Williamstown and Williams College: Explorations in Local History

WILLIAMSTOWN and WILLIAMS COLLEGE Explorations in Local History

dustin griffin WILLIAMSTOWN and WILLIAMS COLLEGE  This page intentionally left blank WILLIAMSTOWN and WILLIAMS COLLEGE  Explorations in Local History 

DUSTIN GRIFFIN

ISBN 978-1-62534-379-6 (paper); 378-9 (hardcover)

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Abraham and Rebecca Stein Publication Fund of New York University, Department of English.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Griffin, Dustin H., author. Title: Williamstown and Williams College : explorations in local history / Dustin Griffin. Description: Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, [2018] | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018020569 (print) | LCCN 2018024453 (ebook) | ISBN 9781613766262 (e-book) | ISBN 9781613766279 (e-book) | ISBN 9781625343789 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781625343796 (pbk.) Subjects: LCSH: Williams College—History. | Williamstown (Mass.)—History. | Local history—Massachusetts—Williamstown. Classification: LCC LD6073 (ebook) | LCC LD6073 .G75 2018 (print) | DDC 378.744/1—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018020569

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

“The Theft of the Williams College Library” was previously published as “The Great Book Theft That Wasn’t” in Amherst Magazine, the Amherst College alumni magazine (Fall 2010). A longer version of “Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band: ‘The Mountains’” was previously published as “Alma Mater and an American Dream” in The Delegated Intellect, ed. Donald E. Morse (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), a collection of essays published in 1995 in honor of Professor Don Gifford of Williams College. Both essays have been substantially revised for this book. CONTENTS

PREFACE vii

Part 1 THE TOWN Chapter 1. The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 3 Chapter 2. The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 20 Chapter 3. A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 43 Chapter 4. A Short History of Flora’s Glen 69 Chapter 5. A Very Short History of McMaster’s Caves 84

Part 2 THE TOWN AND THE COLLEGE Chapter 6. Captain and Corporal Two Williamstown Soldiers in the 37th Massachusetts 91 Chapter 7. The Hoosic and the Ohio The Cincinnati Connection 110 Chapter 8. Big Days in a Small Town 135 Chapter 9. A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town Boston, New York, and Williamstown 154

v vi Contents

Part 3 THE COLLEGE Chapter 10. The Theft of the Williams College Library 173 Chapter 11. Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band “The Mountains” 179 Chapter 12. “Yard by Yard” Line by Line and through the Years 197 Chapter 13. Windows on the Past Stained Glass on the Williams College Campus 209 Chapter 14. The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 223

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING 245 INDEX 247 Notes are available online at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/umpress_williamstown/1.

Gallery of illustrations follow page 134. PREFACE

This book offers a new look at the local history of Williamstown and Williams College. It is a collection of fourteen separate microstudies, each of them focused on a single narrowly defined topic in the local history of Williamstown and its most notable local institution, Williams College. Some of the chapters deal primarily with the town, some primarily with the college, but in fact (given the close relationship of town and college since the latter’s founding in 1793) there is considerable overlap. Taken together, they present a picture of this prototypical New England college town, both what it shares with many other similar towns in the region and what makes it distinctive. Each chapter takes up some feature that visitors to present-day Williamstown might encounter—a historical plaque or a cemetery gravestone, a Civil War statue on Main Street, a town-wide holiday, a popular hiking trail, a stained-glass window in the college chapel, a song that alumni sing at reunions—and traces its history. The topics range from the colonial history of the town in the middle of the eighteenth century to the complicated process during the 1960s, whereby Williams College made the crucial decision to become coeducational. Some chapters focus on notable events, some on notable people who have been unjustly forgotten, and some on particular places in the town, including two secluded valleys that have had a very curious history. In some chapters I deal with matters that were once well known but about which few present-day readers will know anything. In others I take a fresh look at oft-told tales and two beloved college songs and critically examine the evidence, correct misconceptions, and

vii viii PREFACE reconstruct the historical context so as to enable present-day readers to understand them better. I have not simply recycled old stories but based my narratives on documentary evidence. In many places I have silently disagreed with previous local historians. Yet I have always tried to keep the general reader in mind. Some casual readers will dip into the book here and there and find the stories entertaining. Others might use it as a reference work, to check details about a historical matter. Specialist readers and future local historians who wish to pursue my topics further may find extensive footnotes online at https://scholarworks.umass.edu/umpress/. I began writing essays on the history of Williams College about twenty-five years ago. After moving to Williamstown in 2003, I continued to write about the history of the college and began writing essays on the history of the town. Most of the essays in this collection have been written since 2008. Versions of most of these essays were delivered as talks in the annual lecture series, from 2009 to the present, sponsored by the Williamstown Historical Museum, and I thank both the former chairs of the museum’s lecture committee (Rita Watson and Janette Kessler) and the audiences that attended the talks. Thanks also to those who provided technical support: Susan Clarke, Sarah Currie, and Gale Griffin. Parts of “The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams” were delivered at the Williams College Reunion in June 2015. A note on the various spellings of Hoosic, Hoosac, Hoosuck, and Hoosick, all derived from an Algonquian word of uncertain meaning. I have followed conventional use in referring to the Hoosic River, the Hoosac Mountains and Valley, the colonial villages of Dutch Hoosick and West Hoosuck, and the present-day place-names of North Hoosick and Hoosick Falls. Much of the research for these essays was done with the support of the Sawyer Library and the Archives at Williams College and at the Williamstown Historical Museum. Thanks to the staff of those institutions for their unfailing courtesies, in particular Sarah Currie, director of the Williamstown Historical Museum, Linda McGraw of the Sawyer Library, and Linda Hall, former assistant director of the Williams College Archives. Thanks also to the former college archivist PREFACE ix

Katie Nash. Another steadfast supporter was Mike Miller, whose inde- fatigable research into the history of Williamstown taught me a lot and who was always ready to answer my queries. For providing personal information through email, in-person interviews, or telephone interviews, I am grateful to a number of current and former Williamstown residents, some of them sadly no longer living: Tad Ames, Hank Art, Patricia Rice Austin, Nancy Rice Bassi, Bob Behr, Sylvia Kennick Brown, Karen Bucky, Denise Buell, Nancy Burstein, Rick Ciara, Merritt Colaizzi, Albert Cummings III, Albert Cummings IV, Christian Curtis, Dick DeMayo, David Dethier, Hank Flynt, Juliet Flynt, Phil Geier, Jim George, Richard George, Mike Glier, Barry Gradman, Carrie Greene, Lee Hammond, Ken Heekin, Thomas Heekin, Rita Hoar, Bernadette Horgan, Henry Isenberg, Annette Jenks, Jeff Jones, Helen Kaiser, Tim Kaiser, Jeff Kennedy, Steve Klass, Art LaFave, Laney Langtry, Steve Lewis, Tom Lockhart, Wood Lockhart, Tom Loughman, Bill Madden, Caroline George Martel, Mick McAlpine, Chip McCann, Bob McGill, Nancy McIntire, Phil McKnight, Dick Nesbitt, Frank Oakley, Phyllis Brookman Oleson, David Primmer, Dick Quinn, Leslie Reed- Evans, Bill Rice, Dorothy Rice, Susan Roeper, Fred Rudolph, Sheafe Satterthwaite, Sandy Sepka, John Shaw, John Skavlem, Anne Skinner, Phil Smith, Jid and John Sprague, George Stabler, Bob Stegeman, Lauren Stevens, Bill Stinson, Lib Stone, Sheila Stone, Kevin Sweeney, Paula Moore Tabor, Cathy Talarico, Sarah Tenney, Jay Thoman, Jennifer Trainor Thompson, Christa Waryas, Pam Weatherbee, Rebecca Wehry, Paula Wells, Carl Westerdahl, Wayne Wilkins, and Joseph Zoito. For help with illustrations, thanks especially to Sarah Currie of the Williamstown Historical Museum and also Laura Zepka of the Archives and Special Collections at Williams College and Katie Nash, its former archivist; Rachel Tassone at the Williams College Museum of Art and Tina Olsen, its former director; and Kathy Morris and Teresa O’Toole at the Clark Art Institute. Thanks to John Chandler, Phil Geier, Laney Langtry, Steve Lewis, Nancy McIntire, Fred Rudolph, Bob Stegeman, David Stern, and Wayne Wilkins for reading earlier drafts of several of the chapters. For expert editorial advice both on these essays and on my other writings over the years, I thank my wife, Gale. This page intentionally left blank WILLIAMSTOWN and WILLIAMS COLLEGE 

PART 1 THE TOWN  This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1  THE 1746 ATTACK ON FORT MASSACHUSETTS

In August 1746 a small wooden fort, built under the supervision of Captain Ephraim Williams Jr. and located in what was much later the parking lot of the old Price Chopper supermarket on State Road in North Adams, was attacked by a large force of French troops and their Abenaki Indian allies. The small band of defenders, British subjects living in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, put up some resistance but were quickly overwhelmed. The fort was burned, and its defenders were carried off to Canada by the triumphant French and Indians. The story of the 1746 attack on Fort Massachusetts is found in several old printed sources. It was first told in John Norton’s Redeemed Captive (1748), as an eyewitness account by one of the survivors, and it was retold at the dedication of the replica of Fort Massachusetts built on the site in 1933. But the story is little known outside of Berkshire County. It is a riveting story, worth retelling, because it reveals a lot about the interaction of cultures in colonial America. There are no new facts about the attack itself to report, but it’s worth taking a wider view than do most of the previous storytellers, who unreflectively adopt the point of view of the English settlers and tend to view the “Indians” as nothing more than “perfidious savages.” And it’s worth pointing out

3 4 Chapter 1 that some questions about the attack on the fort have never been adequately answered. First, a few basic facts. The fort, built in the summer of 1745, was located on the north side of the Hoosic River. The river flows generally westward from North Adams toward Williamstown, but about two miles east of the Williamstown line it makes an oxbow, flowing south (under Route 2) and then back north (again passing under Route 2). In the eighteenth century, the east–west path to Deerfield (on an old Indian trail) passed to the north of the fort. It forded the river just north of where the Route 2 bridges are now. The fort measured sixty by sixty feet and was surrounded by a twelve-foot wall. There was an open parade ground of about forty-eight by forty-eight feet. The reconstructions of the fort at the North Adams Historical Society are incorrect in several respects: The models show that the logs of which the walls were constructed were placed vertically, as in a stockade, resting on the ground, when in fact they were assem- bled horizontally, one on top of the other, and sat on a stone foundation to keep them dry. The models show four gun mounts when there were only two. And they show a large freestanding structure within the walls, when in fact the structures within the walls were attached to the walls. The replica constructed in 1933 was also historically inaccurate: the gate in the replica faced south, toward Route 2, but the gate in the original faced north. There was no tall central stone chimney, only small chim- neys protruding through the saltbox roof; today all that survives of that replica is a single chimney. The gate to the fort faced the ridge on which present-day Massachu- setts Avenue runs. To the south of the fort, the ground was marshy. The fort was, in effect, protected by natural features on three sides—on the south by the marsh and the river and on the east and west by the river. But it was exposed on the fourth side to the north, where sharpshooters on the ridge might shoot down into the fort, over the high walls. Fort Massachusetts was the westernmost of a “line of forts” designed to defend what was still the frontier against raiding parties of Abenakis who had been harassing the English settlers in the Connecticut River valley for decades. It was staffed by about twenty men, armed with mus- kets, under the command of Captain Ephraim Williams Jr., who was The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 5 to die nine years later, at the age of forty, at the Battle of Lake George. Some of the men had their families with them. The fort was resupplied from the village of Deerfield, thirty miles to the east. The nearest of the other forts, Fort Pelham, was about five miles to the east. On August 16, 1746, tracks were found near Fort Massachusetts, indicating the presence of some kind of enemy, apparently “Indian.” Because ammunition had run low, a small detachment went out from the fort to march to Deerfield. Captain Williams was absent, perhaps conferring with his superiors in Deerfield or Boston about a proposed expedition to Canada. Sergeant John Hawks was left in charge. Of the thirty people in the fort, eight were women and children. Of the twenty soldiers, half were under the weather, disabled by some form of dysentery. On August 19, the defenders of the fort suddenly found themselves attacked by a large force of French and Indians—some nine hundred of them. The attackers surrounded the fort and kept up steady fire. Defenders had to husband their dwindling ammunition. One defender was killed. By the following day it had become clear that further resistance was futile, and the fort was surrendered. Among the twenty-nine prisoners carried off was nineteen-year- old Benjamin Simonds. They marched four miles west, stopped to rest in “Hoosac Meadow,” on the site of what would later be Simonds’s own house, now River Bend Farm. Along the way one captive, Mary Smead, gave birth to a child, whom she called Captivity. (Both mother and child died in captivity.) Simonds and the other surviving captives were exchanged for French prisoners a year later.

The Context Looked at by itself, the attack on Fort Massachusetts seems like little more than a brief firefight in the boondocks. But if we set the attack in a larger context, it is possible to see a complex interaction of at least four cultures: the Abenaki Indians, who had lived for centuries on the land between what is now Canada and Massachusetts; the French, who had long been established in Canada; the descendants of the Dutch patroons, who controlled the Hudson River valley; and the English 6 Chapter 1 settlers moving north and west from Boston. Each of them had a stake in what happened at Fort Massachusetts. It was once generally assumed that before the Europeans arrived, much of northern New England was uninhabited—just hunting ground, no permanent settlements—and constituted a sort of no-man’s- land between the French and the British. Modern historians have established that there were many different tribes in New England and that what is now Vermont was the “homeland” for the Western Abenakis. By one estimate there were about ten thousand Western Abenakis in Vermont in 1600. There had been Abenaki settlements to the west of Fort Massachusetts at Schaghticoke (on the Hudson, just north of where the Hoosic flows into it) since the seventeenth century and to the east at Deerfield and Northfield. These settlements were depleted by epidemics during the contact period—that is, when the Indians and white European settlers first came into contact. Indians gradually retreated northward toward their principal villages in the Champlain Valley, fighting guer- rilla actions against the English colonizers as they went. They sometimes fought alongside the French, sometimes on their own, sometimes against other tribes. Prior to 1744 Indians moved freely through the forests separating the French and English settlements, hunting and trading, especially along water corridors (Lake Champlain, the Hudson River) and old trails, including the “Mohawk Trail” running east–west from the Hudson River to the Connecticut River—roughly but not exactly the path of today’s Route 2. They knew the Hoosic River well, from the Hudson to its headwaters. The French had been sending missionaries to the Abenakis since the late seventeenth century and had succeeded in getting many of them to practice Catholicism. Modern historians would call the Abenakis syn- cretists: they adopted elements of Christianity but did not throw out the entirety of their “traditional belief systems.” French explorers may have paddled up the Hoosic from the Hudson as early as 1540. By 1609 French fur traders and missionaries had set up colonies in “New France” along the St. Lawrence River and had moved south along the Richelieu River to Lake Champlain and Lake George. Fort St.-Frédéric at Crown Point on Lake Champlain was The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 7 built beginning in 1734. The French had made allies of several Indian tribes. When they traveled south to Fort Massachusetts in August 1746, they were moving along well-established routes, south from Lake Champlain to the Hudson and downriver to about the point where the Battenkill flows into the Hudson (present-day Schuylerville). There they headed southeast overland—to avoid being detected by the British at Saratoga—following trails through what are now Greenwich, Cambridge, and Hoosick Falls, where they reached the Hoosic. Then they traveled upriver (on what is now Route 346) to what is now North Pownal and present-day Route 7 down into Williamstown, camping near today’s River Bend Farm (built 1770), just four miles west of Fort Massachusetts. Henry Hudson and the Dutch, sailing up the Hudson River, had explored north of Albany in 1609, establishing Fort Orange at present- day Albany in 1624. When the English took over control of New York from the Dutch in 1664, wealthy Dutch patroons and settlers remained, including the Van Rensselaer family, their descendants settling along the Hudson and some dozen miles up the Hoosic. By 1740 there was a settlement at the confluence of the Hoosic River and the Little Hoosic River called “Dutch Hoosick” (present-day North Petersburg) and another at Pownal. (Dutch settlers in Dutch Hoosick provided supplies for the building of Fort Massachusetts in 1745.) Some New Yorkers claimed that their land grants extended to the eastern side of the Taconic Range and were still defending those claims as late as 1739, when Massachusetts surveyors came north from Stockbridge, knowing that the 1629 charter established the western boundary of the commonwealth as the Pacific Ocean. New York counterclaimed that its eastern boundary was in fact the Connecticut River. The English were the latecomers in New England: they did not land at Plymouth until 1620. By the end of the seventeenth century they had begun pushing north up the Connecticut River (to Deerfield by 1669, then to Hanover and beyond). English settlers assumed that land not actively farmed by the Indians, even if used for hunting, was “empty” and thus available to them. The English had moved up the Hudson River, especially after they took over New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664. They built a fort at Saratoga in 1689 and a stockade—Fort 8 Chapter 1

Edward—at the head of navigation by 1709. This brought the English and the French into conflict—it was less than fifty miles from British Fort Edward to French Fort St.-Frédéric (at Crown Point). English settlers also moved up the Housatonic River from Connecticut; Sheffield was incorporated in 1733. Northern Berkshire County was the last part of the state to be settled. England and France had been intermittently at war in North America since the beginning of the century, but the years between 1713 and 1744 were relatively peaceful. In 1744 hostilities broke out again with the beginning of King George’s War (in Europe called the War of the Austrian Succession). One of the major campaigns was the capture of the French fortress at Louisbourg (on Cape Breton Island) in June 1745, by men from Massachusetts. In reprisal, the English fort at Saratoga was destroyed in November 1745. In the spring of 1746 there were dozens of bands of French and Indian raiders along the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers. Fort Massachusetts itself came under attack in the spring of 1746. On May 10 two men were wounded at some distance from the fort, and the next day one man was killed, one wounded, and one taken captive. One hundred cattle were killed. This brings us to the summer of 1746 and the big attack on Fort Massachusetts in August, which we can now begin to see was part of a large-scale struggle involving not only the French and the English but also the Abenaki inhabitants of the area, as well as the Dutch New Yorkers along the lower Hoosic River. As I suggested at the outset, although the basic facts of the attack are not in dispute, there remain details that are inadequately understood.

Location of the Fort The line of forts was initially proposed because settlers west of the Connecticut River wanted to stop French and Indian raids eastward along the Mohawk Trail. Governor William Shirley was receptive, for a number of reasons. First, he and the Massachusetts House of Representatives were initially concerned about encroachments by “Dutch Inhabitants” from New York. Dutch farmers had been moving up the Hoosic River into present-day Pownal in the 1730s. As early as The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 9

February 1743, the colonial legislature discussed laying out a new township at “Hoosuck,” in order to “prevent Persons from the neighboring Government incroaching thereon.” The line of forts was to extend west “to the Dutch settlements,” and the westernmost fort was to defend the “Western Frontiers.” It was to be called “Fort Massachusetts” as a way of claiming that the land on which it was built belonged to the colony of Massachusetts rather than New York; that is to say, its siting was as much political as it was military. Second, it was only later—in 1744—that the line of forts running west was also thought to be useful “in case of war with France.” As early as May 30, 1745, Shirley wrote that he wanted to prevent “any Surprise from the Enemy”—that is, the French—and in June 1745 the Massachusetts House of Representatives voted to pay 178 men “to be constantly employed in scouting and guarding.” Fort Massachusetts, in this view, was a defensive post, designed to give early warning of raids and to resist offensive moves by the French. There was some foot-dragging, some resistance, on the part of the legislators to voting for funds to supply the forts. Shirley had to keep pressing for money. In March 1746 he reported that the “enemy [that is, the Abenaki] are again upon Motion in the Western Parts.” At the end of May he wrote of the “Extream Distress” of the people in the western part of the province: “I must desire that you would provide for their further immediate Protection.” On June 3 the legislature voted for funds for more men on the Connecticut River above Northfield and 50 men to “range the Woods with Fifty large Dogs.” On August 15, 1746, just four days before the attack, Shirley again reported “further Mischiefs done by the Indians in the Western Frontiers.” Doubts have been raised about whether Fort Massachusetts— eighteen miles by road from Fort Pelham—could give effective warn- ings to Connecticut River valley settlers of raids on the frontier. Some scholars have suggested that the purpose of widely spaced eighteenth- century forts was not to provide warning, but in effect to provide a target for attack, a “magnet,” so that Indians would attack forts instead of settlements. (In late August 1746, Indians did attack Deerfield.) And it seems dubious that Fort Massachusetts could resist any full-scale attack. At the western end of the line of forts it was quite exposed and far 10 Chapter 1 from reinforcements—about fourteen miles to the nearest house on the way, in present-day Charlemont. The nearest settlements to the west were Dutch Hoosick and Albany, making Fort Massachusetts look like a home for sitting ducks. Governor Shirley was probably interested in building the fort for yet another reason: because he took an expansive view of British interests and sought to push the French back with offensive warfare. It was he who promoted the 1745 attack on Louisbourg and in the spring of 1746 proposed an “expedition to Canada,” attacking Crown Point and, ultimately, Montréal. He sought to raise troops in Boston by public announcement. Building a fort in the wilderness was a way of asserting a military presence. It might also serve as a launching pad for an attack on Crown Point. There was another political reason to site Fort Massachusetts in the Hoosac Valley, just a mile or so from the Vermont line: it could serve to reaffirm the newly drawn border between Massachusetts and Vermont (then part of New Hampshire) on the north. Massachusetts and New Hampshire had previously been one colony and when they were divided engaged in a prolonged dispute about the border between them. A line defining the boundary was drawn in 1741 by surveyor Henry Hazen. “Hazen’s Line,” designed to run due west, was not popular in Massachusetts, where it was believed the line should have been drawn farther north. Was Shirley signaling that he was ready to defend only his own province? And did he possibly know as early as 1745 what was to become public later, that Hazen’s Line was in fact mistakenly drawn a little bit north of due west, awarding to Massachusetts some land now in North Adams and Williamstown that properly belonged to New Hampshire? If so, the siting of Fort Massachusetts along the Hoosic River, about three miles south of the border, might have served to create facts on the ground and consolidate an error in his favor. Finally, the decision to locate Fort Massachusetts in the Hoosac Valley was probably made in part because it suited the financial interests of Captain Ephraim Williams Jr. Scholars studying the Williams family have noted that they had excellent political connections in the colony and that Ephraim had acquired a considerable amount of land in the neighborhood of Fort Massachusetts. In 1745 he may have been The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 11 thinking ahead to peacetime when rich bottomland along the Hoosic River would fetch a good price when the opportunity arose of reselling it to new settlers.

Enlisting Soldiers Only a few of the men who fought at Fort Massachusetts were what we would call draftees. Most had volunteered for service. What would have motivated them to do that? On the French side: François-Pierre de Rigaud de Vaudreuil, commander of the French forces at Fort Massachusetts, was a Canadian- born aristocrat, the son and younger brother of governors of New France. He would have been motivated to promote the interests of New France and to advance his own professional career. In 1746 he had the rank of major, but on the expedition he was called (in the English accounts) “General Rigaud.” His troops included a number of officers from the regular army and from the Canadian provincial forces. One of the provincial officers was Lieutenant Jacques-Pierre Daneau de Muy. Born in Quebec and a career officer, de Muy had spent several decades defending French territory in and around Detroit and the Ohio River valley, where he developed good relations with local Indians. Reassigned to Montréal, in the summer of 1746, at the age of fifty-one, he was in command of a force of some sixty French Canadian and four to five hundred Indian irregular troops. After scouting in the Hudson River valley, he joined with Rigaud’s troops. Rigaud and de Muy would have had more in common with the officers in the Massachusetts provincials than they did with the habitants— the French Canadian fur trappers and traders in their ranks, who were not restrained by any gentlemanly code of war. According to Norton, after the Indians had scalped the body of the only Englishman to die in the attack and cut off his head and arms, one of the French Canadians “flayed” the arm, “roasted the flesh,” and made a “tobacco pouch” from the skin. This soldier and his fellow French Canadians would have looked on their military service as a way to supplement their seasonal income. 12 Chapter 1

Indians were cheaper soldiers than provincial habitants. They were generally paid bounties for scalps or prisoners and were permitted to keep captured booty. French troops included a number of Abenakis. Rigaud’s forces also included members of at least five other tribes. Some were “domiciled” Indians—Christianized and living in “pray- ing villages”—and some were from the backcountry, remote from the settled villages. The Indians were valuable because they typically knew the territory better than the French did. But they did not serve only as guides, as they apparently marched and fought as a separate unit, at the front, rear, and flanks of the main French force, with their own chaplain and Lieutenant de Muy leading them. One of his means of control was apparently to offer rewards if the Indians followed his orders. The claim that the Abenakis wanted to avenge the killing of their great chief Cadenaret, reportedly killed near Fort Massachusetts in the spring of 1745, has been disputed. But they would have had another motive for fighting the English: loss of ancestral hunting grounds. Grazing cattle competed for grass with game, and Abenakis regularly killed English cattle to deter settlement. Early reports say that the idea of attacking Fort Massachusetts was not originally a French plan but the Abenakis’ idea. Like the French, the English forces were a mixed group. They included the Reverend John Norton, a chaplain and Yale graduate. Ephraim Williams Jr. (1715–55), a captain in the provincial forces, was commander of Fort Massachusetts and of the line of forts, but he was in fact not present at any one of them on the day of the battle. He was from one of the most powerful families in western Massachusetts and interested in preserving and improving his influence in the colony. He also gained materially. In 1751, five years after the attack, he was granted two hundred acres near the rebuilt Fort Massachusetts and another lot next to the fort, on which he built a mill. The man in charge at the time of the attack, Sergeant John Hawks, went on to have a distinguished military career in the militia, ending as a lieutenant colonel. The rest of the men were from fourteen Massachusetts towns, only about a third from the Connecticut River valley. Three of the men were married and had their wives with them, along with five children. They probably had little conception of fighting The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 13 for the Crown and had signed up in the provincial force because it paid a regular salary. At a time when by law land in Massachusetts was inherited by the oldest son, volunteers were typically younger sons from landowning families, temporarily poor and dependent, serving until they could accumulate enough money to buy their own land. Provincial soldiers were pretty well paid, and in eight months (the typical enlistment period) one could make more than enough money to buy 150 acres in Hampshire County. A number of the men at Fort Massachusetts in 1746 ended up with land in the area.

The Attack on the Fort The French had no wish to seize and hold territory or to launch a further attack on Deerfield, never mind Albany or Boston. The attack on Fort Massachusetts was a raid. (The French sent out many raiding parties that summer.) Just how much planning went into the raid is in question. French accounts of the attack need to be read with caution, since they were designed by their provincial authors not only to inform but also to impress French officials in Paris. Rigaud had received intelligence that the English were planning to attack Fort St.-Frédéric, at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. When he arrived there with more than seven hundred men, he found that no attack was in fact immi- nent. A council with his troops led to the decision, based reportedly on a suggestion from the Indians, to attack Fort Massachusetts. Official reports sent back to Paris claim that this was not an improvisation or change of plans, that the initial orders were “to go in quest of the enemy to their own country” if Rigaud found that Fort St.-Frédéric was not under attack. But these reports were, of course, written up afterward and had the effect of making Rigaud look prescient. Rigaud no doubt wanted to make himself look good. But he probably had other motives than self-promotion as well. It is clear that he was looking to avenge the loss of Louisbourg—this was the strategic objective. When he left Montréal, Fort Massachusetts was not his destination, but if he subsequently improvised the attack, it would have been in accord with broader French military policy. It was also in accord with another element of French policy: to harass “unprotected 14 Chapter 1 and out-lying homesteads, in order to create a sense of insecurity on the frontier . . . and to make more northern settlement [by the English] impossible.” And in that respect he reported that the attack, and the subsequent burning of settlements and harvests, was a complete success: “These incursions spread alarm throughout the whole of New England; almost all the rural settlements were abandoned in the month of September . . . , and the Colonists no longer went abroad except in parties and armed.” (As it turned out on the Plains of Abraham in 1759, the French success would be short-lived.) Finally, Rigaud would have had intelligence from agents in Boston that Governor Shirley was promoting another “expedition to Canada,” via an attack on Crown Point. One way to counter that attack was a preemptive strike on Fort Massachusetts. You might say that an attack on Fort Massachusetts, isolated and exposed, was inevitable. You might also say that the attack was in effect provoked by the actions of the English settlers, especially Governor Shirley.

