Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River

Hoosic River Watershed Association Copyright ©2017 Hoosic River Watershed Association Cover photo credit: Buskirk Bridge, L.Stevens Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River

Buskirk Bridge, S.McMahon

By Lauren R. Stevens with John Case & Wendy Hopkins Hoosic Subwatersheds Credit: R.Schlesinger 4 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 5 INTRODUCTION: River. Located about 150 miles equally Three states, one river from New York City and Boston, the The granite marker where New York, valley is neither urban nor suburban but Massachusetts, and Vermont abut stands country—and likely to stay that way. beside an unmarked former logging road Although it is not an area in which a lot of in a remote section of 2,600-forested people have made a lot of money—in fact acres. The nucleus was once a patchwork most residents work hard in low-paying of small farms, then Amos Lawrence jobs—it is an area to which some wealthy Hopkins’ 19th century private preserve, people, like railroad tycoon Hopkins, have then an experimental forest administered escaped. And, partly as a result, much of by the U.S. Forest Service, and now by the land is protected. Williams College. Williams’ students Land use in the watershed is consistently and faculty continue the forest research, wooded on the ridges, dotted by small studying the natural systems like water towns and villages along the river and its flow in the brooks, weather, leaf fall, tributaries, with the area between largely and forest regeneration. A canopy walk agricultural. This is a pattern visitors seek provides access to the upper parts of out, residents feel comfortable with, and the trees. The movement from private those who emigrate desire to return to. to government or non-profit ownership And yet peoples’ vision of the area is and the emphasis on the environment is distracted by the imaginary lines that typical of the tri-state area that comprises demark towns, counties, and states to the the Hoosac Valley. extent that we have lost our understanding The establishment of state boundaries of the congruence of the Hoosac is an important part of the history of the Valley, so that nowadays Williamstown area. Political boundaries, however, are residents, for example, rarely venture to of modest importance from the natural Schaghticoke, and Bennington folk have system’s point of view. The 720-square- little to do with North Adams. Perhaps mile Hoosic watershed that surrounds even an idiosyncratic history of the valley that marker includes eastern New will help overcome the myopia—and York north of Albany, the Bennington reveal the increasingly scarce qualities of area of southwestern Vermont, and the watershed. the Mt. Greylock area of northwestern Hoosic, Hoosac, Hoosick, Hoosuck… Massachusetts, all linked by the Hoosic The word is Algonquian and any consistent spelling, elusive. In general usage, 1943, “Miss Niles, a woman in her late Hoosuck is an older form, as in a former seventies, was doubtless, from a literary name for Mt. Greylock: Grand Hoosuck standpoint, the most talented person Mountain. Nowadays the town in New native to this small Vermont town” of York, Hoosick Falls, deploys a terminal k. Pownal, non trivial praise considering that The valley and eastern ridges that form two U.S. Presidents, James A. Garfield the valley are spelled Hoosac. The river and Chester A. Arthur, while not native, itself is Hoosic. The root word may have nevertheless taught in their youths in the meant “beyond place.” That is, living same one-room Pownal school. as the Mahicans did along the Hudson, they crossed beyond the Taconics to the Hoosacs for hunting and the like.

HISTORY, LEGENDS, & NILES An idiosyncratic history of the Hoosac Valley has already been chronicled. Grace Greylock Niles’ The Hoosac Valley: Its Legends and History (Putnam’s, 1912) is an example of regional history that doesn’t clearly differentiate between the “legends,” mostly about Indians, and the “history,” matters that can be documented. It also buries its story under detail, as do Grace Greylock Niles, self-portrait (?). many regional histories, and it bestows Credit: Pownal Historical Society somewhat odd place names. Given that some contemporary historians consider it Born in Pownal in 1864 as Grace unreliable and given that over 100 years Stoddard Niles, she attended Pownal have passed, it is time to take another look schools (post presidential teaching at Hoosuck, -sick –sac, -sic history. stints), later a private school—probably Still, Niles’ book is a remarkable in Herkimer, New York—and still later, effort. Pairing it with her biography adds nursing school. She returned to teach in to its allure. After all, according to her Pownal and then began her writing career. Bennington Banner obituary, June 15, She never married. Largely self-taught as 6 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 7 a naturalist, she published “The Origin of but stuck to her geographical - and Plant Names” in 1902. Her close feeling name-base, writing “The Greylock Park of association with her natural setting may Reservation” in 1911, more history, to have caused her to adopt the name of the celebrate the state’s protection of the highest peak in southern New England, massif. The following year she published Greylock, located in Massachusetts just The Hoosac Valley, followed by “The south of Pownal. The commonwealth had North American Cypripediums” (orchids). recently acquired the core of the Greylock While she had been returning to Pownal Reservation (1898) as its first state-owned summers, she moved back full time in wild land. In 1904 she displayed that 1918, at the age of 54. She settled on feeling for nature and her considerable family land, which now belongs to The talent for botany in her book, Bog Trotting Trustees of Reservations and is called for Orchids, the result of wandering Mountain Meadow Preserve. Where on through the Hoosic River watershed, the property her house stood is not known, especially the wetlands between the North although the remains of a foundation by Branch of the Hoosic and feeder streams Benedict Road may have been hers. to the Walloomsac. She drew many of the Soon she began harassing her few illustrations “from nature,” as she wrote. neighbors, especially those who were This book is still regarded as an accurate setting out apple trees for what became and inspiring text. the Kalarama Orchards. A distant, In the same year she published her first younger relative who saw to her, the late history, “The Mission of the White Oaks Henry Montgomery, recollected: “She Chapel,” which was founded by Williams worked so hard she went to dope,” a College Professor Albert Hopkins, in the phrase of which the general meaning at section of Williamstown, Massachusetts, least is clear. He added: “I was the only closest to Pownal. The article, published one she let in… She carried a rifle all the in the Christian Register, provides an time. The house was full of paintings and intimate recounting of the runaway slave books. She was in terrible condition [:] no community that lived in that part of town, clothes or food or heat.” and which Hopkins’ chapel served. Perhaps she agreed. She burned She continued to publish articles on down her house, while she “sat under her flowers. She moved to New York City grapevine eating grapes,” Montgomery around 1910, to serve as a private nurse, reported. (The Benedict Road foundation shows signs of fire.) Two days after she researched was not available in any neighbors took her in she ran away. digested, convenient form, except for Montgomery found her in the rain “in college and Williamstown historian Arthur a swamp” near the Sand Springs Hotel, Latham Perry’s and a few other’s books. down White Oaks Road in Williamstown. Her hours of digging through musty He called the sheriff, who drove her to documents and old deeds in registries, the Brattleboro Retreat Center, a mental libraries, and historical societies for The institution in Vermont. There she died in Hoosac Valley are awe-inspiring, might 1943, to be buried back in Pownal, at Oak even drive someone to dope, even if she Hill Cemetery. doesn’t provide us with a bibliography If historians consider suspect her and only occasionally a footnote. Don’t Indian history, her geology in The Hoosac expect footnotes to this informal paper, Valley is based on the best available although a bibliography is attached. information of her day. Williams College, Regarding the legends, she was in part having broken free from a strict Classical set up. Her publisher, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, curriculum, had become a center of was into them. In the back of her volume science. Amos Eaton began the study are advertisements for The Mohawk Valley: of geology at Williams, before joining Its Legends and History, Old Paths and Stephen Van Rensselaer to found Legends of New England, and other similar Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Eaton’s titles. So, to some degree the inclusion student, Ebenezer Emmons, established of unverifiable or even fanciful material the Taconic System as explanation for may have been part of her assignment. mountain building and inspired T. Nelson Among her legends are those relating to Dale, Niles’ contemporary and immediate Indians pre-Revolutionary War. She found source. Oddly, Niles the botanist includes her Indian heroes, to whom she dedicated scarce information about the plants of her book, in 17th century Albany deeds. the region in The Hoosac Valley. Her The Dutch were scrupulous about accounts of 18th century settlement in negotiating with the Indians for their land, her valley appear to be accurate. She although their payments can seem trivial certainly was a writer, artist, historian, (cf. Manhatten). She refers to Soquon and and above all botanist of note. In fact, Maquon as the “last of the great seers” of the more one reads her, the more she the Bears and the Wolves. By her time, the fascinates. For the most part, the material new Americans, in the East anyway, had 8 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 9 romanticized the Indians. (In the West we one point. In the words of explorer and were still stealing their land.) She turned geographer John Wesley Powell, it is for sources to poet William Cullen Bryant “that area of land, a bounded hydrologic and novelist James Fenimore Cooper. system, within which all living things are To be sure, both Bryant and Cooper inextricably linked by their common researched Indian lore extensively, but water course and where, as humans their purpose wasn’t history. Anyway, who settled, simple logic demanded that can be absolutely certain of history lived they become part of a community.” before it was written down, she implied. Heights of land, however modest, send Another legend, one that attracted barn water one way or the other. Humans expert Richard Babcock like a pollinator to are part of resulting ecological areas; one of her orchids, had to do with French therefore everyone has a watershed settlement of the Hoosac Valley prior to address. the Dutch and English. Again, historians The Hoosic is a sub-watershed of find that highly unlikely, but if legend, it’s the Hudson. The main stem of the good one. Babcock, as we’ll see, added Hoosic rises in Lanesborough, flowing to it the story of Norumbega (also spelled through Adams, while the north Norembega or just Bega)—Norumbega on branch descends from Heartwellville, the Hoosic. In any case, Niles begins her first Vermont, to join in North Adams, chapter with a quotation from Henry David thence through Williamstown; Pownal, Thoreau: “We should read history as little Vermont; and through the New York critically as we consider the landscape… It is State towns of Hoosick Falls, Pittstown, the morning now turned evening and seen and Schaghticoke before mingling in the west,—the same sun but a new light with the Hudson at Lock Four of the and atmosphere” (A Week on the Concord Champlain Canal, some 70 main-stem and Merrimack Rivers). Verification isn’t miles. (“Schaghticoke” is Algonquian necessarily the goal. for “mingling waters.”) Its tributaries are sub-watersheds to the Hoosic, including SOMETHING FISHY the Green, Little Hoosic, Walloomsac, We need to define the Hoosic River Owl Kill, and Tomhannock Creek. Mount watershed and describe its natural Greylock, the Hoosacs, the Taconics, history, as Niles began her book. In a the Rensselaer Plateau, and the Green watershed all precipitation drains to Mountains nestle the watershed, demarking the area that drains into the river is recovering, warming—its greatest Hoosic. threat since the glaciers—is upon it. The history of this Hoosac Valley over The heights that bound the watershed the last 500 years: Forested, deforested, are part of the Appalachians, a mountain and now mostly forested again. Along chain once of Alpine proportions that with the trees, the larger forest animals formed millions of years ago when are returning. The related history of the continental plates collided—an activity Hoosic River and its tributaries: Pristine unknown to the geologists Niles consulted. to badly polluted, to being able, once In the Taconic Orogeny (mountain again, to perform most of their ecological building) offshore islands pushed west functions. Yet just at the point when the onto what is now New England, which

The Green Mountains from Northwest Hill, Williamstown Credit: Williamstown Historical Museum 10 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 11 is why local mountains contain layers of years ago, a nearly one-mile-thick ice rock formed under the ocean, such as sheet covered the entire region, scouring quartzite, schist, and limestone. Wind and out the U-shaped valley as it crept water erosion through time have reduced southward toward Long Island. As the and continue to reduce their height. ice sheet receded through the region The Taconics, along the New York- 4,000 years later, Lake Bascom filled the New England border, are predominantly Hoosic River valley below the 1,100-foot phyllite schist. The Hoosic passes through elevation. Glacial debris dammed the melt an opening in that ridge. The Hoosac water in various places, ultimately Potter Range, with a complex of phyllite, Hill, New York, preventing its draining quartzite, and granitic bedrock, defines to the northwest, while a smaller dam in the eastern flank of the valley. Its summits Cheshire blocked the flow to the south. form the Berkshire Plateau, at around Lake Bascom persisted for about 800 2,400 feet in the north, decreasing years until it emptied toward the Hudson to about 2,000 feet in the south. The in a series of dramatic floods. The Hoosic plateau merges to the north with the regained its pre-glacial southeast to granitic Green Mountains of Vermont. northwest flow, unlike most rivers in New The Valley of Vermont, extending from England that the glaciers gouged north Pownal to Proctor, is based on erodible to south. Traces of the lake are still visible dolomite bedrock. as gravel and sand beaches, hundreds Some geologists hold that the Taconics of feet above the river in northwestern were originally the peaks of the Greens Massachusetts and southern Vermont. A and the Hoosacs, shoved across that tributary, the Green, is colored because valley. Mt. Greylock stands as a massif finely powdered rock left over from in the northern Massachusetts portion of glacial grinding continues to wash down the region, its summit at 3,491 feet. Its from the hills. bedrock geology is closely related to the The valley floor contains a variety of Taconics. The Little Hoosic River bounds wetland types, from flowing and flooding the western edge of the Taconics. The rivers to ponds and backwaters dammed Rensselaer Plateau, primarily greywacke— by 19th century industrialists. Vegetative durable sandstone with slate layers—rises wetlands include wet meadows, marshes, 1,400 to 2,000 feet in the west. fens, swamps, and bogs. The Pownal During the Pleistocene, some 18,000 Bog, where Niles trotted, north of Barber Pond, is actually a 2.5-acre peatland fen, west. Riparian areas grow black willow, formed in a kettle hole depression. The sycamore, cottonwood, and giant ostrich marshes in Cheshire just downstream of ferns—as well as numerous invasive the Reservoir are the most extensive in shrubs. Flood plain forests border the river northern Berkshire. Additional significant near Cole Field in Williamstown, the bend wetlands are found in Stamford, Vermont. of the river below North Pownal, and the Uplands support boreal coniferous Thompson Mill site in Valley Falls, among forest of balsam fir on Mt. Greylock, other stretches. above 3,000 feet, and also on the Dome During the 19th and early 20th in Pownal, and red spruce from 2,400- centuries, much of the forest cover was 3,000 feet above sea level on other peaks converted to agricultural uses, with of Greylock. Sugar maple, yellow birch, residual forests cut for woodlots, for eastern hemlock, and beech dominate timber, charcoal, fuel, and other forest north- and east-facing slopes at lower products. Early days of railroading finished elevations, while oaks, hickories, and the job of largely denuding the slopes for beech dominate south- and west-facing crossties and telephone poles, leading slopes. Eastern white pine, as well as to increased runoff and landslides that hemlock and red spruce, populate the fouled the river. Loss of riparian vegetation Rensselaer Plateau. Alkaline-preferring removed a natural barrier that held banks plants, some rare, enjoy the calcareous soils in the valleys and hillsides, such as the old quarry in the Quarry Hill Natural Area, owned by The Nature Conservancy in Pownal. The lime also buffers vegetation, such as Niles’ orchids, and waterways (some but not all) against the The Walloomsac forms in the wetlands south of Bennington Center. Credit: T.Hyde acid deposition from power plants to the 12 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 13 and strained out pollution. With the such as pickerel, perch, and bass. Otter regional decline in agriculture and the and bank beaver patrol the shores. Great pivot from wood to fossil fuels in the 20th blue and green herons fish the river, which century, forests began to reclaim much is also home to ducks. Bald eagles stake of the land. Residential and commercial out fishing territory beside at least two developments, including roads and nests in the valley. parking lots, are also important features The upper Hoosic, roughly the of the post-agricultural landscape. Massachusetts portion, is biologically a Tributaries include the Tomhannock, cold-water fishery (although apparently which flows from the City of Troy’s to accommodate a waste water treatment reservoir, and the Little Hoosic, two of plant, the official boundary is Adams); the three remaining sparsely developed, the lower portion, a working river with free-flowing rivers in eastern New York significant hydroelectric generation. The State. Hopper and Money brooks, fish indicate the health of the entire, river- flowing from Mt. Greylock to the Green, related ecosystem. The Hoosic and its are Massachusetts-certified Wild and tributaries produce quantities of fish, the Scenic Rivers. The Green, currently on creatures fish feast upon, and those that the impaired list, may be removed. Thus live upon the fish. In the gravel reaches of it should be fishable and swimmable. the upper river brown, rainbow, and brook The Walloomsac is listed, probably trout spawn; the Hoosic is one of the few inaccurately, as unimpaired. The six rivers in Massachusetts in which trout Massachusetts communities through reproduce. These wild trout are more of a which the Hoosic runs for 29 miles have challenge to anglers than those raised in adopted it as a Local Scenic River. A hatcheries. Brook trout are stocked in the fishing advisory on the main stem tributaries. downstream of North Adams, due to On a given autumn day in the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) left watershed, the sun, peering from over from the Sprague Electric Company, underneath dark clouds, sends a bolt of and bacterial contamination, encourage fire through the orange and gold leaves fishermen to release their catch, which of the sugar maples. On the bottom of increases the productivity of the river. In a clear, moving tributary to the Hoosic, its lower reaches, primarily in New York, a dark-olive fish with wavy markings the river is home to warm water species, on her back and red spots on her side Lucy Bridges Prindle caught these trout over 100 years ago. Credit: Williamstown Historical Museum

