HISTORY OF MONTAGUE Q ^^ (*, at Ex] W Q t t a h a v a j GILL E R V I N G G VI ,, HISTORY of MONTAGUE A TYPICAL PURITAN TOWN [Illustrated] By Edward Pearson Pressey INTRODUCTORY By Robert P. Clapp. i Including SHORT HAND NOTES of CONVERSATIONS with the OLDEST INHABITANTS, AD. 1895 By Mr. Clapp <s a HISTORY of the GUNN FAMILY By Mrs. Lyman 0. Gunn Published by THE NEW CLAIRVAUX PRESS Montague, Mass., 1910 Copyright, 1910, by EDWARD P. PRESSEY • fa P? % Contents BOOK I. Invocation Inspired by other New England historians, and by the charms and legends of "Hunting Hills," Mr. P. undertakes the History of Montague. BOOK II. Introductory A discourse treating Montague history in a general way to beguile a summer's afternoon; Montague field day of the P. V. M. A. F September 10, 1895. BOOK III. The First Inhabitants Reveals some knowledge of the creatures that left footprints in the red sandstone. BOOK IV. Indians Since the Indian always behaved himself in Montague, we let you know how on the whole, he laughed, prayed, sung, wrought, and spun yarns of magic. BOOK V. Pioneers History of the lumber camp that supplied Sunderland with boards for its first houses in 1714 and of the first settlers of the land. BOOK VI. Winning Democracy Just how the Congregational church hatched modern democracy when the Baptists and Unitarians cracked its shell. BOOK VII. Causes and Conduct of the Revolution How Montague helped save the democracy she had won and avoided paying tribute money to George III.'s favorites. 6 CONTENTS BOOK VIII. The King's Highway All about the old county roads and turnpikes and tavern life. BOOK IX. The River Its ancient fisheries, lumber rafts and commercial boating with Dewey's River Odyssey. BOOK X. Drum Taps, 1786-1865 History of Montague's romantic share in Shays' rebellion and in the Civil War, and her opposition to some other wars. BOOK XI. Old Town Memories Being a transcript of notes on conversations with the oldest in- habitants and a brief Gunn history. BOOK XII. Peskeomskut Tells how Turners Falls began and grew and what she amounts to. BOOK XIII. Old Town Industries Recovers from oblivion something about our old-fashioned in- dustries; and records the revival, in 1901, of making beautiful things. BOOK XIV. Education A complete- history of our schools from the beginning, including the location of every district school. BOOK XV. Religion The religion of the Puritans and the era of split, good feeling and don't care. Religion is our deepest sincerity. BOOK XVI. Visions The charm and resources of our waters caused Philip to center his Indian commonwealth here. About Montague "City," Crocker's scheme and the old town. APPENDIX Gives complete lists of town officers from 1756-1910, history of Lake Pleasant, new Indian finds, and mixed matter. HISTORY OF MONTAGUE Book I-^Invocation THE tale of human life is enchanting. The life of a community is a beautiful, a divine mystery. In it we have the law, the orderly customs of men, which are a part of nature, akin to those laws which fix the orbits of the stars. In it we have deposits of tradition and ancient lore which spring from the subsoil of the imagina- tion and heart of the childhood of the race. We have manlike loyalties which hold the people true to some pole- star of nationality, even to the crack of doom. We have great visions and ideals which beckon them from afar and make the work of their hands, in time if they prevail, to blossom into beauty. And finally we have in the hours of fulfillment the feasting and the song, the joyous contemplation of all the things that God and man have done amongst us. Fellow Citizens: I invite you to the feast and song, to celebrate a stage of this community's life journey, to close the books of two centuries' ideals and deeds, while the twentieth century, on fresh fields and pastures new, is dawning. A former minister in Montague, David Cronyn, was asked what salary he got. " Fifteen hundred dollars," was the reply. Surprise was expressed, whereupon he ex- plained: " I get five hundred dollars in money and a thou- sand dollars in scenery." The scenery of our banquet house is superb and its walls are frescoed and tapestried with memories. I invite you to the feast of memories and traditions of folks whose names our hills and streams and 8 HISTORY OF MONTAGUE old homesteads still bear, of a once little town, so modest, in 1833, that a citizen of Worcester described it as "one of the most obscure towns