The Fort Is Quickly Overwhelmed The defenders of Fort Massachusetts were not meant to stay behind their stockade walls. They were supposed to send out regular scouting parties to watch for signs of approaching enemies. There were clear instructions to patrol regularly to the next fort and thus establish a kind of defensive “line” that the enemy could not cross. But Fort Massachusetts was the westernmost fort, and although its scouts were also supposed to patrol to the west, down the Hoosic River, it is not clear how far they were ordered to scout or how frequently. On August 18 they were clearly understaffed and perhaps had curtailed their scouting expeditions. But it is not clear whether there was a failure in command and control when more than nine hundred men approached the fort unobserved. Fort Massachusetts was the only fort taken successfully by the French between 1696 (when Fort William Henry was captured) and 1750. Indeed, so-called Fort No. 4, on the Connecticut River, repelled a siege by 700 French and Indians in 1747. But the attack on Fort Massachusetts was no formal siege—the French did not have artillery, and they did not have regular army troops trained in siege warfare. The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 15

The objective of the raid was to compel a quick surrender and then to destroy the fort. To accomplish this the French deployed two different established strategies: first, surprise and then intimidate the defenders by surrounding the fort, rushing forward, firing incessantly, making a lot of noise, picking off defenders one at a time by sharpshooting, and constructing ladders to scale the high walls—though experience showed that this seldom succeeded in taking a fort. Only one man was killed by sharpshooters. And second, make plans to dig trenches toward the stockade, pile combustible material against the walls, and set the fort afire. In a parley during the battle, the French told the English that this is what they would do and invited the defenders to surrender. There were reasons the English could not hold out. The fort may have been built near the river to help combat fire, but the location of the fort on low ground turned out to be unfortunate, for it permitted sharpshooters to climb the hill to the north and shoot down into the fort from above. Not an ideal location perhaps, but in defense of the military engineers it should be noted that in this narrow valley, it would have been difficult to situate the fort at a point where it was not commanded by high ground on one side or another. A more serious problem was the “want of Ammunition.” Ammunition did run out, as was pointed out by Sergeant Hawks afterward, so they could not keep up defensive fire. The fact that when it was rebuilt the fort was equipped with artillery suggests that Governor Shirley thought the original fort had been underarmed. What is more, half of the men were sick. Some of the defenders were absent in Deerfield, to get supplies. Even at full strength, the fort could probably not have held out against more than 900 men, who would have been able to push back any reinforcements arriving from Deerfield. Only 178 men in total had been assigned to defend the western frontiers. The French not only had more men but also had some soldiers from the regular army and were led by experienced officers. The English were led by a sergeant of militia.

French and Indian Conduct after the Surrender The French ruthlessly burned the fort and then houses and barns along the Hoosic River, but they treated their captives well. Early reports explicitly and repeatedly comment on the kind treatment of captives. 16 Chapter 1

Perhaps the reason is clear enough: their purpose was not to destroy the enemy army but to deter settlement on the frontier. Hence, the French offered “very liberal terms” (noticed in early accounts) and killed no prisoners (despite early reports to the contrary), even though they had lost as many as 45 men in the battle. The captives were “generally kindly treated” and arrived at Crown Point a week later “in better health than when they surrendered.” The Reverend John Norton was under the personal care of Lieutenant de Muy; in his journal Norton comments that he was “courteously entertained” by the lieutenant, treated as an equal, a fellow gentleman, rather than a prisoner. The “humanity” of the captors may not have been unusual: captives were valuable to the French, who exchanged them for French prisoners, as well as to the Indians, who expected to receive a reward when they turned over the captives to the French authorities in Montréal. Captives were valuable for another reason: they could provide information about English plans to invade Canada, and the official French records show that the prisoners were carefully interrogated. If humane treatment was not unusual, then what accounts for English surprise at French humane conduct? Captives probably feared cruel treatment because they knew stories of earlier Indian raids, including the famous raid on Deerfield in 1704.

Responsibility and Blame Nobody seems to know who was responsible for siting the fort in a vulner- able spot or who was responsible for failing to keep the fort properly supplied. Nobody knows why the captain was not present on that day. There is no evidence that anybody lost his job, not Captain Ephraim Williams, not Colonel John Stoddard, his superior, and not Governor Shirley. There are some suggestions that somebody should have made sure the fort was better supplied. The father of one soldier who was captured and died in captivity petitioned for compensation: “If their stock of amanition [sic] in the Fort had lastid my son might have livd. . . . [T]he fault was not on our part. If any their was in them that had the Trust of the fort reposed in To se To stors and amenition.” The Massachusetts House of Representatives implicitly agreed and provided compensation to the petitioner. It also appointed a committee to “concider The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 17

[sic] and report the Cause of Fort Massachusetts being so destitute of Ammunition,” but if this committee ever reported, the document has not been found. Maybe nobody was blamed since Governor Shirley and the legislature realized that the fort had not been adequately equipped in the first place and that not enough men had been assigned to each fort—in part because Stoddard and Shirley himself, with the participation of the Williams family, recruited some men from the line of forts for the Louisbourg expedition and for the “expedition to Canada.” Shirley implicitly acknowledged that more should have been done to provide for defense. In September 1746 he asked the Massachusetts Council and the House of Representatives to “consider what may be further done for the more effectual Security of [the western frontiers].” Shirley also implicitly acknowledged that there should have been more scouting expeditions; the importance of a “constant Scout” is stressed in his messages to the Massachusetts Council and House of Representatives several times. If more men had been stationed at the fort, they could have scouted both westward and eastward. In December 1747 he approved an addition to the garrison at Fort Massachusetts “to keep a Scout Westward . . . as well as to continue the usual Scout towards Fort Pelham.”

Consequences Fort Massachusetts was immediately rebuilt. Its garrison was considerably increased: there were 276 men there in May 1747. A page from a 1748 Fort Massachusetts account book shows the names of the men under Ephraim Williams’s command at the fort at that time. But the rebuilding of the fort made no difference in the outcome of the war. (Even Louisbourg was handed back as part of the treaty negotiations.) And Fort Massachusetts itself was abandoned fifteen years later, in 1761. In part, that was probably because it was no longer considered necessary: by 1761 the French had been defeated in Canada, the Indians had been pushed north, and Massachusetts’s claims to its western and northern borders had been boldly asserted by the laying out of the townships of East and West Hoosuck. 18 Chapter 1

But the fort was instrumental in the settling of Williamstown. Settlers, including several who had served at Fort Massachusetts, arrived in present-day Williamstown (then called West Hoosuck) in 1749. Ephraim Williams was granted two hundred acres there in 1750, and he bought other lots in West Hoosuck in 1752. A town plan drawn up by Williams shows that he owned two eleven-acre lots near Hemlock Brook and that a dozen of his soldiers had also bought lots. The first “proprietors’ meeting” was held shortly thereafter, in December 1753. Fort Hoosac was built in 1754 to protect the settlers, and the Benjamin Simonds house was built in 1770. But that is another story.

Appendix: The Later History of Fort Massachusetts The fort was rebuilt in 1747, on orders from Governor Shirley. This time it was designed to house thirty men. While it was being reconstructed, the fort was attacked on May 25. One Indian was killed and scalped. Work was completed by June 1. It was equipped with three pieces of artillery, two of them transported from Boston, not overland but by boat to New York City, then upriver to Troy, then overland thirty-six miles to the fort. A third was dragged overland from Fort Shirley. This was hard, thirsty work. Williams’s account books show that he needed to distribute eight gallons of rum to the men “to grese the wheels.” On some occasions the fort housed as many as one hundred men, including two Negro slaves. On May 21, 1748, a band of thirty Indians was discovered near Fort Massachusetts by soldiers en route from Deerfield. On July 23, 1748, the fort was attacked by two to three hundred men, mostly Indians, with French officers, but the attack was repulsed and English casualties were light: one killed and two wounded. By then peace negotiations between France and Britain had begun, and the Peace of Aix-la- Chapelle in October 1748 brought an end of hostilities in America. In 1749, the garrison at Fort Massachusetts was reduced from eighty to fifteen men, and in 1759, the fort was abandoned. By 1829 the land on which the fort had been built was being farmed. In 1846 students from Williams College dug up the grave of Elisha Nims, a young soldier buried at the fort in June 1746, and recovered a fragment of bone: embedded in it was the musket ball that apparently The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts 19 killed him. In 1852, Williams professor Arthur Latham Perry removed Nims’s headstone, the last one remaining in the fort’s burying ground. The headstone and bone were displayed until about 1915 in a small museum of natural history in Clark Hall. The artifacts were then entrusted to the Fort Massachusetts chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. In time the headstone disappeared, but the bone fragment was deposited in the North Adams Public Library. In 2000, it was reinterred in Hillside Cemetery in North Adams. In 1859, when virtually all traces of the fort had disappeared, Perry planted a tree to mark the site; it was long known as the “Perry elm.” It lasted until the 1970s, when it succumbed to Dutch elm disease and was finally cut down. In 1933, the Northern Berkshire Historical Society constructed a replica of the fort as a tourist attraction. The fort was then turned into a restaurant, but it was vandalized and eventually torn down about 1965. All that remains is a stone chimney, built as part of the 1933 replica. In 1976, the Daughters of the American Revolution dedicated a memorial boulder on the site, with a plaque commemorating the original fort. CHAPTER 2  THE WEST HOOSUCK BLOCKHOUSE, 1756–1761

A few yards east of the intersection of Main Street and Fort Hoosac Place, in front of the Williams Inn, sits a large boulder with a commemorative bronze plate affixed to it. On the boulder is the following inscription:

Here Stood The West Hoosac Blockhouse Built In 1756 On This House Lot Number Six Under Decree Of The Great And General Court Of The Province Of The Massachusetts-Bay In Compliance With Urgent Appeal From the Homesteaders It Served As Sole Refuge From Their Allied Foes The French And Indians. It Was Witness On the Evening Of July 11 1756 Of The Massacre of Sergeant William Chidester, His Son James, And Captain Elisha Chapin By The Enemy In Ambush Without Its Northern Portal. Here In Peaceful Assembly Were Laid the Foundations Of Town Government

The “stone of remembrance” and the inscription were dedicated on the 160th anniversary of that 1756 attack by the members of the Kappa Alpha Society at Williams College, whose fraternity house was then located adjacent to the lot on which the blockhouse and its surrounding palisade had once stood. The story of the attack told here, and repeated in several previous and subsequent retellings, is ultimately based on a contemporary letter, written two days after the event, as

20 The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 21 well as a series of petitions filed by the settlers in West Hoosuck in the mid-1750s, appealing to the leaders of the province for relief of their “Distrest Condition,” exposed as they were on the frontier to the dep- redations of the enemy during the early years of the French and Indian War. Transcriptions of those petitions are found in the Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts-Bay (1889). A fresh look at the letter and the petitions is enough to remind anybody who wants to reconstruct the history of the West Hoosuck blockhouse that the real story was not the one commemorated on the memorial boulder. The attack was in fact a minor skirmish, far less significant militarily than any number of minor firefights in the Hoosac Valley during the summer of 1756. Three men were killed—hardly a “massacre”—and much less loss of life occurred than in another incident in the area just two weeks earlier. (The hyperbole may reflect the fact that the memorial boulder was dedicated during another great war.) This was not like the attack on Fort Massachusetts ten years earlier, in which a large force of French and Indians surrounded that fort and the defenders sought to prevent them from scal- ing the walls. On this later occasion, the three men, Sergeant William Chidester (commander of the blockhouse), his son James Chidester, and Captain Elisha Chapin, had in fact left the blockhouse near sunset on an early July day and gone out to look for their cows, which had apparently wandered down Hemlock Brook toward the Hoosic River. A group of some forty to fifty Indians, who had been spotted in the area on June 26 and 30, surprised the three men and quickly killed them. Some of the Indians then rounded up the cattle and killed them, while others crept up the brook toward the blockhouse and reportedly fired about two hundred rounds, and when night began to fall they withdrew. What were the Indians planning when they came across the three men? At Fort Massachusetts (four miles east of the blockhouse), the commander, Captain Isaac Wyman, later reported to his superior, Colonel Israel Williams, that he thought the Indians were planning an “ambush between this Fort [that is, Fort Massachusetts] and the Town [of West Hoosuck]” and that he now expected an attack. But Wyman does not make it clear whether he thought the objective was to ambush soldiers from Fort Massachusetts or from the blockhouse or to stage an open attack on one fort or the other. After reviewing the report, 22 Chapter 2

Colonel Williams concluded that the purpose of the Indians had originally been to attack the blockhouse, and if they had not come upon the three men, “by morning they would have surprised the garrison [at the blockhouse] and destroyed it.” As for the role of the blockhouse in witnessing the “foundations” of local government, this turns out to be less than you might imagine. For the duration of the French and Indian War, from 1754 to 1760, West Hoosuck was not yet a town, and the proprietors did not meet at all. They did meet several times in the blockhouse between September 1760 and September 1761, but these were neither the first of their meetings nor the meeting when the proprietors incorporated themselves in 1765 as Williamstown. The real story of the blockhouse concerned internal divisions in the settlement of West Hoosuck about the appropriate location for a fort and who was going to be in charge. Some thought that Fort Massachusetts was sufficient to protect the homesteaders in West Hoosuck. It has been suggested that the dispute was a case of professional rivalry, a natural and even expected conflict between the men who served at the established Fort Massachusetts and those who served at the new blockhouse. But almost all the soldiers had served at Fort Massachusetts. Why did some of them transfer their commitment to the blockhouse? It has also been suggested that the dispute was a perfectly normal conflict between those homesteaders who came from towns in the colony of Massachusetts Bay and those who came from the colony of Connecticut. But this does not explain why “Connecticut men” in West Hoosuck should think differently from “Massachusetts Bay men.” The early settlers of Berkshire County did include both those who came west from Massachusetts Bay and those who came up the Housatonic River from the colony of Connecticut, but surviving evidence suggests that on the whole the two groups cooperated with each other in defense of the frontier. Common sense would ask why anybody with a house in West Hoosuck, whether he came from Connecticut or Massachusetts, wouldn’t be in favor of building a fort to protect the new village. These suggestions also ignore the political dimension of the dispute that pitted Israel Williams, “the monarch of Hampshire” (as his enemies called him for the imperious way he wielded his power and The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 23 authority), against some of his enemies both in Hampshire County and in the political center of the province in Boston. Just what Israel’s cousin Ephraim Williams Jr. thought of the West Hoosuck dispute is hard to tell. He probably shared the strong doubts of his cousin about the reliability of some of the West Hoosuck proprietors who petitioned for the fort, but he apparently thought better than his cousin did of one of them, Captain Elisha Chapin (one of the three men killed in the ambush). Before digging deeper into the particulars of the local conflict, it’s useful to situate the building of the fort, and the attack of July 11, 1756, in the larger context of the French and Indian War and the broader concerns and priorities of the political and military leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which ultimately determined what happened in West Hoosuck. When war broke out in 1754, the French and English were both well established in colonies that had been planted for more than a century, the French claims generally to the north and west of the English, concentrated on the great inland river valleys of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Ohio, from present-day Canada south to Georgia. But in between New France and the English colonies was disputed territory, each empire pushing its frontiers outward, with the ultimate objective of driving the other colonial power back to its base on the St. Lawrence River and Atlantic Seaboard, respectively. For our purposes, the French and Indian War was fought in three theaters: the Hudson River valley, the forks of the Ohio River, and Lake Erie. English war planning began in earnest in June 1754, at the Albany Conference, just a few miles from West Hoosuck. Representatives from seven colonies met to discuss a common defense against the French and to reestablish agreements with their Iroquois allies. British forces were made up of three groups: professional soldiers, especially officers, from the regular British army; colonial provincial troops or militia; and Indian allies. These three groups worked under a united command, but their interests were not always fully aligned. The provincial troops naturally had a greater interest in the defense of the farms and towns in their own towns and province than in geopolitics. The Iroquois were sometimes more interested in fighting their Indian enemies than the 24 Chapter 2

French. Careful coordination of these three groups was essential and difficult to achieve. In 1755, Massachusetts Bay governor William Shirley assumed command of all British forces in North America. The British planned three separate campaigns for 1755: one along the upper Ohio River valley to capture Fort Duquesne, a second (to be led by Governor Shirley himself) to capture Fort Niagara on the west end of Lake Ontario, and the third to drive northward up the Hudson River and capture the French fort at Crown Point. These campaigns would no doubt have occupied Shirley and his colleagues, whose three-part plan imagined that they could defeat the French conclusively in one fighting season. But all three campaigns failed. The defeats may have led Shirley to conclude by late 1755 that since the French were proving to be stronger than expected and might themselves go on the offensive, defenses against French and Indian incursions in the Hoosac Valley needed to be strengthened.

The Local Picture On May 28, 1754, a group of so-called “Schaghticoke” Indians attacked and burned the little settlement of Dutch Hoosick, on the Hoosic River, about ten miles downstream from West Hoosuck. On the following day they attacked and burned the nearby settlement of St. Croix, at the confluence of the Hoosic and Walloomsac Rivers, near present-day North Hoosick. Settlers from both villages fled upriver to Fort Massachusetts, where they sought refuge. Settlers at West Hoosuck were sufficiently alarmed that they too fled four miles east to Fort Massachusetts, but when they got there they found no room at the inn—the so-called Dutch settlers were occupying all space available to refugees—and the English settlers from West Hoosuck had to seek refuge elsewhere, some of them traveling down to the Connecticut towns that had been their former homes. Being turned away from safety in Fort Massachusetts may well have set smoldering a spark of resentment on the part of the West Hoosuck homesteaders against the leaders at Fort Massachusetts. Indians continued sending raiding parties into the headwaters of the Hoosac Valley throughout the summer of 1754. On August 25, Captain Elisha Chapin, in command at Fort Massachusetts, wrote The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 25 to his superior, Colonel Israel Williams, to report that eight hundred Indians had been sighted making their way up the Hoosic River and were expected to attack. On August 28 a large force of Abenaki, Algonquin, and Nipissing Indians burned more houses and barns in Dutch Hoosick. There is no solid evidence that any French soldiers were with them, but some English settlers thought there were. The Indians apparently continued upriver, and when they reached West Hoosuck some of them seem to have turned south, heading up the narrow Green River and then down the Housatonic River toward Stockbridge, where they engaged in several skirmishes in the first week of September. It was no doubt in response to this threat to the settled towns around Stockbridge that Colonel Israel Williams, on September 12, wrote to Governor William Shirley, proposing that two new forts be constructed west of Fort Massachusetts, to prevent further incursions of Indians from the north through what he called a “large opening.” Although Shirley accepted his recommendations concerning the existing forts, he did not yet have approval from the Massachusetts Council for building two additional forts. Williams wrote on September 28 to a colleague that he had “no orders for building forts anywhere.” Two weeks later, eleven settlers from West Hoosuck reinforced the colonel’s proposal: they petitioned the governor on October 17 for a new fort to “strengthen the Town” and also serve as a “barrier” against invasion from the north and west to the rest of the province. One of the routes for invasion from the north into the province, providing access to Pontoosuck and Stockbridge, would have been the Green River, which flows into the Hoosic at the east end of the newly laid-out town. Another would have been Hemlock Brook, flowing north into the Hoosic at the west end of the town. A fort on the high ground above Hemlock Brook might well have served as a literal “barrier.” With such a fort in place, the settlers said, they would return to their houses in West Hoosuck. But the settlers’ petition received no response in late 1754 or 1755. The governor and the Massachusetts General Court were clearly concerned about the attacks on the western frontier, but their correspondence suggests they thought the danger should be addressed by raising more troops. Some orders were given to Israel Williams to repair the “line of forts” 26 Chapter 2 and to build a new fort “at a Place west of Massachusetts Fort,” but on February 25, 1755, Governor Shirley wrote again to Williams, instructing him to “desist from building the Fort you were ordered to build.” By January 1756 circumstances had changed: on January 18 William Chidester, one of the proprietors in West Hoosuck and one of the signatories of the petition in October 1754, filed a petition with the lieutenant governor and commander in chief of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, urging that he and the other four remaining families in the town were “in Emmanent Danger of being Murthered” by the French and Indians and asking for some “Relief” from his “Distrest Condition.” Although in this petition he did not explicitly ask that a fort be built, perhaps because the legislature had declined to respond to the earlier petition for one, he again described the little town of West Hoosuck as a “Barrier to the Province.” This time the legislature responded positively. William Chidester arrived in West Hoosuck in 1753, as one of the original proprietors. He came from Cornwall, Connecticut, where he owned land and, beginning in 1741, operated a ferry across the Housatonic River, on the site of what later became Cornwall Bridge. He was perhaps an adventurous, or a restless, man, having been born in Wethersfield, Connecticut, about 1698 and moving later to Wallingford and then to Waterbury. When in 1753 he was ready to move again from Cornwall, he was the father of four children, three of whom later joined him in West Hoosuck. Soon after he arrived, he signed up as a soldier at Fort Massachusetts and (perhaps because at fifty-five he was much older than most of the other soldiers) was quickly made a sergeant. Perhaps too he was selected as the representative petitioner in January 1756 in recognition of his seniority. Just two weeks later, the legislature authorized the building of a “Block House” at “the Square,” that is, on public land at the center of the town’s house lots. But their authorization came with a condition: the blockhouse was to be built by the proprietors themselves, at their own “Cost & Charge,” the province providing only “subsistence” (a per diem) for the laborers for a period of two months and a guard of ten soldiers from Fort Massachusetts during the construction. Why, with a war against the French heating up, the province would not fund the building of the fort remains an unanswered question. One suspects The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 27 that the members of the Massachusetts General Court did some quiet investigating and apparently had some doubt about the likelihood that the proprietors would agree among themselves, for it specified that if the blockhouse was not built on the Square in five weeks’ time, then Chidester was authorized to build it on his own lot, with a palisade that surrounded his house and “two other houses convenient to be taken in.” The only other two houses that would have been “convenient to be taken in” were those just east of Chidester’s lot, built by Thomas Train and Isaac Wyman, fellow soldiers at Fort Massachusetts, or two houses on Ephraim Williams’s lot, just west of Chidester’s lot. Chidester was apparently unable to recruit more than eight proprietors to help him—Seth Hudson (whose lot was directly across Main Street), Benjamin Simonds, Jabez Warren, Nehemiah Smedley, Josiah and William Horsford, Silas Pratt, and Isaac Searl—so the blockhouse was built on Chidester’s lot. Why the other proprietors refused to support the project is another unanswered question. No drawing or physical account of the blockhouse has survived, so it is not possible to describe it confidently in any detail. The term blockhouse was used in the eighteenth century to refer to any small fort of wood or stone. This one was probably built along the lines of the other structures in the “line of forts,” including Fort Massachusetts, that extended east from East Hoosuck to Greenfield. It would have been a sturdy structure, built of timber, and of one or two stories. If there were two stories, the second would probably have overhung the first. The blockhouse was perhaps 40 by 40 feet, and thus smaller than Fort Massachusetts, which was probably 60 by 60 feet. (Whereas thirty soldiers were assigned to Fort Massachusetts, only ten were assigned to the blockhouse.) Because the blockhouse was also intended to serve as a “refuge” for ten families in case of attack, 40 by 40 feet seems cramped. But when you recall that a “regulation house” in West Hoosuck, intended for one family, was only 15 by 18 feet (270 square feet), then a 40-by- 40- foot space (1,600 square feet) should have been able to provide temporary accommodation for ten families, especially if there were two stories. Openings in the walls would have permitted defenders to fire guns from within. Several small pieces of artillery, such as a swivel gun, could have been mounted on pedestals in the corners. The blockhouse was enclosed by a palisade, 28 Chapter 2 probably 8 to 10 feet high. There was probably a gate to the north or west, toward the Hoosic River or Hemlock Brook, because any attack might be expected from those directions. Within the palisade was a well. The palisade was extended 28 rods (462 feet) along Main Street, but instead of enclosing two other houses to the east, belonging to Train and Wyman, it extended west, enclosing a lot with two houses on it belonging to Ephraim Williams. Why the palisade was not built to the east is not known, but two explanations are plausible: first, running the palisade westward might have been felt desirable for defensive purposes, since it would have extended closer to Hemlock Brook, a likely approach route for any enemy. Second, perhaps Train and Wyman had in some way fallen out with Chidester, who, because they declined to help with the construction, decided not to provide a stockade around their houses. But cause and effect could have worked in the other direction: it is possible that Wyman and Train fell out with Chidester because he decided for other reasons to build the palisade to the west. Do we see here the beginnings of a split between the settlers from Connecticut and those from Massachusetts Bay? The evidence does not strongly support it. The nine who built the blockhouse included four who came from Connecticut. But there were at least two other Connecticut men who had built houses or cleared land and did not participate in the building of the blockhouse. The split may have in fact begun as an internal dispute at Fort Massachusetts. The nine builders included three, one of them Chidester, who (as noted) had served at Fort Massachusetts and pointedly did not include three others from Fort Massachusetts, Wyman, Train, and Samuel Taylor. The blockhouse was completed on March 22, and five soldiers from Fort Massachusetts, under Sergeant Samuel Taylor (a West Hoosuck proprietor), were sent by Captain Wyman to occupy it. This probably did not sit well with the three Fort Massachusetts soldiers who had helped build the blockhouse. Chidester, Seth Hudson, and Benjamin Simonds might well have expected that the assignment of commanding the blockhouse would fall to one of them. And the situation was aggravated further when Taylor, on orders from Wyman, seized a room in Chidester’s house (within the stockade) for himself and his family, forcibly evicting Jabez Warren, his family, and his goods. Relations between the West Hoosuck settlers and the soldiers at Fort The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 29