thrashes about, creating a nest in the provided no barriers are placed in their gravel. Her even more colorful mate, he way, when their turn comes to spawn. with the jutting jaw, fiercely drives off Historically, brook trout (also known as other males. When her redd is ready, she speckled and squaretail) in the eastern deposits 1,000 or so eggs and he, after United States have found homes in one last tour of the perimeter, slides in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, to fertilize them. They cover the eggs and on south in higher elevations of the with gravel; then both adults leave their Appalachians. Destruction of suitable progeny to be. habitat by dams, flood chutes, the removal Although peripheral males feed on of riparian vegetation, and pollution, have some of the eggs, as the water warms already reduced that range by some 20 to in the following spring, most hatch. The 25 percent, especially in the central and alevins stay under the gravel for a week southern Appalachians, and including before emerging to eat. They grow and western New York. The Manomet Center swim away. Their lives will take them up- for Conservation Services, of Plymouth, and downstream, perhaps into the Hoosic Massachusetts, and the National Wildlife itself, looking for food, logs under which Federation, in 2012 reviewed the to hide from predators, cool temperature considerable research on the effect of a refugia or pools, and boulders to provide warming climate on trout, the indicator protection from storms. This will be the of the health of cold-water ecosystems place to which they will return, however, and prize game fish of our area. By 14 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 15 mid-21st century higher temperatures stream shading, angle to the sun, and may severely limit the viability of trout. adjacent land use. Blacktopped parking Brown, brought from Europe in the lots and roads by rivers; dams; concrete 1880s, and rainbow, introduced from or stonewalls, all increase heat. the western U.S. in the 1870s, as well Certainly the erosion of trout fishing as native brookies, are largely limited areas in the northeast will continue, to unpolluted, cold, well-oxygenated working from south to north and from streams. Water above 70 degrees F. kills lower elevations to higher. Nevertheless eggs, fry, and adults. Therefore trout the future for the Hoosic may not be as “might be among the more sensitive fish grim as earlier studies predicted and there in the U.S. to climate change,” according are ways that we, the culprits in climate to Manomet. Although more study needs change, can modify its outcomes and to be done, as a species trout do not even manipulate stream environments seem to be particularly adaptable. Brown to prolong the life of what we correctly and rainbow are more tolerant of warmer perceive as a prime indicator of our river’s temperatures than brook trout. vitality. Our river would be significantly Many variables are in play, beginning poorer without the trout. with the issue of just how much the climate will warm, which in turn depends BARN MAN on the steps that we take to reduce the Dick Babcock, nationally known carbon we emit. In the Hoosac Valley expert on what he called “roots to date, frost-free days have expanded barns”—those created according to the significantly into the spring and fall. distinct styles of the European origins Some possibilities exist that may limit the of their builders—was mystified. This negative effects. Recent studies Manomet bear of a man had discovered and reviews have emphasized that conditions dismantled to move to his barn museum for trout need to be assessed on a site- in Hancock, Massachusetts, a barn built by-site rather than regional basis. The like none other he was familiar with. He relationship between air temperature and had studied, saved, dismantled, and water temperature is not automatic. Other reassembled German, Dutch, Scots- factors may buffer stream temperatures, Irish, and English barns, but this one such as tributaries flowing from the had him stumped. So we can imagine hillsides, the addition of groundwater, how he reacted when he read in Niles’ His grandfather asked, “Why don’t you move one?” So they did, from a farm once owned by Clayton’s father and then by Clayton’s brother. And that was how Richard learned, hands-on, the skills that became his profession, and how he was introduced to the wealth of ancient barns, most about to disappear, in the Hoosac Valley. That any of them were still around is a miracle, partly explained by their being over built. Given the size of the trees at the time, it may actually have been easier to build with huge timbers than to hew them down to size. But if barn roofs weren’t kept up they Richard W. Babcock. Credit: R.Babcock moldered; and they were bulldozed as Hoosac Valley about French settlement farms gave way to subdivisions. along the Hoosic prior to any other The method involved a gin pole Europeans, in fact 80 years before the and bull wheel—something like the Pilgrims’ arrival at Plymouth Rock. cargo hoist on a freighter—, portable Babcock, born in 1934, came to live devices that enable a crew to lift or with his grandparents on their Cold lower heavy beams. The method Spring Road farm in Williamstown when involved knowledge of the intricate he was young. His grandfather, Clayton, joints timber framers used to connect knew the skills, nearly lost to history, of horizontal beams to vertical posts. It disassembling and reassembling timber- involved the skill and sweated labor of framed barns. Clayton had learned hewing beams. Babcock learned from them from Square Allen of Petersburgh, his grandfather, and later research, that a talented timber-framer who had the earliest barns were built to be taken learned from his father, and so on. apart so that they could be moved as When Richard, returning from serving the farmer’s plans changed. He learned as a Marine in Korea, purchased a farm and became a master at the different in Hancock, he knew he needed a barn. kinds of joinery used by settlers from 16 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 17 different European backgrounds in major barn raisings were well covered the Hoosac Valley and nearby, and he by the press and brought Babcock fame passed those skills on to his sons and and jobs. He simply could not manage others who went into timber framing. money, however, and for all the attention, With other ancient carpenter’s he remained as he described himself, techniques, Babcock took down and “barn poor.” moved barns, most dating to the 18th In 1984 he disassembled a barn on century or before, to become homes. His Breese Hollow Road in Hoosick that he activities turned out to be photogenic found different from any before. This one and newsworthy, such as a piece in had a king post that had originally risen Yankee Magazine (February 1976), from the great swing beam that spanned which led to numerous other jobs. He the width of the building. Some of the moved two barns—one 17th century beams had been removed, no doubt to English, one later—from Shrewesbury install a hayfork, but still he could see to Macomber Farm, the Massachusetts how it had been. He noticed unusual Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to carpenter’s compass marks on most Animals in Framingham. Then Catherine beams. He noticed braces that ran all the Filene Shouse invited him to move an way from sill to the top of corner posts. early 18th century German barn, from The nails were cruder than those he had Blenheim, New York, together with a found before. He stored the pieces in the 1790 Scots barn from Jackson, New York, Saratoga barn. to Vienna, Virginia, to be combined as a Then he turned to Niles for clues to performance shed at Wolf Trap. Babcock who could have built it. There he read deconstructed and reconstructed a 1750 legends of St. Croix, a spirit cross, Dutch barn, from Guilderland, New York, formed by the T-shaped junction of the which he dubbed the Great Plantation Hoosic and Walloomsac—or perhaps Barn of Saratoga, to be the focus of a Little White Creek and the Walloomsac— barn museum he planned. He took a 17th rivers, near the barn site. Niles wrote century Dutch barn from Guilderland to that when the Dutch, the supposed first Tarrytown to be part of the Philipsburg Europeans, arrived in that area, they Manor estate, operated by Historic found the ruins of a fort. She wrote that Hudson, Inc. He and his crew erected this Jean Alfonse’s (Allefonsce) crew from one in public and in costume. All of the St. Onge, France, visited the Hoosac Indian hunting grounds between 1540 University Libraries, where he sat down in and 1542, established a community, front of Alfonse’s Cosmographie (1545). and named it St. Croix. That name, He asked a librarian to copy every page sometimes corrupted to Sancoick, where he found the word Norumbega. lingers. The community included a forest He found someone to translate them. chapel in memory of the missionary, St. Jacques Cartier, searching for the Antoine of Padua. Nearby Mt. Anthony, Northwest Passage in 1535, sailed up the in Benningon, Vermont, bears the saint’s St. Lawrence to Quebec and Montreal. name. Ships, churches, and barns had In 1541, he built a fort above Quebec, similar construction. For Babcock, but his lieutenant, Sieur de Roberval, the barn was very early, French, and with three ships and 200 settlers, was originally a chapel. delayed crossing the Atlantic, so what Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian might have been the first European (as explorer in the service of France, described opposed to Viking) settlement of North hearing on his voyage in 1524 about America, failed. One of Roberval’s a magnificent city named Norumbega pilots, Alfonse, wrote that after sailing on a great river south of Cape Breton. southward to a great bay at latitude Alfonse wrote that he found Norumbega; 42 degrees (roughly New England), he but where was he when he found it? proceeded to Norumbega. The idea Historians don’t believe there were any of Norumbega caught hold. Andre 16th century European settlements in Thevet contributed in his account the Albany area, and John Cabot and of his 1556 voyage—which Babcock Verrazzano didn’t get that far up the also read about at Harvard. Generally Hudson, anyway. There were no French adventurers, like Champlain, and the settlements in the area until after 1609, poet John Greenleaf Whittier, believed they say, when Champlain arrived on the Norumbega, if not a misplaced myth lake that bears his name and Hudson, about Mexican gold, was up the on his river. Richard knew the negatives; Penobscott River, in Maine. nevertheless, the barn expert who left Babcock found support for his view school in eighth grade for a job erecting on Mercator’s 1569 map, which shows utility poles did a scholarly turn. He a left branch from what might be the determined to check Niles’ sources. He Hudson that could be the Mohawk, and traveled across the state to the Harvard a right branch that could be the Hoosic, 18 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 19