on the river "; yet it was unfail- ingly faithful over a few things and has been entering into a large joy. Newcomer: When you look out hereafter upon Mt. Toby I want you to see a beautiful mountain above a lovely valley; and I want you to see besides the spirits of the air and of its wooded heights, the Mikumwess, the little folk of the rock and the "Thunder family" which the Indian saw there. I want you to read the pretty legends of our brook banks with their 150 kinds of blos- soms. I want you to see the stream of travel and traffic (of the days of Uncle Elisha Ward's gig), which once poured over our ancient turnpikes and more ancient river. I want you to sit with me around old tavern fires and listen to tales of the old time. Join with me, if you will, in a song of tender memory over old hearthstones. Dream over with me the old dreams of cities by the water, Montague City, Peskeomskut, Grout's, and the summer city by the gem of waters in the Plain. Raise with me the psean of progress as new and larger enterprises sup- plant the old ones and the old ones rise newborn, Phcenix- like, out of their ashes. Sing with me then the new song of our craftsmen and school children and plowmen. And in fellowship and the fear of God let us eat, drink and be merry; for to-morrow we sleep with the fathers on the dunes above the meadows. I have undertaken to write a town history on a new plan. Most New England town histories are things of shreds and patches, of recollections, annals and genealo- gies, promiscuously thrown together. I have tried to as- similate a lot of the usual material, rather than to print BOOK I. INVOCATION 9 haphazard every available fact. I hope the result is a book rather than a student's notebook. I may have failed; but that is another story. The aim is to tell the pro- gressive development from Puritan principles of a typical New England town. If America at the end of the nine- teenth century is comprehensible at all, it is in some such miniature, under some such magnifying glass as I have used. I have found an interesting plot here as in those popular novels, truth stranger than fiction. I find absorp- tion and excitement in the problem of what, out of all these beginnings, we shall be, when we reach that ideal, to the promise of which two centuries have clung and towards which our little firmament still earnestly moves. At the outset of the book your own flesh and blood greets you old town folks, as I have greeted the neophyte and the stranger and now greet you all with reverent memories. My task is to commend Puritan Democracy and the romance of its coming to a twentieth century, cosmopolitan Montague and to the general reader. Issues that live through time and overstep the bounds of race and creed, imaginations that for their beauty never grow old are the inspirations of my story, and simple facts tersely stated are its chosen substance. I write this history because I must. When I was nine years old, Sebastian Griffin, an old man of Auburn, New Hampshire, where I lived, wrote The Legends of Lake Massabesic, which charmed my imagination. My dis- tant kinsman Benjamin Chase, published a history of the noble town of Chester. And it was in those years I made up my mind to find a New England town to write about. Local traditions since then everywhere stick to my mem- ory. I brought it up on Parker's Londonderry, McGregor's Nvifield, Morrison's Windham—burning the midnight oil, 10 HISTORY OF MONTAGUE when a boy, and all the world was an undiscovered country and the past was my fairyland. And when I became a college student I made annual pilgrimages to Lexington and Concord and memorized the New England poets about old places and legends. Finally I was more than half a man at Rowe, when my recreation was recovering some knowledge of the people who once lived on the site of every old cellar hole in that mountain town. The late Warren Bardwell of Montague once said to me: "When I was a young man and we got five cents to spend, we bought a glass of beer; now they take a trolley." But mine, when I got enough, was some old town history. Ten years ago I began to collect material for this history of Montague. My first installment of lore came from a conversation with Rufus Thornton about Indians. Now it has grown to these proportions with material to spare. Some day I shall have to print a second volume. Meanwhile I offer this as the first fruits of a life long interest in such things.