Massachusetts were further exacerbated in April when Chidester took the trouble to go all the way to Boston and secured from Governor Shirley a commission making him the commander at West Hoosuck. Chidester must have been persuasive, but Shirley may have been pre- disposed in his favor: he seems not to have had as much confidence in Wyman as Israel Williams did. (As it happened, the commission is dated April 16, the same day Shirley received word from London that he had been relieved as commander in chief of colonial forces and was to return to England. In appointing Chidester, Shirley may have wanted to solve a problem while he still had some authority.) Shirley specified that the soldiers at the blockhouse were to include only men who had helped erect the fort, specifically naming them. The group associated with Wyman and Taylor then rounded up a total of fifteen proprietors who agreed to subscribe funds to build a separate fort on the Square, and on May 27 Thomas Train on their behalf signed a petition calling for a larger fort, eighty by eighty feet, with two gun mounts and a watch box, because Chidester’s fort, he claimed, “answers to no good purpose and was erected contrary to the minds of the proprietors in general, and . . . contrary to the design and order of the General Court.” (A larger fort would also have accommodated more of the settlers in case of attack.) The signatories included not only Wyman, Train, and Taylor but also (and curiously) Benjamin Simonds, who had just helped build the blockhouse. Of the eleven others, all but one were from Massachusetts, and at least eight were soldiers at Fort Massachusetts. None were from Connecticut—suggesting that the Connecticut men may now have been lining up against them. Train’s petition provoked a response within two weeks from yet a third group of West Hoosuck householders, who argued that the better path would be to extend and fortify the existing blockhouse, thus ally- ing themselves with the Chidester group. (They even argued that Fort Massachusetts, which was beginning to crumble, should not be rebuilt— thus probably confirming the suspicions of the Fort Massachusetts soldiers that the blockhouse builders wanted to replace their fort.) This petition, dated June 9, was signed by fifteen men, two of whom (Nehemiah Smedley and Josiah Horsford, from Connecticut) had helped build the blockhouse less than three months earlier. A third, Enos Hudson, was 30 Chapter 2 the son of Seth Hudson, who had also helped build the blockhouse. Of the other twelve, six were also from Connecticut, for a total of eight out of fifteen. But it’s probably a mistake to assume that the split was simply geographical: three of the signatories had also just subscribed funds for a new fort at the Square. Alliances, in other words, were fluid and shifting. And some proprietors did not take sides. Six settlers who had cleared their lots or built houses did not sign either petition. Another dimension of the dispute between the two groups was personal. One of the members of the Chidester group was Captain Elisha Chapin. He had commanded Fort Massachusetts from 1752 to 1754 while Ephraim Williams was away and had also served as commissary. But he was removed from the latter office in 1754 on order of his superior, Colonel Israel Williams, who thought Chapin had failed in his duties. Williams appointed Isaac Wyman—one of his allies—in Chapin’s place as commissary. (Williams was well known to dispense patronage to members of his family and kinship network.) Chapin had his supporters—both Ephraim Williams and Governor Shirley thought well of him—but Israel Williams claimed he was incompetent and “imprudent”: “He is a bold venturesome man, but fails in conduct & government.” In 1755 the command of Fort Massachusetts also went to Isaac Wyman. Chapin, who remained at Fort Massachusetts, no doubt resented being supplanted by Wyman (who had once served under him as a sergeant), and in 1756 he threw in his lot with Wyman’s adversaries in the blockhouse group. Chapin had also fallen out with another soldier at Fort Massachusetts, his former partner, Moses Graves (with whom he had bought land from Ephraim Williams in 1751). Graves happened to be Israel Williams’s cousin and Hatfield neighbor. In May 1756, apparently acting without authorization from Wyman, Sergeant Chidester, in command at West Hoosuck, took on Captain Chapin to supervise the “billeting” of the men at the blockhouse. (It seems anomalous for a captain to report to a sergeant.) Wyman let Colonel Williams know what was going on, and on the same day (May 17) began a “Journal of Operations,” making brief notes of the scouting activities at Fort Massachusetts. This brings us up to the time of the raid on the blockhouse, July 11, 1756. Again, it may be useful to step back and consider the bigger picture The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 31 in New England and the Hudson River valley. It was a year of success for the French and major losses for the English. In March 1756, the French overwhelmed an English fort near present-day Rome, New York. The British suffered seventy-six dead and thirty-five taken prisoner. (The French lost only one man.) On May 17, Britain (which had already been fighting the French in North America) formally declared war on France, opening the so-called Seven Years’ War on the Continent. On May 25 the British held a “council of war” in Albany. In June and July the English were adding troops at Fort William Henry on Lake George, while the French were at their fort on Lake Champlain, preparing for an attack on Fort Oswego, which they were to capture on August 11–12. The English suffered heavy casualties and gave up seventeen hundred prisoners. “Indians” continued to be sighted in the Hoosac Valley throughout the summer of 1756. On July 16, five days after the attack on the blockhouse, Wyman wrote to Colonel Israel Williams, reporting the deaths of Chapin and the two Chidesters, noting laconically that they had been “imprudent” to go out of the blockhouse in search of their cows. The guns that Chidester had requested were, he assured Williams, now (belatedly) in place in the blockhouse. Wyman says that if no “better fort” was provided (such as had been proposed in the May 27 petition), it would be better to pull down the blockhouse and abandon the town. Colonel Williams picked up the charge that the blockhouse was not strong enough, writing to provincial secretary Andrew Oliver on July 20 of its “insufficiency.” In the same letter Williams also passed on to Oliver his concern that “the duty and Service Enjoyned the Garrison has been grossly perform’d and some wholly neglected.” He did not mean to accuse all of the men—only “Hudson, [Jabez] Warren, three Hosfords, [the two] Searls, and [Isaac] Vanornem” (Williams’s letter says “Vanornem,” but the name was actually “Vanarenem”)—all of them part of the group allied with Chidester. More serious than negligence was his suspicion of their resisting his authority: “It has appeared to me from the beginning that these men, and some others that are dead [that is, Chapin and the two Chidesters], have aim’d at Independency.” In both the military and political context of the day, “Independency” meant mutiny or even rebellion. 32 Chapter 2

Relations between Fort Massachusetts and West Hoosuck continued to be strained. Wyman’s next letter to Colonel Williams, on August 9, complained that “the men at the West Fort live in continual confusion together.” The men there (including Seth Hudson, along with Jabez Warren, the two Horsfords, and William Chidester Jr.) insisted they were “an independent Company of soldiers” and would take no orders from Wyman or from Taylor, who had been put back in charge. (This echoes Williams’s earlier charge of “Independency.”) “They go as carles about there work as tho’ thier had never bin any Indians there, and will do no scouting at all.” On behalf of the proprietors, Hudson petitioned Colonel Williams, formally protesting the appointment of Taylor. Not only had the Massachusetts General Court ordered that the commander at West Hoosuck be one of the men who had built the blockhouse, but Taylor, so Hudson argued, was also unqualified, “being a man of very week naturel ability and of very ordnery Learning, and of but Littel Experience in military Affairs and is judged by all that know him a man that is not capable of any good.” Hudson assured Williams—perhaps disingenuously—that he had confidence that the grievance would be addressed but hinted that he was prepared to go over Williams’s head: “We have reason to think your Honr is on the Side of Reason and Justice . . . so that for the future we need not go any further for redress.” Hudson and the other men were also letting Taylor himself know that they thought little of him and apparently resisted his authority. They seem to have made things so difficult that in October, Taylor asked to be relieved of his responsibilities. Disputes between the blockhouse at West Hoosuck (now under the command of Seth Hudson, who, although he had no formal commission, had become the de facto leader of the community) and Fort Massachusetts (under the command of Isaac Wyman) continued into 1757. But the focus shifted from the western frontiers to the provincial capital in Boston, and the conflict within the local military establishment became a province-wide political matter. It led ultimately to an investigation, commissioned by the Massachusetts General Court, of what is described in the court’s minutes as the “Affair of West-Hoosuck.” The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 33

The View from Boston On January 8, 1757, Josiah Horsford, on behalf of twenty other proprietors, petitioned the Massachusetts General Court, complaining of “hard treatment” by Captain Wyman, who would not allow them more than fourteen days of supplies at a time, which put them at risk when they had to travel to Fort Massachusetts every two weeks. They asked for permission to “subsist themselves”—that is, to provide their own subsistence or supplies (and charge the province for them)—and for a larger garrison. They also asked that command of the blockhouse go to one of the inhabitants. Signatories included thirteen of the fifteen who had signed the June 9, 1756, petition. Five of the other eight were closely related to those who had already signed, and there were three new names. It was clearly the same group that had solidified around the West Hoosuck soldiers the previous summer, but it was not predominantly a Connecticut group: only eight of the twenty-one were from Connecticut, and the new leader (Seth Hudson) was from Massachusetts and had served at Fort Massachusetts. (Hudson served as surgeon for both the blockhouse and Fort Massachusetts after 1756, which suggests that the divide between the two forts was not unsurpassable.) The readiness of the court to receive the petition was probably increased by the absence of William Shirley, who, having been replaced as governor, departed for London four months earlier. Israel Williams, Wyman’s superior, was known to have been allied to Shirley, but the new governor had no such ties. The Massachusetts General Court responded almost immediately by not only granting the request for self-provisioning but also appointing a committee to look into the “facts alleged.” The court went on to charge the investigative committee with a much wider brief: “to consider whether it be most expedient to Repair Fort Massachusetts [already said to be in need of repairs] & to keep a garrison there and at the Block- house, or to build anew elsewhere.” In effect, the court here agreed to consider the West Hoosuck petition from the previous May, which called for building a new fort at the Square, and the one from June, which had argued against repairing Fort Massachusetts and in favor of strengthen- ing the blockhouse. The committee was slow in getting to work. Two and a half months later, on March 20, Timothy Woodbridge, former representative from 34 Chapter 2

Stockbridge, was added to the committee by the Massachusetts General Court. (Woodbridge had publicly opposed the Williams family interests in Stockbridge, especially concerning treatment of the local Indians.) Woodbridge took depositions from three West Hoosuck settlers, who used the occasion to present grievances not specified in the January petition, suggesting that the complaint about provisions was just the tip of an iceberg of resentment. When three more weeks passed and the committee had still not visited Fort Massachusetts or the West Hoosuck blockhouse, Seth Hudson reminded the court of its order. The court, prompted to action, responded quickly by appointing yet another committee and then renewing its January order and directing Woodbridge (who had at least taken depositions) to assume direction of the investigation. Since Woodbridge and the Williams family were known to be adversaries, it would appear that the “West Hoosuck Affair” had become more deeply embroiled in provincial politics. Woodbridge’s committee reported back on June 10 with their recommendations concerning both the complaints against Captain Wyman and the condition of the forts. On the latter point they concluded that Fort Massachusetts was ill-sited to prevent or even give warning of incursions from the north and west; that it was in bad condition and was, although not worth repairing, doing some service; and that the blockhouse, although not located at the Square, was in a defensible location and, especially if strengthened, could be “maintained against a considerable force.” It also recommended that an additional twenty men be assigned to its defense, thus endorsing the January 1757 petition of the West Hoosuck settlers. These recommendations concerning Fort Massachusetts and the West Hoosuck blockhouse of course reflected badly on the judgment of Captain Wyman and on that of his superior, Colonel Williams. For his part, when the Woodbridge report was filed, Israel Williams faced two problems. The first was how to respond to Hudson’s complaints about Captain Wyman and Sergeant Taylor and to the recommendations made by the Woodbridge committee. The second was how to regain control of the West Hoosuck blockhouse by installing a commander whom he trusted. On the first problem, he began by seeking a The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 35 delay. On the second problem, Williams dug in his heels: he gave commissions for West Hoosuck to Captain John Catlin of Deerfield (an old family friend), Lieutenant Selah Bernard, and Ensign John Hunt. All had served at Fort Massachusetts. None of them were West Hoosuck men. This decision was not likely to be well received in West Hoosuck. The next stage of the story was largely political, involving not only the politics within western Massachusetts. Although Israel Williams, and the Williams family generally, had good connections in Boston, they also had enemies there who resented the power and authority accumulated by “the monarch of Hampshire.” As “nonexpansionists,” the enemies did not support the proposed campaigns against the French or an expensive military establishment in the western part of the province and did not want to approve the expenditures he recommended. Williams and his family were “expansionists.” Governor Shirley was linked to both factions. But even Shirley, with whom the Williams family was allied, seems to have indicated that his support of Israel Williams had its limits. Indeed, looking back to 1754, one can see a pattern of resistance on the part of Shirley to some of the military proposals and decisions of Williams and his client Isaac Wyman: inaction on Williams’s proposal to build two forts west of Fort Massachusetts; a determination to find a suitable position for Elisha Chapin, whom Williams had clearly written off; and a readiness to give a commission to William Chidester in 1756 to supplant the commander at West Hoosuck appointed by Williams’s client Wyman. But the “West Hoosuck Affair” was soon overshadowed by much bigger events: On August 3, a new provincial governor, Thomas Pownall, replacing William Shirley, took up his duties. And on August 9 Fort William Henry was surrendered to the French, and twenty-three hundred English soldiers and civilians were taken prisoner. It was not clear what the triumphant French would do: would they now march south on Albany? Would they march east to the Connecticut River valley? Pownall had to respond to this disaster and depended on Israel Williams, who was in charge of defense of the western frontiers. He wrote almost immediately to Williams with marching orders. And on August 19 the Massachusetts General Court approved a bill to send ninety additional men to West Hoosuck, probably influenced in this decision by the panic induced by the disaster at Fort William Henry. 36 Chapter 2

Pownall also found time to consider how to solve the problem of the dispute over the West Hoosuck blockhouse. The commissions that Williams issued in June expired at the time a new governor took office, and had to be reissued. One of Pownall’s advisers suggested— perhaps because he had some doubt about Williams’s impartiality— that the governor select the new commander at West Hoosuck himself, rather than sending signed blank commissions for Williams to complete, as was the customary practice. But another adviser, Francis Hutchinson, who happened to be a Harvard classmate of Williams, suggested instead—perhaps because he wanted to prevent the gover- nor from appearing to favor either party—that Pownall let Williams “fill up to Commissions so as to put an end to this dispute.” However, Hutchinson too may have worried about Williams’s judgment: he urged his old friend to “do nothing out of prejudice” and implied that, like the governor, he ought to “have at heart the peace and interest of the whole.” Pownall also wrote to Williams, underlining his hope that “the Divisions and Animosities subsisting between the People of the two Forts” be stopped. He wanted the commissions filled so that “neither party may be aggreived, and no ground left any longer subsisting for these feudes.” As it happened, Williams would disregard this advice. On August 25 the Massachusetts General Court read the Woodbridge report. Their willingness to hear the complaints against Wyman was probably strengthened by the arrival of the new governor. Woodbridge was a political ally of Pownall, and in the new political climate it would have made political sense to consider his report. The governor, however, was savvy enough to know that a leader needs the support of his fol- lowers: he was reluctant to press the court and knew that he needed its confidence. As a practical matter, Pownall was focused on the need to raise more troops to defend the western frontiers—and clearly wanted the West Hoosuck matter resolved. The court voted on August 25 to have the blockhouse supplied by a local man, Isaac Searl, thus solving the provisions problem. It found that the complaints reviewed in the Woodbridge report were for the most part “well supported.” The charges against Colonel Williams, Captain Wyman, and the commissary, Colonel Elijah Williams, were referred to a committee for further review. Final consideration of the recommendations in the report was deferred. It soon became clear to Andrew Oliver that the Woodbridge report The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 37 on the West Hoosuck matter was dividing representatives. He wrote to Williams on September 6 that West Hoosuck “seems to grow more and more a party Affair among the Members of the Court; and there are some who would not fail to find fault in case the Men should not be completely raised.” And he again urged Williams to appoint “such an officer for West Hoosuck as will be able to raise the Men, and one whom they will be willing to obey, and the People be Satisfied in.” Williams, however, resisted the advice and on September 9 reissued commissions to Catlin, Bernard, and Hunt. When the governor found out about it, he replied on October 18, through Oliver, that he “suspends his opinion” about Williams’s action in disposing of commissions, “but thinks it would have been as well if you would have found any suitable Person concerned in West Hoosuck to have bestowed some of the Commissions upon.” Oliver was ready to support his fellow Harvard alumnus as far as he could, but he also gave Williams a veiled warning. Oliver followed up the warning on October 25 by forwarding an order from the governor that Williams revoke the commission given to Bernard. On November 5 Williams replied to Governor Pownall, reporting that he had followed the order, but he took the occasion to reaffirm that he did not have confidence in any West Hoosuck man to be commander: “I know not one of the Proprietors of West Hoosuck that is [qualified of “going into Service there”] or “suitable to have a Commission.” In effect, he justified his decision not to take the advice of the governor and secretary. In the same letter, however, Williams wrote that “pursuant to your Excel’cy’s order of the 25th ultimo I have dismiss’d all the men rais’d by yr order of the 20 Augt.” Williams also began his own response to the Woodbridge report. Although he had not yet seen the report, he moved to mount a defense against the charges lodged against Captain Wyman—and, as he understood, against himself. It took the form of a counterattack. On September 10 he received a signed confession from Isaac Searl, a soldier at West Hoosuck who had sided with the Chidester-Chapin- Hudson group, apol- ogizing for reproaching and vilifying the character of Colonel Williams within the hearing of other men. It does not seem purely coincidental that just two weeks earlier, the same Searl had signed an agreement to provide provisions for the ninety new soldiers. Was this confession a quid pro quo? 38 Chapter 2

Williams’s next step was to try to discredit the prime petitioner and plaintiff, Seth Hudson. On October 18 he took signed depositions from Isaac Wyman, Benjamin Simonds, Samuel Taylor, and Gad Chapin (no relation to Elisha Chapin), all of them in service at Fort Massachusetts, that Hudson, who had “cast many Aspersions on the Character of Col. Israel Williams, Col. Ephm Williams, Capt. Wyman and Others,” was a man of thoroughly bad character, a man who “pays no regard to truth, any farther than to serve his own secular Interest, And one that has been [guilty of, crossed out] addicted to the hatefull Practice of Stealing. Whether he was guilty of theft or not is what we can’t absolutely say but that he and his wife were turned out of this fort by Capt. Ephm Williams, as he himself said, upon a violent Suspicion of Theft, is what we give our Attestation to.” The deponents then swore a “Solemn Oath to the Truth of the Same” before Colonel William Williams, justice of the peace in Pittsfield (who happened to be Israel Williams’s brother). It is likely that this deposition, along with the confession from Searl, was submitted to the court of the governor. But Williams’s campaign to discredit Hudson failed. Governor Pownall had apparently determined to end the dispute in West Hoosuck. It would appear that between November 5 and December 1, Williams was put under additional pressure to appoint a local man to lead the soldiers at the blockhouse. Less than a month later, on December 1, Captain Catlin left West Hoosuck, the additional troops having been dismissed, and Seth Hudson was reinstated as commander. It may not be coincidental that on November 30, Williams reportedly resigned as captain of the “line of forts,” perhaps frustrated that he did not have the support of his superiors. On December 8, Williams was probably privy to one last attempt to put pressure on the West Hoosuck settlers. His cousin Elijah Williams, commissary at Fort Massachusetts, in response to the complaint from the settlers that he had failed to provide adequate provisions, filed a petition with the Massachusetts General Court, charging the settlers with fraudulently taking subsistence from him when they were also on the payroll of the provincial government—that is, accusing them of double-dipping. He singled out Seth Hudson as commander, for filing a fraudulent return, and he asked for repayment from the West Hoosuck soldiers. The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 39

On December 13 the court took up the Woodbridge report, which it had first considered in August, and conducted a “large Debate thereon.” The following day they summoned the plaintiffs and the defendants (Israel Williams, Isaac Wyman, and Elijah Williams) to appear before them at a hearing. After examining the witnesses and reviewing the evidence, the court separately considered “three Articles of Complaint” against Colonel Israel Williams and separate charges made against Colonel Elijah Williams and Captain Wyman. In each of the articles, Israel Williams was found not “to blame” by unanimous vote. But Wyman did not escape without censure. On two of the charges against Wyman—that he obstructed the building of the West Hoosuck blockhouse and that he was to blame for not providing more than fourteen days’ provisions—he was cleared. On three others—that he was to blame for evicting Jabez Warren from Chidester’s house, for failing to fire a cannon as an alarm when the enemy attacked West Hoosuck, and for withholding their pay when soldiers were absent but had hired a substitute—he was found guilty as charged. The charges against Elijah Williams were put off until January, as was consideration of his December 8 petition. In January the court moved quickly to dispose of the “West Hoosuck Affair.” On January 10 the court considered the charges against Elijah Williams: he was found “not to blame” for the quantity and quality of the provisions he delivered to West Hoosuck, though the court affirmed that whereas a soldier on furlough is not entitled to subsistence, a hired replacement was so entitled. Wyman was found “not to blame” for withholding provisions. Elijah Williams’s own petition was briefly considered on January 7, but the court found it unacceptable and sent it back to the committee for further hearings. On January 23 the committee, having heard the parties again, concluded that Elijah Williams had not supported his complaint against Hudson. The court dismissed the petition as “groundless.” Although the court had determined that Wyman was guilty of some charges, no punishment seems to have been meted out. He retained both his command at Fort Massachusetts and his position as town clerk in West Hoosuck. The Massachusetts General Court apparently chose not to impose any penalties, perhaps because they had more important military matters on their minds: they were then debating a bill 40 Chapter 2 to reform the militia and were nervous about the consequences of the disaster at Fort William Henry the previous August. Perhaps too they were influenced by Israel Williams’s campaign to discredit Wyman’s accusers. Although disinclined to yield to demands from military leaders for more troops, they were perhaps reluctant to call for a change in command at Fort Massachusetts or, more important, to issue an implicit rebuke to the powerful Colonel Israel Williams. Even though Israel Williams had escaped censure, Governor Pownall made it clear that he didn’t entirely trust his judgment and (like Governor Shirley before him) was keeping Williams on a short leash. On January 24 he wrote to Williams, directing him to appoint Gad Chapin as sergeant at West Hoosuck, apparently to replace Selah Bernard. He also ordered Williams to put ten of the West Hoosuck inhabitants on the payroll at the blockhouse. It appears that Pownall did not trust Williams to settle the “feud” between the two forts and needed to be directed. But he also sought to send a signal to the West Hoosuck men that he would not tolerate any “Independency.” It is odd that Chapin would be commissioned to serve alongside Hudson, since he had recently signed a deposition besmirching Hudson’s character. Perhaps Pownall also wanted to keep Hudson on a short leash. The governor’s action may have settled matters, apparently to the satisfaction of all parties: he succeeded in ending the feud between the forts, Colonel Williams reestablished his authority on the western frontiers, Captain Wyman remained in command at Fort Massachusetts, and the settlers of West Hoosuck, who stood up for what they regarded as their rights, won a limited measure of independence, not from Colonel Williams but from Fort Massachusetts. Pownall’s letters later that year to Williams are businesslike: he needed Williams to direct the defense of the western frontiers and to assist with a proposed invasion of Canada. There were also concerns that the French might march south: in late April the garrison at West Hoosuck was doubled, the men ordered to be constantly employed in “Scouting.” “Preference” in hir- ing was again to be given to inhabitants of West Hoosuck. However, by September 1758 the sense of crisis on the western frontiers had subsided. But Captain Wyman, like Sergeant Taylor, perhaps found it uncom- fortable to remain in West Hoosuck. At the proprietors’ meeting at The West Hoosuck Blockhouse, 1756–1761 41 the West Hoosuck blockhouse on October 1, 1760, he was replaced as town clerk by one of his adversaries, William Horsford. Another adversary, Josiah Horsford, was elected treasurer. Even before this incident Wyman was apparently at odds with the blockhouse. By submitting a muster roll that included the West Hoosuck soldiers, he was claiming authority over the blockhouse. But Seth Hudson, in charge at the blockhouse, submitted his own muster roll. Hudson had been able to shake off the accusations made against him. A year later, Wyman sold his land in West Hoosuck and moved to Keene, New Hampshire. By late 1760 emphasis was shifting in West Hoosuck from defense against the French and Indians to the development of the new town, by clearing north–south roads (present-day South, North, and Water Streets). This was the result, in large part, of a change in the fortunes of war well to the north: in July 1759 the English took Crown Point and Fort Carillon, and in September 1759, when Wolfe defeated Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham at Quebec, the war was in effect over. The decline in the perceived military importance of the Hoosac Valley seems to have come even earlier. The military establishment at West Hoosuck, set in 1756 at ten, raised in August 1757 to ninety men, was then cut back to eighteen by June 1758 and to nine in October 1759. In 1761 the blockhouse and Fort Massachusetts too were abandoned as military posts. But the town of West Hoosuck was thriving. News of the British vic- tories in 1759 encouraged many who were looking for land, including soldiers who had passed through during the military campaigns of the previous five years, to migrate to West Hoosuck. Large numbers of the new settlers between 1760 and 1765 were from Connecticut. The last documented public use of the blockhouse was a meeting of the West Hoosuck proprietors on September 24, 1761. It is likely that by then the building was in considerable disrepair and not considered suitable for adaptive reuse. And it is not unlikely that any sound lumber might have been removed in 1763 to build the “schoolhouse,” used for preaching and for meetings of the proprietors, and in 1768 for the “meetinghouse,” also used for religious purposes and for town meetings. Ruins of the blockhouse were still visible about 1800 but had completely disappeared within a generation. By 1761 most of the men who had figured prominently in the short 42 Chapter 2 history of the blockhouse were gone. William Chidester and Elisha Chapin were dead. Isaac Wyman had moved away, as had Samuel Taylor. But several others remained and helped incorporate West Hoosuck as “Williamstown” in 1765. These included Jabez and Gideon Warren, William and Josiah Horsford, Benjamin Simonds, Seth Hudson, and Thomas Train, all of whom held town offices in the early 1760s. Although the building and defense of the West Hoosuck blockhouse was a significant event in the town’s very early history, Williamstown’s founding fathers do not emerge from this episode as heroic or even exemplary figures. What the story of the blockhouse shows is that Williamstown was settled not by an idealistic band of brothers who came together peaceably to found a town, working together selflessly, but by a heterogeneous group of farmers whose interests diverged and even conflicted and who quarreled among themselves, couldn’t agree about the means for their common defense, and at critical moments turned on each other. History, in other words, turns out to be messier and more complicated than the founding myth on the plaque on the boulder in front of the Williams Inn. But this should not be cause for surprise. The town’s founding fathers and mothers were ordinary people, prompted by ordinary human motives. One could probably uncover similar stories about the founding of hundreds of New England settlements. West Hoosuck may have had a rocky beginning, but within just a few years the town was officially incorporated and got on with the business of living. CHAPTER 3  A SHORT HISTORY OF TREADWELL HOLLOW

If you look at a current U.S. Geological Survey topographical map of Williamstown—the one called “Berlin NY-MA-VT”—you will see that there is a double broken line, indicating a “4WD” road, roughly parallel to the Taconic Trail (Massachusetts Route 2), running from the intersection of Berlin Road and Treadwell Hollow Road up to Petersburg Pass, just past the Massachusetts–New York border. On some hiking maps this road is marked as the Sara Tenney Trail. If you begin at the trailhead at Petersburg Pass and walk downhill, through high weeds and thick brush below the parking lot, then a grassy road on the hillside, and then along a washed-out rocky roadbed, after a while you might see through the woods, on your left, the ruins of a handsome two-story frame house. Here the seemingly inevitable spread of human settlement across the landscape—where commonly what once was a farmer’s field is now a residential subdivision—seems to have been reversed. People once lived here, but now the woods are empty. This is a common story in New England, where there are vestiges of human habitation—stone walls, charcoal pits, cellar holes—in the woods everywhere and notably, in Williamstown, on the shoulders of Mount Greylock. Who lived here and when? What did they do to make a living? Why did so many

43 44 Chapter 3 settlers abandon Treadwell Hollow? Why did the farms along nearby Berlin Road last longer than those on Treadwell Hollow Road? Why did Berlin Road rather than Petersburg Road become the first turnpike route over the Taconic Mountains? Why did Treadwell Hollow Road not become the major route? Why is Peace Valley Farm the one farm in the area that has survived to this day? Why was much of the land in Treadwell Hollow and along Berlin Road saved from development? Answers to these questions yield a microhistory that illuminates the history of Williamstown and in turn sheds light on a larger story, the history of the landscape of rural New England. From White Rocks (just north of Petersburg Pass) south to Berlin Mountain, the east side of the Taconic Range is shaped and drained by several tributaries of Hemlock Brook, little mountain streams separated by steep, narrow ridges, once described as “flying buttresses supporting the main range,” between which were “beautiful glens and deep recesses.” The four tributaries running through these glens (two of which form the “north branch” and two the “south branch” of Hemlock Brook) descend from Petersburg Pass, high ground just south of Mount Raimer (formerly Petersburg Mountain), just south of Berlin Pass, and the northeast shoulder of Berlin Mountain. The two northern valleys (Treadwell Hollow proper) have been described as having been rounded by glaciers into a U-shaped “natural bowl.” The southern valley (Berlin Road) is narrower and more V-shaped. Until about 1760 these three valleys were probably covered with virgin forest right up to the crest of the Taconic Range. Mahican Indians had long before that traveled through the area, especially to hunt, but when crossing the Taconics they sensibly followed the route of the Hoosic River, which cuts a passage through the mountains some nine miles north of Petersburg Pass. Shortly after the founding of Williamstown in 1753, and the formal division of the land into lots, settlers began clearing land in Treadwell Hollow, to establish farms and erect dwellings. A rough woods road had, of course, been cut to enable them to travel by horse or wagon three miles from the center of Williamstown. That road still survives as today’s Bee Hill Road. From the point where the road crosses Hemlock Brook, wagon roads were cut to follow each of the four branches of the brook, of which only Berlin Road and part of Treadwell Hollow Road are still open to auto traffic. Traces also survive of two other old wagon roads A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 45 that climbed out of the northeast side of the hollow to meet the old Petersburg Road extending from the town center over Petersburg Pass. Once cleared and cultivated, the land in Treadwell Hollow and along Berlin Road has now largely reverted to forest. Once there were as many as fifteen farms and farmhouses in these three valleys or hol- lows. Only one farm remains. The only habitations now are five houses along Berlin Road, on the way up toward Berlin Pass, and two houses along the short stub of Treadwell Hollow Road, which is not passable beyond Peace Valley Farm. It’s probably safe to say that while many of today’s town residents have driven up Berlin Road, very few have ever been up Treadwell Hollow Road. The land is well known only to the farmer who still lives and works land at the bottom of the hollow, his neighbors on Berlin Road, a handful of all-terrain- vehicle riders who come down into the hollow from the Taconic Crest Trail, and a few adventurous hikers. Reconstructing the history of Treadwell Hollow is partly a literal matter of walking in the footsteps of those who have walked there before and coming across signs of human habitation: roads, culverts, cellar holes, stone walls, fences, a ruined house, clearings that were once planted. And partly it’s spending time poring over town histories and old maps in the Williamstown Historical Museum or talking to people who remember Treadwell Hollow of decades ago. From books and conversations I soon discovered that the ruined house in Treadwell Hollow is the old “Tenney Camp” (used by three generations of the Tenneys from 1905 until the 1960s) and that the hollow itself is named for its original settler, Agur Treadwell, who arrived from Connecticut in the 1790s. This led me to think that one good way to tell the story of Treadwell Hollow is to tell the story of a few of the families who lived there for extended periods. Reconstructing family history means digging for information in a variety of sources: registries of births, marriages, and deaths; real estate tax records in the tax assessor’s office; deeds for the transfer of land in the local registry of deeds; town directories (to see who lived where and when); and old maps that show the location of a family’s house. If you’re lucky, it means finding a trove of family papers or old newspaper clippings in the local historical society. Best of all is to find a live informant who can provide a firsthand report and can tell old family stories. Fortunately, I have 46 Chapter 3 found a number of informants, both in Williamstown and elsewhere, who were able to help me fill out the story of a few of the families who lived on Berlin Road and in Treadwell Hollow.