Mercator’s 1569 map, sheet 9. his hands, track down their history as best Credit: Wiki Commons he could, save many old barns, and add with the word “Bega.” And he found the considerably to the knowledge of timber account of David Ingram’s extraordinary framing. Unfortunately he stored the (and unlikely) 1569 hike from the Gulf timbers from the “French” barn in the of Mexico to find a Christian captain to Saratoga barn, which burned down the take him home. Ingram said he found evening of July 5, 1994. As he ran for help, Bega—Babcock thought near the Babcock felt pain shooting through his Hudson—on his way to Montreal, where body. The firemen called an ambulance a French captain offered him a lift. Ingram and he was taken to the coronary care describes a great diamond rock near the unit at Berkshire Medical Center. It is head of navigable waters. Richard located probable that the fire was an accident, the at least a facsimile on the east bank of the slow result of fireworks set off the night Hudson below Albany—not a diamond, before. He struggled with the realization but shiny enough—now camouflaged by that he was no longer young and that for residential development. all his epic barn adventures, what little he All this is secondary to what Babcock had in financial resources had gone up did, that is, learn the facts of barns through in smoke. His mind slipped and he died in a Williamstown nursing home in 2014. council of sachems met regularly at In fire, poverty, and loss of bearings, their capital of Shodac (Schodack) on Babcock followed the path of his trusted the Hudson to decide matters affecting source, Grace Greylock Niles. the entire confederacy. For warfare they tightened the organization, passing DRUMS ALONG THE HOOSIC authority to a war chief who exercised The Mahicans, often spelled almost dictatorial power. Mohicans, have been confused with Their villages consisted of 20 to the Mohegans, an eastern Connecticut 30 mid-sized, fortified longhouses, tribe (as in Mohegan Suns Casino in located on hills. Unlike other Algonquin, Uncasville). James Fenimore Cooper the Mahicans didn’t always move to named Uncas, “the last of the Mohicans,” scattered hunting camps during the after the Mohegan prince. For clarity, winter, finding it safer to stay in their then, let’s spell it with an “a.” And let’s “castles.” Large cornfields were located call them Indians, even though it is nearby. Most of the Mahican diet was Columbus’ misnomer. Mahicans spoke corn and other agricultural produce, the Algonquian language, with other supplemented by game, fish, and other Algonquin or Algonkin tribes, such as a wild foods. They used copper, acquired group Niles separates out, the Hoosacs. from the Great Lakes through trade, (She wrote that their totem was the extensively for ornaments and some of owl—hoo, hoo.) The Mohawks, perhaps their arrowheads. Once they began trade originally a derogatory term (“flesh- with the Dutch, they abandoned many eater”), were Iroquois speakers. Their of their traditional weapons, becoming homeland was the Mohawk River Valley, experts with their new firearms. heading west from the Hudson, south Many archeological sites in the Hoosic of where the Hoosic enters. The Hoosac watershed have been uncovered, dating Valley was Mahican territory. to Colonial times and earlier. The segment The Mahican formed a confederacy between North Pownal and Hoosick Falls of five tribes with as many as 40 villages, contains 10 known prehistoric sites. Forty- governed by hereditary sachems three others have been found before the through matrilineal descent, advised by Hoosic mingles with the Hudson. The site a council of clan leaders. They had three at Schaghticoke is over 8,000 years old. clans: bear, wolf, and turtle. A general River Bend Farm in Williamstown is said to 20 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 21 have been an Indian camping place where Although culturally similar to other hunters and travelers enjoyed nearby woodland Algonquin, the Mahican were 73-degree F. spring waters. Archeology shaped—or at least our knowledge is—by is indebted to 19th century Pownal their constant warfare with neighboring resident Alonzo Whipple and his 20th Iroquois. The source of the enmity is century successor Gordon Sweeney who, unknown. The story of the Mahicans during his lifetime, uncovered some 400- through the 17th and 18th centuries is 500 points, pieces of pottery, and stone of their 200-year fall from dominance to tools, mostly above the river in Pownal. subservience to dispersal. This fall was He hunted best on freshly plowed fields due to a combination of circumstances just after rain, when the object stood out including Mohawk rivalry and above the beaten ground. manipulation—sometimes unwitting— The Bennington area contains by European powers and settlers. This important prehistory archeological story is more archeological and less information revealed by two digs prior mythological than Niles’—and covers the to the creation of the Bennington Colonial history of the area. Bypass, Vermont 279, which opened The Iroquois had organized into in 2004. The Silk Road site, the setting the Iroquois League, an alliance of five for a 19th century textile mill, was tribes (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, located on two river terraces adjacent Cayuga, Seneca; later the Tuscarora to the Walloomsac. The many artifacts became the sixth) thought to prefigure documented how the Walloomsac was the confederacy of colonies, and were used by prehistoric Indians for annual regarded as formidable. After 50 years seasonal encampments sporadically for of warfare they had driven an unknown 7,000 years between 5,000 B.C. and Algonquian-speaking enemy whom they 1,500 A.D. The nearby Cloverleaf Site, a called the Adirondack (bark-eaters) from large archeological location, preserved the mountains in northern New York and the remains of a prehistoric village dating were in the process of reclaiming the St. almost exclusively to a brief span during Lawrence Valley from the Algonkin. Thus the Late Archaic Period, called the River the St. Lawrence River west of Quebec Phase (ca. 1,000-1,800 B.C.). was a war zone blocking the expansion As with much of human history, what of the French fur trade. Mohawk war we know best is often defined by battles. parties made the Algonkin and their Huron allies reluctant to bring their furs below what was to become Albany. The to Quebec so, to win their loyalty, the Mahicans were friendly and eager to French decided to help them. In July trade. Hudson exhausted his trade goods of 1609, Samuel de Champlain and six and returned to Holland with a cargo of other French accompanied a combined valuable furs, which attracted Dutch fur Algonkin, Montagnais, and Huron war traders in the following years. So European party south. At the north end of the lake fashion for fur hats drove Europeans into given his name they encountered a large the wilderness, to encounters detrimental force of Mohawk warriors massing for to the Indians—and to the settlement of battle. French firearms broke the Mohawk the New World. formation, killing several of their chiefs. As the Dutch established a trading post The Mohawks broke and ran. near Albany, they attempted to broker The Iroquois were saved from a peace between the Mahicans and technological annihilation by the Mohawks. The first agreement involved beginning of trade with the Dutch on access to Fort Orange in return for tolls to the Hudson. Trade goods soon included the Mahicans. The Dutch tended to favor arms for pelts. In order for the Mohawk to the Mahicans because they had closer trade with the Dutch, however, they first contact with them, including marriage. As had to cross Mahican territory—which local supplies of fur were being exhausted, the latter were reluctant to allow. So the the Dutch asked the Mahicans to arrange stakes were set. trade with the Algonkin and Montagnais Henry Hudson, an Englishman of the St. Lawrence. To the Mohawks, employed by the Dutch East India already unhappy about the tolls, trading Company to search for that elusive with their enemies was too much, and Northwest Passage, sailed through led to another outbreak of Indian war Verrazzano Strait and entered the in 1624. A Dutch commander and six of Hudson River in September, two months his soldiers joined a doomed Mahican after Champlain’s visit. The Wappinger war party. The Mohawks celebrated Indians on the lower river were hostile, their victory by eating one of the dead. due to earlier encounters with European Gov. Pieter Minuit ordered the Dutch fishermen and slave traders, but Hudson to remain neutral and evacuated the continued upstream until stopped by families near Fort Orange to Manhattan shallow water near the Mahican villages Island, inadvertently freeing the Mohawks 22 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 23 to conquer their enemies. By 1628 the in 1630 to negotiate with the Mahicans. Mahican had abandoned their villages on They were willing to part with the land they the west side of the Hudson. had already abandoned. Rensselaerwyck The flexible Dutch accepted the made additional purchases over the years, Mohawks as their new primary trading including the east side of the Hudson, partner, brokering a peace that required until it controlled nearly one million acres. the Mahicans to pay an annual tribute of While Indians battled along the St. wampum to the Iroquois. The Mohawk Lawrence, the Mahican and Mohawks, used the wampum to purchase what they although heavily armed, entered a period needed at Fort Orange. After 1629, when of peace. In 1624 smallpox started in New a British fleet captured Quebec, French England and swept through the Hudson goods and weapons were no longer Valley, devastating native populations available to the Algonkin and Montagnais. that had no immunity. Measles, influenza, The Iroquois seized that opportunity to typhus, and a host of other diseases took attack, so that when the French retook a similar toll. The two ancient enemies, Canada in 1632, the Mohawk had nearly needing additional hunting territory cut the trade corridor that included the but with reduced manpower, found Ottawa River valley and the Great Lakes. themselves cooperating. The Mohawk The French began to arm their allies and pressured the Munsee Delaware west the Dutch did the same, resulting in 70 of the Hudson, while the Mahicans went years of intertribal warfare known as the after the Wappinger on the east. By the Beaver Wars (1629-1701). summer of 1645, more than 2,600 had The Dutch system of settlement been killed. The treaty signed at Fort involved wealthy investors (patroons) Orange that August made the Wappinger willing to transport 50 adult settlers to subject to the Mahican and required a New Amsterdam. The patroon owned the tribe on the western end of Long Island land, while the settlers were tenants or to pay an annual tribute in wampum sharecroppers; as opposed to settlement (shells), which the Mahicans duly passed in New England, where farmers owned on to the Mohawks, as required. Local their own land. Of the five patroonships peace ended as the French tried to established, however, only Kiliaen Van organize Algonkin forces opposed to Rensselaer’s was successful. He sent Iroquois. In 1650 the Mahicans joined Sebastian Jansen Krol to Fort Orange in for several years until the Dutch once governmental control was over. Their citizens remained, however, Dutch traders continuing to deal with the Indians and Dutch burgers maintaining residences in the area along the Hoosic River known as Dutch Hoosac. The English looked Remains of the Witenagemot Oak the other way, just Credit: L.Stevens as the Dutch had, when four members of the Iroquois Confederacy drove again forced them into a separate peace Algonquian allies of the Mahicans out with the Mohawk. Which did not hold. of western New England. The Mohawks The fighting continued until 1762, but followed the old Indian trail along the after 1664 the Mahican were forced to Hoosic to decimate the Pocumtucs in abandon most of their holdings in the what is now Deerfield, opening the way Hudson valley. They moved their ancient for Anglo settlement in the area. (And capital from Shodac to Wnahkutook inspiring what is really a misnomer, (Stockbridge) on the Housatonic River in calling the automobile road that parallels western Massachusetts. the path, Route 2 in Massachusetts, In September 1664, the British fleet the “Mohawk” Trail.) New York Gov. captured New Netherlands. Fort Orange Francis Lovelace traveled to Albany on surrendered on the 10th. Now it was the another peace mission, but the peace British turn to urge peace on the Indians, the Mahicans made with the Iroquois in with whom they signed treaties of trade 1672 was a total surrender. The Iroquois and friendship on September 24. Although came to handle all Mahican negotiations the Dutch returned briefly in 1673, their with Europeans. The Mahicans, in fact, 24 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 25 became the first members of the Iroquois William’s War (1689-96) between Britain “Covenant Chain,” meaning that Mahican and France, French attacks dispersed warriors were recruited for Iroquois raids. the Mohawks. Faced with a possible Philip was the anglicized name for invasion from Canada, New York recruited Metacomet, who led the Wampanoag Mahican, Wappinger, and Munsee tribe in fighting back against the invasion warriors to join Mohawk fighters—all lost of Europeans in New England. After King many casualties. With the approach of Philip’s War (1675-76), Gov. Edmund Andros of New York invited Indians to a sanctuary, the Mahican village at Schaghticoke. Perhaps he reasoned that they would stave off attacks from Canada on Albany. To the displeasure of New Englanders, 250 refugees from Philip’s War came and, after speeches and gifts on all sides, planted the Witenagemot Oak, the English word referring to a council of the wise. By 1700 the number of refugees St. Croix Church, White Creek Credit: L.Stevens at Schaghticoke had grown to more than 1,000—enough so that they agitated for a Queen Anne’s War in 1703, Gov. Edward second tree to shelter them all. The peace Cornbury authorized construction of did not last; the tree (or its immediate Fort Schaghticoke, which became the successor) did. After being propped up headquarters for Mahican and Mohawk with cement and rebar, a 1948 hurricane scouts who were crucial to the defense finally felled it. Its remains rest in peace system that protected the outermost behind the Knickerbocker Mansion. regions of his colony. In 1709, Johannes Having sold most of their lands in what Knickerbocker became commander of was to be New York, the Mahicans found the Fort, obtained the first farmland along themselves under pressure in what was the Hoosic, and initiated Schaghticoke’s to be New England for, with the close of European settlement. King Philip’s War, settlers streamed up Dutch or perhaps Walloons founded the Housatonic Valley. Small pox reduced the Fort St. Croix colony in 1724, at Mahicans to fewer than 800. During King the junction of Little White Creek and the Walloomsac River. Walloons were Indians. Most of them came to live in French-speaking Belgians often lumped frame houses, attend church, send their together with the Dutch. They probably children to British schools, and resemble gave their name to the Hoosic tributary. their white neighbors in other ways. This Perhaps they built the unusual barn was, however, insufficient to protect them Babcock dismantled. Other settlers from the colonists, who continued to pushed up from the Hoosic onto the encroach on their lands. So the New York- Rensselaer Plateau. Philip Van Ness New England Indians sorted into two founded the Tiashoke Colony on the groups, to the north the Schaghticokes north bank of the Hoosic, below its and, south, the Stockbridge. junction with the Owl Kill. Mahicans from Stockbridge garrisoned Mahicans, as their numbers continued Fort Dummer (New Hampshire Grants) to dwindle, began to scatter. Konkapot, to protect western New England during their chief sachem, sold a large section Greylock’s War (1724-27) and later served along the Housatonic in 1724 for 460 as British scouts during King George’s War pounds, three barrels of cider, and three (1744-48). Turning the other cheek, as quarts of rum, leaving only one holding required by their new faith, the Stockbridge south of Stockbridge. Game became chose not to retaliate to an unprovoked increasingly scarce and alcohol a serious murder of a Mahican by two white men, problem. Keepedo (later known as the even when the court’s punishment was “Mohican Abraham”) abandoned his exceptionally lenient. At the outbreak lands and left with his people in 1730 to of the French and Indian War in 1755, a settle among in the Wyoming Valley in war party from St. Francis retrieved some northern Pennsylvania. The departure left of its people from Schaghticoke—and only 400 at Wnahkutook, most converted some of them returned to kill five colonists to Christianity by missionary work, notably near Stockbridge, increasing distrust by by John Sergeant, who built his mission in Anglos. Yet 45 Stockbridge warriors joined Stockbridge in 1735. Mahicans, Munsee, Major Robert Rogers’s Rangers against the Wappinger, and several New England French in 1756. Because of them, Abenaki tribes soon joined his congregation. and Schaghticoke raiders avoided English Although predominantly Mahican, settlements along the Housatonic. A as tribal lines blurred the community constant, despite their service, was became known as the Stockbridge that the Stockbridge found themselves 26 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 27 increasingly unwelcome in New England. invading and as a warning to Yorkers not The Hoosic River provided a significant to encroach from the west. At the same Indian trail, both for canoes and as a time, entrepreneurs widened the trail to footpath, as the Mohawks had found. It Schaghticoke for carting supplies to the generally followed the north and east sides fort. In 1746, 900 French and Canadian of the river, although a trail said to have Indians captured the fort, flew the French been used by scouting parties followed flag above it briefly, and then burned it, on the west side through Pownal to North taking its defenders, women, and children Petersburgh. Together with a similar over the trail. On the way, Captivity route along the Deerfield River it joined Smead was born in Pownal. Neither the Connecticut and Hudson valleys; and she nor her mother survived captivity

Photo of the 1930s reproduction of Fort Massachusetts. Credit: Williamstown Historical Museum

in Quebec. The fort was rebuilt and successfully defended in August 1748. With the Peace of Aix-La-Chappele in October, the garrison dwindled. In 1753, the year of the first settlement of the route up the Hoosic tributary Owl Kill West Hoosac (Willamstown), Elisha Hawley was a major pathway to and from Canada, followed the trail to create a rough route known as the Great Northern Warpath. over the Hoosacs to Charlemont. Two The English built Fort Massachusetts on years later Indians descended on Dutch the trail, in what’s now North Adams, Hoosac, burning and scalping, including in 1745, to prevent the French from the Brimmer family on what is still called Indian Massacre Road, and the next day lands in 1756 and, accepting the invitation hit a settlement on the Walloomsac. The from the Oneida, moved to upstate New French and Indian War had begun— York. After the fall of Quebec in September or begun again, as both communities 1759, emboldened British settlers poured had been destroyed in the raid on Fort into western Massachusetts. Even Massachusetts. In June of 1756, 13 Konkapot was forced to sell land to pay soldiers from the fort were ambushed off debts to white traders. By the start and in July a subsidiary, Fort West of the American Revolution in 1775, the Hoosac, was attacked. Ephraim Williams, Stockbridge holdings had been reduced Jr., for whom the town was named and to fewer than 1,200 acres. Other than commander of a string of forts along what land provided by the Oneida, that was all Massachusetts considered its northern the Mahican had after years of service to border, volunteered to fight the French at the Dutch and British. Lake George in 1755, and was killed that As the Revolutionary War approached, September, although the British for whom the Mahican and Wappinger sent he was fighting won the engagement. wampum belts to the other tribes advising Of more lasting importance concerning neutrality. After a meeting with the the Anglos’ feelings for the Indians was patriots in Boston in April 1774, however, the Marquis de Montcalm’s siege of the Stockbridge Captain Hendrick Aupamut undermanned British Fort William Henry, changed his mind and decided to throw in on Lake George. The day after signing an with the rebels. The Wappingers joined, honorable peace, on August 10, 1757, too. The Stockbridge were one of the few Indians from 33 different tribes, mostly tribes to support the American cause. from Canada, attached to Montcalm’s They participated in the siege of Boston troops, attacked the retreating British and fought at Bunker Hill that June, saw column, massacring soldiers, women, service at White Plains in 1776, fought and children—and providing a setting for as a company-sized unit at the Battle of Cooper’s Last of the Mohicans. The Peace Bennington in 1777, served as scouts for of Paris, signed in 1763, largely ended the army of Horatio Gates at Saratoga, France’s claims to North America, except and were at Barren Hill in 1778. Whatever perhaps in the city of Quebec. the gratitude of their white neighbors, Although Konkapot at first refused to it did not last after the war and did not leave Stockbridge, many others sold their include citizenship. With most of their 28 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 29 lands gone, the Stockbridge left western Hoosic, which Queen Ann confirmed Massachusetts for New York, the last in 1707. He was one of the eight group in 1786. Occasionally Mahicans original lessees of Albany city land at visit this area, as did Stockbridge- Schaghticoke and he also owned milling Munsee from Wisconsin in 1975. In 1990 rights for lumber. He added considerably The Trustees of Reservations, which to his land. In Albany’s 1720 census, he owns the Mission House in Stockbridge, was listed as a freeholder, having property returned a Bible given to the Indians in worth at least 40 pounds. 1745. A few Mahican descendents live in Their son Johannes was born in 1679. the Hoosic Valley. He married Anna Quackenbush in 1701, putting up a cabin on the family property. WHOSE LAND? He and Anna had three sons, of whom One family takes us through the era Johannes (no surprise there), born in of European settlement in the Hoosac 1723, followed his father in acquiring land Valley to the Revolution, and beyond. and serving his community. Knickerbocker might mean “brick baker” In 1750 Johannes married Rebecca or “marble baker,” depending on the Fonda at the Dutch Reformed Church source. Harmon Jansen Knickerbocker in Albany. He served with the British migrated from Holland to New York about expedition against Fort Carillon (the 1674 and made his way up the Hudson French name for what the British to Albany. His father was Johannes Van christened Fort Ticonderoga) in the Bergen Knickerbocker of Friesland, French and Indian War. He was a Justice Holland, and his mother was related to of the Peace in Albany County and, the Van Rensselaers’ Norwegian factotum, although many of the Dutch were Tories, Roelof Jansen. Harmon married Elizabeth in the run up to the Revolution he headed Van de Bogart in 1678. They moved to the local Committee of Safety. He was the Albany by 1680 and then back down river. first Colonel of the 14th Albany militia. He The Albany Corporation, standing in was wounded at Saratoga. He served the for a patroon, had purchased land from state legislature from the newly formed the Mahicans in Schaghticoke in the Rensselaer County from 1792-96. He early 17th century, leasing it to settlers. died in 1802. Harmon leased a tract of land west of The Colonel and Rebecca’s son, the Tomhannock Creek and south of the Johannes, referred to as John Jr. (1751- Knickerbocker Mansion, open to the public. Credit: L.Stevens

