interested in bees, is sending queens to all parts of the country. It pays to visit his place and see the bee city, and witness with what unconcern Mr. Cary handles the busy little creatures. Where there, you should not fail to look at Whiting's trout ponds, and feast your eyes, if nothing more, by a look at the finny tribes there.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 16, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
Rev. Mr. Warfield and Henry K. Simons, Cashier of the Franklin County National Bank, have returned from their fishing tour down in Maine, and brought home several fine specimens of the salmon trout caught by them during their absence, weighing from half a pound up. We were remembered by Mr. Simonds on his return.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 9, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
A party of 6 or 8 of the Tool Factory men experienced the "fun" and the proverbial luck of fishing, by a trip to Somerset, Vermont the first of last week. They arrived on the ground in good spirits, built a shelter of hemlock boughs, and laid out for sport. But before the actual business of the expedition began, it commence raining; nor was this the worst of it, the rain continued all day; by night it got well going, and the wigwam of boughs became leaky.
Hemlock bark was then tried, but to no purpose; rain it would, and leak it did. Alas for luck! The fishermen became wet, but they stood it like the "braves of the wood" for 3 days, and still the rain was on hand each day. Suffice it to say, that though the "young trout" bit well, "older game bit better". The party was welcomed home Wed., but it was observed that they looked a "little sad".
Gazette & Courier - Monday, August 2, 1875
A Tennessee man
A Tennessee man went fishing a few days ago, hauled up his wife, who had been missing for 2 weeks, and thereby saved the $200 reward he had offered for her discovery.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, July 26, 1875
Turners Falls
The logs are beginning to run in considerable numbers, and there is a big jam at the "French King" some 4 or 5 miles up the River. The Turners Falls Company are removing the rocks thrown into the log way last winter, by the blasting for the fish-way, as the drivers threatened to send their logs over the dam, if the "way" was not cleared.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, July 26, 1875
News about home: Greenfield items
The monster band concert at Lake Pleasant next Fri. will eclipse any attempt of the kind ever made in New England, and will attract thousands to this popular resort. Extra trains are to be run over the Connecticut River, Fitchburg, New London Northern and New Haven and Northampton roads. The concert programme will occupy about an hour and a half, after which each band will perform selections of its own choosing. Hayner's Orchestra of Northampton will furnish music for the dancing. Richardson will get up a mammoth clam chowder so that all will be provided for.
Gazette & Courier - Monday, July 26, 1875
Letter from the seaside
Marblehead Neck, July 18, 1875 - ...I blundered upon Marblehead Neck. O, backwoodsman, who never saw a live lobster! O farmer, who never heard the roaring of the sea! O, country lawyer, full of the foul air of the court room, go to Marblehead Neck and renew your life and take back memories with you for old age. But stop at the Atlantic House and eat one of Tom Roche’s fish dinners and hear his merry laugh. Reader, I am not paid for this article. Tom Roche of South Deerfield was a stranger to me, and Marblehead Neck a myth, till that lucky day when Lon and I set out on a Bohemian tour.
I can give no details of our pleasuring. The time passed as if we had been residents of Utopia. Rowing, sailing, fishing, driving and smoking...succeeded each other in just the right order, and we forgot the "Hub" bub of our existence and gave ourselves up to dreams. Who would not dream with the Atlantic within half a minute’s walk of his piazza, and all around wild roses, whose cheeks are reddened by the salt breeze..."Sailor roses", the little brown faced girl, who tented on the beach, called them...
Six weeks had passed like a day, when it suddenly flashed upon us that our "business would go to the dogs" if we kept on oblivious to it...Max the Rhymer. [See Wikipedia].
Gazette & Courier - Monday, July 19, 1875
Amherst City
Perhaps there is not a village of Franklin County where the people are more enterprising, intelligent and united than the people of Amherst city, a village at the northern part of Amherst. Here are the great leather mills of the Cushmans, the paper mills of the Roberts, that give employment to most of the people of the place. "Uncle John" Cushman is the Nestor of the place. He has a beautiful and costly residence, one of the finest in the town of Amherst; and "Uncle John" is one of the best men the town can boast of.
He has a family of boys that are engaged with him in the leather mills, and they all work together in harmony, and with profit. Young John was a soldier in the war, and lost an arm in one of the first battles. Avery Cushman, the oldest son, is at the head of the concern, and the principal manager - an enterprising business man - Moses is a kind, noble-hearted, genial man that is a friend to everybody. Then there is Charley Dadmon, one of the employees, an intelligent, amiable man, who is always on hand for anything that will make people happy.
Well, last week the whole village met together for a "clam bake", and your correspondent had an invitation to be present. Up a little way east of Uncle John’s beautiful home, there is a shady, retired and pretty grove. Thither we all went for the bake. A fire was burning over a heap of stones, and we all heaped on brush to get them hot. By and by, they were all right.
We swept out the hot coals and ashes and piled on the oysters (not clams) and covered them over with green grass. A party came on from the village, with 2 or 3 pots of clam chowder. Soon our oysters were done, and the company seated around promiscuously in little squads, ate their clam chowder and baked oysters, with boiled eggs and small beer as a relish. Your correspondent was called on for a speech, and he made a short one, just as the sun went down, and bade the party "Good night".
[See Google Books "The Handbook of Amherst" by Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1891].
- Sun, Feb 21, 2010