The Treadwells The Treadwell family was not the first to move into what was at first known as “the hollow” and later as “Treadwell Hollow,” but they were certainly among the first wave of settlers. By the time they arrived in the 1790s, roads had been extended from the town center of Williamstown to the outlying districts, in order to provide access to fifty- to one- hundred-acre farm lots. Bee Hill Road reached present-day Berlin Road by about 1760. As the population of Williamstown increased (by 1776 it exceeded one thousand and doubled in the next twenty-five years), the proprietors of the town made further “divisions” of the township. The Eighth Division in 1770 provided for a grid of rectangular sixty- acre lots, eight with frontage along the north branch of Hemlock Brook in Treadwell Hollow, six along the south branch along Berlin Road. In 1773 a road was opened over Berlin Pass—the old “Albany Road,” today’s Berlin Road—connecting Albany with Deerfield. And no later than 1788, David Foster (1755–1818) and his wife (with the help of three young sons) had established a farm “on the province land on the west mountain,” that is, at Berlin Pass. Over the next four years three more Foster children were born there. Fosters would own the farm until 1856 and remain in Williamstown for more than a hundred years. By about 1796 Agur Treadwell, from New Milford, Connecticut, arrived in Williamstown and began buying land in what was later called Treadwell Hollow. He must have bought enough to make him the major landholder along the north branch of Hemlock Brook. Born in 1766, he was probably motivated to move north into Massachusetts by the availability of cheap land. He may have heard about it from other Connecticut men who preceded him northward: the Prindle and Hickox families, early settlers of the western parts of Williamstown, were also from Connecticut, Prindle from New Fairfield and Hickox from Woodbury. Treadwell and his wife, Lydia, brought with them five daughters, and on March 25, 1797, a sixth daughter, Sally, was born in Williamstown. A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 47

One of his first tasks would have been to clear the land of trees and to build a house: the mixed hardwood forest would have included beech, ash, chestnut, maple, and birch. (The 1830 Mills woodlot map shows that virtually all of Treadwell Hollow and most of the Berlin Road valley were cleared by that date.) No specific evidence survives to tell how he made his living. If he was like many others, he would have had domestic animals (a cow, a few pigs) and planted enough potatoes, vegetables, and grain—corn, wheat, and rye—to feed his family and his animals. If he was like the Williamstown farmers a generation later, he might also have planted flax, for spinning and weaving into sheeting, towels, and rough cloth for clothing. He probably harvested chestnuts from the trees that were still plentiful in the hollow 150 years later. He probably did a little maple sugaring—the maple trees in Treadwell Hollow are still being tapped today. He could have harvested blueberries, which thrive in the acidic soil, still to be found in the late summer until very recently in great profusion on the meadows on the ridge of the Taconics. He might have burned wood for charcoal, as did neighbors on Berlin Road and others in Mattison Hollow in New York, just over the ridgeline of the Taconics. Lydia Treadwell died in 1831, and her husband, Agur, followed in 1842, at which point—since they had no sons—the Treadwell name died out in Williamstown. At least two of his daughters survived him— Susannah lived on until 1856 and Huldah until 1874. But there was no longer a Treadwell among the landowners in the hollow. On the 1858 Walling map of Williamstown there are ten farms along Treadwell Hollow Road, but none of them belonged to a Treadwell. (Lorinda Treadwell Foster may have lived on the Foster farm in the hollow.) The Treadwell house—the last of the original houses in the hollow—burned down in 1885.

The Leets The Treadwells must have mingled with their neighbors the Fosters, for in 1804 their daughter Polly married David Foster Jr. (and in 1815 her sister Lorinda ran off to marry David’s brother John). Other nearby neighbors in the hollow included Jared Leet (1736–1806), also originally from Connecticut, who had a farm in what was apparently once 48 Chapter 3 called “Leet Hollow,” on a tributary of the north branch of Hemlock Brook, reached by a wagon road that probably extended beyond his farm up to the crest of the Taconics and connected with the old Albany Road. Leet was a descendant of William Leet (1613–83), first colonial governor of Connecticut (1676–83), and like many other Connecticut men moved north to find land, arriving in Williamstown in 1794. He took possession of sixty-acre lot 40 (of the Eighth Division), which was well watered and had southern exposure, cleared the ground, built a house and barn, and planted apple trees. Leet got into legal difficulties concerning his property and may have originally squatted on the land. His legal adversary was apparently David Noble, a wealthy lawyer and landowner in town, and Leet is probably the author of some satirical verses about Noble after his death in 1803:

There was an old man lived in a brick house, He had no more conscience than a louse. Seventy dollars he did cheat Out of poor old Jared Leet. Now he’s dead I wish him well, No other than the gates of hell, There to roast and burn and fry, With devils to eternity.

Leet died three years later, but he must have gained legal title to the property, for the farm was passed down through the family to his son William (who emigrated to Ohio) and then to William’s son Alonzo (1817–83), who sold a portion to John Brookman in 1872 and when he died left the rest to his son William A. Leet (b. 1846, d. before 1937), the fourth generation of his family in Treadwell Hollow, who still had three hundred acres in the hollow in 1885. But in that year the farm was sold to William Cain. The Leet family gave their name to what is still called Leete Hill, high on the eastern slopes of the Taconics. Even today you can see cellar holes for what were probably their house and a substantial barn, together with the foundation of what was probably an outbuilding, on the woods road that links Treadwell Hollow Road with the Taconic Crest Trail. A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 49

The Birchards Another early family in Treadwell Hollow was the Birchards. Joseph Birchard (1755–1830) came from Fairfield, Connecticut, and is recorded as having bought land in Williamstown—the sixty-acre lot 47 in the Eighth Division (on present-day Berlin Road)—in 1779. But he seems not to have settled in Williamstown until after 1797, for although he had ten or eleven children between 1775 and 1797, only his daughter Polly seems to have been born in Williamstown. Joseph Birchard cleared what later became the Foster farm on the Berlin Pass Road. Members of the Birchard family continued to buy land in the vicinity: Daniel Birchard (perhaps a brother) bought land in 1795. Joseph and Jabez Birchard (perhaps another brother) bought lots 43 on present-day Berlin Road and 44 on present-day Treadwell Hollow Road in 1800 as well as lot 45 on Berlin Road in 1812. From his family, Joseph’s son Amos (b. 1777) eventually acquired lot 44, nearly all the way up the hollow, close to Petersburg Pass. His story dramatically intersects, in two ways, with the history of settlement in the area. The first has to do with roads. When the western part of Williamstown was first settled, several roads were extended up the eastern slope of the Taconics to gain access to the property lots on higher ground. One of them was today’s Petersburg Road, running due west from Main Street, climbing to about thirteen hundred feet before turning south, in order to skirt the steep slopes that lay ahead, and turning west again and climbing to about sixteen hundred feet, where it was still about a mile and a half from and five hundred feet below Petersburg Pass. Another road climbed over Bee Hill and made its way across Hemlock Brook and up the path of today’s Berlin Road at a fairly gentle slope to about seventeen hundred feet before climbing another six-tenths of a mile steeply up to Berlin Pass at twenty-two hundred feet. A third made its easy and gradual way up Treadwell Hollow to about sixteen hundred feet—about three-quarters of a mile short of Petersburg Pass. The first road over the Taconics was the one over Berlin Pass, and it was quickly made part of the Albany Road and the “Eastern Turnpike.” (The tollgate at the Massachusetts–New York border was on part of the Foster farm—which soon came to be known as the “tollgate farm.”) Soon there was stagecoach service over the pass to Troy every other weekday, 50 Chapter 3

“for passengers and bundles.” Presumably, this was the first road over the mountains in part because you could get a stagecoach or wagon pretty close to the pass before you had to put real strain on the horses for the final six-tenths of a mile. But perhaps because of that last steep stretch, projects were hatched to put a road over Petersburg Pass, more than a hundred feet lower than Berlin Pass. Two rival proposals emerged, one to extend Petersburg Road along the steep shoulder of the high ground north of Hemlock Brook and the other to extend the road in Treadwell Hollow up another three-quarters of a mile to Petersburg Pass. Here is where Amos Birchard comes in. His land straddled the path of the proposed extension of Treadwell Hollow Road, and he refused to allow the road to pass through his land. As a result, Petersburg Road—perhaps as early as 1800—became the only way to get up to Petersburg Pass. Those in Treadwell Hollow had to go down the hollow and up Berlin Road to Berlin Pass. It was probably at this time that a side road was cut, skirting Birchard’s land, from Treadwell Hollow Road steeply uphill to the Petersburg Road. This road is sometimes marked on old maps, and some vestiges of it remain on the ground today. No later than 1843, as old maps show, Treadwell Hollow Road was extended up to Petersburg Pass, but that was after Amos Birchard had left town. Over time the road was sometimes called “Lower Petersburg Road.” In time, and probably by 1870, Petersburg Road (sometimes called “Upper Petersburg Road”) became the main wagon route over the mountains. But ox- and horse-drawn wagons occasionally climbed up the “lower” road to the pass as late as 1906. Why did Birchard stand in the way of the road up Treadwell Hollow? Was it mere orneriness, a determination not to sacrifice any of his land for the common good? Perhaps. But before we condemn him, we ought to consider two matters. First, Treadwell Hollow Road, by closely following the path of a waterway, met the fate of many such roads in early Williamstown: it was prone to flooding in the spring. Perhaps Birchard, who would have known that, thought it foolish to invest any more effort in a road that would be impassable for several months a year. Second, why did settlers want a road over the pass anyway? Presumably, it was so they could get their farm produce to market or to bring manufactured goods in from Troy. But the farmers in Treadwell Hollow and on Berlin Road were very probably producing only enough food to support their own families and not buying much. For much of the nineteenth century, small A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 51 farmers in Williamstown had little cash. The farmers who had need of a road to the markets in Troy and Albany were the larger landholders in the town, those who owned fertile bottomland closer to the center of town, or the merchants. Why should a farmer in the uplands sacrifice himself for the good of his richer lowland neighbors? In time Birchard himself gave up his attempt to farm in Treadwell Hollow. In 1822 he seems to have decided to emigrate to western New York. Together with his father, three of his siblings, their children, and a number of their neighbors, he picked up and moved some 365 miles to Cattaraugus County, in western New York (in the southern tier), where there was rich bottomland along Cattaraugus Creek. They settled in the newly established town of Otto, about fifty miles south of Buffalo. Amos Birchard died there in 1858. The last of the Birchard land in Treadwell Hollow was sold in 1830. By leaving, Birchard became an emblematic figure in the story of Treadwell Hollow. Why did he and his fellow pioneers leave? Perhaps it was because, having quarreled about the road, they didn’t get on with their neighbors. More likely, they concluded that farming in the thin soil and steep slopes of Treadwell Hollow was just too unrewarding. Like many others in the Appalachians who went west in the early part of the nineteenth century, they perhaps heard reports of better land to be found in Illinois, Ohio, or even western New York. After the Erie Canal was opened in 1823, it was a lot easier to move family, belongings, and even livestock west from Albany. Birchard was one of the first to leave Treadwell Hollow but was hardly the last. Perry thinks the Hollow rapidly emptied out after 1850. It is true that Williamstown itself lost population in the years before the Civil War. In 1850 the population stood at 2,626 (only about a 25 percent increase since 1800). In the next fifteen years, it actually dropped to 2,555. But in 1858 there still were nine farms in Treadwell Hollow, just as there had been in 1800, at least two of which belonged to early families, the Fosters and the Leets. Farther down Hemlock Brook, in 1850, there was both a sawmill and a cider mill and even a school. But the farmers on the slopes of the Taconics were increasingly isolated from the economic life of the town. In 1852 the Troy and Boston Railroad was completed from Pownal to Troy, put through the gap in the Taconics formed by the Hoosic River, thus displacing both the Berlin Pass Road 52 Chapter 3 and the Petersburg Pass Road as the most important route across the mountains and putting an end to the stagecoach service over Berlin Pass. By 1871 there were only five houses in Treadwell Hollow, and by 1876 only two were occupied, the Leet farm below Leete Hill and the Brookman farm—today’s Peace Valley Farm.

The Walkers Treadwell Hollow began to empty out before Berlin Road did. Indeed, Berlin Road was still attracting newcomers in the late 1860s, when a new owner took over the old “tollgate farm” (formerly belonging to the Fosters) at the state line on the road up to Berlin Pass. Alexander Walker was a Scotsman from Rhynie, Aberdeenshire. He was born in 1819. As a young man in Scotland, “Sandy” Walker worked as gardener at two large estates in Aberdeenshire. He later worked as a correspondent for the weekly Banffshire Journal. Walker had other talents, too. He was well known as a fiddler, having begun perform- ing in public while still a child and reportedly conducting a concert of Scottish dance music at the Guildhall in London in 1851. In time he became a composer of fiddle tunes and a song collector, and in 1866 he published Collection of Fiddle Tunes, Strathspeys, Reels, Marches, &c., still well regarded by specialists today. At some point after 1869—his four-year-old daughter died in Strathbon in 1866 and his son George was born there in 1869—he left Aberdeenshire to emigrate to America, settling first in Albany and then (after 1872) moving to Williamstown. When he arrived, he was over fifty, and he brought with him at least five children: three sons, Charles, Alexander, and George, and two daughters, Margaret (Maggie) and Louise. Walker bought the old Foster place on the state line, to which he may have given the name “Beechdale Farm.” For years he worked the farm—some 440 acres—with his sons and seems to have improved the land. Bill Stinson, who owns and operates Peace Valley Farm now, reports that Walker planted a great many apple trees, a number of them surviving today. He probably did not derive much income from the tollgate, for by 1867 much of the road traffic was going by rail or by way of Petersburg Road over Petersburg Pass. Perhaps in order to supplement that income, he became a surveyor. In 1885 he listed himself in A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 53 the Gazetteer of Berkshire County as a “landscape gardener, civil engi- neer, patentee of an improvement on the tone of the violin, composer of music, and farmer.” In December 1885 Walker surveyed the land in Treadwell Hollow, and in 1889 he produced and published a map of Williamstown. He also did landscape work for Williams College. Walker was famously hale and hearty, even as he was approaching eighty. A receipt surviving in the Tenney Papers in the Williamstown Historical Museum shows that at age seventy-five, in 1894, he was paid for a surveying job in the White Oaks section of Williamstown. He was especially known for surveying mountain lots, both in the Taconics and on Mount Greylock, as late as 1900. He also kept up his music, playing fiddle tunes at a farewell party for a Scottish neighbor in February 1891, playing violin solos at the Hemlock Brook School later that year, and at other events in town at least as late as 1898. But even he seems to have found the winter nights on Berlin Pass more than he could tolerate. A story in the local paper just before Christmas in 1898 reports that he was planning to spend the winter with his son George closer to town. Walker was still living at Beechdale Farm in 1903. (He died in 1905.) His daughters settled nearby: Margaret married Charles Brookman (who grew up on what is now Peace Valley Farm), and Louise married a man named McDonald and settled with him on Berlin Road. In 1893 Walker’s son Charles, together with Charles’s brother-in- law Charles Brookman, took over the management of Beechdale Farm. In the same year, George Walker was working his sister Louise Walker McDonald’s farm: he had nine acres planted in potatoes and also raised strawberries, in 1893 selling twenty-one hundred quarts at 17 cents a quart ($350 doesn’t sound like much today, but it was significant enough in 1893 to be reported in the local newspaper). George later bought land on Berlin Road—by 1904 he owned what was (until 2016) the Haskins farm and land on the north side of the road, later sold to Floyd Rosenburg—and in 1911 he bought what is now Bill Stinson’s Peace Valley Farm. Over time George Walker gradually severed his connections to Berlin Road and Treadwell Hollow. In 1918 he sold Peace Valley Farm to Judge Sanborn Tenney and followed his father into landscape gardening, serving sixteen years as Williamstown’s tree and fire warden in the 1920s and ’30s, in which job he was responsible for planting many of the town’s shade trees. In the 1920s and ’30s he sold off his holdings on Berlin 54 Chapter 3

Road to Elmer Haskins, Floyd Rosenburg, and J. W. Bullock, and by about 1940 he moved to Lanesborough. The old Walker farm is gone now, but in 1937 the house and barns were still there, just south of the road up to Berlin Pass, some 800 feet east of the state line; twenty-five years later, an “old vacant dwelling”—probably the farmhouse—was still to be seen on the banks of Haley Brook. Why did farms on Berlin Road survive so much longer than those in Treadwell Hollow? One answer might be that Walker did not depend on farming for his entire income. Another answer is that the road up to Berlin Pass never crosses the south branch of Hemlock Brook. As a consequence, it remains fairly dry, except in mud season, while the road up Treadwell Hollow, which crosses the north branch of Hemlock Brook nine times, was regularly washed out and probably impassable in the spring. The Berlin Road hollow also gets more sun, because it is wider and V-shaped and because it is oriented east–west, which means good morning sun. Treadwell Hollow is narrower, more U-shaped, and oriented more northwest–southeast, which means it takes longer each day for the sun to reach its southwest hillside. And because the sun in the afternoon falls behind 2,572-foot Petersburg Mountain, sunset comes earlier in Treadwell Hollow than in the Berlin Road valley, where the Taconic crest is only 2,200 feet at Berlin Pass. As a consequence, the growing season along Berlin Road is longer.

The Brookmans A fourth reason the farms on Berlin Road lasted longer than those in Treadwell Hollow is that the farmers on Berlin Road raised cash crops—at least potatoes and strawberries and in later years blueberries. Another family famous for their strawberries—the Brookmans—spent nearly a half century on Berlin Road; they bought what is now Peace Valley Farm in 1862. Located at the confluence of the two branches of Hemlock Brook, it has more nearly level ground and gets more sun than any of the other farms in the watershed. John Brookman, born in England in 1827, emigrated in 1843 and married in 1853. He had worked his way up at Beaver Mill in North Adams and the Pownal Mills before deciding, reportedly because of ill health, to take up farming. He and his wife had seven children, three sons and four daughters. In 1872 he bought a second farm, A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 55 the old Leet place in Treadwell Hollow. By 1885 he was running the farms with the help of his sons Charles (born about 1865) and George; on 110 acres he had a dozen cows. By 1888 they had three horses, eighteen cows, and a number of “yearlings.” They also figured out, apparently by cross- breeding, how to grow unusually large strawberries and for many years carried them to market in Williamstown. By 1893 Charles had taken over the farm and was also managing the George farm up Berlin Road as well as Walker’s Beechdale Farm. (His son William, born in 1894, while still a very young boy used to be sent up to the grassy top of Berlin Mountain— then called “Macomber Mountain”—to bring the cows down.) George moved out on his own. Although farming was in the Brookmans’ blood—William Brookman’s son William R. Brookman Jr. (1922–2017) would go on to become manager of Mount Hope Farm in the 1960s and ’70s—Peace Valley Farm was not passed down in the Brookman family. In March 1901 Charles Brookman moved out of his father’s farm and bought his own place, the McCarthy farm on Sloan Road in South Williamstown. Perhaps John Brookman was not ready to pass the family farm on to his son, or perhaps Charles wanted better land. John Brookman, then seventy-four years old, moved in with a married daughter in town and by 1910 seems to have found a tenant for the farm, Jabez Odell, from Grafton, New York. In 1911 Brookman sold the farm (100 acres) to George Walker. Another family on Berlin Road contemporary with the Brookmans was the Joshua Maynard family. Less prosperous, and hard drinkers, for years they lived on what is now known as “Bee Hill Extension.” Joshua was born in Treadwell Hollow. After the family house on Bee Hill Road burned in 1898, his son Stephen (Dummy) Maynard (1852–1937), deaf and dumb from being hit on the head as a child by his father, moved up to a little cabin at the end of Berlin Road, where, according to the 1900 U.S. Census, he scraped out a living gathering and selling chestnuts, berries, and apples from abandoned trees in the woods. According to Art Rosenburg (in a 1976 interview), Maynard lived in “an old shack or shanty” on the left side of a side road extending north from Berlin Road just before the college ski area. Later, three of the Maynard brothers, Frank, Henry, and Dummy, lived together on Berlin Road. Dummy died in 1937 at age eighty-five, still identified as a berry picker. A generation or so later, another family on Berlin Road was more 56 Chapter 3 successful: like the Brookmans, they engaged in small-scale commercial farming but managed to keep the farm in the family for three generations, from the late 1930s into the present. Elmer Haskins (b. 1869) bought George Walker’s 105-acre farm on Berlin Road in the 1930s. In time his second son, Harry (1914–85), took over the property and farmed it into the ’80s, while Elmer built a house for himself elsewhere on the property. Harry also acquired Walker’s Beechdale Farm, pieces of which he subsequently sold to the college in 1960 and to three Williams alumni in 1970. The Haskins farm was long owned by Harry’s son James. Like the Brookmans, the Haskins family raised and sold strawberries. In the 1940s, neighborhood kids were paid five cents a quart to harvest them. The Haskins family also raised raspberries and tended the wild blueberry bushes up on Berlin Pass, which they picked and sold to a bakery on Spring Street. They also kept bees and sold honey as well as cider, probably made out of apples from trees planted a half century earlier by Alexander Walker. They supplemented their farm income by other means. Elmer Haskins drove the local school bus, as did his son, Harry, after him.

The Tenneys More than a dozen years before George Walker sold Peace Valley Farm to Sanborn Tenney in 1918, a new stage in the social history of the area was inaugurated: the new owner was not a farmer, nor did he live on the farm. (For most of the next fifty-five years, the Peace Valley Farm was let to tenants.) But Sanborn Tenney and his descendants left an indelible mark on Treadwell Hollow, assembling a large bloc of land, holding on to it for more than a half century, forming a deep attachment to what their neighbors came to call the “Tenney Camp,” and ultimately ensur- ing that the land would be preserved for the benefit of the public. Judge Sanborn Gove Tenney (1864–1923) belonged to a prominent Williamstown family. His father, also named Sanborn Tenney (1827– 77), was a professor of natural history at Williams from 1868 until 1877 and the author of several textbooks on zoology and geology. The future Judge Tenney grew up with his mother, Abby Amy Tenney, and his sister, Amy, at “Parkside,” the family’s substantial house on Park Street. He graduated from Williams in 1886, attended Columbia Law School (1888– 90), and settled in Williamstown. In 1893 he opened a law office, first in A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 57

North Adams and then in Williamstown. By 1894 he was a justice of the peace, and by 1897 he had become judge of the Williamstown District Court, serving in that position for the rest of his life. (He was eventually named president of the Berkshire Bar Association.) In 1901 he married Sara Griswold, who had been born in Troy but grew up in Bennington. Judge Tenney built a big house on the Tenney estate, just uphill from his mother and sister in Professor Tenney’s house, where he and his wife raised four children. The judge’s wide circle of friends included a number of New Yorkers with summer homes in Berkshire County. While still a young man, and before his children were born, Judge Tenney began buying abandoned farms in the foothills of the Taconics, acquiring parts of the old 242-acre Leet farm, high in Treadwell Hollow and inactive for some years, from Almedia Cain in 1895 and John Brookman in 1899. Over the next twenty years he accumulated more property in Treadwell Hollow and on Petersburg Road. In time he and his wife would together own 1,465 acres on both sides of what later became the Taconic Trail. (Judge Tenney was not the only one buying up agricultural land in Williamstown during these years. From 1887 to 1910 Amos Lawrence Hopkins bought up more than 1,600 acres to put together his “Buxton Farms,” today’s Hopkins Memorial Forest.) As a real estate man, Judge Tenney was in a position to know the value of property. Several of the old farms he bought—those that were still economically viable—were let to tenants who continued to farm the land. As for the farms that had been abandoned, he plainly took pleasure in hunting in the woods and fishing the brook. And according to one face- tious family story, he just liked to buy land. After acquiring Peace Valley Farm from Walker in 1918, Judge Tenney rebuilt the fences and installed a tenant farmer to raise sheep. About 1918 he built a substantial slate-roofed barn, with concrete foundation, which Bill Stinson still uses. But the building in Treadwell Hollow for which the Tenneys are most remembered was the house he bought from Cynthia Wheeler, in 1905, about a mile and a half up Treadwell Hollow from Peace Valley Farm (known then as the Brookman farm), not as a permanent residence but as a weekend camp. It was an old substantial two-story frame farmhouse, with a large stone fireplace and chimney, living room, kitchen, attached storeroom, two other rooms downstairs and one upstairs, and several outbuildings, including a barn. It was one 58 Chapter 3 of the early Treadwell Hollow farms, lot 21 of the Eighth Division on early maps, and had once belonged to the Birchard family. Over the next thirty years, the farm had lain fallow, its house uninhabited, when Tenney bought it in 1905. A photograph, probably taken at the time of purchase, shows that the land around the house was still largely clear of trees. (Tenney and his wife and her brother stand before the house, as if symbolically taking possession.) The Tenneys did some rudimentary decorating and on Saturday, November 11, 1905, held a housewarming for family and friends. Although during these early days the house had no insulation, electricity, gas, phone, or indoor plumbing, it was frequently used in the winter—with a big fire in the fireplace for heat and cheer, and probably candles and kerosene lamps for light. Three volumes of guest books for the house, handed down in the Tenney family, give a vivid picture of their visits—mostly day trips and an occasional holiday weekend stay of several nights—at what they called “Peace Valley Camp,” or just “camp.” It took about an hour and a half to drive out four miles from Park Street in a horse-drawn buggy, somewhat longer to walk, via either Bee Hill Road or the footpath up Flora’s Glen. In the late spring they hiked up to see the “swamp-pink” wild azaleas in bloom on the New York side of Petersburg Pass—you can still see them today. In the summer they picked strawberries in the “Cole Meadows” at the top of the hollow and blackberries down near the junction with Berlin Road, fished for trout in the brook, and walked with their dogs over to the Leet farm or down to the Brookman farm to get fresh milk. In the fall they collected chestnuts, and Judge Tenney went out with his dogs hunting for rabbits, partridge, or woodcock. In the winter they all rode out from town in a horse-drawn sleigh or snowshoed up to talk with the farmer at “Foxcroft Farm” on Petersburg Road. To make this walk easier, the farmer at this time cut a broad path—which survives today—leading from the Petersburg Road down into Treadwell Hollow. Living at “camp” was pretty basic. Simple cooking was done on a wood- stove. Mrs. Tenney had her own cook at home, but at camp she was in the kitchen herself. At first it appears that water for drinking and cooking was carried by buckets from the brook or a spring, and dishes were washed in the brook, but in time pipes were put in to allow water to flow by grav- ity from Hemlock Brook to the house. In the summer they sometimes A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 59 drove to camp in their Hupmobile. Over time, the nine old culverts that spanned the brook were replaced by iron “boiler shells” (the larger ones six feet, six inches, in diameter). Regular visitors included Mrs. Tenney’s brother John Griswold and his wife, who also lived in Williamstown, and Byron Rees, a young professor at Williams who became a close family friend. At least once there were as many as a dozen guests. The Tenneys continued to use the camp regularly until 1920, when (perhaps in part because of the death of their friend Rees that year) their visits stopped for a while. They resumed in late 1920, but then Tenney himself fell ill and, “after a prolonged illness,” died in January 1923. The final entry in the log was made by Rees’s daughter in 1924. After a while, Mrs. Tenney and her children returned to camp and probably spent a good deal of time there, at least in the summers, until the two sons graduated from Williams in 1927 and 1928. By the time Judge Tenney died, other major changes were in store for Treadwell Hollow. In the late 1910s plans were announced for the building of a new state highway through the middle of Tenney’s woodland and farmland. For years the main route to New York State was via the old “Petersburg Road” (or “Upper Petersburg Road”), a narrow and wind- ing unpaved road that followed the path of Buxton Brook. Now that the “Mohawk Trail” from Greenfield to North Adams had been opened to great acclaim, some leading citizens, like Henry Teague, manager of the Greylock Hotel and the town’s road commissioner, and L. G. Treadway, manager of the Williams Inn, argued that the Petersburg Road ought to be improved in order to complete a scenic route from Greenfield to Troy and thereby attract more tourists to town—and to his hotel. In 1917 the state appropriated $50,000 to conduct a survey of the proposed new highway, but debate arose about the best route: some argued that the old Petersburg Road should simply be widened and improved, while others said that a new approach should be made not from the east but from the south, even though it would be considerably longer. Despite opposition from those concerned about the loss of huge hemlock trees along Hemlock Brook, the southern route was chosen, land was acquired in 1926 (including, in October 1926, land belonging to Judge Tenney), and about that year the work began. The new road extended westward from Cold Spring Road, initially following the path of Hemlock Brook, but then turning northward, skirting Sheep Hill and Bee Hill, then 60 Chapter 3 westward, keeping Birch Hill on the right, and again paralleling the path of Hemlock Brook, but staying a half mile above it on the shoulder of a steep hill. (The final mile and a half of the highway closely tracks the old Petersburg Road, still found—as part of the Brooks Trail—a few yards uphill.) The new route required engineers to build a bridge over Hemlock Brook near the former Taconic Restaurant (and to improve two or three other bridges on Cold Spring Road) and to blast rock along the approach to Petersburg Pass, cutting away the hill and filling low spots. The much-heralded Taconic Trail was opened in 1929 and was soon recommended by travel writers for its glorious “alpine scenery”—long views down into the Hoosac Valley and across to Mount Greylock not only from Petersburg Pass but also, since a wide swath of trees was cut to create the right-of- way, from various points on the way down. It is difficult to visualize today the views that our forefathers enjoyed eighty-five years ago, since the trees along the road have grown tall and the motor- ist coming down the Taconic Trail now passes through a narrow green- walled corridor. In one respect the new highway, high above Treadwell Hollow, left the area untouched by the drivers who whizzed past. In another respect, the Taconic Trail can be said to have turned Treadwell Hollow into scenery to be enjoyed through the car windows, since you could look down into it from the new restaurant, gift shop, and observation tower at Petersburg Pass or from the several parking areas along the trail on the way downhill on the Massachusetts side. Opening up Petersburg Pass to auto traffic improved access to the Taconic Crest Trail generally and attracted more hikers to the area. Hikers had, of course, long used the old roads up to Berlin Pass. So too had the men who manned the fifty-foot fire tower on Berlin Mountain, erected in 1915 as a joint venture among Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont and removed to Brodie Mountain in 1923, reportedly because the interstate agreement fell apart. In 1932 the Taconic Hiking Club formed, and members of the Williams College Class of 1933 constructed a new trail up the northeast side of Berlin Mountain. About a mile from the trailhead at the old Haskins farm on Berlin Road, they also constructed a cabin (on private land), which remained in regular use by Williams students and others until the early 1970s, when it apparently became a drug hangout and was removed at the request of the landowner. A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 61