1827), continued the family traditions. In over the Hoosic to facilitate agriculture 1769, at 18 years, he petitioned the Albany and the developing industry based on Corporation, asking that he be granted waterpower in the Schaghticoke gorge. all the remaining un-leased corporation After serving as a private in the 14th land between his father’s and the Hudson Albany during the Revolution, in 1791 he River. That was allowed in exchange for became a major in Henry Van Rensselaer’s an annual feast at his home for the Albany Brigade, rising to colonel by the War of 1812. Mayor and Common Council. He married He was Poor Master and Commissioner Elizabeth Winne in the same year. of Highways for Schaghticoke. He was By the 1780s, when he owned far more Assistant Justice of the Peace and served land than his father, he built the existing after his father in the State Assembly, Knickerbocker Mansion on the site of his from 1796-1802. John Jr. and Elizabeth’s grandfather’s cabin. The mansion, just son, Harmon, frequently invited young off Route 67, is now open to the public. Washington Irving to the mansion by the The 1790 census shows Johns Junior and Hoosic. The stories the boys heard about Senior each owning nine slaves. In the the family in the days of wars and Indians, days before mechanized farm equipment, and the games they played, led to Irving’s the Dutch could not have maintained short stories such as “Rip Van Winkle” and their large farms without slaves. (Babcock “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Niles believed they could not have erected believed that some of the ideas came from their huge barns without slaves, either.) tales told the boys by a Knickerbocker In 1799 John Jr. invested in a bridge slave. Irving’s pseudonymous Dietrich 30 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 31

Knickerbocker’s Knickerbocher’s History overshadowed international issues, of New York (1809) is about New York especially over the New Hampshire City in “golden” Dutch days, downriver, Grants: Land west of the Connecticut River but mentions Peter Stuyvesant’s run-ins now known as Vermont. Although there with Kiliaen Van Rensselaer and, of course, had been some talk of a 20-mile boundary the Knickerbockers of Schaghticoke. that would split the distance between the Irving made his beloved home, Sunnyside, Hudson and the Connecticut rivers, the now open to the public, in Tarrytown— New York side, mostly populated by Dutch scene of Richard Babcock’s most descendents like the Knickerbockers, colorful barn raising. wanted to push east, while western New When France and England squared off England did not wish encroachment, just against each other in what the colonists as in the days when Fort Massachusetts called the French and Indian Wars, from was built. In 1769, the grants sparsely 1740 to 1763, Britain controlled what occupied mostly by land speculators from the colonists could manufacture, how Connecticut with deeds (or “grants”) they shipped their goods, and what from Gov. Benning Wentworth of New they could buy from abroad. While New Hampshire, Gov. Cadwallader Colden of Yorkers, including the Dutch, and New New York sent surveyors into Bennington Englanders didn’t like the duties and in order to deed some of the same obligations, good Protestants all they parcels; or make the grants’ owners nevertheless sided with England in its pay twice for the same parcel. New attempt to claim the continent from Englanders attempted to stop the survey Catholic France. In 1756 France and and several times, unsuccessfully, to get England declared war. England captured King George III and his counselors to take Fort Duquesne and the French fortress their side. The Wentworth grantees were of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, in 1758, hauled into court in Albany—where, not and, under Gen. James Wolfe, captured too surprisingly, they lost their cases. Quebec in 1759. Thus in four quick years So they asked fellow landowner, Britain wrested control of North America Connecticut resident Ethan Allen, to from France; the question became, could stand up for them. His feisty response to Britain retain control over its colonies? them: “The gods of the valleys are not the South of what was to become gods of the hills.” Loosely translated, he Canada, inter-colony bickering at first meant that those who exercised power in the Hudson Valley would be rudely Mountain Boys, in honor of their uneven treated in the Green Mountains. Tensions landscape. They portrayed the conflict as grew when Sherriff Ten Eyck, a Dutch between the hard-working yeoman farmers descendent from Albany, was prevented of the Grants and the rich landowners of the from arresting Bennington residents, almost Hudson Valley—forgetting for the moment resulting in a militia battle in July 1770. that Allen and his friends were themselves Towns in the grants formed committees of non-residents. While calmer citizens safety and young men formed quasi-military sought a peaceful solution, Allen honed groups under Allen, who appointed himself colonel. As some found Allen a bit over the top, however, they formed under Seth Warner’s leadership instead. Both groups began harassing New York agents. They carried out a series of mischief raids on Yorker farms along the “border.” Newly installed Gov. William Tryon of New Former Catamount Tavern York professed disgust with these activities Credit: Wiki Commons and thought the way to solve the problem was to take the land from the ruffians and his rhetoric—and his land investments in to divide it among “men of weight and the Onion (Winooski) River Company. In consideration,” that is, Dutch Yorkers— March of 1774, Gov. Tryon issued a warrant many of whom continued to suffer the most for the arrest of Allen, Warner, and other indignities, however. leaders, including a 100-pound bounty for In response to a perceived New York Allen and Remember Baker. In response, threat of force, the Hampshire Grants militia Allen conducted mock trials and sentenced organized under the heading of the Green Yorkers who came within his reach to 32 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 33 undignified punishment. One was bound found the rhetoric they had employed and hoisted high in a chair to sit for hours against Yorkers applicable to the before the Catamount Tavern, the favorite British: Yeoman farmers against wealthy Green Mountain Boys’ meeting place in absentee powers. The Green Mountain Bennington. Boys, like the Minute Men, caught the The only way to avoid an eventual spark of Revolution. shooting war, it appeared, was to have As independence became a theme, a common enemy arise. The British Fort Ticonderoga became a likely early obliged. So, early in 1775, 25 Vermont target. Held by the British, it was a towns, meeting in Manchester, formed a steppingstone for an attack from Canada. compact to protect the land grants and Colonists who dropped by the fort noted to maintain good relations with New that the British held it rather casually. York in the face of joint concerns over Benedict Arnold received a commission the actions of the British government from the Bay Colony to take the fort and toward the colonies. Therefore the hustled westward along the old Indian first shots were fired not across Lake trail via the Deerfield, Hoosic, and Owl Champlain, but on April 19 on the fields Kill rivers. of Lexington and Concord. Even the Coincidentally, volunteers from Minute Men, until then, had assumed Connecticut and Massachusetts met up accommodations could be worked with Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys out. And the more conservative found at Hand’s Cove on the east side of Lake it harder to maintain that all evil arose Champlain on the early morning of May from George III being misinformed. 10, 1775. They hoped to cross to the fort In the Grants, Allen and his ilk still before sunrise. At the last minute two hoped the King would favor their scows were found to ferry 80 men—and grants, so were reluctant to force their two leaders, Allen and Arnold, who had complaints against him and, of course, reluctantly agreed to share command. loathe to cooperate with New York. They approached the fort three abreast Nevertheless Allen and the other leaders and conquered the sleeping garrison with agreed, after April 19, to join with the only one, ineffective, shot fired. Albany Committee of Correspondence. But two years later the rebels had to Conveniently the militias were already retreat from Ticonderoga, fight a delaying organized and the Green Mountain Boys action at Hubberton, Vermont, and disperse to gather again in the Bennington hair said to have been so long it nearly area. The American cause was at its lowest reached the ground, was staying near point with the news, on July 17, 1777, Fort Edward with a Mrs. McNeil, a cousin that 500 or more Indians from north of the of British officer Simon Fraser. Hearing Great Lakes had arrived to join the British the Indians were in the area, the two side at Skenesborough (now Whitehall), women were in the act of descending New York. As well as members of the through a trap door to seek safety in Iroquois League of Six Nations, which had the cellar of a cabin when a war party previously maintained neutrality, came burst in. The women were separated. Ottawa, Fox, and Ojibwa, recruited by St. Indians with Jane began to quarrel over Luc de la Corne, a Frenchman who had whose captive she was. One shot and previously led the same Indians against scalped her, stripped off her clothes, and the British. In fact, some were the same mutilated her body. When he paraded who had massacred British soldiers and through Burgoyne’s camp with her scalp, colonists after their surrender at Fort David Jones recognized the long locks William Henry. St. Luc had lured them of his beloved. Widow McNeil was with promises of scalps, prisoners, and later brought in alive. Burgoyne at first loot. Many were young men, looking to demanded Indians execute McCrea’s establish their reputations. When British murderer; however, British officers and Gen. John Burgoyne publicized his threat St. Luc dissuaded him, arguing that the to “give stretch to the Indians,” the Indians would leave, possibly going on a inhabitants of the Champlain Valley and rampage in Canada on their way. surrounding area fled. Burgoyne tried to The news spread that the British set limits in ceremonial meetings with the could not control the Indians, even tribes, such as scalping only those killed from attacking the British side. The in battle, but not prisoners, old men, western Indians continued to pick off women, and children. colonists, including one who had the Jane McCrea, the daughter of soles of his feet sliced off, perhaps a Presbyterian minster, in her early before he died, and another who was twenties, was engaged to David Jones, drawn and quartered. Scores of men a loyalist who went to Canada to join were scalped. Burgoyne realized the the American Volunteer Corps, i.e., Indians were a mistake, trying once Tories. The blooming Jane, with reddish again in a formal meeting to set 34 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 35 boundaries. The Indians appeared to Philip Skene, against the advice of senior agree, but the next day began leaving, officers, to send Col. Friedrich Baum, 500 loaded with loot. Brunswickers, Canadians, and Tories to Meanwhile American Gen. Philip “try the affections of the country, to mount Schuyler continued to retreat, first from Riedesel’s dragoons, to complete Peter’s Fort George and now to Saratoga. The corps [of Loyalists,] and to obtain a large Indians’ departure was a break for the supply of cattle, horses, and carriages.” Americans and their presence turned The detachment left Fort Edward on the out to have been, also. Enlistments Great Northern Warpath on August 13; were up. Either fight united or be and that evening surprised and captured picked off. Jane McCrea’s locks turned five Americans in Cambridge. The next out to be a potent recruiting tool. So day they continued down the Owl Kill to a the Germans fighting for the British ran mill in Hoosick, 12 miles from Bennington. into more on their way to Bennington Gen. John Stark, learning of their than they anticipated. approach, sent an order to Col. Warner, About August 1, 1777, Burgoyne’s at Manchester, to march with his regiment army, heading south from Ticonderoga, of Green Mountain Boys and he rallied reached the Hudson and took possession the neighboring militia, many of whom of Fort Edward. Progress was slow because arrived along the old Indian trail along retreating Americans had felled trees the Hoosic. He sent out an advance guard and destroyed bridges. While assuming of 200 men, under Lieutenant-Colonel his troubles were nearly over, Burgoyne William Gregg on the 13th to encounter had one vexing problem, securing the enemy and then marched his whole provisions. With 15 days of hard labor he force along the Walloomsac on the 14th, was only able to bring 10 bateaux and to meet the latter in retreat, about five four days’ worth of supplies from Lake miles from Bennington. The enemy was George. In fact his supply line stretched about a mile back, chasing Gregg. Both to Quebec, even to England. Burgoyne armies chose strong positions and threw learned that the colonists had collected up temporary entrenchments. Baum, a large quantity of military stores, cattle, alarmed at the number of Americans, and horses at Bennington, where the sent for reinforcements. Bennington Battle Monument now stands. Weapons of the day didn’t work He let himself be persuaded by Tory Major well when wet so, the next day being Bennington Battlefield. Credit: L.Stevens three directions and, if we cross Route 67 rainy, was spent preparing, with some to Caretaker Road, see where the Tory sniping. Col. Warner’s regiment arrived contingent was wiped out. After two- in Bennington in the evening, stopping and-one-half hours of hard fighting, the to dry their powder and rest after their Brunswickers on the hill gave way in a long march. Warner himself continued to disorderly retreat. the Walloomsac. Stark, concerned about That morning, August 16, 500 British the enemy receiving reinforcements, reinforcements under Col. Heinrich determined to attack the next day. Breymann left Cambridge early after Previous to the signal to attack, he told a miserable night in the rain. They the troops: “See there, men! There are moved slowly, halting regularly to dress the redcoats. Before night they are ours, ranks. After all, Baum’s last message to or Molly Stark will be a widow.” Burgoyne had sounded confident. The At the battlefield today it is easy to horses pulling the guns were weak and envisage Stark’s approach to the hill from slow. At 4:30 p.m. the advance guard 36 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 37 arrived at St. Croix Mill, where they About 30 Americans were killed and meet Philip Skene. Not a rebel in sight. 40 wounded. The British loss in killed, They didn’t hear firing. A captain and wounded, and prisoners, was 934. While some Indians showed up to report that a small battle, it deprived the British force all was well. Skene and Breymann rode of the supplies they needed, as well as forward to a group of men they mistook the troops, and provided the colonials for loyalists, lounging at the end of a rail with their first victory in the Northern fence. The men suddenly fired a volley, Campaign, thereby contributing more killing Breymann’s horse from under him. than any other previous event to By this time Stark’s men were tired, Burgoyne’s surrender at Saratoga— drunk (they brought their own in their where Col. Knickerbocker was wounded. canteens), or busy collecting German The rest of the Revolutionary War was loot. So, as had happened at Hubberton, fought to the south, but a prerevolutionary a British relief party could have swung piece of business remained. Where was the battle. Still, Stark was able to round the New York-New England border? up enough militia to form a skirmish line, This dispute had percolated up through which fired back at Breymann, all the Connecticut and Massachusetts and now while retreating. focused on the New Hampshire Grants. The Green Mountain Boys, under In December 1781, allies turned against Major Samuel Stafford, left Bennington each other. Grants militia from the about noon. They arrived in Stark’s camp Schaghticoke area mutinied, taking their just in time to see, in the distance, Baum’s Yorker officers captive. New York troops troops running for it. When they came to rushed to “quell the insurrection.” The the bridge over the Walloomsac, where rescue party met the dissidents at Fort Baum had taken his stand, the fighting St. Croix. Outnumbered, they backed seemed to be over—except that Warner down and the would-be Vermonters rode up to inform them they were decided to go to the new Congress for a needed immediately to help the militia. legal settlement. In 1790 Congress chose Stark rallied his broken forces behind the 20-mile line, approximately half way fresh troops, and soon the battle again between the Hudson and Connecticut became general. At sunset the rest of rivers, along the Taconics, for the the enemy side fled toward the Hoosic, boundary. Most of what is still referred pursued by the Americans until dark. to as Dutch Hoosac—Petersburgh and Hoosick—fell in New York State, land WHEATIES claims were adjusted and, incidentally, Williams opened in 1792, according to one of the provisions of Ephraim the terms of Ephraim Williams’ will as a Williams’ will, that the township west of free secondary school, with 15 students. Fort Massachusetts be in the Bay Colony, The trustees immediately petitioned was fulfilled, enabling the founding of a Massachusetts to convert the school into free elementary school in what became a tuition-based college. It became the Williamstown. What no one noticed second college in the commonwealth was that in 1741, when Richard Hazen after Harvard when it opened the next surveyed the north boundary of the Bay year, in the same building, which came to Colony at the order of the Privy Council be called West College. Most of its early in London, he mimicked the course of the students were area farmers’ sons who wanted to become ministers— although, unlike most New England colleges, Williams was never church-related. Timothy Dwight, IV, president of Yale College, used his vacations to travel in New York and New England, writing of his observations under the guise of letters to an imaginary Englishman. The letters, intended to correct misinformation West College. Credit: L.Stevens about this country, were published posthumously. President Dwight followed Merrimack River three miles to its north, the Hoosic River from Hoosick (Falls) to as directed. He then set out “due west” Williamstown on horseback in October from what is now Lowell. The problem 1799. He described autumn-tinged was, his compass was slightly off, so that mountain ridges through which flowed about one-third of what was to become “one of the handsomest streams in the Williamstown, including Williams College, world, over a fine bed of pebbles and should have been in what was to become gravel.” He attested to its flashiness: “Its Vermont. No matter. course is between high mountains and 38 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 39

accompanied us. Our ascent was a spiral circuit of three miles, and employed us diligently two hours,” wrote Dwight. Wilbur, born in Rhode Island in 1753, arrived on the side of Greylock at age 14, with his older brother. Their father had died and their mother remarried. Some Rhode Island Quakers sailed through Long Island Sound and up the Hudson, eventually settling in Adams. It is possible that the Wilburs were among them. A 1767 Adams property map shows John and Jeremiah Wilbur owning the first parcels of the 1,600 John Trumbull’s portrait of acres Jeremiah eventually held. John Timothy Dwight, IV. apparently moved on. There doesn’t Credit: Wiki Media appear to be any record of Jeremiah’s its current rapid. Hence it rises and falls service during the Revolutionary War. If greatly within very short periods.” He he were a Quaker pacifist, he may have depicted landmarks still recognizable, declined to fight the British. including a mill and dam in North Pownal. Dwight detailed something of the The successor mill went from textiles to “active and industrious” Jeremiah, who tannery, became a Superfund site and now “has here cleared in the midst of the forest, produces hydropower. and reduced to a good state of cultivation, Once in Williamstown, Dwight looked a farm from which, besides other produce, up fellow Yale graduate, Williams’ first he cuts annually one hundred tons of president, Ebenezer Fitch. The two of them hay.” Wilbur cut the road the presidents then rode up Notch Road in the north part rode on, in a year boiled 1,800 pounds of of Adams to inquire of the owner of land sugar from the sap of his maple bush (the on Mt. Greylock if they could continue descendents of which still line the Bellows to the summit of the mountain—100 Pipe Trail), and of course cut the wood years before Grace Niles added it as her to build his house, heat it, and cook. He middle name. Jeremiah Wilbur “willingly constructed three mills on Notch Brook, saw, cider, and grist. He had help. His first we do. We can consider the immense wife, the perhaps aptly named Patience task early farmers undertook, even those Harrandine, bore him 10 children and died not half way up a mountain. He died in in 1801. The second, the widow Hannah 1813 and is buried in a family cemetery in Russell, bore him two more. Fitch wrote forested land near his likely Bellows Pipe admiringly about his sheep. Wilbur’s home site, his name spelled “Wilber” on children helped maintain his herd of cattle, the stone. His family lingered in the area. protecting them from bear and wolves. One of his grandsons gave Nathaniel One Wilbur son died in infancy; another Hawthorne a tour of the homestead. died at age 18, taken ill after searching the Oddly, Dwight doesn’t mention Wilbur’s mountain for stray cattle. house or, even more oddly, his barn. The two college presidents and the At the time a visitor usually judged the farmer dismounted about 20 feet from worth of a farm by the size and condition the summit, which was tree covered. As of the barn. Perhaps, coming from an there was as yet no tower, each of them academic background, Dwight saw things shinnied up a frost-stunted evergreen. differently, i.e., number of tons, number of “The view was immense and of pounds. We may suspect, however, that amazing grandeur,” Dwight wrote. They both home and barn were nondescript. recognized the Adirondacks, the Greens, Certainly the barn was the first thing Mt. Monadnock, Mt. Tom, and the Richard Babcock would have commented Catskills. They believed they looked down on. His early career as a farmer and later as on the “houses, church, and colleges” a barn expert gave him unique insights into of the “village of Williamstown” which, the early days of agriculture in the Hoosac however, is not possible, as other peaks Valley. Indians grew native corn in the of the Greylock massif, mounts Prospect rich alluvial soil beside the Hoosic and its and Williams, obscure the town. What the tributaries, especially along the lower river. presidents saw remains a mystery. History They used fish perhaps as much to fertilize can labor under misapprehensions, even the crop as to eat. White men came to grow when quoting sources, as Henry David wheat, which they brought with them from Thoreau may have demonstrated some the old country. Settlers built most of the 45 years later. first-generation barns close to the rivers, We are fortunate, through Dwight’s often in fields that had already been cleared visit, to know as much about Wilbur as by the Indians, a break Wilbur didn’t get. 40 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 41

Farmers were eventually crowded out of the bottomlands necessary to sustain wheat crops and moved to the higher land on the valley walls. There, although they disassembled their barns and moved them, they were forced to change their focus The Historic Barns at Nipmoose restored by Babcock’s sons to grazing animals, Credit: C.Kheel which could thrive There the farmer grew a crop to make bread, when the soil was not as on which, with meat and some vegetables, rich. Even those who managed to remain his family subsided. Wheat was cut early in beside the rivers eventually exhausted the the field, before it became so dry it would fall soil for wheat. Most farmers in the Hoosac off the stalk as it was being cut. After being Valley switched over from wheat to dairy gathered into small bundles, it was loaded or sheep after the Revolutionary War. Then by hand into a wheat cart and brought to the they grew corn or hay to feed their animals. barn. There it was stored on top of a layer of So now, Babcock pointed out, farmers had loose hay spread over poles that lay across barns originally designed for wheat storage the beams. Babcock uncovered notches they were using to house animals—and, as for those poles in his barn work. When the time wore on the barns became less and wheat dried, it was dropped to the threshing less relevant to the farmer’s occupation, floor below, the large, opposing barn doors with 20th century regulations for sanitary allowing the prevailing wind to blow away milk production the last clang of the milk the lighter chaff, while the raised thresh hold, can. Barns that weren’t a necessity weren’t which Babcock also documented, contained kept up. Although with their huge beams the wheat. The farmer thrashed the wheat and joinery they lasted, wooden barns, with flails, two sticks fastened together with the emblem of European agriculture, rawhide. started their long decline some 250 years ago in the watershed. More recent barns, was piped to the Windsor Mill. Now both generally the ones still visible on the impoundments are used for recreation. Hoosac landscape, often in some form Often a system of canals, as in Adams, of decay, are what Babcock dismissively connected reservoirs or tributaries to the referred to as “pole barns,” made out mills. As industry took hold along the of dimensional lumber from the sawmill, Hoosic throughout the 1800s and much nailed together rather than joined. of the 1900s, New York and New England became world leaders in manufacturing, MILLS & MILLERS especially textiles. Some early farmers, like Philip Van Hard-working Quakers, like Wilbur Ness of the Tiashoke colony, near St. perhaps, established a forge and trip Croix, established water-powered mills hammer, four cotton mills, a paper mill, on their land to grind flour, saw wood and five factories along the Hoosic in for construction, and create cloth— Adams before 1850. By then, more of the tradition Wilbur later followed. the town’s residents were manufacturers Neighbors came by with raw materials than farmers. At first farm girls came for manufacture, paying with a portion into town to work at the mills, staying of their produce. Gradually the mills in dormitories built for them. There took on a life of their own, their owners weren’t enough of them, so soon came becoming more millers than farmers. immigrants, sometimes the result of By the mid-1800s there were mills and recruiting trips, at first Irish-Catholic, factories throughout the valley, using the then Scots, French-Canadians, and Hoosic and its tributaries as a source of Germans; and, in the 20th century, waterpower and as a convenient way to Poles, Jews, and Lebanese. The get rid of waste. Because the flow in the immigrants tended to set up their own Hoosic was irregular, mill owners often communities, including churches and dammed up reservoirs, either upstream stores. Generally they were received or on tributaries, to impound water and gracefully, with one exception. By the let it out during periods of low flow. 1860s Adams south and north were Cheshire Reservoir, otherwise known as bustling commercial centers. The Hoosac Lake, provided an upstream head employees of the Calvin Sampson for downstream mills. Water from man- Shoe factory, members of a union, the made Windsor Lake, in North Adams, Knights of St. Crispin, struck for higher 42 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 43

in 1897 to dedicate Berkshire Mill No. 1 and again, in 1899, to lay the cornerstone for Mill No. 4. In 1901, after he was assassinated, the town erected a statue to him. If women and immigrants were scarce, mill owners turned to children, who were small enough to scoot between the machines and whose hands were sized Tannery Dam. Addie worked at a textile mill there. Credit: L.Stevens for several jobs. Lewis Hines’ 1910 photograph of 12-year-old Addie Card, pay and a 10-hour workday. Sampson “Anemic Little Spinner in the North imported 75 young Chinese men from Pownal Cotton Mill,” graced a 1998 U.S. San Francisco as strikebreakers. They postage stamp commemorating passage arrived June 13, 1870, to face a hostile of child labor laws. The mill was in the crowd. No blood was shed, however. same location as the one Dwight saw. Eventually they migrated either back Bennington also used waterpower in its to the West Coast or to Boston, early days, for gristmills, sawmills, and establishing that city’s China Town. forges. Moses Sage set up a blast furnace The War of 1812 boosted production, in 1800. The mills evolved through the because Americans were unable to buy 19th century to textile, gunpowder, textiles from England. The need for shoes, paper, charcoal, brick, pottery, uniforms during the Civil War set off a and underwear manufacturing. By the textile boom in the entire valley. U.S. 20th century electronics, lubricating President William McKinley, a fishing devices, MACE, steering wheel columns, friend of the major mill owners in Adams, health, and of course culture, including the Plunketts, established a high tariff Bennington College, were staples of policy that benefitted U.S. textiles—hence employment. One form of culture, still the provocatively named Protection celebrated, was the presence of poet Avenue in North Adams. McKinley visited Robert L. Frost in South Shaftesbury, from 1920 to 1929. There he wrote many Walter A. Wood Mowing and Reaping poems, including, on a warm June day in Machine Company, which replaced a 1922, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy former wooden dam at the falls with a Evening.” His home has been preserved, concrete one, sprawled over a large part while he and his family reside in the of Hoosick Falls and became the largest graveyard of the Congregational Church farm equipment manufacturer in the in Old Bennington. world by the 1890s. Other businesses and From earliest days, Hoosick Falls’ factories were drawn to the town and the settlers built dams above the cascade population swelled to 7,000. (which Niles refers to as “Falls of Wood went on to be a member of Quequick”) for which the town was named, the U.S. House of Representatives from in order to increase the flow and head of New York’s 17th district, from 1879- waterpower. In 1774, Isaac Turner and 83. He built a large mansion on 1,000 Joel Abbott rigged a trip hammer in their acres, which he farmed. He served as blacksmith shop. A decade later, Joseph mayor of the Village of Hoosick Falls and Dorr found power for carding, fulling, and president of its board of education. He cloth dressing; two years later Benjamin died in 1892. Competition, the panic of Colvin built a gristmill. In 1852, at 37, 1895, business errors by his successors, Walter A. Wood organized a company including the failure to take the plunge for the manufacture of reaping machines, into self-propelled farming equipment, improving on the patented creation of and World War I, which destroyed the John H. Manny, after a previous experience European market, put the company out of manufacturing moldboard plows—and of business by 1924. An English spin-off having grown up in his father’s forge and continued through World War II, when foundry. The younger Wood’s approach, its equipment helped England convert improving on others’ inventions, grew parkland to agriculture in order to be more his business rapidly in a variety of horse- self-sustaining as German submarines drawn farming equipment. His products harassed shipping. In the 1970s, the vast, won prizes at international exhibitions. vacant Hoosick Falls plant was torched. In 1867 Napoleon III awarded him the By the 1920s the textile operations Cross of the Legion of Honor and in began to head south, nearer their cotton 1878 the emperor of Austria bestowed suppliers and cheap labor, beginning the Imperial Order of Franz Joseph. The a long industrial decline in the Hoosac 44 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 45