At his death in 1923 Judge Tenney left his land to his wife. As they grew up, three of her children moved away. Only one of the four remained in Williamstown: Sanborn G. Tenney Jr., the eldest, born in 1904. He graduated from Williams in 1927 and, emulating his father, went into the real estate and insurance business. Judge Tenney’s widow never remarried and remained in the Park Street house with her eldest son. In 1931, near the bottom of the Depression, she sold land in Treadwell Hollow, including 90 acres of the Peace Valley Farm (but not the Tenney Camp), to Albertine Morrier and Filomena Burro of North Adams. Burro and her husband had bought the depreciated property in hopes of running it with the help of their sons as a family farm. But shortly thereafter Mr. Burro died, the sons were too busy helping out on their uncle’s farm, and Mrs. Burro found that her farm was more work than she and her teenage daughters could handle. In November 1933, having acquired Mrs. Morrier’s interest, she sold the property and all its contents, including livestock, farm implements, and fifty tons of hay, to a local farmer, Earl George, who ran it as a dairy farm. He must have had trouble making ends meet and sold it back to Burro in 1937, who quickly sold it to Sanborn Tenney Jr., who had prospered sufficiently that he was able, like his father before him, to begin acquiring land. Earl George stayed on as a tenant. In 1939 Tenney bought more property, acquiring the 450-acre Foxcroft Farm, across the Taconic Trail, from his mother, at which point Earl George moved up as a tenant to the larger farm. Peace Valley Farm may have been vacant for several years, for when Hart Rice and his family moved in, in 1942, the house was in dilapidated condition. Rice worked as a farmer during the day at Mount Hope and tended his own farm in the evenings and on weekends, cultivating the fields with a horse-drawn plow. He raised cows, pigs, and chickens and planted potatoes, corn, tomatoes, beans, and peas, enough to feed his large family (eleven children) and his animals, with his sons and daughters working beside him. He raised no cash crops but traded milk to Harry Haskins in exchange for strawberries and the right to cut hay in Haskins’s fields. Rice’s children gradually grew up and moved out, but he continued at Peace Valley Farm for thirty years, still working the farm into his late seventies. His children—several of them still living in the Williamstown area—fondly remember their days in “Peace Valley” in the 1940s and ’50s. In the late 1930s, Sanborn Tenney hired Albert Cummings 62 Chapter 3

(grandfather of today’s contractor and well-known musician of that name) to make some improvements to the Tenney Camp. Over time the old barn had been demolished. Now a one-story wing was added to the old two-story house, with a full bathroom and half bath, a wood- shed, and an attached garage—used, as it turned out, mostly for storage. Outside (on the south side) a roofed stone patio was laid. A small concrete dam was built in the brook below the house to create a pool for swimming—and for the trout. The trees were taller than thirty-five years earlier, when the family first started using the camp, but not so tall that the grass in an open hayfield on the north and east sides of the hollow didn’t grow high: one summer a pair of goats were brought in to keep the grass short. But there was still no electricity in the house, even though electric power was finally extended as far as Berlin Road and Treadwell Hollow Road in 1945. At this period the house was occupied only in the summer. Sanborn Tenney, busy with his real estate and insurance business, sometimes came out for the day. But his sister Sara (Sally) came up from New York, where she was working, for weekends and vacations, and his mother frequently stayed overnight as well. Sally’s niece Helene (Laney), who as a young girl spent part of every summer there with her aunt Sally in the 1940s, has very fond memories of her time at “camp”—her grandmother cooking her special codfish balls, her uncle San fishing for trout in the brook, Sally avidly gardening (she planted hundreds of daffodils in front of the house and had a rose garden on the south side of the house and a vegetable garden beside the garage), the phoebe that returned every year to build its nest under a corner of the patio roof, eating lunch on the deck, hiking up to the crest of the Taconics to pick blueberries, and sitting on the patio in the evening watching the sun go down over the mountain. But it was probably Sally Tenney who loved and used the house more than anybody in her family. She returned to it every summer into the 1950s. There were other visitors to Treadwell Hollow in those years. Anglers fished for trout in the brook in the spring. Hunters drove in or walked up to stalk deer in the fall. Local kids as well as riders from Arthur George’s Taconic Stables, on Oblong Road, rode up along Treadwell Hollow Road and the various woods roads that branch off of it. They identified places along the road by reference to the “bridges” (that is, culverts)—for example, “between the fourth and fifth bridges” (counting from the barn A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 63 at Peace Valley Farm). On at least one occasion about 1954, a leisurely trail ride turned dangerous: a neighbor from Berlin Road rode up along the brook one day—between the fifth and sixth culverts—and suddenly found her horse deep in “quicksand” and was unable to get out. She jumped off and ran down to Peace Valley Farm to call for help: Hart Rice came up in his tractor and pulled the horse out. It is possible that the stretches of quicksand were exposed by a big flood on the brook in 1954, so big that it forced the brook out of its banks. As waters receded, the brook had found a new course, and what was once streambed was now one of the stream’s banks—not solid ground as it appeared, but saturated clay buoyed by groundwater from below. In time, the bank drained, or the groundwater found another channel, and the soil became firmer. But stretches of “quicksand” were still to be seen in the early 1980s. Some of the visitors to Treadwell Hollow in the 1950s left a different kind of mark. By the late 1950s the Tenney house was falling prey to trespassers, who broke in during the fall and winter, when the house was empty, burned clothes that had been left in the closets in the fireplace, and stole dishes. Although Sara Tenney reported the problem, the police told her they were unable to prevent it. By the mid-1950s—though perhaps as early as 1952—she suspended her visits to the camp. In the late 1950s the Tenneys made arrangements to have the hardwood timber in Treadwell Hollow harvested by a local logger, who removed white birch cordwood and then over a four-year period—about 1959–63— took out oak, maple, and ash, even setting up a diesel-powered sawmill on some high ground downstream from the camp. In the end it was the vandals and the condition of the road that brought an end to the summers at the Tenney Camp. Every spring, snow- melt would cause the brook to rise above the culverts, flooding the road and sometimes washing it out and leaving deep mud holes. Even though the road provided access to only one house, the town’s highway department repaired it every year and kept the culverts in good condition. But after about 1957, because the only wintertime use was logging, the town gave up plowing the road and limited its repairs to the culverts. And in 1962 the selectmen proposed converting Treadwell Hollow Road beyond Peace Valley Farm from a public to a private road—which meant that the town would no longer accept legal liability for it, maintain it, or perform any repairs. At a public hearing on September 4, 1962, the county 64 Chapter 3 commissioners heard testimony in favor of “abandoning” the road from the town manager, who argued that the road was principally used only for logging operations and that the town wanted to limit its future liability to provide services if the land in Treadwell Hollow was to be developed as building lots. Sara Tenney objected, citing the property taxes her family had paid over many years. Neighbors also objected, citing the local riders from Taconic Stables and the hunters and fishermen from throughout the state who came to Williamstown in season and used the road. (One wonders whether it was some of these same hunters who broke into the Tenney house and burned clothes in the fireplace to keep warm. More likely, it was local teenagers who had had too much to drink.) But the commissioners nonetheless made the decision to abandon the road, meaning that the town was no longer responsible for it, though the public still had the right of access. The Tenneys were disappointed, perhaps even embittered. Sara Tenney continued using the camp for as long as she could gain access—but the family realized that they would have to make other plans for their extensive holdings. They renewed the lease on Peace Valley Farm with Hart Rice. They leased a large tract extending from Petersburg Pass down into Treadwell Hollow to the operators of the recently opened Petersburg Pass ski area. In 1966 Sara Tenney made an agreement with Jerry Jenkins, who had just graduated from Williams College, to live in the Tenney Camp as a caretaker—presumably to guard against vandals—even through the winter. (A highly regarded biology major as a student, Jenkins developed deep knowledge of local plant species while living in Treadwell Hollow.) Even though Sanborn Tenney was in the real estate business, the family did not consider real estate development. By the end of the 1960s, they concluded that the land in Treadwell Hollow ought to be preserved. Back in 1954 they had drawn up a map of their lands and in 1955 made a gift of the Foxcroft Farm (450 acres on the other side of the Taconic Trail) to the state of Massachusetts for a future “Taconic Trail State Park.” In March 1969, before her death the following November, Mrs. Tenney and her daughter Sara agreed to sell two more parcels of land—368 acres and 213 acres, including the holdings in the upper part of Treadwell Hollow—to the state for additions to the state park. About the same time, Sanborn Tenney reportedly made an informal agreement to sell Peace Valley Farm (which belonged to his mother’s estate) A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 65 to a Berlin Road neighbor, Harry Haskins, but his sister Sara, who was executrix, revoked the arrangement, since she had already entered into discussions to sell the farm to Prentice Bloedel, a wealthy young man from Washington State whose parents lived in South Williamstown. However, negotiations to sell the farm were apparently suspended. Two years later, when Sanborn died, his ashes were scattered in his beloved “Tenney’s Woods,” and in 1973 Sara concluded the deal, preserving a piece with frontage on Treadwell Hollow Road for herself and selling the remainder, including the farm, to Bloedel. Bloedel, who was trained at Harvard and Stanford as a zoologist and had an interest in preserving wildlife habitat, closed off access to Treadwell Hollow Road in order to keep motorcyclists from driving up the hollow. He also wanted to create four building lots on the old farm fields but found that the land would not “perc.” He then made plans to raise cattle, in the summer of 1973 arranging with Bill Price, who had just graduated from Williams, to put up barbed-wire fencing for him in exchange for living rent free in the farmhouse. Also living in the house during the academic year of 1973–74 were six of Price’s friends, all members of a Williams rock band called Cat’s Cradle. In 1974 Bloedel hired Bill Stinson, a new graduate of the University of New Hampshire who had grown up in Williamstown and had a background in 4-H, to serve as caretaker of the farm. With long hair and a beard, Stinson in those days would have been called (and would have called himself) a hippie, and had ideas about “going back to the land.” As part of the arrangement, Stinson and his future wife, Susan, camped out in the farmhouse, which by then was in need of substantial repair. Bloedel worked with Stinson on several ways of improving the soil, including a portable pig- pen that could be moved from one piece of ground to another, so that pigs (by rooting, eating, and excreting) could in effect cultivate the land piece by piece. Three years later, Bloedel, after a divorce and a decision to return to the Pacific Northwest, sold the farm to Stinson, who undertook repairs to the farmhouse. An adjacent 36-acre parcel along Treadwell Hollow Road was sold in 1976 to Charles Sheppard, a local internist, who in 1980 built a house on the property and lived there with his wife and family. After she died, he remarried and moved away, making plans to subdivide the property. But when those plans failed, in 1986 Sheppard sold the house and 36 acres to Christopher and Dana 66 Chapter 3

Reeve, whose children still own it today. When Sara Tenney Osborne died in 1998, she left 178 acres to her two nieces. In 2016 they gave it to the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation. Of the original Tenney landholdings in Treadwell Hollow, only 29 acres remain in the family.

Treadwell Hollow and the Berlin Road Today Treadwell Hollow today is being rapidly reclaimed by the forest. For some years after the Tenneys departed, their old house was used as a camp by hunters in the fall. Gradually, some of the house—the front porch, the outdoor deck that the Tenneys called the “piazza”—rotted away. Locals made their way up the hollow on horseback. Sometimes they drove in by pickup truck and helped themselves to chestnuts, daf- fodil bulbs, and building stone from crumbling stone walls and cellar holes. Young teenagers not old enough to have a driver’s license drove their old “beaters” up and down the woods roads. About 1960 one of the young Rice boys drove his 1947 Studebaker up the hollow, and when the transmission seized up and the car could not be towed, he abandoned it, first salvaging what he could: he removed the battery, but because the ground was too soft he couldn’t jack the car up, so he rolled it over and took the tires away. You can still see the shell of the car, turned over beside the side road going up to the old Leet farm. The Tenney Camp remained pretty much intact until the mid-1970s, but in the late ’70s and early ’80s vandalism resumed and the house was badly damaged. By the late ’90s the house had been picked clean, and once the roof let the rain in, the building slowly fell into ruins. Little is to be seen now except the remains of a piano and sewing machine and the names of local kids scratched on the old plaster walls. The state has adopted a policy of benign neglect: it has chosen not to develop the Taconic Trail State Park or even to draw attention to it—there is no “state park” sign to be seen along the Taconic Trail. A single modest sign posted along Route 2 by Williamstown’s Conservation Commission marks the trailhead to the “Sara Tenney Trail,” which descends a half mile into Treadwell Hollow and then follows the old Treadwell Hollow Road up to Petersburg Pass. In the early 1990s mountain bikers from Williams tested their mettle on the bike-breaking rocky road they called the “Kryptonite Trail” or “Superman Trail,” after Christopher Reeve. A Short History of Treadwell Hollow 67

Deer hunters still make their way into Treadwell Hollow in the fall. Few hikers seem to use or even know about the Sara Tenney Trail today, but it appeared in the 2008 revision of the Williams Outing Club’s North Berkshire Outdoor Guide. An old woods road extending from Berlin Road over to Treadwell Hollow Road has been cleared by the landowner, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, and appears on hikers’ maps as the “Turnpike Trail,” in memory of the old “Eastern Turnpike.” Other trails in Treadwell Hollow—the old road past the Leet farm and several 1960s skid roads on the sides of Leete Hill—have been kept open by fairly benign all-terrain- vehicle use and await rediscovery by hikers. Bill Stinson also owns a forty-five- acre tract of woodland in the lower part of Treadwell Hollow, where he used to tap maple trees and draw water. His fifteen-acre farm, which he acquired in 1976, has over the years become a thriving business, supplying tomatoes and vegetables to local restaurants and to Williams College. (After years during which local dairy farms closed, one after the other, his is the only farm in the Treadwell Hollow area to survive, perhaps because of its location at the bottom of the hollow and because he has specialized in vegetables— keeping cows only to provide manure.) He probably knows the land in Treadwell Hollow better than anybody and can point out the remaining cellar holes and apple trees. Along Berlin Road descendants of one of the old families are still in residence. Three houses are owned by granddaughters of Henry Rosenburg, who lived on Berlin Road into the 1920s and early ’30s. His property was apparently inherited by his son Floyd Rosenburg (1905–96), who first bought or inherited land on Berlin Road in the 1930s, kept a large garden, logged the woods with a team of oxen, and over time gave small plots of land along the road to his four children, selling off the remainder of his holdings. Most of the land on Berlin Road is now conserved by one nonprofit organization or another: the town of Williamstown, Williams College, the Berkshire Natural Resources Council, and Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation. The town acquired woodlands on the south side of Berlin Road in 1926 from J. W. Bullock, who had bought up several parcels and left the land in trust for the benefit of the public. Some of that land, high on Berlin Mountain, was logged in 1995–97. The college first acquired property on Berlin Road in 1960, when it decided to build a ski hill on the slopes of Berlin Mountain, leasing forty-one acres from the town and 68 Chapter 3 buying another parcel from Harry Haskins. It hired a logger/contractor to clear-cut and develop the hill (with access roads and a culvert for Haley Brook) and ran it as a ski operation for the Williams ski team and the site of the college’s Winter Carnival in the early 1960s. But snow was unreliable in the ’70s, and in those years the ski area at Berlin Mountain operated only intermittently. In 1979–80 came a virtually snowless winter, and in 1981 the college finally closed it down and moved the lift to Brodie Mountain. In 1990 it let its thirty-year lease on the ski hill expire. In 1972 the college acquired Alexander Walker’s old Beechdale Farm on the Berlin Pass Road as a gift from three alumni, who had bought it two years earlier from Harry Haskins, and later acquired another parcel from the same donors. That parcel was sold in 1997, in accordance with the terms of the gift, to a logging company that harvested the timber and sold the land, part of which was bought by the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation; the larger part ended up in the hands of the Berkshire Natural Resources Council. The college still owns a large parcel of land, extending from Berlin Road up to Berlin Pass, including eighty-six acres in Williamstown and more in New York State. Over the past thirty years, students from the Center for Environmental Studies have explored the feasibility of a wind farm on Berlin Pass. A student project in 2001 led to a proposal by the college to erect a wind-monitoring tower, but after exploring the idea and meeting opposition from the Berlin (New York) Planning Board, the college dropped the project. The open land along the western half of Berlin Road is now designed for use by hikers on the two trails maintained by the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation. The old turnpike road up to Berlin Pass, now badly washed out, still serves as a hiking trail up to the Taconic crest. Other unauthorized use—for target practice and by all-terrain vehicles—has led to serious littering and some degradation of the old ski area parking lot and the trails on the Taconic crest, but recent efforts to drain off the standing water and enforce regulations banning motor vehicles seem to be having some effect. The Berkshire Natural Resources Council is working on plans to develop hiking, biking, and cross-country skiing trails from the Taconic crest down to Berlin Road. There are even some signs that the several nonprofits that own land in the area might one day develop a plan for coordinated management of the open space. CHAPTER 4  A SHORT HISTORY OF FLORA’S GLEN

Flora’s Glen is a narrow, steep-sided valley separating Birch Hill (1,621 feet) from Bee Hill (1,428 feet), carved out by and drained by Flora’s Glen Brook, a small stream with several even smaller unnamed tributaries. It rises from four tiny feeder streams in the meadows of the Taconic Trail State Park, runs down through the glen, crosses Bee Hill Road, and empties into Hemlock Brook. Quite close to the center of town, land in the middle of Flora’s Glen was laid out in two sixty-acre lots in the Eighth Division of Williamstown in 1771. They changed hands over the years, and were subdivided, but have remained fairly large. From the earliest days of Williamstown, Flora’s Glen was readily accessible via an old road that extended south from West Main Street to meet Bee Hill Road (part of the old Albany Turnpike), which crossed Flora’s Glen Brook at about the point of the present bridge before heading up the shoulder of Bee Hill and down into Treadwell Hollow. Like Treadwell Hollow, Flora’s Glen is a secluded valley, infrequently visited today, but it is different in several important respects: it is close to town rather than remote, it was not the site for farmhouses and was probably never even cultivated, and it is considerably more picturesque. The broad outline of its history is quite different, not a story of early

69 70 Chapter 4 settlement and later reforestation but a wooded valley that has over 250 years served a variety of human needs. The first matter to be addressed is its name. It’s called “Flora Glen” on some maps published about 1900. But in late-nineteenth- century books it was routinely called “Flora’s Glen.” You can still find and hear both versions: Flora’s and Flora. (When a private road off Bee Hill Road was laid out in 2003, it was called “Flora Glen Road.”) But it has not always been called a “glen.” Initially, it was thought of as a hollow and usually called “the gully.”

Gully For most of the time since the late eighteenth century, there was a farm at the top of Flora’s Glen and a farm at the bottom. What we now know as Flora’s Glen was until about 1860 simply the steep-sided wooded gully between the two farms, wasteland that could not be put to agricultural use. Elevation of the brook at the bottom of the glen—at the site of the former pond—is about eight hundred feet, and over a little more than a mile it rises to about thirteen hundred feet at the beginning of the state park meadows. The south bank of the glen climbs three hundred feet, the north bank five hundred feet. The south slope of the eastern part of the valley is so steep and narrow that it was probably never cleared—it’s too steep for sheep and even for goats. The lower mile or so is sometimes now called “Flora’s Glen gorge.” Until the 1950s there was a farm in the saddle at the upper end of the glen (where the brook rises). And as early as about 1800, the land on Bee Hill, some six to eight hundred acres on the south side of the glen, was cleared and cultivated by the Hickox family. The 1843 Coffin map and 1858 Walling map also show a farmhouse at the lower end of the glen. For several decades in the nineteenth century that house and farm belonged to the Hosford family. In the mid-nineteenth century Stephen Hosford had a mill just below the pond, where he ground surplus corn and potatoes into starch. (The mill was later converted to a twine factory and then a sawmill and later fell vacant. It was still standing in 1889, but had burned by 1895.) The farmhouse at the bottom of the glen survived into the twentieth century. In the 1860s and 1870s it was owned by Calvin R. Taft, president A Short History of Flora’s Glen 71 of the Williamstown Aquaduct [sic] Company and longtime town post- master, who was married to the oldest daughter of Stephen Hosford. Taft sold the farmhouse to Alexander Shand in 1875. The house appears on the 1876 Beers atlas and the 1889 Walker map. It is illustrated in Picturesque Berkshire (1893). In the early years of the twentieth century, it was the residence of Herbert Bradley. The house was fondly remembered in a poem written about 1912 by Bradley’s son Ernest titled “The Farm at the Mouth of the Glen.” (A copy of the poem survives in the Williamstown Historical Museum.) The farmhouse is also mentioned in a pamphlet titled Short Walks in the Vicinity of Williamstown, published during the 1920s. The land in between the upper and lower ends of the glen was originally part of the adjacent farms fronting on Bee Hill Road and Petersburg Road but was not farmed. The north slope, where the sun- light encourages the growth of oak and other hardwoods, was probably used as woodlots. At first there was small-scale woodcutting, and perhaps some woodlot grazing, but probably very little until the middle of the nineteenth century, as suggested by an observer in 1867 who thought a woodpile in the glen unusual enough to be mentioned. An old photo from about 1890 shows that at that time the top of Birch Hill was clear-cut. Aerial photos from 1935 and 1940 show that two less steep areas—one on the Hunter property and the other south of Birch Hill—had been cleared and were perhaps being used as pasture, one apparently part of the farm at the bottom of the glen, the other part of the farm at the upper end. On the darker and steeper south slope is an extensive hemlock stand. Some of the hemlocks (of little commercial value, except for the tannin in the bark, to supply local tanneries) may have been standing there since before Williamstown was first surveyed in the middle of the eighteenth century. It’s unlikely that there was ever any grazing on the south slope: as hikers will notice, nothing much grows on the forest floor in a dense hemlock stand. The western part of the valley is much less steep and could have been cleared for pasture. Not many signs of human shaping have survived: there are old cart roads up the north side—one branch goes north to Petersburg Road, and the main branch goes west. Old farm roads came down both sides of the brook from the upper end. You can see the remains of an old “page wire” fence (typically designed for sheep) across the glen, marking the boundary of the old Earl George farm. The 1876 Beers map shows 72 Chapter 4 one building, unlabeled, on the south side of the glen, but it is not on the 1904 map so was presumably gone by then. There is some evidence on the ground of an old utility easement, now grown over, crossing the eastern end of the glen. Lyman Burdick (1845–1930), who grew up on Cold Spring Road in the 1850s, confirmed that the glen was at one time—probably in his youth—generally called “the gully.” An 1875 deed refers to the boundary of one lot as marked by “the Gulley-Brook,” suggesting the glen was still at that time called the gully by local property owners. Burdick also reported that his grandmother told him the Boston-to-Albany mail used to be carried by horseback up the gully—this would have been well before 1845. He himself remembered “a good wagon road the whole length of the Gully with heavy log bridges wherever one was needed,” and seventy years earlier (ca. 1856) there remained, at the upper end of the gully, almost directly north of the John Prindle farm, the “skeleton” of a large bridge, consisting of huge hewed chestnut timbers twelve to fourteen inches wide and fifty feet or more long. The earliest inhabitant of the gully was probably Thomas Melody (1745–1834), who arrived in Williamstown about 1796, apparently via Richmond, in southern Berkshire County, where he sold land in April 1796. Reportedly a Scotchman, he began buying land in Williamstown in 1797, mostly along the Hoosic River. He appears to have been a towns- man rather than a farmer: on early deeds he is described as a “hair dresser.” Having sold his land in town, in 1805 he bought three parcels, totaling about eighty acres, in what would later be called Flora’s Glen and on the shoulders of Bee Hill. One of the lots, half of the original sixty-acre lot 34 on the “Proprietors’ Map,” extended down to “the brook.” Over time the gully became known as “Malady Hollow,” apparently reflecting an alternate spelling and the local pronunciation of Melody’s name. In later deeds Melody is described as a “yeoman”—so maybe he gave up his hairdressing shop. He was apparently prosperous enough to pledge $29.50 to support Williams College in 1823, when it faced a serious economic crisis, but he seems to have had his own economic problems: he sold his land and in 1831, at the age of eighty-six, emigrated with his wife and his son James to Michigan—precisely when many farmers in Williamstown were heading west for better land—and died in Novi, Michigan, in 1834. A Short History of Flora’s Glen 73

Less than ten years later, a free black man named Prince Jackson and his wife, Electa, lived as tenants in a house on a hillside at the upper end of the glen. Jackson was born in Brunswick, New York, a little northeast of Troy, in 1800. He seems to have arrived in Williamstown about 1838–39. He appears as a Williamstown resident on the 1840 U.S. Census, where he is listed among the “Free Colored Persons.” But according to Lyman Burdick, when Jackson first arrived in town, he was a runaway slave. Perhaps Jackson knew some of the blacks living along Broad Brook who had come to town before 1827 as fugitive slaves from the Albany and Saratoga areas. Burdick says his grandfather persuaded Jackson to go back to New York on his own, where he was subsequently freed and then returned to Williamstown legally. Jackson was hired as a farm laborer by Keyes Danforth Sr., longtime chair of the town’s board of selectmen, who owned a farm and house at the end of West Main Street. As Danforth’s son reported many years later, Jackson was given his own house to live in “on the sunny side” of Flora’s Glen—that is, the north side—where he grew for himself a little corn, potatoes, and vegetables and kept a pig. Burdick confirms that the house was “at or near the end of the gulley . . . near the bridge . . . at the upper end of the gulley.” The reminiscing Danforth portrayed Jackson’s life as idyllic: he drank “the purest spring water” and New England rum (at twenty-five cents per gallon) “flavored with lemon peel.” He and his wife lived “to the good old age of over eighty years”: “They used to have darkey dances and enjoyed life to its fullest extent. To listen to the old darkey’s laugh was a joy forever.” Darky dances was a not uncommon phrase in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Jackson’s black guests—in 1895, darky was thought to be a relatively benign term—may have come from as far away as Broad Brook, but there were other free blacks living as close as Belden Street in what was then known as “Charityville.” Jackson remained in and around Flora’s Glen for more than forty years but never improved his circumstances. On the 1850 U.S. Census he is listed as a farmer. On the 1855 state Census he is a “laborer,” on the 1860 U.S. Census a “Day Laborer”—that is, a short-term hired man. In the 1880 U.S. Census, when Jackson was eighty, he was still listed as a “Laborer.” So much for the idyllic life. In his later years, Jackson worked for the Burdick family on Cold Spring Road. They built a house for 74 Chapter 4 him on the west side of Cold Spring Road, just south of the icehouse. He died at the town almshouse in 1888. There was apparently one other early inhabitant of Flora’s Glen. Danforth in his Boyhood Reminiscences refers to an evidently well- known “Hermit of Flora’s Glen” who by the time of writing (1895) had moved to “an old one-story dwelling on the Meacham farm” on South Street. No other record of this hermit has been found, though it would not have been unheard of for a man to live in a shack in the woods.