Valley that lasted through the 20th century. nearby hamlet he later named for himself, The dam Dwight noted and near which building a brick gristmill and sawmill. Addie labored, later provided electricity From 1859 to 1907, the Johnsonville Axe for a tannery. A hydropower site was Manufacturing Company, purveyor of developed below the falls in Hoosick Falls axes to the entire nation, occupied much in the 1880s. That site remains a small- of the gristmill. The company later moved scale electric generator. Dams to provide to Jamestown, New York. The town, direct power to manufacture cotton cloth since the mills have gone, has become on the lower Hoosic became dams to a suburban community relating to the create electricity, a move dictated as the Capital District of New York, while still value of electricity surpassed the value of retaining an agricultural base. manufacture. Appropriately, the Hoosic forms a In Schaghticoke, Chase’s bridge over giant S in Schaghticoke, while dropping the Hoosic, built in 1788, led to a second 150-feet over cascades in a distance bridge, built by John Knickerbocker, Jr., of about two miles. The grounds of the and others, led to Charles and Benjamin Schaghticoke Fair, held each year over Joy’s carding machine, gristmill, and Labor Day weekend, overlook the gorge. sawmill. In 1850, Lewis Pickett built The Schenectady Power Company took a paper mill at the sawmill site. All advantage of the geomorphology, these and many other mills, including building dams, diversions, and the Rensselaer Woolen and Cotton holding ponds between 1907 and Manufacturing Company of 1810, turned 1910 at Johnsonville, Valley Falls, and the 100-foot falls into power to run Schaghticoke for hydropower generation machinery. Other mills were installed that ended up totalling18.5 megawatts. nearby on Tomhannock Creek, including At Schaghticoke the water is drawn from the Masters family’s black powder mill, behind a 680-foot-long concrete dam, which may have provided percussive force which replaced five older dams, on the in the War of 1812. The mill moved to upstream curve into a reservoir and then Valley Falls to become Hercules Powder by siphon across the mid-portion of the in service of the military, the taming of the river’s S into a surge tank to level the flow, West, fire works, lifesaving, harpoon guns, and thence to five penstocks, pipes that and signaling through the Civil War and lead the water into the four generators. World War I. William Johnson came to the The fifth penstock supplies the exciter business General Electric purchased in 1903—used it to light Great Barrington in 1886. Steinmetz provided General Electric and the world with the theory and mathematics of alternating current, which led to Edison’s adapting that current. Steinmetz built a three-phase, AC plant in Mechanicville in 1897, the oldest still in Putting in below the Powerhouse, Schaghticoke. Credit: T. Hyde. operation. In 1908 he experimented with a new kind of transmission line, monocyclic, turbine, used to maintain voltage. The which traveled eight miles from water exits at the lower curve. The Schaghticoke to Mechanicville, where it Johnsonville dam includes additional joined the line to Schenectady, GE’s home. turbines; the Valley Falls dam creates a While the two customary wires carried reservoir. General Electric manufactured electricity, a third, “teaser” wire enabled the machinery. Niagara Mohawk took over starting an electric motor without using the Schaghticoke Power Co., operating a clutch, thus allowing for smaller motors it until selling to Brascan, which became with fewer failures. Lightening bedeviled Brookfield Power. his new transmission line and, although Charles Proteus Steinmetz, born in his three-phase approach prevailed, rival Prussia, sought refuge in the United Westinghouse’s transmission line became States in 1888 from possible political the industry standard. persecution due to his socialist leanings. (Upon immigration he did Niles one GETTING THERE better, choosing both his first and middle One May day in 1830 Williams’ names.) Four-feet tall, with a hump in his President Edward Dorr Griffin excused the back and an off-center gait, he settled entire college from classes, leading them in Schenectady where he was frequently instead to clear a trail up the west, grain- seen riding his bicycle. Direct Current, hopper-shaped side of Mt. Greylock. At which the Edison Company, forerunner the summit they built a tower. That burned, of GE, had favored, could not travel long but college Professor Albert Hopkins distances. Alternating current could. and his students built another in 1841, William Stanley—whose transformer which was to host Thoreau’s overnight 46 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 47 visit. Hopkins was the brother of Williams Hopkins. Born in 1807 in Stockbridge, College’s fourth president, Mark Hopkins, upon arriving as a student at Williams and uncle of Amos Lawrence Hopkins, in 1823 he became interested in the the gentleman farmer of Hopkins Forest. community of runaway slaves who A true polymath, Albert placed weather- inhabited the banks of Broad Brook, from recording equipment at the college the northern portion of Williamstown into spring, on Spring Street in Williamstown, Vermont, since before the Revolution. and in the tower, so that he could compare Many were supposed to have come from the readings. He and his students used Virginia. The men used the oaks to make stone they quarried on Pine Cobble to baskets; the women generally worked build the first college observatory, still as servants. Massachusetts effectively standing, now used as a planetarium. In abolished slavery through a court case in 1863 he founded the Alpine Club, the 1783. Vermont was admitted to the Union first mountain-climbing organization in in 1791, its constitution banning slavery. the United States, preceding both the New York did not abolish slavery until White Mountain Club (1873) and the 1827, revealing perhaps the importance Appalachian Mountain Club (1876). of the Dutch tradition of large-scale Although its first members were mostly agriculture. In these states, however, local young women, it was the forerunner runaways could still be hunted down. of the Williams Outing Club, which has The White Oaks, as the area was been maintaining trails ever since. A called, harbored petty white criminals, as related Hopkins’ endeavor was Camp well, who could hop across the border to Fern, which borrowed Methodist camp escape capture. Thus it was considered, meeting tents and set them on Stony in Niles’ words, “a place of poverty and Ledge on Greylock for several summers moral degradation.” Hopkins graduated beginning in 1869. Families hired from Williams and became a professor Bridget, a young Irish woman, to cook. there, preaching in his spare time. He Her name and other camp participants’ sought to reform the area, including appears on a fungus that is in the Williams purchasing a farm in the White Oaks, College Archives. They organized games, in Niles’ words from her article in The explorations, and parties, publishing the Christian Register, “in order to better “Camp Fern Leaflet” to record the events. understand [White Oaks residents] and Grace Niles wrote of another side of gain their confidence.” In February 1865 he aroused interest in building a chapel. Jeremiah Wilbur, and up the Bellows After the cornerstone was laid in May, Pipe—named, he suggested, for the “labor, lumber, and luncheons were way the wind rushes down it in a storm. generously donated.” The building, still He stopped at a house for a flirtatious standing, was dedicated in October. conversation with its mistress and then, He and others preached and reached rather than taking Wilbur’s bridle path, out. Niles reported that the state of the went cross lots, stopping in a field where community improved markedly. When he the owner of the next house assured him died, in May of 1872, “the people of White he would not make the summit before Oaks bore him reverently, as a father, to his dark. He barely did or perhaps didn’t, grave in the college cemetery of Williams, for he described seeing “Williamstown and the children gathered arbutus, violets College” in the valley, using that as the and ferns from the glens he loved most, occasion to comment on the value to the to be strewn over last resting place.” students of placing a college at the foot Henry David Thoreau, set out from of a mountain. “Some will remember, Concord in July 1844. He climbed Mt. no doubt, not only that they went to Monadnock in southern New Hampshire, the college, but that they went to the then hiked west several days, crossing mountain. Every visit to its summit would, the Connecticut River and following as it were, generalize the particular the old Indian trail along the Deerfield information gained below, and subject it River to Charlemont, where he spent to more catholic tests.” Starting before the night at a Rice house. In A Week on sunrise in Charlemont, he made it to the the Concord and Merrimack Rivers he summit of Greylock, some 30 miles, on presented an amusing image of his crusty foot, in one day. host. Arising very early the next morning, But mounts Prospect and Williams Thoreau continued on the trail over the hadn’t moved since Timothy Dwight’s Hoosacs, arriving at the Western Summit, visit, suggesting that either Thoreau from which he looked down at the three- didn’t see anything because dark had dimensional wonder of the north portion already settled or that by the next year, of Adams nestled in the Hoosac Valley. when he wrote the book while staying at After picking up rice and a tin cup in Walden Pond, he had forgotten what he the village, he climbed what’s now Notch saw. In either case, he was acquainted Road, past the homestead of the late with Dwight’s Travels, having cited it in a 48 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 49 description of his trip to Cape Cod, and by the early 19th century the young nation likely borrowed the line about seeing the went on a spree of canal digging, including college. After a night in Hopkins’ tower, the Erie, west along the Mohawk River. As he was treated to a gorgeous view of a companion, following a proposal initially the sunrise above the clouds; then he put forward by Revolutionary War Gen. departed in the rain down the mountain Schuyler, the Champlain Canal, a way of to Pittsfield. He wrote that the experience moving past the shoals and falls of the on Greylock offered him a view of heaven. Hudson above Albany, opened in part to Niles quoted Thoreau several times Lake Champlain in 1819 and entirely four in Bog-trotting, as well she should, for years later. As rebuilt for wider vessels, it whether by accident or design he was a became known as the Champlain Barge pattern for her writing and her life. Like Canal, remaining open to commercial him, she was an excellent botanist and traffic into the 1980s and still available for a graceful writer. Both attempted to feel recreational use. Lock builders rerouted at home in the natural world, even to the the lowest stretch of the Hoosic to provide extent of getting muddy—or frightened. additional flow for raising boats at Lock He wrote history, as in essays on Colonial Four, Schaghticoke, in the largest park (91 wars; she, on the Hoosac Valley. Neither acres) in New York State’s canal system. married. Both taught school. He and she Construction also included removing both worked briefly in New York City. He changed his name from David Henry to Henry David; she substituted Greylock, where Thoreau found heaven. He retreated to Walden Pond, she to Mountain Meadow. Nor everyone walked like Thoreau, Hopkins, or Niles, not even then. Some wanted to ride. As a result of increased manufacturing, coupled with Lock Four, Champlain Canal. The Hoosic the uncertain condition of carting roads, enters right. Credit: Marinas.com high, shale bluffs and reconfiguring two 4.74 miles, it was the longest tunnel in the islands to be come part of the shore, world. The old Indian trail had become a along with two dams, a bridge, and the rough carting road over the mountain, canal cut. Not to be outdone, in 1825 below which the tunnel bored. Initially Massachusetts appointed Daniel Noble it brought the Boston, Hoosac Tunnel of Williamstown and William Brayton of & Western line, formed in 1878, from North Adams, among others, to scout out Mechanicville to Boston. The Fitchburg a canal route across their state. They put Railroad soon acquired both that line and on a brave face, but the prospect cannot the optimistically named Troy & Boston. have looked good and soon faded. Later the Fitchburg became the Boston Canals preceded railroads, which & Maine, now PanAm Southern, with a were needed to bring cotton from the couple stops along the way. Passenger south to textile mills—and to market service ended in the 1950s, although the cloth. The route Noble and Brayton freight service continues. Testifying to the came up with would have gone over the economic effect of the tunnel, its opening same Hoosac Mountain the railroad later helped the northern part of Adams tunneled beneath. The first railroad to outgrow the southern, causing it to split serve Hoosick Falls was the Troy & Boston, off from the mother town in 1878. chartered in 1852, connecting Troy with Settlers needed wood to build their North Bennington—and with the north homes and outbuildings; some burned 20 part of Adams by 1869. A line north from cords or more annually to cook their food Pittsfield also served northern Adams. and warm their hearths. They cleared Railroad fever drove out canal thoughts for crops, for sunlight, and to provide and, after much delay involving financing separation from whatever or whoever and the failure of two steam-driven might be lurking in the forest. They began digging machines, the pioneering use of the job of denuding the landscape. As nitroglycerin created a breakthrough— the farms moved upslope, away from the literally, as the tunnels that progressed alluvial land, they cut farther toward the from each side were only one-eighth of ridgelines. Then their livestock, notably an inch off when they met in the middle in the sheep, cropped the vegetation to 1875. The Hoosac Tunnel, at the cost of 195 the summits, which encouraged erosion. workers’ lives, connected the Deerfield Manufacturing needed wood, too, watershed to the Hoosic watershed. At especially as converted to charcoal for 50 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 51

turned it over to the state in 1898, the first Massachusetts wilderness reservation. The trains ran along the rivers, jostling the roads for position. And so did the trolleys. Early on, horses pulled the cars, often with help from the passengers, but in 1884, Frank Julian Sprague came Hoosac Tunnel. Credit: Williamstown Historical Museum up with the first practical method for smelting iron. Charcoal burners combed combining electric power with a spring- the hillsides, hauling their product to the loaded trolley pole, a wire-and-wheel furnaces. Lime burning similarly ate trees. suspension system, and an electric motor The demands of the railroads—early he designed to create trolley service in on—for fuel and—all along—for poles, Richmond, Virginia. (The word trolley crossties, and buildings, finished the refers to the wheel that runs along an deforestation. The hillsides leaked into overhead wire.) By the late 19th century, the rivers, covering the gravel and sand 170 miles of light rail linked Hoosick Falls, with silt, thus reducing fish propagation. Bennington, Pownal, Williamstown, North Concern for the erosion prompted Adams, Adams, Cheshire, Pittsfield, individuals in North Adams to purchase and on south to Canaan, Connecticut; 400 acres around the peak as Greylock and from Lee east nearly to Springfield. Park. Essentially they were reassembling Frederick Billings, who founded the part of Wilbur’s holdings. Although they Northern Pacific Railroad, was also a charged for access, they were unable partner in founding the trolley line from to sustain the park financially, so they Bennington to New Lebanon. Generally the tracks ran in the roads but occasionally the project three years later, the idea of they took off through the woods. Workers whisking people up the mountain, as at were able to commute. The Hoosac Valley nearby Mt. Tom, smoldered. It was fanned and Pittsfield lines both built and served by the economic distress of the area as dance pavilions and amusement parks. mills moved south. The trolley became a Dance bands came to Meadowbrook, near tramway, as proposed by the Mt. Greylock Hodges Cross Road in Adams. The lines Tramway Authority in 1960. In fact, it had open cars for recreationalists, parlor was to be “ world’s largest tramway,” cars for the well to do, and freight cars. measured not by the distance it traveled The Berkshire Street Railway was formed nor the height it attained, but by the size in 1901 from lines previously owned and of the vehicles, each of two cars to carry operated by the Hoosac Valley Street 104 passengers: A centerpiece for a major Railway, Pittsfield Street Railway, Pittsfield downhill ski resort. The battle, which went Electric Street Railway, Hoosick Railway, to the courts, engaged the Mt. Greylock Bennington Electric Railway, Bennington Protective Association. On Labor Day, & Hoosick Valley Railway, Bennington & 1966, both houses of the legislature North Adams Street Railway, Hoosick abolished the Tramway Authority. Falls Railroad, and the Vermont Company. However, they left open the possibility Yet in spite of it all, the BSR didn’t make of developing one of Greylock’s sister money. The automobile horn came to peaks, Saddleball. That was the bait that sound louder than the clang of the trolley. led Elco developers to assemble property By the 1920s trolleys were being replaced on the Adams side that came to be known by buses, a less elegant and less joyful as Greylock Glen. In 1973, ground was way to get there. broken for the new resort proposal—only In what might have been the last to succumb to environmental opposition trolley hurrah, in 1910 the state legislature and shaky financing. authorized a trolley line up the eastern In 1925, Robert C. Sprague, son of the side of Mt. Greylock to the summit, to trolley developer, invented a tone-control be operated by the Hartford and New device for the radio, which he and his Haven Railway, which at the time owned wife marketed from their home in Quincy, the line from Pittsfield to North Adams. Massachusetts. The next year he and Although the state’s Public Service Board friends anted up $25,000; such devices had second thoughts and turned down came to be called capacitors and led to the 52 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 53