Glen Flora’s Glen is not mentioned by early travelers—not by Timothy Dwight, who traveled through Berkshire County in the 1820s; not by Hawthorne, in his six-week visit to North Adams in 1838; and not by Thoreau, in the account of his 1844 visit to Williamstown. It did not occur to many people to think of mountains and woods as “picturesque” and “scenic” until they were taught to do so by writers who began in the 1830s to suggest that America had scenery just as beautiful as that of Europe. The name “Flora’s Glen” does not appear on the 1858 Walling map. It was not until the 1860s that Flora’s Glen was thought of as a picturesque secluded valley, probably first by Williams students and faculty and then by travelers. One reason local attention would have been focused on Flora’s Glen is that there were far fewer trees than at present on the hillsides surrounding Williamstown, which had been cleared for grazing and even cultivating. So a fully wooded glen, especially so close to the town center, would have been especially noticeable and attractive. The first recorded visit to Flora’s Glen was made by members of the Williamstown Alpine Club, who made an excursion to both Flora’s Glen and Ford’s Glen in 1863–65. There may have been a few earlier student visitors. Flora’s Glen, described as “a wild ravine,” was reportedly one of the “favorite haunts” of David Scudder, Williams College Class of 1855. It was probably about that time that Flora’s Glen was given its name, very possibly by Albert Hopkins, founder and “chronicler” of the Alpine Club. He was fond of the word glen and of assigning fanciful names to A Short History of Flora’s Glen 75 local topographical features. In a series of newspaper articles (1867–71) about the scenery of North Berkshire, Hopkins writes about “Laurel Glen” and “the Glen” (on Greylock). He was also very interested in wildflowers and perhaps named Flora’s Glen after the abundant flora he saw there or possibly as the haunt of Flora, Roman goddess of flowers. Or maybe it was an analogy with Ford’s Glen, another narrow gorge just off Northwest Hill Road. Or perhaps it was because gorges elsewhere in Berkshire County at the time were called “glens”—a book from 1852 refers to “Undine’s Glen” (Mount Washington), “Tories’ Glen” (Lenox), and “Wizard’s Glen” (Pittsfield). Hopkins could have found the name in Sir Walter Scott. In chapter 22 of Scott’s famous novel Waverley (1814)—Scott was one of the most popular of novelists in nineteenth-century America—Flora Mac-Ivor conducts the hero into a wild “narrow glen” to view her favorite Highlands scenery. There they walk on a small path along a little brook, with overhanging rocks, a waterfall, little pools, and mossy banks of turf. (Perhaps Hopkins thought a Scottish-sounding name suitable for a glen where a Scotsman once lived.) And it is also about this time—the 1860s—that Flora’s Glen was first associated with the most famous poet to attend Williams College, William Cullen Bryant, who spent a year at the college in 1810–11. Bryant went on to become the author of one of the most famous poems in nineteenth-century America, “Thanatopsis” (a made-up Greek word for “vision of death”), first published in 1817. Bryant got an honorary degree from Harvard in 1819, but Williams came late to recognition of its famous alumnus. In 1863, on the fiftieth reunion of his Williams class, Bryant was invited to deliver a poem at the commencement—in those days reunion took place at the same time. He agreed to compose a poem but declined to attend, concerned for his health, so an oratorically gifted classmate, Charles Sedgwick, recited the poem, titled “Fifty Years.” Bryant was restored to the rolls of the class of 1813 and formally made an alumnus. The story linking Bryant with Flora’s Glen began about this time. In 1866 a long poem titled “Bryant” appeared in the Williams Quarterly. Although it does not mention Flora’s Glen, it imagines Bryant while yet a student at Williams, pondering his poems: 76 Chapter 4

In whispering groves, or vallies bosomed deep ’Mong climbing hilltops, where woodfairies sleep, Where green-fringed streamlets long have made their bed ’Neath the green canopy of leaves o’erhead.

By the mid-1860s it began to be reported that Bryant had written “Thanatopsis” in Flora’s Glen. In 1867 the editor of the Williams Quarterly reported on a visit to Flora’s Glen by moonlight: “We entered its mountainous aisle. . . . We rested against the rock upon which tradition says Thantopsis [sic] was inspired.” But alas, the visitor finds that it now “bolsters up a profane woodpile” and laments the “desecration” of the scene. Even so, he concludes, “the genius of the place must be essentially changed since it inspired Bryant.” It’s a plausible story. Bryant did write such poems. The glen was perhaps a fifteen-minute walk from West College, where he lived in 1810–11. But Bryant himself reported in 1870 that he wrote the poem in Cummington, his hometown, a few months after he left Williamstown. This did not keep people in Williamstown from repeating the story. Just after Bryant’s death in 1878, a memorial writer noted, “Local tradition represents him as actually sitting on a rock in a lovely ravine known as Flora’s Glen, on the outskirts of Williamstown. There is reason to suspect that much of this story is apocryphal, and the fact that the rock is still pointed out to visitors by way of proof weighs but little in the balance of belief.” Guidebooks to the Berkshires commonly continued to repeat the story—sometimes labeled a “local tradition”—that Bryant composed his poem in the glen. It is found in at least nine such guides published between 1884 and 1922. The story about Bryant can still be heard today in one or another of its versions—he got the inspiration for his poem in Flora’s Glen or wrote the first draft there. Ralph Waldo Emerson may have been one of the first tourists to see the glen, conducted there by one of his student hosts, Charles Woodbury, on the second of his two visits to Williamstown in 1865, when he delivered a series of lectures. Reporting on the excursion thirty- five years later, Woodbury wrote that they once together walked to “Bryant’s Glen,” a ravine with a “dark and tangled fragment of forest.” “In the immediate nook where he wrote his poem the scattered trees are of shrunken shaft, like a life which ends without accomplishment.” A Short History of Flora’s Glen 77

Emerson doesn’t mention Bryant but does mention one of Bryant’s poetic masters, Wordsworth. Looking up at Mount Greylock, Emerson reportedly said, “I should think this would be just the place to read The Excursion” (a famous poem by Wordsworth). By the 1870s Williams students were only too familiar with Flora’s Glen. During the night of June 9, 1877, the chairs in Professor Arthur Latham Perry’s lecture room were mysteriously “removed to Flora’s Glen.” By the 1880s the fame of Flora’s Glen had spread beyond Williamstown, and it became one of the standard sights recommended to tourists by locals, national magazines, and New England tourist guides over the next fifty years as a “wild and beautiful spot” and “sequestered glen.” Sometimes the tourist guide was illustrated with a drawing or a photograph. It also appears in books designed for the literary tourist. Because of its seclusion, Flora’s Glen also attracted the reputation as a place for romantic encounters. As an 1890 guide published by the Fitchburg Railroad puts it, “The shade is dense, and the opportunities for gallantry, if there are ladies present in the party, are numerous enough.” Flora’s Glen appears in tourist guides as late as 1927. In 1891 the farm at the mouth of the glen, and much of the land in the glen itself, was bought by Colonel Anthony D. Bullock (1824– 90), a Cincinnati financier who began buying land in 1876 and spent the summers in Williamstown. He and later his son James W. Bullock would own most of the land in the area, from Glen Road south past the present ’96 House and from Stone Hill Road north into Flora’s Glen. As early as 1894 Bullock renamed the farm Glen Farm.

Pond At the bottom of Flora’s Glen, the brook passes through a level stretch, where it creates a delta, dropping much of the sediment carried down the gorge, before falling again through a second short gorge down to Cold Spring Road. There was long a pond upstream of the second gorge, just above Bee Hill Road, where Flora’s Glen Brook was dammed. Over the years the pond was known by many names: Flora’s Glen Pond, Glen Pond, Bullock Pond, Flora’s Glen Reservoir, Ice Pond, Bee Hill Pond, and Brooks Pond. When he acquired the farm at the bottom of the glen, Colonel Bullock 78 Chapter 4 saw bigger commercial possibilities in the pond that had formerly provided the power for the old mill that once stood there. Having recently bought the nearby Greylock Hotel and Taconic Inn, at the intersection of Main and North Streets, he saw in the pond a reservoir for drinking water in the summer and ice in the winter for his hotel businesses. In 1889 a local contractor constructed a forty-by-forty-foot icehouse for Colonel Bullock, extending from the shore into the pond, to save the labor of hauling ice blocks. But when Bullock died the following year and his son James inherited his land in Williamstown, the millpond was sold to the Williamstown Water Company; Colonel Bullock had founded the company, and his son James became the principal stock- holder. The younger Bullock’s plan was now to provide drinking water to the entire town. In 1895 the water company built a new dam—sixty- five feet wide, nineteen feet high at the outlet—to create what was now called Flora’s Glen Reservoir, with a capacity of ten million gallons. Water was first used in the summer of 1896, but the quality was “below its average goodness,” giving “a disagreeable taste.” The state board of health found in June a “distinctly earthy odor on heating” and “milky” turbidity and in August a “decidedly disagreeable” odor. Use was discontinued after public complaints about the water quality. In November the state board of health wrote to the Williamstown Water Company, asking that the house within sixty feet of the reservoir— apparently the old farmhouse—be removed, as a “menace to the purity of the water.” There were continuing problems: an 1898 inspection showed that in June, the water was “faintly musty,” in August “distinctly musty and fishy on heating,” and in October “faintly unpleasant.” In the winter there was a commercial ice-harvesting operation on the pond. In January 1897 Frank H. Daniels, who ran a large ice business in town, was cutting ice thirteen inches thick and “as clear as glass” from the “new town reservoir” in Flora’s Glen, “where he has an ice house with a capacity of 1500 tons.” The Transcript carried regular stories about Daniels’s business. Harvesting ice was dangerous work. In March 1897 one local farmer and his hired man, Stephen (Dummy) Maynard, were cutting ice on the Flora’s Glen reservoir when the restless team of horses, misinterpret- ing a tightness in the reins (tied to the sleigh), backed up and slid in and knocked Maynard into the water. The horses drowned; Maynard was in A Short History of Flora’s Glen 79 the water for several minutes before they pulled him out, unconscious and feared dead. They were able to bring him back—stories say that whiskey helped—and took him off to a nearby doctor. In January 1898 Daniels had a good harvest, filling his icehouse with ice “of excellent quality.” In December 1898 another horse went through ice on the pond while Frank Daniels’s brother-in- law was sweeping snow off. The horse was in icy water up to his head for a half hour but finally rescued. In the 1930s, so Rita Hoar reported, Old Riley (her father’s former circus horse) was clearing snow off the pond as a crew began cutting with an ice saw when the ice cracked; the horse fell in but was rescued. Ice harvesting was not reliable: in some years the ponds apparently did not freeze hard enough. In October 1898, when the weather was unusually warm, consumption of ice was high, and there was fear of an “ice famine,” so Daniels had to arrange to get his ice that year from Adams and Fitchburg. In 1902 Daniels built a bigger icehouse one hundred feet downhill from the old one, on the site of the present brick sewer building on Cold Spring Road, with an eight-thousand- ton capacity, enough for two years of ice. A metal-lined wooden chute carried the ice downhill from the pond to the icehouse. By 1942 the pond was no longer being used as a source of drinking water or for ice. In March of that year land around the pond and reservoir was given by the water company to the town of Williamstown, and in June, as part of a wartime scrap-metal drive, a crew of men with a horse pulled several tons of iron pipe from Flora’s Glen Brook (below the dam), part of an old water main from “the former reservoir.” The old icehouse was “abandoned,” but the ice chute was still in evidence as late as the mid-1960s. The last man to cut ice from the pond was probably Joe Zoito, who owned the Williamstown Ice Company from 1949 to 1954. He bought most of his ice from a supplier in Adams and delivered it to residential customers, restaurants, and the college. In the winter of 1950– 51 he also cut ice from the Flora’s Glen pond and slid it down the ice chute to the old icehouse on Cold Spring Road, but by then the icehouse roof had rotted away, and he found that he couldn’t keep the three-hundred- pound ice blocks from melting together into a solid mass. The pond from its earliest days was also used by local kids as a place to swim. In 1912, in the middle of a July heat wave, Charles Porter, an 80 Chapter 4 eleven-year- old black child who lived on nearby Belden Street, died after slipping off a raft in the pond—he didn’t know how to swim. Water was then fifteen to eighteen feet deep. Neighbors were unable to find the body—young Ernest Bradley, who lived in the farm at the mouth of the glen saw it all, but was too young and could not help— and finally called in a professional diver, who found the body three days later, wedged in the outlet pipe. In the aftermath, the pipe linking the pond to the town water supply was cut off, partly because of suspected pollution from an old privy on the banks of the brook and partly because of fears about contamination from the dead body. In the late 1930s the pond in Flora’s Glen was the site of “famous beer picnics” for Williams students and faculty. A photo of one such picnic in June 1937 shows, among others, the young Lane Faison and the popular philosophy professor John William Miller. Local kids continued to swim in the pond from the 1940s into the ’70s: the water was still more than six feet deep in the mid-1960s and very cold. There were both a wooden dock and a rowboat. From the late 1940s into the ’80s the pond was maintained by Robert R. R. (Bob) Brooks, who lived on Bee Hill Road and whose lawn sloped down to the pond. “Triple R” Brooks (1906–92), a labor economist and professor of economics and dean at Williams (1937–71), built the house with help from his wife and three children as well as college students from 1947 to 1953. Even though he didn’t actually own it—it belonged to the town—Brooks drained the pond once a year to clean out the silt. In the 1950s the pond was also used for skating in winter. Brooks arranged to have speakers installed to play music outside for the skaters. In 1968, while Brooks was on leave in India, town officials became worried about the structural integrity of the dam and determined to lower the water level. They failed to locate the outlet pipe, so they pumped water out to lower the level and dismantled the top of the spillway, planning to install a new outlet pipe at the base of the spillway. In the summer of 1968, when he returned, Brooks (apparently without the town’s knowledge) did repairs to the dam, building it back up to its former height. In 1992 (the year Brooks died) the pond was still four to five feet deep. But silting continued, hastened by rain-induced landslides in the gorge. A major rainstorm in the early ’90s damaged the dam and threatened A Short History of Flora’s Glen 81 the foundations of the bridge on Bee Hill Road. The road had to be closed and a temporary metal bridge built. In 1997 the present wooden bridge over Flora’s Glen Brook at Bee Hill Road was completed. At this time, the pond was mostly drained by lowering the spillway. Part of that dam remains today, but the pond is now largely silted in.

Trail There had long been old woods roads on both sides of Flora’s Glen Brook, on the south side (close to the brook) extending down from the Earl George farm and on the north side (farther up the slope, where the land is not so steep) from the farm at the top to the farm at the bottom. These roads may have occasionally been used for logging. In the 1920s there was a walking trail in Flora’s Glen—described in the 1927 Williams Outing Club guide as not suitable for horseback riding or for skiing, but commended for its “magnificent winter setting.” A map shows a loop trail, with one trail up the right-hand bank and another up the left-hand bank. The 1937 Federal Writers’ Project book on Massachusetts shows a trail leading into Flora’s Glen. Rita Hoar remembered riding up the north side of the glen as a teenager about 1940, seeing native wildflowers (arbutus, bloodroot, jack-in- the- pulpit) from her father Henry George’s farm up through her uncle Earl George’s farm to the Taconic Crest Trail. In the early 1950s, while doing research on old roads for the town’s bicentennial history, Brooks got the idea for a ski trail through Flora’s Glen. He figured that he could with a little brush cutting, grading, and bridge building connect an old logging road in Flora’s Glen with an old farm road leading to the west end of Petersburg Road to make a trail that would enable you to ski all the way down from Petersburg Pass to his house on Bee Hill Road. The first version of his trail, laid out in 1953, went over Birch Hill and then down the east side of the hill, along the north slope of Flora’s Glen, ending at the pastures of Henry George’s dairy farm on Glen Street. Brooks wanted to call it the “Petersburg Mountain–Glen Trail,” but locals quickly called it the “Triple-R Trail.” In 1955 Brooks relocated the lower portion of the trail so that it ran down the south side of the glen and through Flora’s Glen gorge. Brooks 82 Chapter 4 built one hundred wide steps for “the climb out of the gorge” and built a wooden bridge across a ravine to allow skiers to cross. The trail was well known to local skiers, who would cut hemlock boughs in the fall, before the snow fell, to fill low areas and level the trail. In its earlier years the trail also attracted wider attention: stories about it appeared in the Transcript and the New York Times. A few people still ski it today. Another group to use the trail was the Boy Scouts. Paul Lepesqueur remembers camping at a Boy Scout shelter (seven-tenths of a mile up the trail, at the intersection with the Fitch Trail) in the 1950s with Troop 70 in tents. Boy Scout Troop 134 used the area in the summer of 1969 and the winter of 1969–70, perhaps the last Scout group to do so. All that remains now are a pile of corrugated tin from an old roof and two piles of wooden posts.

Flora’s Glen Today The town owns the two acres immediately surrounding the old pond. The land at the bottom of the glen is in private hands. Farther up the glen the land belongs to the Boy Scouts of Williamstown (31 acres), the state, and the town, which in 1978 acquired 176 acres of old woods and pastures (with frontage on Petersburg Road) from the Hunter family. Marked by crumbling stone walls, old deer stands, and old logging roads, that land is now held as recreational open space. Conservation restrictions first put on the land in 1976 allow hiking, cross-country skiing, riding, camping, and logging but not hunting or motorized vehicles. One ruggedly beautiful stretch of Flora’s Glen—from Bee Hill Road down to Cold Spring Road—is hardly ever seen. The brook, passing through private property on both sides, drops steeply—some fifty feet—over a series of rock ledges. Over the years the route of the RRR Brooks Trail has been altered. In the late 1990s a house was built on the site of the original RRR Brooks trailhead on Bee Hill Road. The trail was relocated to skirt the silted- in pond, cross the brook delta, cross back again, and climb the hillside via stone steps up to rejoin the original route. The Williams Outing Club, in two stages, put in high-water steps to enable hikers to get uphill and around a washout and a sturdier bridge in 2008 to replace Brooks’s sapling bridge, which had been washed out. The new bridge A Short History of Flora’s Glen 83 was later washed out, too. (Sections of the old bridge beams can still be seen on the hillside.) Farther upstream, lumber has been stashed beside a tributary for a future bridge. After a spectacular subsidence from the north slope of the gorge during the summer of 2009, much additional sediment washed down to the widening delta. Flora’s Glen is now mostly used by hikers and a few skiers. In 1996 a trail leading south from Petersburg Road, over a new bridge, built by local Boy Scouts, was cut and blazed, uphill and then down into Flora’s Glen, but this trail was little used and the blazes removed. The bridge was washed out by Hurricane Irene. In 1998 the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation put in the Fitch Trail, which begins on Bee Hill Road, goes up over Bee Hill, and then heads down into Flora’s Glen to link to the Brooks Trail. In 2003 Lauren Stevens and a small crew put in a new bridge on a proposed ski trail on the north side of the glen. More recently, a ski trail higher up the north side of the glen, following much of the original 1953 Brooks trail, was reopened. It was named the “Sara Tenney Trail”—a bit of a misnomer, since neither she nor the Tenney family, who owned the farm at the top of the glen, had anything to do with the land in the glen proper. CHAPTER 5  A VERY SHORT HISTORY OF MCM A STER’ S CAV E S

One of the most interesting but least known natural features in Williamstown is the cave system found just east of Oblong Road, between Sloan Road and Woodcock Road, on the land at Field Farm, now belonging to the Trustees of Reservations. There are in fact two separate caves—one of which has two entrances—once known collectively as “McMaster’s Cave,” later as “Phelps Cave,” and now “McMaster’s Caves.” You can see the cave entrances from the so-called Caves Trail at Field Farm, located on Sloan Road, just east of Oblong Road. A map of the trail system can be found at the trailhead, where parking is available. As you proceed in a clockwise direction from the “Oak Loop” onto the “Caves Trail” loop, you will soon find yourself walking in a northerly direction on an old woods road, on a sort of terrace, with the land to the left (west) sloping gently toward you and to your right rising in a dry ridge. A little farther on, the land to the right rises more sharply and the land to the left is marshy and wet—sometimes you will see water flowing parallel to the trail or flowing eastward toward the trail. And then the water disappears! It passes into three cave openings, but you won’t see them unless you climb down from the trail. The first two cave openings you come to are larger than the third. Curiously, water flows from the west and south

84 A Very Short History of McMaster’s Caves 85 into the first two cave entrances and from the west and north into the third. So the caves drain their own watershed. Just to the south of the cave entrances surface water flows south and east, in a stream eventually emptying into the west branch of the Green River. Just to the north of the caves, surface water flows north into Sweet Brook, eventually ending in Hemlock Brook and the Hoosic River. Geologists explain that the water apparently arises not from Sweet Brook, which descends from the Taconics to Oblong Road and crosses the road a little to the north of the caves, but from underground springs. It is these springs and seeps that give rise to the small streams that seasonally flow toward the calcareous (limestone) ridge and then pass beneath it, very slowly dissolving the stone as the water flows. The dissolving limestone is capped with somewhat less soluble ledges that overhang the cave outlets just to the west of the Caves Trail, prevent- ing the caves from completely collapsing. Geologists still do not know whether the water reemerges somewhere to the east and north of the dry ridge on the right, finding its way to Sweet Brook, or perhaps just collects in an underground aquifer, emerging as springs. It appears that some water resurges from small caves and springs to the north and east of the ridge. The caves have long been known to landowners. They got their first name from Robert and John McMaster, who in 1763 settled on farms along Sweet Brook, bounded by present-day Woodcock Road on the north and the Taconic crest on the west, where they also gave their name to McMaster Mountain and McMaster Hollow, which was later called Kidder Hollow or Kidder Pass, after the Kidder family, who bought their farms from the McMasters and lived there before and after the Civil War, and to the old McMaster School, one of the many one- room schoolhouses in the town, on Oblong Road. And the caves were also known to travelers, who could find McMaster’s Cave on maps to the area as early as the 1876 Beers map and the 1894 Miller map. It also appears in the 1887 guidebook Famous Berkshire Hills, published by the Berkshire Life Insurance Company. The ridge that rises steeply above the caves was called Phelps Knoll on the 1876 and 1894 maps and was notable for its sugar bush, recently reclaimed by a younger Phelps and decorated with sap-collecting tubing. On the 1947 U.S. Geological Survey topographical map, the name Phelps Knoll had migrated east to 86 Chapter 5 another piece of high ground, the round hill next to Route 7 between Sweetwood and Mount Greylock Regional High School. Tourists attracted to the Berkshires for their natural beauty could still find McMaster’s Cave fifty years later in the 1937 Guide to Massachusetts, produced by the Federal Writers’ Project. In those days you were directed to follow a footpath south from the intersection of Routes 7 and 2 (the old Taconic Park and present-day Margaret Lindley Pond) over Phelps Knoll to the cave entrances. Once there, one could, so the guidebook says, explore cave passages for some 250 feet underground. McMaster’s Caves are still mentioned—by their old name—in a guidebook as late as the 1997 Nature Walks in the Berkshire Hills by Charles W. G. Smith. But long before 1997, the McMaster farm was acquired by the Phelps family, which at one time owned most of the land between Woodcock Road and Sloan Road in South Williamstown. And over the years, the local name for the caves shifted to Phelps Cave. Before she died in early 2011, Phyllis Oleson of South Williamstown reported that her father, who used to work on the old Phelps farm, climbed into one of the caves, but that as a little girl in the 1930s she was afraid to. Pam Weatherbee, who grew up on Sloan Road, reports that her brother explored the cave in the late 1940s. In 1997 much of the Phelps farm was put under conservation restriction, and a forty-two- acre parcel containing the caves was sold to the Trustees of Reservations and attached to the Field Farm preserve. It was also placed under a conservation restriction held by the Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, which raised several hundred thousand dollars from the community to support the project. The caves are thus protected from development and are accessible to hikers, cross-country skiers, snowshoers, and spelunkers. A notice in the Field Farm parking lot invites visitors to “explore intriguing geological formations, from caves to limestone outcrops,” and marks their location on the Caves Trail. Local geologists and naturalists conduct Williams College and Mount Greylock High School students on geological field trips to— and into—the caves. In 2010 a large section of roof fell into the main cave. In the winter the cave entrances are blocked by ice and regularly flooded by as much as eight feet of standing water. Spelunkers (or cavers) have long known about the caves and have published maps of the cave passages, based on explorations in 1975 and A Very Short History of McMaster’s Caves 87

1983 by well-known local spelunker Alan Plante and others. The caves trend gently downward to about thirty feet below the surface. Cavers continue to visit and explore McMaster’s Caves. John Dunham, in Northeastern Caver magazine in March 2008, reported on a visit made in September 2007 and posted photos on the Web. He confirmed that the cave passages—some “crawls,” some “stoopways,” and some places where you can walk upright—extend for “a few hundred feet” and notes that despite mud and clay that had flowed in, the caves at that time had “a surprising amount of walking passages and features, including interestingly-carved marble and some active flowstone.” Some of the bedrock in the caves has been washed clean and elsewhere is mired in silt or sediment. Another report from Dunham on the caves appears in the fall 2010 NRO Guidebook, published for members of the Northeast Regional Organization, a cavers group. Although protected by conservation restriction, the caves recently came under threat of development. In the spring of 2011, AT&T announced that it wanted to erect a 190-foot cell-phone tower on the ridge under which the McMaster/Phelps Caves are located, just a few hundred feet east of the cave openings. Local environmentalists objected that since construction and stabilization of the tower would require the sinking of piers, it was not known what effect the excavation or required pile driving would have on the subsurface rock. In January 2012 the AT&T application to the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals was denied. This page intentionally left blank PART 2 THE TOWN and THE COLLEGE  This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 6  CAPTAIN AND CORPORAL Two Williamstown Soldiers in the 37th Massachusetts

This is the story of two men who fought together in the Civil War and of their lives in Williamstown before and after the war. One was born to an old colonial family, was raised in privilege, and graduated from Williams College. The other was an Irish immigrant, employed as a shoemaker. In the Civil War they served in the same regiment and the same unit—Company E, 37th Massachusetts. One was an officer who rose from captain to lieutenant colonel, the other a noncom who was busted from sergeant to the ranks. They were both commended for bravery at the Battle of Petersburg—one of them won the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military honor. Both returned safely, one to spend his life at his trade in Williamstown, dying by a violent accident in his late sixties, the other to spend a career in the law in Washington, D.C., returning every year to Williamstown, where he kept a summer home, dying in his bed at eighty-four. Both were deeply marked by their wartime experience. Both played leadership roles in veterans’ organizations. And both were what you might call eccentrics. Their careers illustrate both the links between and the distance between “town” and “gown” in Williamstown.

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Archibald Hopkins Archibald Hopkins was born on February 20, 1842, fifth child of Mark Hopkins, president of Williams College from 1836 to 1872. His older brother, Henry Hopkins, called Harry, would also later serve as president of Williams. His younger brother, Amos Lawrence Hopkins, called Laurie, became a railroad baron and at one time a close associate of Jay Gould. He went on to establish a gentleman’s farm in Williamstown on land that would become Hopkins Forest. During the Civil War, Harry, an ordained minister, served as a hospital chaplain, while Laurie enlisted in the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. The Hopkins brothers were great-grandsons of Colonel Mark Hopkins (1739–76), who had served in the 1st Massachusetts during the American Revolution and claimed to be related to Stephen Hopkins of the Mayflower—Archibald Hopkins was very proud of his ancestry, especially his military forebears. Archibald Hopkins’s father was not only the famous longtime president of Williams but also one of the most famous educators in the country and an adherent of Christianity as the basis of all true education. But his son did not follow closely in his father’s footsteps. Young Archibald was educated in Williamstown. Having developed an early interest in natural history, in the spring of 1857, at the age of fifteen, he was a member of the Williams College “Florida Expedition”—a field trip to gather specimens for the college collection—even before his matriculation at Williams in September 1858. He was an avid ornithologist and compiled reports of rare birds he had spotted. By the time he enrolled at Williams, he was already something of a poet and while an undergraduate reportedly wrote “several of [the] best college songs.” He was tall—five foot ten—with blue eyes. His nickname was Archie. He lived at home during his college years (in the president’s house) but was a member of Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall), as were his brothers and first cousin Edward. Years later, a friend noted the “liberality”—that is, the freedom—of the “intellectual atmosphere” at the Williams of his day. Hopkins’s intellectual development was apparently less influenced by his father than by some of his fellow students, among them Edward Morley, of the class of 1860, who went on to become a distinguished chemist and physicist, as well as his own classmates George Raymond, who would later write widely on literature, ethics, and aesthetics; Edward Herrick Griffin, who would Captain and Corporal 93 become dean of the faculty at Johns Hopkins University; and Franklin Carter, who later became a professor of Latin and German and president of Williams College. When the Civil War broke out in April 1861, Hopkins wanted to sign up. As he wrote to his father—who was then on a lecture tour—in late April, “The whole county is on fire with patriotism; large numbers of students, ministers, lawyers, and doctors are going to the war.” He asked for his father’s help in getting into the U.S. Navy as a midshipman, but his father seems to have encouraged him to complete his degree. Hopkins graduated from Williams in the class of 1862. War fever was still very strong, and the war had not gone well for the Union during the past year. On the day he graduated (August 8), he enlisted in the army. Thirty-six of the seventy-seven members of his class would serve in the Civil War, no doubt with various motives. It is difficult to estimate the reasons Hopkins decided to enlist. They may not have been purely idealistic. His college roommate and best friend, Samuel Chapman Armstrong, who would go on to lead black troops in the Civil War and become a proponent of education for black people, also enlisted upon graduation. In a jaunty letter of July 1862, he confessed to Hopkins that he had not “learned to love the Negro. . . . I go in . . . for freeing them more on account of their souls than their bodies,” and he urged Hopkins to sign up to “get $100 or so per month, see the country, wear soldier’s clothes, save the land from anarchy, rescue the Constitution, punish the rebels—long live the Republic!” Hopkins, who would exchange letters with Armstrong for the next thirty years, may have viewed the war in the same mixed ways. On August 27, at the age of twenty, Hopkins was commissioned captain, in charge of Company E, 37th Massachusetts Volunteers. After a few weeks at Camp Briggs in Pittsfield, the regiment was sent to Camp Chase, in Arlington Heights, Virginia, just outside Washington, for further training. Hopkins was soon detached from his regiment and assigned to staff duty, as an aide-de- camp to Brigadier General Henry Shaw Briggs, who had been put in charge of Camp Chase. Briggs, who had previously led the 8th and 10th Massachusetts until he was severely wounded, was born in Lanesborough, had graduated from Williams in 1844, and spent the summer of 1862 in Berkshire County—and was thus likely to notice a fellow Williams alumnus who had just enlisted. 94 Chapter 6

Perhaps Briggs also recognized that a young man of twenty, no matter how bright, was perhaps not ready to lead a company of soldiers, many of them twice his age, and might be better suited to a staff job. In October 1862 Briggs was assigned to lead a brigade in the field. Hopkins was with the brigade at Sharpsburg, Maryland, in October 1862, where the bloody Battle of Antietam had been fought just three weeks earlier. Even though his brigade now came under fire, he reas- suringly reported to his grandmother from Sharpsburg that “a more delightful spot than the one we occupy can not be well imagined.” He hoped the war would soon be over, and—in words that recall for us the illusions of a later war—expected that he would be home by Christmas. In November 1862 he was with the brigade at Harpers Ferry and Warrenton, Virginia, and in December at Fredericksburg, where the brigade suffered heavy casualties. In late December 1862, when the brigade went into winter quarters near Fredericksburg, Hopkins accompanied General Briggs, who had been transferred to Baltimore to command a brigade in VIII Corps on guard duty. In July 1863 Briggs’s brigade—and Hopkins with it—was sent to cut off the retreat of Lee as he moved south after the Battle of Gettysburg. The brigade, however, saw no action. (Hopkins’s own regiment, the 37th Massachusetts, was at Gettysburg for the battle; although held in reserve in the rear, it suffered heavy casualties from Confederate artillery.) In August 1863 Briggs and his staff were at a training camp in Alexandria, where Briggs was in command. Hopkins remained there through July 1864. As a captain he was paid $115.50 per month and received an additional premium for serving on a general’s staff. Holding a staff job meant that Hopkins was rarely in harm’s way—at least not until he rejoined his regiment. And he was comfortably housed and fed. Later, when he was an officer in the field, he had a horse—which he was obliged to pay for. He and his brother Laurie, who also served in the Washington area, made plans to have their younger brother, Mark, come visit them. Archie’s letters home to his mother and father mostly provide can- did reports on adverse conditions in the brigade—stragglers among the enlisted men, disgust among the officers at political interference (when Lincoln removed McClellan as commanding general), and the widespread sense that the Confederates had a bigger, more enthusiastic, and better-officered army. The Rebels, he said, “are infatuated to an Captain and Corporal 95 incredible degree, determined and desperate. Have made terrible sac- rifices and undergone untold privations and sufferings, in all of which they glory, and declare themselves ready for more.” A letter in June 1864 expresses his hope that the “three hundred dollar clause” (allow- ing men with some financial means to buy their way out of the draft) would be repealed: most of the draftees, he says, “are mercenaries, more than 80 per cent being foreigners, many of whom cannot speak a word of English and can have no or little idea of what the fighting is about. But the new draft rigidly enforced will reach another class.” His letter reflects widespread belief in the army that draftees made much less good soldiers than volunteers did. His estimate that 80 percent of draftees were foreigners is high: many draftees were immigrants, but only about a quarter of the soldiers who served in the Union army were foreign born, mostly German and Irish, and Hopkins may have concluded that the Irish couldn’t speak English. Regimental medical records show that Hopkins, like many soldiers, repeatedly suffered from illness. In November 1862 he was hospitalized for “bilious remittent fever”—a common disease, the main symptoms of which were vomiting and diarrhea. In January 1863 he was granted thirty days’ leave on a surgeon’s certificate of disability. In February and March he was still sick, though apparently on duty with General Briggs. He also suffered in 1863 from sunstroke, as did many soldiers in the heat of the Virginia summers. He reportedly suffered in 1864 from “camp fever”—probably a combination of typhoid fever and malaria. In March 1863 a mix-up in record keeping led to his being mistakenly accused as a deserter—he apparently returned directly to his regiment rather than, as expected, to a hospital in Alexandria at the expira- tion of his January 1863 medical leave, and a hospital clerk reported him as AWOL. In a letter to his parents Hopkins complained bitterly about the charge. He apparently resolved the matter, but the charge remained in his file and is still there today. Hopkins rejoined his regiment in late August 1864, where he was now put in charge of Company A, shortly before the Battle of Opequon Creek (on September 19), near Winchester, Virginia, at the head of the Shenandoah Valley. Although taken ill with “colic” (an acute bowel complaint) and transported into battle by horse-drawn ambulance, he was able to rally his strength and then lead his men into battle. In a 96 Chapter 6 letter to his mother written several days later, Hopkins described the action as the Rebels retreated and then made a stand behind a rail fence, where they brought up a battery of artillery:

I placed the men behind a fence, and we went at them; they had just got their battery into position, but we did not let them fire a gun. I had several men wounded at this point, and took a Spencer [one of the new automatic rifles that had recently been issued to the regiment]— and ammunition from one, got a good rest, and fired about 60 rounds, taking good aim every time. . . . We killed most of their horses, but just then our ammunition gave out, and they crept up and fastened ropes to their guns and dragged them away; then I went back to the regiment and we charged at the double quick again, driving them in confusion for more than half a mile. . . . I, without knowing how I got there, found myself 20 paces in front of my company, everybody shouting and cheering as we moved forward. . . . [S]everal men . . . were killed and wounded, but I can say that I didn’t once feel afraid, that I kept cool, and think I have won the confidence of my men; they knew I was sick and didn’t expect me up, but I wouldn’t have missed it for a thousand dollars.

After the battle, as a reward for its valor, the regiment was assigned to guard duty in Winchester and remained there until December. In December 1864 the regiment moved south to Petersburg, Virginia, to join the Union siege of a key town just south of Richmond. On March 25, 1865, Hopkins was placed in command of the regiment; the regiment’s field officers were out of action, and he was the senior captain. Hopkins led the regiment at the crucial “breakthrough” at Petersburg and was officially commended for “gallant conduct in storming of the works.” Four days later, Union forces caught up with the retreating Lee at Sailor’s Creek, twenty-five miles west of Petersburg, and in a little-known but strategically important battle Captain Hopkins led the regiment again and received three brevet promotions—honorary promotions on the battlefield—to major, lieutenant colonel, and colonel, for “gallant and meritorious services before Petersburg, and at the battle of Little Sailor’s Creek.” The regiment then pursued Lee; the 37th Massachusetts actually “led the advance of the Union Army” all the way Captain and Corporal 97 to Appomattox. In a letter to his father, Hopkins reported that his colonel told him that “no one ever handled a regiment more handsomely than you did in the late battles, and I wish you had a full colonel’s rank.” Hopkins was confirmed in the ranks of major and lieutenant colonel at the end of the war. Shortly after the war’s conclusion, Hopkins went to New York City, where he studied law in the office of David Dudley Field (a childhood friend of his father and a Williams alumnus) and in May 1867 graduated from Columbia Law School. He then served six months as a civil- ian clerk on the staff of his old friend Sam Armstrong, now General Armstrong, who was in charge of the Freedmen’s Bureau, a federal agency set up in 1865 to protect the rights of newly freed southern blacks, in Fort Monroe, Virginia. Armstrong would serve as the first principal of Hampton Institute, a normal school organized in 1868 by the American Missionary Association, a group that had been founded in 1846 but traced its ancestry back to the Protestant missionary movement that was founded under the famous “Haystack” at Williams College in 1806. Hampton thrives today as Hampton University, one of the country’s oldest historically black institutions. Hopkins then practiced law in New York City with a Columbia Law School classmate, but he reportedly suffered from throat trouble, which hampered him from speaking in court. At this crucial point, Williams connections again helped advance his career. His brother-in- law Charles C. Nott—he was married to Hopkins’s sister Alice—was one of five judges of the U.S. Court of Claims (which adjudicated mon- etary claims against the U.S. government), and in 1873, at the age of thirty-one, Hopkins was appointed chief clerk of the Court of Claims in Washington, D.C. Perhaps by coincidence Charles Nott got an honorary degree from Williams a year later. On November 14, 1878, Hopkins was married in Washington to Charlotte Everett, from an old and socially prominent Massachusetts family. Over the next six years, they had four children. Charlotte was a “civic leader, philanthropist, social reformer,” especially with the National Civic Federation. She was well connected and on at least one occasion conducted President Woodrow Wilson’s wife on a tour of sub- standard black housing in Washington; her papers are in the Library of Congress. 98 Chapter 6

Colonel Hopkins—as he was known publicly—had a long career with the U.S. Court of Claims, where he was paid $3,000 a year, by no means a princely sum but a good civil service salary. He would spend the rest of his life in Washington, which had already been familiar to him from his nearly two years’ service on General Briggs’s staff during the war. He served as a chancellor of the Loyal Legion, a Civil War officers organization. He was also interested in his military ancestor Colonel Mark Hopkins. He joined the Society of Colonial Wars and in 1902 was cofounder and president of the Washington, D.C., chapter of the Sons of the Revolution. The other societies he joined suggest the range of his interests: the National Geographic Society, the Columbian Historical Society, and the American Social Science Association. He was a director of the Washington Society of Fine Arts; he and his wife loaned pieces from their personal collection to the Smithsonian. Hopkins was a political insider and acquainted with several presidents. He worked closely with Lorrin Thurston, a Hawaiian lawyer and son of a Williams College graduate, for the annexation of Hawaii as a U.S. territory in 1898. He also kept in close touch with Williams. When his classmate Franklin Carter was elected president of the college in 1881, Hopkins wrote to him, offering congratulations and support, suggesting the names of some alumni who may be able to “do something” for the college. Beginning in the 1890s, Hopkins, resuming an interest from his student days, wrote poems on political topics, with titles such as “Franklin” and “Free Silver,” published during the 1896 presidential election campaign, and wrote versified toasts for presentation at ceremonial dinners (in honor of Admiral George Dewey, hero of the Battle of Manila Bay in the Spanish-American War, and President William Howard Taft); the poems were reprinted in national newspapers. In January 1900 he published a poem in the New York Times titled “Columbia Reviews the Century.” In the same year his poem on Grant appeared, and in 1907 so did one on his old friend Samuel Armstrong. Hopkins also wrote in prose. In 1897 he published a piece in Harper’s Weekly Journal on the occasion of the inauguration of President McKinley, reviewing past presidential inaugurations, and in 1899 a memorial in a legal journal on Stephen Field, a Supreme Court justice (and a Williams graduate). In 1897 he published an account of the Battle of Sailor’s Creek in which Captain and Corporal 99 he had played a signal role. Although he was probably best known to the public for his poetic toasts to Dewey and Taft, his major book, The Apostles’ Creed, published in 1900, dealt with a religious topic. Why write about religion? Was he honoring his fervently evangelical father, who had died in 1887 and back in 1846 had published a series of lectures entitled Evidences of Christianity, arguing for the literal truth of the New Testament’s account of the life of Jesus? Clearly not. In April 1896 Mark Hopkins’s son published an essay audaciously titled “Are All the Teachings of the New Testament Infallible and for All Time?” The essay first appeared in a magazine entitled Free Thought, and, as the title of the magazine suggests, the answer to Archie’s question was no. Hopkins never joined a church and thus had probably fallen away from his father’s teachings years before, but he was perhaps reluctant to publish his own thoughts about religion while his father was alive. In May 1896 he sent excerpts from the essay in a long letter to the editor of the New York Tribune, where it was published under the headline “Christ’s Resurrection: The Story Critically Analyzed.” The Apostles’ Creed, published four years later, subjected the clauses of the creed to the “rules of evidence,” in good lawyerly fashion, and announced to the world, as the editors of Free Thought put it, that Hopkins was now “thoroughly emancipated from Christian superstition.” His father probably rolled over in his grave. In the summer Hopkins and his wife escaped the sultry Washington weather by traveling to Williamstown, where his family had long been prominent. At least five of his siblings had summer houses there, and by 1887 Hopkins bought a piece of land on South Street from his brother Henry, took down an old house, and built quite near the street a new modern one—modern in 1885, that is: it’s a big Victorian, still standing on the corner of South Street and Knolls Road. Hopkins called the house “By the Way.” His brother Henry lived next door. His sister Susan’s house in Denison Park (now owned by the college and known as the Susan Hopkins House, or “Susie Hopkins”) was only a few minutes’ walk away. Their daughter Charlotte was married in Williamstown, in the Williams College chapel, in 1906, as was their daughter Mary in 1911. His brother Henry served as president of the college from 1902 to 1908. Hopkins retired from the Court of Claims in 1914, at age seventy- two, after forty-one years of service. But he remained very active in 100 Chapter 6 retirement. In 1913–14 he was president of the Williams College Alumni Association. He remained actively engaged with the Associated Charities of Washington, serving as chair of its board from 1916 to 1924, and the board of George Washington University, where he was for many years on its executive committee. He took an avid interest in national and international politics, joining the National Civic Federation and the National Association for Constitutional Government. He wrote numerous letters to the editor of various newspapers, especially the New York Times and the New York Tribune, on political topics and contributed poems celebrating notable events and op-ed pieces warning, for example, against the threat of socialism and communism and supporting France’s rights to reparations from Germany after World War I. He had strong opinions and did not hesitate to go his own way. In 1923, observ- ing that there was no significant difference between the Republican and Democratic Parties—he had been a lifelong Republican—he published “Proposals for a Constitutional Party.” The frequency of his letters to the editor suggests that he might have acquired a reputation, among editors and readers of New York newspapers, as a self-appointed sage, perhaps as something of an eccentric. In Hopkins’s final years, he continued to return to Williamstown. In 1920, at the age of seventy-eight, he marched at the head of the escort down Main Street in Williamstown to Thompson Chapel, for the reinterment of the ashes of the college founder, Ephraim Williams. In August 1921 he was reported to have picnicked on top of Mount Greylock with English guests. In 1922 and 1923 he attended the Williamstown Institute of Politics. As late as August 1922, he and his wife were giving “brilliant” dinner parties, according to the usually breathless reports in the society pages of the New York Tribune, to entertain visiting digni- taries. And he traveled beyond Williamstown—in 1924, at age eighty- two, he went to Oregon. It sounds like a charmed life, but it did have its disappointments, especially within his own family. His son Archie Jr. died in 1889 at the age of five. His daughter Mary died in 1912, a year after her marriage and shortly after giving birth to a child. His daughter Charlotte lost two of her three children in infancy. When Hopkins died on June 18, 1926, at the age of eighty-four, he was the last surviving field officer of the 37th Massachusetts. Respectful obituary notices appeared in the Captain and Corporal 101

Washington and New York papers. An old soldier to the last, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Richard Welch Not much documentary evidence survives to illustrate the story of Richard Welch. That’s mostly because he was an Irish immigrant, a mere enlisted man in the Union army, and because he died penniless. But it’s possible to piece together his life story. Welch was born in Ireland, between 1825 and 1828. He was the son of Robert Welch and Margaret (Burgoyne) Welch and seems to have had two older sisters, Margaret and Bridget. When full grown he was only about five foot six. The average Union soldier was about five foot eight. General Phil (Little Phil) Sheridan, under whom he fought, was five foot five. He was apparently apprenticed as a shoemaker about 1841, while still in Ireland, at the age of thirteen. In the 1830s his two sisters emigrated to the Albany area; by about 1840 Margaret was married and had moved to Williamstown. His sister Bridget would marry a Williamstown man. Richard apparently followed them some years later. He emigrated to the United States before 1848, probably driven from home by the potato famine. He made his way to Williamstown, where in 1845 or ’46 he married a young woman named Harriet Ann Cutter. Just a year or two later, Harriet died in Williamstown of consumption, leaving a two-year-old child, also named Harriet, who died soon after. The daughter is buried beside Welch in Eastlawn Cemetery in Williamstown. By 1849 Welch was working as a “shoemaker” in Williamstown. He was remembered fifty years later as “the fashionable fine bootmaker for the faculty and students of Williams College . . . who were not in the swim of that day without being possessors of Welch’s elegant sewed calf- skin garments.” It is clear that Archibald Hopkins knew Welch before the war—in an 1864 letter to his mother, Hopkins refers to him famil- iarly as “Dick Welch,” as if she would know exactly who that was. It’s not unlikely that while still a student, Hopkins had bought a pair of elegant gentleman’s shoes or boots from him. In 1848 Welch married the much younger Julia C. Curtis, of Pownal. They soon had a child, Mary Elizabeth, born in Williamstown in 1849. 102 Chapter 6

By 1850 they had moved to Adams. A little more than two years later, they had another child, James Byron Welch (apparently called Byron), born in Adams. But the marriage did not last: in 1855 Richard Welch, apparently separated from his wife, seemed to be living in Adams with a family named Savage and a number of unrelated young adults, many of them Irish. (But because Welch was a very common Irish name in Berkshire County, it is difficult to be certain of his movements.) In 1860 a Richard Welch was living alone in Williamstown. On April 18, 1861, less than a week after the attack on Fort Sumter, the hastily organized 5th Massachusetts infantry, on their way to Washington, were attacked by Southern sympathizers in Baltimore. On April 24, Welch placed an ad in the North Adams Transcript, in the form of a letter, announcing with alarm and exaggeration that “Baltimore has fallen! The Soldiers and their Families must be shod for the Revolution. Richard Welch has enlisted in the service of his country and stationed himself one door west of the Post Office, Williamstown [then located on Main Street], where he will pay particular attention to the manufacture of fine sewed Gentlemen’s Boots.” Clearly, Welch knew a marketing opportunity when he saw it and had an inclination for the theatrical. He seems to have made a name for himself as something of a colorful and eccentric local character around Williamstown—a rather smaller community than the metropolitan world of that other eccentric Archie Hopkins. About the same time, Julia filed for divorce, which was granted on May 13, 1861; she got custody of the children, Mary and Byron. A year later Welch married for the third time, on May 25, 1862, to Lydia M. Turner, called Liddie, before a justice of the peace in Pownal. (Like Hopkins, Welch in his adult life did not belong to a church—the Catholic Church would have made divorce difficult for him. Also, he was a member of the Lafayette Masonic Lodge in North Adams; the Masons tended to be anti-Catholic and the Catholics anti-Mason.) In mid-July 1862, though he had been married for only seven weeks, Welch volunteered for military service in the Civil War. His signature can be seen on a local “Enlistment List” now in the Williamstown Historical Museum. He was assigned to Company E of the 37th Massachusetts— Archibald Hopkins was the captain. He received $100 bounty (approved by the town of Williamstown in March 1862), $25 of which was payable up front. He was mustered in on September 2. Captain and Corporal 103

Why did he sign up? Perhaps it was because of the patriotic sentiments he announced in his newspaper ad. Perhaps it was because of the bounty—$100 was not an insignificant sum for a shoemaker in 1862. Perhaps it was because, like many other Irish immigrants, he saw the war as a chance to strike a blow against Great Britain, which had declined to side with the North. (Welch’s fellow Irishmen and friends Patrick and Michael Kelly and Walter B. Bryant signed up with the 37th about six months after he did.) Perhaps it was because he now had a wife to take care of his children, Mary (age twelve) and Byron (age ten), who were again part of his household. Town records list his wife and the two children as dependents in 1862. Welch served for three years with the 37th, in a series of major battles, from Fredericksburg in 1862 and Gettysburg in 1863 to Spotsylvania and the Wilderness in 1864 and Petersburg in 1865. He was paid $13 per month (later increased to $16 after June 20, 1864). He shared the plain hardtack of the private soldier and fairly primitive housing—out in the open while campaigning and in log huts while in winter quarters—and as a common infantryman marched in the Virginia mud, most notably in the disastrous “mud march” in January 1863, when General Ambrose Burnside’s plan to march his troops overland to attack the enemy in midwinter had to be abandoned after four days’ slogging through heavy rain and deep viscous clay. Welch was not a model soldier. He was mustered in as a sergeant (perhaps because he was thirty-seven years old and had a confident verbal manner) but was reduced to the ranks about six months later, by order of his colonel, for some unspecified infraction. His pay was docked in July and August 1863 “for the loss of knapsack, haversack, and canteen,” for which he had to pay $3.21. Like Hopkins, he was charged with desertion. But Welch was guilty: he deserted on June 18, 1863, when the regiment was marching to Fairfax Court House, about a month after Chancellorsville, and was arrested some four months later by Captain Henry Scheetz, provost marshal of the District of Columbia and in charge of military police. But after a short period of detention, he was apparently returned to his regiment. He performed creditably enough to be promoted to corporal on January 1, 1865. On one occasion during the war, after the Battle of the Wilderness, according to a possibly apocryphal story that he liked to tell, “he was 104 Chapter 6 taken ill, and, lame and fainting, fell out of the ranks by the wayside. With a number of other unfortunates he was captured by a band of Confederate guerillas,” and he and his comrades, he said, “were pin- ioned” and taken to be shot in an open space in the dense woods. When his turn came, “his body was bound to a tree, a dozen rifles were pointed at him, awaiting the word to fire, when in a moment of supreme despair he made it evident that he was a Free Mason.” (He apparently gave the Masonic “grand hailing sign of distress”—hands raised, palms forward, elbows at ninety degrees.) “The officer in command rushed forward, struck up the guns with his sword, and, advancing, covered him there- from with his body.” Welch was then released, given food and medicine, and in a short time, “to his astonishment,” he says, “placed within the Federal lines and given directions how to reach a northern camp.” It’s a good story and possibly true: there are many other reports of a Mason coming to the aid of a fellow Mason on the other side during the Civil War. Many years later, Welch claimed (in his pension application) that he was wounded three times: at Gettysburg in 1863 (shoulder and head), at Spotsylvania in May 1864 (shoulder), and at Winchester in September 1864 (neck). There is also a report that he was wounded in early April 1865 at Petersburg (ankle). His official military record reports only the wounds at Spotsylvania and Winchester. Welch claimed that after being wounded at Gettysburg, he was excused from duty but did not bother going to the hospital. He seems to have been something of a reckless daredevil. At the Battle of Opequon (Third Winchester) in September 1864, his bold conduct was praised by Captain Hopkins, who wrote home to his mother that “Dick Welch won the notice of the whole regiment by advancing, when we were lying down, 20 rods in front of the line to reconnoiter, and when fired on and his neck scratched and knapsack pierced, saluted the rebels politely, gave them a shot in return and walked back to his place.” It appears he was as much a colorful character on the battlefield as off. At Petersburg the 37th Massachusetts, with Captain Hopkins in charge of the regiment, was part of the first line of Union forces in the famous “breakthrough.” Welch himself climbed the steep parapet of a three-gun fort and was one of the first two men to spring inside. Once there, he knocked down the Confederate color bearer and seized the flag of the Captain and Corporal 105

37th North Carolina, thus dealing a crucial blow to the morale of the enemy. For this act of daring, he was commended by his colonel and general and awarded the Medal of Honor. The very flag that Welch captured is now at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia. At the Battle of Sailor’s Creek four days later, Welch tried to repeat his daring feat, but, as his commanding officer, Archibald Hopkins, reported, he “was overwhelmed by numbers and taken prisoner in a desperate attempt to capture a battle flag in advance of our line. He was afterward retaken.” He was again commended for “conspicuous bravery.” In recognition of his conduct at Petersburg, he was awarded a thirty-day furlough. After his return to the regiment, his official recognition came through: he signed a simple receipt on June 3 for “one Medal of Honor.” The citation read: “For extraordinary heroism on 2 April 1865, while serving with Company E, 37th Massachusetts Infantry, in action at Petersburg, Virginia, for capture of flag.” He was mustered out on June 21 in Washington, D.C. Welch then returned home. He is listed as a resident of Williamstown in the 1865 Massachusetts Census, living once again with Liddie and his two children (Mary and Byron). On the form she is named Lydia Turner, not Lydia Welch—which may mean that questions had been raised about the legality of the marriage. (Census takers frequently made mistakes, however.) She gave birth to a daughter, Alice Louisa Welch (called Carrie), on February 1, 1866, and a son, Sheridan Sedgwick Welch, on September 12, 1867. The boy was very probably named after General Phil Sheridan—a fellow Irishman and a notable hothead—under whom Welch fought in the Shenandoah in 1864 and at Sailor’s Creek in 1865, and the much-beloved “Uncle John” Sedgwick, the general who led the VI Corps from Fredericksburg to Spotsylvania (1862–64) and died at Spotsylvania in 1864 after a display of the sort of personal daring that Welch apparently admired and sought to emulate. In 1870 Welch was living in Williamstown with Lydia and three children: Mary (from his second marriage), Carrie, and Sheridan, the seventeen-year- old Byron perhaps having gone to live with his mother. He joined the GAR—the Grand Army of the Republic, the largest and most prominent of Civil War veterans organizations—and served as the first commander of the original E. P. Hopkins Post 130 in Williamstown in 1871. The post was named after Lieutenant Edward Hopkins, 1st 106 Chapter 6