Sprague Electric Company that, by 1929, Sprague employed 4,137 in a community outgrew available space in its hometown. of 18,000, the largest employer in Three weeks before the stock market the area and the mainstay of several crash Sprague, with the aid of individual generations. Although the company North Adams shareholders and banks, produced electrical components for the purchased a good portion of the one booming consumer electronics market, million square feet of former Arnold Print competition from abroad led to declining Works mills it eventually acquired. Arnold, sales. RC, as he was called, was a founder which printed textiles, had gone south. By of the Williamstown Theatre Festival, 1931, due to competition and the Crash, helped combine the Sprague Orchestra Sprague nearly foundered, to be saved by with a Williams’ student group to form the diversifying its line of products—and by Berkshire Symphony, and bent his efforts World War II. Sprague Electric capacitors towards an unsuccessful if noble effort to helped develop the proximity fuse and save the elms along Williamstown’s Main radar, and triggered the atomic bomb at Street from Dutch elm disease. He took Nagasaki. With the continuing cold and personally a strike in 1970 and lost a son hot wars of succeeding decades, plus the in an airplane accident in 1991. In 1985, advent of television, Sprague Electric grew his other son, John, in charge of Sprague, to be the nation’s largest manufacturer part of the company moved, closing of capacitors. Silver-haired Sprague in operations on Marshall Street—and later 1958 detailed the company’s history Brown Street—, leaving the ominous and hair’s-breath escape in an address quiet of a community’s heart—stopped. to the Newcomen Society, a non-profit Not much different than what happened educational foundation for “the study and in Hoosick Falls when the Wood Company recognition of achievement in American went out, except that Sprague left behind business and the society it serves.” cleaning solvents that leached into Sprague Electric became a major the groundwater and PCBs, which the research and development center, with company used for lubrication before they state-of-the-art equipment, conducting were suspected of being carcinogens. studies on the nature of electricity and They washed into the Hoosic River. semi-conducting materials. Post-war, its The loss of Sprague also led to yet products were used in the launch systems another in the series of proposals to for Gemini moon missions. By 1966, develop the Adams’ side of the mountain, Heritage Greylock, this time limited to racetrack that opened in the early 1960s. the Glen, but with cross country skiing The five sons of Art Rooney, then owner extending onto the Reservation: 1,275 of the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, condominium units, 380 inn rooms, purchased it a decade later, in spite of their conference center, retail, fitness center, father’s discouraging comment about ski lodge, golf course, downhill skiing, “more cows than people.” Horse racing, tennis, on the order of Vail. The issue once employing in its short season some 700, again engaged vigorous debate across attracted mobile home parks and motels, the commonwealth, leading to a whittling before switching over to greyhounds away of features. The iteration died with a in 1976, due to—too few people. new governor in 1991. But lo and behold Animal rights activists, reportedly, did in Gov. William Weld came up with yet greyhound racing in 1992. Then a period another proposal in 1996. Many of the ensued when only occasional events, same arguments about scale, cronyism, such as car shows, model airplane flying, and private use of public land led yet and concerts took place there. Efforts to another new (acting) governor, Jane Swift, hold a major outdoor concert in 2015 to cancel the deal in 2001. In September went awry when it was discovered that of 2004, the state having acquired the the railroad wouldn’t permit access over property, the Town of Adams submitted its tracks at one of the two entrances. In a proposal to be the Glen developer 2009 the owners made arrangements and it has been moving cautiously ever for what was called the largest solar since toward conference center, outdoor field, some 10 acres, in New England, recreation, and environmental education. changing the name to Green Mountain The label on “Green Mountain Park,” Energy Park. Other forms of energy are which runs for nearly a mile along the yet to materialize, however, and the Hoosic and U.S. Route 7, sometimes cavernous vacant grandstand sits like confuses those who consult maps. It is a gigantic, squat frog among the green not a state park, although it is located fields and glens. in the Pownal portion of the Hoosac Valley—considered the beautiful THE SOLUTION TO POLLUTION southern entryway to Vermont—and During the industrial period, the people within the Green Mountain National and the river were both destructive. Since Forest acquisition area. It is, in fact, a industries and households used the river 54 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 55 as an open sewer, the Hoosic became Head After Disastrous Blow,” headlined offensive and a source of disease. The The North Adams Transcript, following the Hoosac Valley News, in August, 1894, September 1927, storm. warned that “the river bed [in Willow As a result, the Army Corps of Dell, North Adams] receives 99 percent Engineers built flood control structures in of all the sewage, refuse and discarded Adams, North Adams, and Hoosick Falls material of the houses along its bank… It in the 1950s. Transforming the cascades is no wonder that illness is prevalent in the at Hoosick Falls involved widening the tenements.” In the winter, newspapers channel, creating an earthen berm and cautioned people on their habit of dumping their garbage on the frozen river, where it stayed until the spring thaw swept it downstream. Mills dumped directly into the river, so that it ran different colors depending on what dye was being used. Even after water-powered mills were history, riverside remained the industry site for convenience in disposal, and because railroads and roads followed water level routes along the river. Occasionally the Tropical Storm Irene tests the North Adams Hoosic turned the tables, visiting towns chutes. Credit: L.Stevens with devastating floods. After heavy concrete wall, removing the Wood rain or snow, especially after vegetation Company dam, and related projects, was removed, the narrow, steep sides similar to the Corps’ approach in Adams of the upper valleys acted as funnels. and North Adams. The chutes survived Floodwaters rushed from the hills into their first real test in August 2011, the valley bottom to destroy homes and with Tropical Storm Irene. They put an businesses. Floods in 1927, 1936, 1938, end to the most destructive flooding 1945, 1948, and 1950 were particularly at their locations, although with the destructive. North Adams “Feebly Raises possibility that by speeding the water through the towns they created more environment, soon after the first Earth problems downstream. The same storm Day, was a non-partisan issue. In fact, flooded The Spruces Mobile Home Park for most in Congress it was a relief to in Williamstown out of existence. The talk about, as opposed to a contentious chutes also created a sterile environment Vietnam War. Furthermore, Congress was in which fish and other aquatic life a friendlier place then. He doubts that such struggled to survive. At the time the legislation could pass today, given the chutes were installed, people didn’t mind partisan divide on environmental issues so much because the river was foul with that has become the norm. Jorling went pollution. As the river was out of sight on to be U.S. EPA Assistant Administrator behind concrete and fencing, people for Water and Hazardous Material under forgot that it was a living organism. the Carter Administration. He directed Thomas C. Jorling, who has a Hoosic and taught in the Williams College watershed address, took his Notre Center for Environmental Studies and Dame law degree to the U.S. Senate as served as New York State’s Environmental a staffer. In D.C., with teammate Leon Commissioner, before retiring as Vice G. Billings, coached by Maine Senator President for Environmental Affairs at Edmund Muskie, they drafted the Clean International Paper Company. There he Air and Clean Water acts, which marked was responsible for moving thousands of a profound change in Americans’ acres of paper company land to the public relationship to their natural resources. domain, as part of the Adirondack Park. Individuals and businesses no longer had While with NYDEC, as an ardent bicyclist the right to dump pollutants; rather, they he often rode up to Petersburgh Pass in were regulated and had to apply for a the Taconics. When he noticed the former permit. Furthermore, from then on not ski area there was for sale, he worked with only the government but individuals and Massachusetts to create a two-state park organizations like watershed associations at the site—along the 20-mile line. had standing in environmental issues. While the states and the federal They could sue. The model was that the government had taken some action federal government set the standards for previously, Congressional passage of cleanliness, which the states implemented. Public Law 92-500, the Clean Water Act, And the public was involved. in 1972, offering funding for sewage Jorling has pointed out that the treatment and penalties for dumping, 56 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 57 began substantial improvement in water took the other prescribed route, switching quality. In the Hoosac Valley, it was not from reservoirs to rely on wells. Since wells a case that residents rose up demanding can fail if the power goes down, their use a cleaner river; they had come to required installation of a water tank. The accept the false notion that having jobs town and The Clark Art Institute, which required mistreating natural resources. didn’t want to look at a tank, cooperated Rather government action led to a in burying it near the ridge of Stone Hill, gradual change in residents’ attitudes in The Clark’s backyard. toward their rivers from utilitarian to The Water Pollution Control Act, 1972, more recreational, aesthetic, and health raised the goal, not yet achieved, of conscious. Family memories were tainted eliminating the discharge of all pollutants by foul smells and flooding, but gradually into the rivers by 1983. Both Williamstown many came to realize that a cleaner river and North Adams had primary wastewater could improve living conditions and treatment plants that needed updating in could expand the economy. the 1970s. In addition, the Widen Tannery These federal standards have had a in the Blackinton section of North Adams major impact on the Hoosic Watershed. was contributing toxic materials the plant The City of Troy had closed three smaller couldn’t handle. The Berkshire Regional drinking water reservoirs and placed an Planning Commission suggested earth dam across Tomhannock Creek to secondary treatment at a joint plant, also create one reservoir, five and one-half including the town of Clarksburg, to be miles long, containing 12.3 billion gallons, located downstream in Williamstown. under construction from 1900 to 1905, The state supported the plan, as did and incidentally realigning the lower the federal government. An interceptor portion of the creek. Fishing from the bank sewer line connecting North Adams and and ice fishing are the only recreational Williamstown was completed on 1973. activities permitted on the largest water The new plant opened three years later body in the watershed. As a result of the and the North Adams plant phased out. federal Safe Water Drinking Act of 1974, Widen Tannery installed pre-treatment and amendments, the city also treats the facilities but soon went out of business. water. North Adams, faced with the same Several decades passed before part of regulations, installed a treatment plant at Clarksburg was sewered and connected. its Mt. Williams Reservoir; Williamstown The Hoosac Water Quality District plant has been updated several times since. Page One of The North Adams Transcript. The plant serving Pownal was likewise Although HRBCEPA had faded by the the result of seizing the moment. Prior to 1980s, its litigious work and the departure it, waste either went directly into the river of certain industries from the area meant or into tanks or, often, failing septic fields. that the water quality of the river was The former North Pownal mill, once becoming an asset rather than a liability producing cotton cloth and more recently to watershed communities. a tannery, due to extensive contamination It also meant that from the Hoosic became a federal Superfund site. The River Watershed Association’s (HooRWA) Environmental Protection Agency founding, it was free to look at a broad worked with the Hoosic River Watershed range of issues rather than concentrate Association, the town, and Vermont in solely on tracking down polluters. The 2006 to construct a treatment plant on first recommendation of the Berkshire top of one of the former tannery waste Regional Planning Commission’s “Hoosic lagoons, terminating a major source of River Action Plan” was the creation of a river pollution. watershed association that would look out A memorable outdoor performance for the river. The board was established was held in the late 1970s, on Cole Field in 1986, including several members who in Williamstown. Legendary balladeer were active in HRBCEPA. The next year Pete Seeger, founder of the Hudson River a canoe cruise on the Hoosic, in which sloop Clearwater, sang and urged the officials from the three states participated, crowd to sing along, to benefit the locally coincided with a major aluminum organized Hoosic River Basin Citizens anodizing company spill in North Adams. Environmental Protective Association Paddlers were amazed at the number of (HRBCEPA). That group hired a lawyer dead suckers and trout—testimony to the to apply the tools created by the Clean toxicity of the spill but also to the fecundity Water Act in order to force polluters to of the river. Restocked from upstream desist. In one case, for example, the and the tributaries, the river rebounded. group tracked a truckload of toxic material A settlement from the company financed from a Vermont companyto a manhole in river monitoring. North Adams. They had tipped off the The watershed association early on press so when the driver began the illegal took an interest in recreation. In 1990 discharge, a flashbulb went off. He made HooRWA intervened when the then- 58 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 59

Boston & Maine Railroad proposed to the engineers who brought the Mohawk sell off the rail line that runs along the Trail highway into being. Thanks to the river between Pittsfield and Adams, the Deerfield River Watershed Association, one that might have linked to a trolley up HooRWA, the state’s Division of Greylock, giving first state Senator and Greenways and Trails, regional planning then Acting Governor Jane Swift time commissions, and others, most of the it to purchase the abandoned line and Massachusetts segment of the Mahican create the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail. (The Mohawk Trail is complete.HooRWA has been facilitating the creation of parks, greenways, and river access, including the conversion of an abandoned rail line in Hoosick Falls to a bike path and of the Thompson Mill site in Valley Falls into a village park. Fundamentally HooRWA longs for fishable and swimmable rivers. It monitors the entire Hoosic, which shows significant improvement. In the 1990s, then HooRWA board member Jerry Schoen determined that flood The Mahican Mohawk hiking trail, here utilizing old railroad abutments, follows an Indian route. control chutes heated the river and Credit: L.Stevens established that heat was a form of name came, slightly altered, from Niles’ pollution that should be governed by for the south branch.) The watershed the state’s anti-degradation regulations. association continues to work with the While development in flood plains was regional planning commission and the already off limits, the passage of the towns to extend the bike path to North Massachusetts River Protection Act Adams and Williamstown. In 1992 in 1996 has aided efforts by further Williams students proposed a hiking trail limiting development next to rivers. to link the Connecticut and the Hudson Williams’ students continue to track rivers by following the Hoosic and the the decreasing amount of PCBs in the Deerfield, the route of the old Indian trail, river, while Massachusetts College of as mapped by David Costello—one of Liberal Arts’ students have pinpointed remaining sources of biological pollution. were both eventually acquired by the Although much of the pollution from French multinational Saint-Gobain pipes has been reduced, the treatment Performance Plastics. plants were not designed to treat the Perfluorooctanic acid (PFOA) and pharmaceuticals and other alien matter associated chemicals—that have since that gets into them today—and they are been linked to thyroid disease, high approaching the limits of their expected cholesterol, liver damage, testicular and life. As well, the difficult task remains kidney cancer, and pregnancy problems— of reducing runoff from agricultural were used to stick Teflon to products. fields, lawns, and impermeable surfaces In 2014 a Hoosick Falls citizen, Michael such as roofs, roads, and parking lots. Hickey, tested his well water and that of Controlling non-point pollution, as it is a local McDonald’s, discovering PFOA called, is to a large degree a matter of over limits regarded as “safe.” Later it public education, requiring at once more was found in groundwater in Bennington patience and imagination. and Pownal, Vermont; and Petersburgh, And unanticipated threats emerge. White Creek, and Cambridge, New In the early 1950s John R. Cook and York. These communities either Cleveland Dodge, a philanthropic scion hosted the manufacturing facilities of the Phelps Dodge mining company, or are located nearby. Saint-Gobain, developed a Teflon-coated wire that Honeywell International—owner of could withstand high temperatures, another company that once operated in and which soon became a commercial Hoosick Falls—, and Taconic Industries, success. They controlled the Warren Wire which used a product related to PFOA Company, named after Cook’s oldest in Petersburgh, assumed responsibility, son, in Pownal. Later Dodge left Warren providing bottled water, filters for Wire to found Dodge Fibers Corporation private and public wells, and cash to in Hoosick Falls. Cook sold Warren Wire the communities. Those actions do not and went on to start a third company, erase the feelings of the residents who ChemFab, in Bennington. Hoosick Falls discovered they and their children have became the center for the manufacture elevated levels of PFOA in their blood. of yarn, fabric, pots, and aluminum foil, Although only trace amounts have been while the Bennington factory specialized found in the Hoosic River, groundwater in Teflon roofs. Dodge and ChemFab tends to follow a river’s course. All the 60 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 61 communities involved are in the Hoosic purchase, furthering the longevity of watershed. Testing and remediation are some farms and ensuring more wooded under way state by state, including the land. With the numerous federal and standards for “safe” levels, whereas PFOA state properties, such as Green Mountain is really a watershed issue, in its origins National Forest, Tibbitts State Forest as well as in its effects, a point Caroline which long-time owners the Tibbits family White-Nockleby, Williams College ‘17, donated to New York, and Mt. Greylock wrote in her riveting paper on the subject. State Reservation, land in the watershed The river, although faced by climate is 71 percent forested and a declining 20 change—a threat to the Hoosic more potentially lethal than PFOA or any other pollution—is ready to play its part in a post-industrial watershed world. The other players would also seem to be some of the old ones, re-invigorated.

NORUMBEGA In much of the valley, as milk prices became too low to sustain small farms and, as farmers’ sons and daughters became painfully aware that most people don’t work 12-hour days year around, remnant farm families no longer bred future farmers to carry on the dairying Land Use in the Hoosic Watershed. tradition. Their properties are divided for Credit: R.Schlesinger residential development, often for retired city dwellers, and often with large lots. percent in agriculture, the ratio opposite Thus the former fields, no longer hayed that of 150 years ago. With the trees or producing corn, fill with trees. Land and unplowed fields come wild animals: trusts and state programs attempt to Most obviously a large deer herd and an preserve the rural quality of communities active beaver population; a modest influx by buying development rights or outright of moose, bear, bobcat, coyote, feral pigs, and occasionally even a cougar just family on a land grant from the Van passing through. Rensselaers, in Hoosick, and McMahon’s Industries were a threat to the Hoosic, Hooskip Farm, named for the adjacent particularly their dams, which interrupted Hoosic River and Skiparee Mountain, fish passage, and their discharge of 714 acres on Indian Massacre Road in pollution—both of which warmed the Petersburgh and Pownal. In Buskirk small river. Cattle manure on fields washes farms have consolidated, yielding a large into the river, cattle sometimes deposit dairy operation, apparently viable, of directly into the adjacent waterway; 580 milkers and 500 young stock at the farmers have been known to plow to the Tiashoke Farms, employing immigrant water’s edge, resulting in bank erosion; labor, milking around the clock. Great farmers have employed pesticides that sweeps of cultivated and hayed land are toxic to aquatic life. Unlike major surround serried rows of milk sheds. The industry, however, there is a future for name harks back to the first European enlightened agriculture in the watershed. settlers of the area and even further, to A few farms hang on by offering agro- the Indians. Niles reported that Tiashoke entertainment, where the farm becomes land was fenced, at Albany’s expense, to a tourist attraction, with hayrides, corn provide Indians 12 acres to grow corn mazes, and baby animals. Specialty farms without incursions of their new, European include branded ones like the (Grandma) neighbors’ domestic animals. The Ziehm Moses Farm in Eagle Bridge, named family is into its third generation there, for the folk painter whose works are on Frank’s dad having turned the farm over view at the Bennington Museum, or pick- to him when he was 27, and Frank turning your-own berry patches or orchards, it over to his sons. According to Cabot or organically grown vegetables, often Creamery, whose Agri-Mark trucks pick catering to farmers’ markets, schools, up the milk, the Ziehms “are passionate and restaurants. Annual investors receive about dairy farming and feel a profound vegetable dividends at community- responsibility for their stewardship supported farms. St. Croix Farms, 688 of the land, dedicating 550 acres to acres in Valley Falls, raise beef, forage, ‘open space,’ which means the land and feed crops. Dairy continues, such as is restricted and cannot be used for at Breese Hollow Farm, licensed to sell development of any kind.” The family’s raw milk, founded originally by the Breese commitment to the broader community 62 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 63

it progressed to North Adams State College, assuming its present title in 1997, under the guidance of alumna and President Mary Grant. It plays a significant role in the community. Southern Vermont College, a private, four-year liberal arts college, was founded in Bennington, in 1926, as the St. Joseph Business School. In 1962 it became an accredited junior college. Twelve years later, it moved to the estate of jar magnate Edward H. Everett Tiashoke Farms, Buskirk. Credit: L.Stevens in the east side of Mt. Anthony, becoming extends beyond farming and land the four-year Southern Vermont College. stewardship. Frank has been a member Bennington College, with a mission to of Agri-Mark’s hauling committee for educate woman and to include in its many years, and he has served on the academic year a non-resident winter Village Board for three decades. term, was founded in 1932. It became co- The Hoosac Valley is rich in culture educational in 1969, keeping the winter as well as agri-culture, witness the term. Traditionally known for its drama, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Old Castle dance, arts, and literature, it is engaging Theatre in Bennington, Hubbard Hall in the full liberal arts curriculum. Cambridge and even a drive-in movie Robert Sterling Clark, scion of the in North Hoosick. It is in fact a cultural Singer sewing machine company, an watershed, containing along with many entrepreneur, explorer, and art collector, public and private secondary schools, acquired his first Renoir in 1916. In Paris four colleges. Williams, at over 2,000 he met up with Francine, an actress with students, became coeducational in the La Comedie Français who had excellent 1980s. It is consistently rated among taste for, and awareness of, Impressionist the top in the country. Massachusetts painters. After their 1919 marriage they College of Liberal Arts was founded in joined in collecting art. It was assumed 1894 as North Adams Normal School. In they would donate their considerable 1932 it became a state teachers college, collection to the Metropolitan Museum adding a baccalaureate degree. In 1960 of Art, but they became concerned about MASS MoCA, at the junction of the North Branch and the Hoosic. Credit: L.Stevens the possibility of a nuclear attack on New space for traveling exhibits, and enhanced York City. Clark’s father and grandfather landscaping that includes reflecting pools. had been trustees of Williams College, So The Clark had been transformed from and the Clarks established relationships a gorgeous but static display to a world- with the Williams art faculty so, in 1950, class purveyor of timeless art—all with real they began building a home that was cows on real fields with no water tank for also an art museum in Williamstown. a backdrop. The 1973 addition underlined that the The Sprague closure devastated the Clark is an institute, as well as a museum, local economy immediately—and through housing an art library and Williams time, right up to the demise of North Adams College’s art curators’ graduate program. Regional Hospital in 2014. Unemployment Under Director Michael Conforti, the rates shot up and population declined. center on Stone Hill opened, with more In 1986, the business and political exhibit space and the Williamstown Art leaders of North Adams sought creative Conservation Laboratory. Finally, in 2014, ways to re-use the vast Arnold/Sprague the Clark Center opened, providing complex. Williams College Museum of 64 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 65

Art (WCMA) Director Thomas Krens, The state legislature announced its who would later become director of the support for the project in 1988. Subsequent Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was economic upheaval in Massachusetts looking for space to exhibit large works threatened funding, but broad-based of contemporary art that would not fit in support from the community and private conventional galleries. When Mayor John donors, who pledged more than $8 Barrett III (serving 1983-2009) suggested million, kept what was to be called the the vast Marshall Street complex, the idea Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary of creating a contemporary arts center in Art (MASS MoCA) under way. The museum the hardscrabble city began to take shape. maintains its structures’ industrial past Joseph C. Thompson, after graduating unapologetically, while serving as what from Williams College in 1981, worked was (and again is, as new space opens) with Krens at WCMA for several years. the country’s largest center for visual and Then the lanky Oklahoman was named performing arts. As home to several firms, an Annenberg fellow in art history at the restaurants, and shops, and as a concert University of Pennsylvania. During his stay, and museum venue, MoCA has made he also received a business degree from economic sense, without as yet noticeably the Wharton School. Then he became reviving the downtown portions of the city. founding director of an idea. While a Still it is clear that cultural activities are part campaign began to build community and of the watershed’s future and MoCA is political support for an entity that would their harbinger. Krens now has proposed a serve as a platform for the creation and high-tech model railroad and architecture presentation of contemporary art—and museum in North Adams, in company with develop links with the region’s other the recently operational scenic railroad, and cultural institutions, such as Jacob’s Pillow, another art museum as part of a resurgent Clark Art Institute, Williamstown Theatre Harriman & West Airport. Destination Festival, Williams College, and the resorts and hotels on the outskirts are in Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts— the works. The Hoosac Valley is home to Thompson held on at low or no salary. His numerous art venues, artists, and academic wife Jennifer Trainer Thompson published institutions. Culture, which includes the cookbooks. Between them they marketed area’s rich natural history and human hot sauces, which sustained them until history, is the valley’s way to provide for its the project found its legs. creatures, human and otherwise. Williams College, a mainstay of area to the post-industrial economic strategy. culture, recognizes the Hoosic in its After generations when the river was a anthem, “The Mountains”: disincentive, due to pollution and flooding, O, proudly rise the monarchs businesses and homeowners are now of our mountain land, attracted to riverside property—although With their kingly forest robes, to the sky, not in the flood plain. Numerous long Where Alma Mater dwelleth distance and shorter hiking trails cross or with her chosen band, follow the river. Along with the Ashuwillticook And the peaceful river floweth gently by. Trail, paved but lightly traveled roads offer —Washington Gladden excellent biking, with arresting mountain and river views. Boating and fishing river And usually it does. The river joins access is available along the entire length. the communities, a link that overcomes We canoe, kayak, and raft on the upper river arbitrary political boundaries. We need and sail or motor in the dead water above no longer be concerned about the Dutch the Johnsonville dam, even if we have to encroaching from the west or the French fight through the water chestnut. On a good and Indians sweeping down from the day, the keeper will lock our canoes through north, anyway. In the 21st century valley Lock 4 of the Champlain Canal. folk are looking to agriculture, culture, and “We had a sportful day… over 200 fish recreation for inspiration in plotting the in one afternoon,” reported President future. Those activities along the river have William McKinley about fishing the Hoosic proven to be compatible. in 1890. “When I saw it was a brook trout, I Judy Grinnell had a dream of using the could hardly believe my eyes: 22 inches, a river to revivify North Adams, no stranger wild brook trout,” enthused Williamstown dream perhaps than using art for the same rod-maker Reggie Galvin 100 years later. purpose. Blessed with fund raising skills For those observing today’s legal limits and a wealth of contacts, she has moved and with a license, fishing the Hoosic her project near the forefront of a small city remains “sportful” and trophy fish, while planning big things for its future. As her cagey, are available. Most of the Hoosic Hoosic River Revival’s efforts to naturalize is categorized as fishable and swimmable, the aging flood chutes, which interrupt fish although also listed as impaired—meaning passage and heat the water, will prove, a that as yet we are reluctant to eat the clear, cool river benefits all and is necessary teaming fish. 66 · Dispatches from the Beyond Place: Tales of the Hoosic River · 67

While it has not yet returned to Dwight’s in vain for the fabled city. His squire reflects: “limpid” state, changing public perception ‘These woods, perchance, no secret hide of the river drives further improvement. Of lordly tower and hall; Improvement means ever more closely Yon river in its wanderings wide approximating the way it was—including Has washed no city wall; the upper river’s character as a cold-water ‘Yet mirrored in the sullen stream fishery. HooRWA is trying to determine The holy stars are given; and protect stream segments most likely to Is Norembega, then, a dream retain coldwater qualities. As John Wesley Whose waking is in Heaven?’ Powell implied, fish, what fish eat, what eat —From “Norembega” fish, and humans—we’re all in this together. The future of the Hoosac Valley looks The Hoosic Valley has a fabled past good. David Ingram, an English sailor perhaps but it can wake into a real future. who supposedly trekked all the way from It is fair to say that at this time, although the Gulf of Mexico through New England the river guides wildlife, humans don’t in the 16th century, described opulence follow the river as much as in the days the in Norumbega: “Kings decorated with Indians crossed the old Indian trail, Fort rubies six inches long; and they were Massachusetts looked to Schaghticoke for borne on chairs of silver and crystal, provisions, Berkshire farmers flocked to fight adorned with precious stones. [Ingram] at Walloomsac, Dwight rode up the valley saw pearls as common as pebbles, and and the mountain, Thoreau found heaven the natives were laden down by their on Greylock, or trolleys connected all of us. ornaments of gold and silver.” The city Perhaps consulting our history will awaken of Bega was three-quarters of a mile long us to the natural congruity of North Adams, and had many streets wider than those of Bennington, Hoosick Falls, Schaghticoke, London, he reported. Some houses had and the towns and villages in between, as massive pillars of crystal and silver. strung together organically by the Hoosic. Could Norumbega be on the Hoosic? For all of us, the Hoosic is our watershed We’re short on silver pillars; in fact the area address. So we should identify ourselves. is still struggling economically, although And if we can mitigate and adapt to climate the plants and animals are doing well. John change so that the upper river system retains Greenleaf Whittier was a Quaker poet and coldwater characteristics—then perhaps we hymn-writer. In his poem, the knight searches will find Norumbega on the Hoosic. Acknowledgements Major sources Grace Greylock Niles. Bog-trotting for Orchids, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904. Grace Greylock Niles. The Hoosac Valley: Its Legends and History, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912. Grace Greylock Niles, “The Mission of White Oaks Chapel,” The Christian Observer, December 1, 1904. “Climate Change and Cold Water Fish Habitat in the Northeast: A Vulnerability Assessment,” Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences and the National Wildlife Federation, September 2012. Portions of the natural history were adapted from “The Natural History of the Berkshires” website, by Henry W. Art, Williams College biologist, and his students. The Mahican section is based on Lee Sultzman, historian, on-line, 1997. Revolutionary War account generally follows Richard M. Ketchum’s Saratoga, Henry Holt & Co., 1997. Dwight’s trip is taken from Travels in New-England and New-York, vol. III, Timothy Dwight, orig. pub. 1822. Edited by Barbara Miller Solomon, Harvard, 1969. Henry Montgomery’s written account of Grace Niles, unpublished, undated, and other documents relating to Niles, were provided by Pamela B. Weatherbee.

Other sources Jean Alphonse. La Cosmographie, E. Leroux, 1904, copy of 1545 orig. in the Biblioteque Nationale. Berkshire County Regional Planning Commission (now Berkshire Regional Planning Commission), “Hoosic River Action Plan,” June 1987. Richard W. Babcock and Lauren R. Stevens. Old Barns in the New World: Reconstructing History, Berkshire House, 1996. “Brief History of the Mahikan/Stockbridge-Munsee Indian People,” adapted from The Stockbridge-Munsee Tribe: The History of the Mahican and Munsee Indians, by Shelly Oxley, Rhinelander School District, 1981. Warren F. Broderick, “A Landscape Transformed: Lock 4 Canal Park,” Rensselaer-Taconic Land Conservancy (now Rensselaer Land Trust), 2000. Robert R.R. Brooks et al. Williamstown: The First 250 Years: 1753-2003, House of Local History (now Williamstown Historical Museum), 2005. Deborah E. Burns and Lauren R. Stevens, with Leah Katzelnik. Most Excellent Majesty: A History of Mount Greylock, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, 2009. James Fenimore Cooper. The Last of the Mohicans, Houghton Mifflin, 1958 (orig. pub. H.C. Carey and I. Lee, 1826). David Costello. The Mohawk Trail Showing Old Roads and Other Points of Interest, David Costello, Greenfield, Mass., 1975. O.R. Cummings. Berkshire Street Railway, Connecticut Valley Chapter, National Railroad Historical Society, 1972. Wilma Dykeman. The French Broad, University of Tennessee Press, 1965.

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James Thomas Flexner. Lord of the Mohawks: A Biography of Sir William Johnson, Little Brown & Co. 1979 (orig. pub. as Mohawk Baronet, Harper & Brothers, 1959). Richard Hakluyt. The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nations, Edinburgh, 1889. Includes passages from Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America (1582) and Principal Navigations (1589—the only version that includes Ingram’s trip). Edward P. Hamilton. Fort Ticonderoga: Key to the Continent, Fort Ticonderoga, 1995. Nelson Hull, “Reminiscences in the Settling of the Valley of the Little Hoosick: Events of the Revolutionary War & with a sketch of the life and character of some of the most prominent men of the town of Berlin,” manuscript, 1858. John Liston, “The Schaghticoke Hydro-electric Plant of the Schenectady Power Company,” General Electric Review, April 1909. Philip L. Lord. War Over Walloomscoick: Land Use and Settlement Pattern on the Bennington Battlefield—1777, New York State Museum Bulletin No. 473, 1998. Joseph Parks. Pownal, Pownal Bicentennial Committee, 1977. Arthur L. Perry. Origins in Williamstown, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1894. Robert E. Shalhope. Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys: The Emergence of Liberal Democracy in America, 1760-1800, Johns Hopkins Press, 1996. David R. Starbuck. The Great Warpath: British Military Sites from Albany to Crown Point, University Press of New England, 1999. Robert C. Sprague, “Sprague Electric of North Adams,” The Newcomen Society of North America, 1958. Andre Thevet. La Cosmographie Universelle, P. L’Huilier, 1575. Peter Thomas, “Bridge Relocation in Pownal, Vermont,” Vermont Agency of Transportation, 1979. Henry David Thoreau. A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1966, orig. James Munroe & Co., 1849. Caroline White-Nockleby, “How Can We Make Them See? Moving beyond the boundaries that fragment PFOA groundwater contamination in Vermont and New York,” Williams College, Fall 2016. John Greenleaf Whittier. The Works of . . , Vol. 1, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1848. Wikipedia, “Jean Alfonse.” This essay draws on my Berkshire Eagle columns, Advocate stories, and magazine articles too numerous to list and for which the sources are long forgotten. Personal interviews, text review, written material Richard Babcock, Alex Brooks, Deborah Burns, Gina Campoli, John Case, Sarah Currie, Susan Denault, Reginald Galvin, Wendy Hopkins, Christina Kelly, Constance Kheel, Richard Lohnes, Gwenda Elin Gustafson Malnati, Eugene F. Michalenko, Steve McMahon, Lion G. Miles, Paul Miller, Roger St. Pierre, Richard Schlesinger, Robert C. Sprague, Shelly Stiles, Gordon Sweeney, Pamela B. Weatherbee. 70 ·

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Copies of this pamphlet available from the Hoosic River Watershed Association P.O. Box 667, Williamstown, MA 01267

HooRWA.org

Locus map of the Hoosic Watershed on back cover. Credit: R.Schlesinger Designed and produced by The Print Shop Williamstown