Massachusetts Cavalry, first cousin of Archibald Hopkins, killed in Virginia in 1864. It was not uncommon for enlisted men to be GAR commanders. Welch seems to have resigned his office the following year, about the time he dropped out of the Masons. Perhaps he was going through a rough patch. His six-year-old son, Sheridan, died in 1873—like Hopkins, he lost a young son—and is buried in Eastlawn Cemetery. Welch resumed his work as a shoemaker, but he seems to have come down in that world. In 1885 he was repairing shoes at Herbert G. Preston’s, dealer in gentlemen’s boots and shoes, who seems to have taken over Welch’s shop on Spring Street. Beginning about 1888 he worked as a shoemaker for Neyland & Quinn, an early “department” store selling grocer- ies and provisions, with a “shoe department,” also at 6 Spring Street. An old photo, now in the Williamstown Historical Museum, shows the staff standing in front of the store; Welch is very likely the third from the left. According to those who knew him, Welch was “a drinking man.” By about 1878 he was drinking heavily—so much that Lydia left him, taking her daughter, Carrie, with her, and moved out to Iowa, where she had family. In 1880 Welch was recorded as living alone again on Main Street. Lydia reported later (in her application for a widow’s pension) that she left because of Welch’s “cruel and abusive treatment and gross and confirmed habit of intoxication.” But his employers reported that they had seen him only “two or three times under the influence of liquor.” Lydia does concede that she had heard that her husband “did not drink as much during the latter part of his life.” Lydia spent about eight years in Iowa (1878–86), and Welch apparently helped her buy a house there—his name was on the deed. She then moved to Florida, where she also had family, to take care of Carrie, who was in poor health. Lydia and Carrie moved back to North Adams about 1886 and lived in Troy for about eighteen months in 1887–88, where Carrie worked in a glove factory. About 1890 she and Carrie moved back to Florida. Welch several times sent money to help them. Carrie’s health continued to fail, and she died in 1891—the third of his children to pre- decease him. Lydia moved back to North Adams about June 1892 but did not reconcile with Welch—they remained separated for the rest of his life. On August 27, 1891, while walking home from Bennington via a side road—as a veteran soldier, he said he was used to “tramping”—he saw Captain and Corporal 107 a small child facedown in a roadside ditch, turned him over, and found he was a black boy, about three years old, who started screaming for his mother. (The story appeared as a feature in the local paper.) Welch carried the child, still screaming, and persuaded a neighbor to take charge of him. It was later reported that the child, apparently restored to its mother, was thriving. In response to a friend who said, “I thought you hated a nigger,” he in effect replied, “Yes, but I couldn’t let him die there.” (Welch apparently shared the callous racist views of his day.) He seems to have continued working at his cobbler’s bench until the end of his life. When he applied for a soldier’s pension in 1890, he was found to be five foot five (he had apparently lost an inch from his full height), to weigh 145 pounds, to have partial loss of sight and hearing, and to suffer from “rheumatism,” even though his body showed no evidence of his war wounds. He walked with a cane. Welch died on March 13, 1894, while walking on the railroad track, west of Cole’s Crossing (at the foot of Cole Avenue), on his way to Pownal. According to one newspaper report, “It is thought that when he saw the [eastbound] train approaching he became confused and stepped in front of the locomotive instead of away from it.” Another news story suggests that the westbound train was coming from behind him, and he didn’t hear it: “He was walking on the track and, when the engine whistled, made no move to get off, but stood still. He was thrown on to the east bound track.” His skull was crushed, and he suffered internal injuries and died at the station. Although no longer a member of the reorganized GAR, he was given a soldier’s funeral by the members of Post 209 (who apparently paid for it) and a military burial in Eastlawn Cemetery. Welch seems to have left no money or life insurance and no property except his shoemaker’s tools, valued at the grand total of $5 and household goods valued at $15. His Medal of Honor may have descended in his family, but it has not been traced, perhaps because at the time of his death he was separated from his third wife and may have lost touch with his two surviving children. Probate court records say he left one son, Byron, address unknown, and make no reference to a widow or daughter. Newspaper reports dis- agree about his family. An obituary in the Hoosac Valley News says he left a widow and one son. Another paper says that it was two sons and 108 Chapter 6 a daughter. A third paper said that he left a brother in Adams (possibly Thomas Welch, b. 1835), a son and a daughter, and his “3rd wife” in Albany. Only one of the three papers seems to have gotten the story right: Lydia, Byron, and Mary survived him. All three led harsh and difficult lives. Lydia filed for a pension as a soldier’s widow. After a series of depositions from her and from neighbors, the special examiner from the Bureau of Pensions determined that she was indeed married to Welch, had lived apart from him from 1878 to 1894, had never been divorced from him, had never remarried, and was nearly destitute. In 1904 she was finally paid $1,125 for payments due since 1892 and then $10 per month (later reduced to $8 per month). In 1900 she was living alone; in 1910 she lived as a lodger. At the time of her death in 1911, she was living with her late brother’s wife in Williamstown. Welch was described generously in an obituary notice as “an old and esteemed resident of Williamstown” who had been “decorated by special order of Congress for bravery.” (Less than ten years later, however, when Lydia’s pension application was being examined, none of the more than a dozen affidavits make any reference to his Medal of Honor.) He was remembered favorably a few years after his death as “a very intelligent man as well as a skillful one, and . . . a general favorite in Northern Berkshire.” When the bicentennial history of the town was written in 1953, nearly sixty years after he died, it was reported that “a good many people still living remember him, but few knew of his winning the medal.” In 1992 (by which time his original gravestone had no doubt become as illegible as those of his children), a new stone was placed over his grave by the national Medal of Honor Society. It reads, “Mustered out [that is, died] March 17, 1894”—another old soldier to the end. (Actually, though, he died on March 13.) A bronze marker notes the medal and charitably gives his rank as “sergeant” (the highest rank he attained, at the time of enlistment) rather than “corporal” (his rank when he was mustered out in 1865). At the suggestion of the Williamstown Historical Museum, April 2, 2012, the 147th anniversary of Welch’s daring feat at Petersburg, was declared by the town’s select board as Richard Welch Day. A brief ceremony in Eastlawn Cemetery was attended by a color guard and a Captain and Corporal 109 three-gun salute from the local American Legion as well as a handful of residents.  The soldier who went in as a captain and came out as a colonel left many tracks in the historical record. He lived a full life, but not a life without losses. And he is little remembered today by the college once led by his famous father and less famous brother. The soldier who went in as a sergeant and came out as a corporal, even though he won a Medal of Honor—the only Williamstown man to be so recognized—is virtually unknown, even in the town where he spent nearly fifty years. Sic transit gloria mundi. CHAPTER 7  THE HOOSIC AND THE OHIO The Cincinnati Connection

This chapter’s title points to the curious and long-standing link over the course of the past two hundred years between the small New England village of Williamstown, on the banks of the Hoosic River, and the inland city of Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, about 750 miles southwest. For most of that time the connection can be explained by the presence in Williamstown of Williams College, which in the first half of the nineteenth century started sending young graduates west to growing towns like Cincinnati to be teachers, lawyers, and clergymen and in the second half of the century began enrolling sons of merchants from Cincinnati and other western towns as students. But for a period of some fifty years, from about 1880 to 1930, three men from Cincinnati—A. D. Bullock, Harley T. Procter, and Bullock’s son James W. Bullock—were drawn to Williamstown not only by the presence of the college but also by the town’s standing and even brighter prospects as a summer resort. In their years in Williamstown they owned many hundreds of acres of land and ran diverse businesses. And it is probably their prominent role in this story that makes it different from the story of the relationship between Williamstown and other rising cities in the Midwest, such as Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Chicago, or St. Louis. Since about 1910 a steady though never large stream of students has

110 The Hoosic and the Ohio 111 flowed northeastward. A few of those students stayed on to become faculty at Williams. Many of them (though fewer in recent years) returned home after college to settle in their native city. Several of them saw their children and grandchildren attend Williams. Other alumni chose to settle in Williamstown, especially in their retirement years. The word connection in the subtitle points to the link across space between two distant places. But there is also a link across time, and to express it perhaps the metaphor of a “chain” or even “network” is more appropriate. It can be shown that the Williams graduates who went out to Cincinnati—a city small enough that the educated elites would all have known each other—and the Cincinnati natives who went back east to Williams, over the course of nearly two hundred years, were linked by personal and institutional affiliations in an unbroken chain from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Early Links Not long after Williams College was founded, young graduates went west to Cincinnati, soon after the city itself was founded in 1802, to be lawyers, doctors, seminary students, clergymen, teachers, and college presidents, though not in any numbers until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1823 made travel to the west somewhat easier. A number of Williams graduates went to Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, founded with eastern money in 1830, and affiliated with the Presbyterian Church. From 1832 to 1850 its head was the famous Boston preacher Lyman Beecher, father of Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe. As Lyman Beecher explained in a fund-raising eastern tour, the mission of Lane was to bring traditional (that is, Protestant) education and “moral culture” to “the West” (already being settled by Roman Catholic immigrants). At least ten Williams graduates passed through Lane Seminary between 1839 and 1873. Willis Lord, class of 1833, was a professor of theology at Lane from 1850 to 1854 and later a trustee. Israel Ward Andrews, class of 1837, was also a trustee of Lane. Several Williams graduates became pastors in Congregational or Presbyterian churches in Cincinnati. Other Williams graduates became teachers in Cincinnati. William Franklin Hurlburt (1823–86), from Lee, Massachusetts, who spent only two years at the college, from 1845 to 1847, was prominent in the 112 Chapter 7

Cincinnati public schools. After Williams he went out to Cincinnati in the late 1840s, starting as a teacher, rising to become a principal, and by 1863 clerk of the Cincinnati Board of Education. Several Williams graduates became college presidents in Ohio, including James Marshall Anderson, class of 1854, who served as president of the Ohio Female College in College Hill, in suburban Cincinnati; Israel Ward Andrews, who began teaching at Marietta College (some two hundred miles east of Cincinnati) almost immediately after graduating from Williams and later served as president for thirty years, from 1855 to 1885; Willis Lord, the first president of the University (now College) of Wooster (1870– 73); and Philip Van Ness Myers, class of 1868, who became president of Farmers’ College (later named Belmont College) in College Hill from 1879 to 1890. Another man with a future Williams affiliation was in 1821 offered the presidency of the Cincinnati College, a struggling new institution founded just two years earlier. But he declined it, choosing instead to become president of a small struggling college in western Massachusetts: he was the Reverend Edward Dorr Griffin, who that same year became the third president of Williams. The first Cincinnati native to attend Williams was John Shillito Jr., class of 1865. He was the eldest son of John Shillito (1824–79), who founded a dry-goods business in 1837 (from a predecessor firm founded in 1832) that grew into Cincinnati’s first “department store.” When he died his estate was estimated to be more than $2 million. It may seem unlikely that a practical-minded Ohio merchant in the 1860s would send his oldest son to a college in the Berkshires. But Shillito was also a devout Presbyterian; the family belonged to Second Presbyterian, where the elder Shillito was for many years a trustee. He was also a trustee of the Lane Theological Seminary, where he would have known fellow trustee Israel Ward Andrews, probably met Professor Lord, and may have even met some of the Williams graduates who were students at Lane. He must have been a man of some culture, since he wanted his sons— probably destined for a future in the family dry-goods business—to attend a New England college known (if at all) for producing teachers, preachers, and lawyers. Upon graduation the younger John Shillito became a member and then a partner of John Shillito & Company. His younger brother, Gordon, also graduated from Williams, in the class of 1868, and like John became a partner in John Shillito & Company. The Hoosic and the Ohio 113

Colonel A. D. Bullock One of the next Cincinnati natives to attend Williams was James W. Bullock, who graduated with the class of 1881. Although they were thirteen years apart, there was a strong personal connection between John Shillito and James Bullock. Bullock’s father knew John Shillito’s father: the two men were directors of the National Lafayette Bank of Commerce. Their wives served together on at least two committees (to found an art museum and the Women’s Art Museum Association) and a board (the Orphan Asylum, of which Mrs. Bullock was president). And they were neighbors in Mount Auburn, a fashionable part of town. The older Bullock, Anthony Davis Bullock (1824–90), was the son of a prosperous wool dealer in Philadelphia. As a young man he went out to Pittsburgh and in 1849 to Cincinnati as a wool buyer for his father. By 1855 he had founded his own firm, A. D. Bullock & Company, wool dealers. He too became prosperous. At the outbreak of the Civil War he was appointed by the governor as assistant quartermaster of the Department of Ohio in the Commissary Department of Subsistence, with the rank of captain, in charge of purchasing clothing for soldiers. In recognition of his service, he was named a colonel of volunteers and thereafter retained the courtesy title of “Colonel Bullock.” Anthony Bullock married Sarah (Sallie) Wilson in 1853, and by 1863 they had two sons, James W. Bullock, called Will by his family, born in 1856, and George, born in 1863. Five years later, he was wealthy enough to build a substantial Italianate mansion on nine acres in Mount Auburn and became a director of several local companies. He also became a trustee of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church. There he would have met George Hollister (1820–98), a prominent lawyer who helped found the University of Cincinnati, a trustee of the university for sixteen years, a resident of Mount Auburn, and an elder of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church. Hollister’s son, Howard Clark Hollister, was educated in the Cincin- nati public schools and then sent for one year (1873–74) to the Greylock Institute in South Williamstown, already a well-established boarding school, in operation since 1831. Beginning in 1859 it was accessible by rail and then began attracting students from outside of New England. The school was badly damaged by fire in 1871 but reopened in November 1872. 114 Chapter 7

When he left Greylock, the younger Hollister went off to Yale, where he graduated with the class of 1878 and then returned to Cincinnati for law school. Bullock’s oldest son, James W. Bullock, although the same age as Howard Hollister, was for whatever reason a year or two behind him in school. He completed his studies at Woodward High School, which had a strong college-preparatory curriculum, in 1876. At that point, presumably with the experience of young Howard Hollister in mind, Colonel Bullock decided to send his son to Greylock Institute for a year of finish- ing, in 1876–77. From Greylock it was a short step to Williams, and in the fall of 1877 James Bullock enrolled at Williams as a freshman. Colonel Bullock was probably already familiar with Williams College and Williamstown from other Cincinnati business, church, and social acquaintances, including William Hurlburt. It was reportedly Hurlburt who gave glowing descriptions of the scenery of “the lovely ‘Berkshire Hills’” of his youth and predicted that “rich people of the great cities” would soon buy up “worn out farms” and build “fine country homes” there. Indeed, New Yorkers had already begun buying land in Lenox and building “cottages.” Williamstown would perhaps be the next Lenox. Bullock was always looking ahead to the next economic opportunity. In Cincinnati he diversified his wool business into luxury goods such as curled hair and feathers and invested in steamboats, street railroads, and the newly invented telephone. He saw new possibilities in electricity. By 1880 he appeared on a list of Cincinnati’s richest men, credited with a fortune of $2 million and saluted as “one of our well-known, quiet, elegant, and very wealthy citizens, who has been the back-bone or capitalist of more corporations than perhaps any other person here.” Colonel Bullock was also interested in investment opportunities in Williamstown. And even before his son James had begun at the Greylock Institute, he himself began buying land there. His first purchase was in August 1876, when he bought five small parcels of land along Cold Spring Road. In 1880 he bought the ninety-acre Jonathan Richmond farm between Cold Spring Road and Stone Hill Road, and by 1885 he was the owner of two more farms, including the eighty-five- acre Noble Farm on Stone Hill Road and the John Sherman farm on Glen Street. He also bought a ten-acre parcel along West Main Street, just west of Hemlock Brook, on what is now called McCauley Lane. By 1883 he was spending his summers in Williamstown, apparently at The Hoosic and the Ohio 115 a “cottage” on the old Sherman farm. (That year he became a director of the newly established Williamstown Savings Bank and soon bought an interest in the Williamstown Aquaduct Company.) While still in Cincinnati he had become interested in horses, buying and selling registered trotters. When summer came, he would send a coach and horses ahead to Williamstown with his coachman. Once Bullock was settled in Williamstown as a summer visitor, his business plan may have changed. If his first idea was to buy land—and to resell it at a profit to wealthy urbanites looking for a site to build a summer house—his second seems to have been that there was more money to be made in the hotel business. Just a few hundred yards east of Colonel Bullock’s lot off West Main Street was the Mansion House hotel, at the northeast corner of Main and North Streets. Rebuilt after a fire in 1872, it had ninety-five rooms in its four stories. There was a broad piazza (250 by 12 feet) around the ground floor for sitting and promenading, spacious parlors, running water, a telegraph, tennis courts, and a livery stable. Unlike its predecessor, the building was not heated and closed each year for the winter in October, after the foliage season. Across Main Street (between the present Wood House and Perry House) was the Kellogg House, a slightly smaller three-story hotel, with fifty rooms. It did not have room for a piazza, but it had a verandah. It also had fireplaces in the rooms and both gas and steam heat, and it remained open all year. Both hotels were favorites with Williamstown’s visitors and often the places where prospective land buyers stayed. In 1887 Colonel Bullock bought the Kellogg House and two years later bought the Mansion House, dispatching his sons to act as his agents. He quickly moved to spruce up the buildings, putting on a new coat of paint. And he gave them new names: the Kellogg House became the Taconic Inn; the Mansion House became the Greylock Hotel. Among the farms Bullock had already bought was land on either side of Cold Spring Road, including the Glen Farm at the bottom of Flora’s Glen, where there was an old millpond, in which Bullock now saw commercial possibilities, in particular as a reservoir for drinking water in the summer and ice in the winter for his hotel businesses. In 1889 a local contractor constructed a 40-by- 40-foot icehouse for him at the edge of the old millpond (which soon became known as Bullock’s Pond), extending from the shore into the pond, to save hauling. In the 116 Chapter 7 late 1880s Bullock also bought property in the center of town, including five lots on the east side of Hoxsey Avenue (as it was then called) and two lots on Spring Street. Colonel Bullock was only a summer resident. He spent the winters in Cincinnati, where he retained even more business interests, serving during the 1880s as president of the City and Suburban Telegraph Association and Bell Telephone Exchange, the Consolidated Street Railroad Company, and the Cincinnati and Avondale Turnpike Company (1882). But his good fortune was not to last: in October 1890 he died suddenly and unexpectedly at his dinner table in Cincinnati, at the age of sixty-six, reportedly of “apoplexy.” His wife was out of town—at their Williamstown home. He left his Williamstown property to his sons, James W. Bullock and George Bullock. He was remembered in an obituary notice in the North Adams Transcript not only for his business acumen but also for his reputation as “the most liberal [that is, generous] of men” and his many “private charities.”

Harley Procter One of Colonel Bullock’s Cincinnati business friends was Harley T. Procter (1847–1920), son of William Procter, one of the founders of Procter & Gamble. Harley was the young marketing genius who was responsible for giving the name “Ivory” to P&G’s new white soap, for the advertising slogan “It floats!,” and for the line “99 and 44/100ths percent pure.” By the 1880s both Colonel Bullock and Harley Procter were among Cincinnati’s wealthiest men. Both were sons of English immigrants. Both were members of the exclusive Commercial Club— Harley Procter and the colonel’s son J. W. Bullock later were life members. Both were breeders and buyers of trotting horses. Procter reportedly made known that he intended to retire early from business and to devote his time to raising horses. It seems likely that Bullock would have recommended to his friend the attractions of Williamstown. If Bullock did indeed make such a recommendation, Procter could have found it confirmed in the 1887 Book of Berkshire, which praised the beauties of the village, its recent improvements, and its prospects as a site for summer homes: The Hoosic and the Ohio 117

The main street of Williamstown is sixteen rods wide and beautifully laid out. . . . The dwellings on each side suggest quiet and comfort. Besides the main street, on which most of the college buildings are located, there are several lateral streets, all of them finely shaded and with handsome dwellings. . . . There is a thriving village improvement society, and the citizens take great pride in their village. . . . Well kept lawns extend the whole distance of Main Street, planted here and there with shrubs and shaded with gracefully spreading trees. . . . It is credited to President Barnum, of the Housatonic Railroad, as saying that if his road were extended from Pittsfield to Williamstown, he could make it rival Lenox as a summer home for city residents.

As a horseman, Procter would have also been encouraged to read in the Book of Berkshire of the “many fine drives about Williamstown”:

The drive to North Adams is a pleasant six miles trip. . . . To Pownal, five miles, is a pretty drive along the river. To Hancock, through South Williamstown, is delightful. . . . There is not a more romantic road in all Berkshire than from Williamstown to Pittsfield via New Ashford, Lanesboro and back via Cheshire, Adams, and North Adams. Two popular drives in the village are known as either the “Long Oblong,” or the “Short Oblong.” . . . The road to Greylock is also a fine drive . . . by an easy grade, making a distance of about fifteen miles. The drive to Bennington, Vt., sixteen miles, is also a delightful one over the hills, and has many nice bits of scenery on the way.

In another local guide book he could have found further praise of the village’s rising future as a summer colony:

That Williamstown is the summer home of many of the well-to-do families of the larger cities can excite no surprise. . . . With the utmost ease of access from all directions, not too far from the center of business and yet in the heart of wild nature, with all the conveniences of modern life attainable, and as few of the discomforts as are to be found anywhere, this gem of Berkshire County rivals and will soon outstrip Lenox and Stockbridge, towns perhaps more fashionable as yet, certainly developed earlier, but far inferior to Williamstown in natural attractions. . . . Those 118 Chapter 7

who come for a few days or a few weeks usually live at the hotels or hire furnished houses. Others have bought farms or building lots with ample grounds on some favorite sites, for the erection of residences of their own. One can not go amiss in choosing a location, for there is scarcely an undesirable outlook in the place.

In 1890 Procter & Gamble went public. Harley Procter was elected second vice president and a member of the board. For his 25 percent interest in the partnership, he received stock and bonds in the new public company worth $1.5 million. And he made plans to retire and move to New York and New England. Perhaps encouraged both by what he heard from Bullock and by what he read, Procter began buying land in Williamstown before the end of 1890. His first purchases were the old Charles Williams farm on Green River Road and two lots on West Main Street, quite close to Colonel Bullock’s house. And he let it be known to the newspapers in Williamstown that he intended to build a “cottage” in town: the Transcript reported with some excitement that four other summer houses were to be built as well. It looked as if Williamstown would indeed become a fashionable summer resort along the lines of Lenox, as Colonel Bullock hoped. The following year Procter bought the old 237-acre Bulkeley Farm (Stone Hill Farm), straddling Stone Hill Road and abutting the Charles Williams farm (and also abutting one of Bullock’s farms) and several houses on the north side of West Main Street. He now owned nearly 400 acres on Stone Hill and all the land on the north side of Main Street, from the Kappa Alpha fraternity lodge at the corner of North Street westward, downhill to the house on the corner of Belden Street and other land on the west side of Belden Street, up to Westlawn Cemetery. It has been claimed that Procter in fact initially intended to build a large country house on the Bulkeley Farm and went so far as to lay a substantial foundation. But there is little evidence to support this claim: the foundation may have been designed for the large barn. One reason not to build his residence on Stone Hill is that securing a water supply would have been difficult. The next project was to lay the groundwork for his “cottage” in town. Procter left one of the houses on the Main Street lots standing, sold off two, and demolished the fourth. And he The Hoosic and the Ohio 119 began building a one-hundred- foot barn for the horses he sent ahead from Cincinnati. He himself arrived in June, traveling by coach and four from New York City, and spent the summer of 1891 in one of the houses he had bought. He stayed until November, by which time he had installed a windmill on the old Bulkeley Farm on Stone Hill Road and a local man as tenant farmer on the Williams farm, where he made improvements, taking down old outbuildings and putting up a new barn and an icehouse. When he arrived in town the following spring, he prepared to build his new house. It was designed by Frederick Stickney and William Austin of Lowell and Boston, regarded as one of the best firms in Massachusetts. They worked in various historical styles: the Procter house was to be a “cottage” in the Newport sense of the term: a three- story Georgian Revival pile, with a columned front portico. The builders broke ground in mid-May. The house was to be 74 feet wide and 48 feet deep, with a 37-by- 30-foot extension leading to a wing 52.5 by 27 feet. The reporter from the Springfield Republican, who viewed the site in early September, declared that the house was to cost $100,000. (Just a dozen years later, Frank Lloyd Wright was promising to build a small house for $5,000.) Why, it might be asked, did he plan to build on Main Street, so close to large hotels? Perhaps he saw it as a way to assemble a large parcel of land close to the west end of the town green, recently rededicated as Field Park. Perhaps it was because it was close to his fellow Cincinnatian Bullock’s property and close to the large estates along Bulkeley Street, West Main Street, and South Street. Perhaps it was because the open land just south of the village center, along present-day Ide Road and Gale Road, had already been bought up by John B. Gale of Troy. The house was completed by May of the following spring, though landscaping would continue through the summer and fall. A reporter from the Pittsfield Sun had a tour in late May and reported that Procter had built a “mansion, not a cottage.” The front hall was 20 by 70 feet. The principal room, on the left, was 30 by 60 feet, with an onyx-faced fireplace. The dining room, on the right, was 20 by 30 feet. The house and property were named Orleton Fields, after Orleton, Herefordshire, where his father was born. Procter spent the summers of 1893, 1894, and 1895 in Williamstown, 120 Chapter 7 the winters in New York or traveling in Europe. While in Williamstown he arranged to have the road up Stone Hill (to one of his farms) repaired at his own expense. Having been a member and active supporter of an Episcopal church in Cincinnati, it is not surprising that he joined the newly organized St. John’s Episcopal Church, but perhaps surprising that as a newcomer he was elected a member of the first vestry in October 1894, where he would have worked closely with established town leaders, including Frederick Leake, the senior warden, and leading members of the summer colony. Before leaving town in the fall of 1895, he donated $5,000 to the building fund for a new stone church and arranged for fieldstone from one of his farms to be transported to Park Street. Although not in residence in 1896 (he and his family were in Europe), he returned the following summer to hold a large recep- tion for friends in the summer colony to meet his unmarried sister, Harriet, who lived in Boston but was planning to spend her summers in Williamstown. Maintaining his establishment required the help of twelve servants, including three grooms for his horses. By 1898 Procter’s schedule had been modified: summers were now spent in Newport, where he rented a house, and he came to Williamstown in September, to remain for the good fall weather. And Procter made a decision to build a winter residence in New York. In 1900 he bought a large parcel of land on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Second Street. In 1903 he built a two-story town house on Fifty- Second Street, designed by Trowbridge and Livingston. But this did not mean that he gave up Williamstown—not yet. In September 1901 he threw a big society wedding at Orleton for his twenty-five-year-old daughter, Lillian Sanford Procter. The groom was Friedrich (Fritz) Wilhelm Hoeninghaus, Yale ’98, of New York City. The wedding guests numbered some five hundred, most of them from New York. An eight-piece orchestra kept things musical, and the ceremony was performed by the rector from Procter’s former Episcopal church in Cincinnati: his name was Dudley Ward Rhodes, the grandfather of Dudley Ward Rhodes Bahlman, who was to teach history at Williams from the 1950s into the ’80s. The following year brought Procter’s affairs in Williamstown to something of a crisis. In the summer of 1902 he offered to donate $10,000 to the town for road improvement (the same amount Cyrus Field had The Hoosic and the Ohio 121 given back in the mid-1870s when he wanted Main Street to be cleared of its fences and cows), if the town would raise $50,000. As a horseman, Procter had a personal stake in the condition of the roads. In those days they were of course unpaved, dirt somewhat stabilized with gravel. But carts, wagons, and coaches, with their wooden wheels clad in iron, made deep ruts in wet weather and ground the gravel to dust. In the spring the roads were topped with mud and stones dug out from roadside ditches and with gravel from Green River. Procter proposed that he be named one of three road commissioners, along with two other summer people (both out-of-towners). His proposal was reported in the New York Times and was strongly seconded in a long letter from an unnamed “Williamstown citizen”—perhaps Procter himself—printed in the Transcript, deploring the condition of the roads and the waste of money on a “false system of road making.” (Procter’s idea was not to macadamize the roads, except for Cole Avenue and Water Street, but to provide—for the others—better underground drainage and four inches of compacted gravel.) The letter went on to suggest that Procter’s objective in improving the roads was to attract more summer residents to town (to spread the burden of property taxes): since driving is the “chief out of doors recreation” in an inland town, the anonymous “citizen” argued, summer people (like Procter himself) who enjoy driving will move to town and build houses. (Procter was then the largest individual taxpayer in town. The thirty-five summer residents were said to pay 20 percent of the taxes in a town of five thousand residents.) The proposal was taken up at special town meeting on October 17, 1902. It was standing room only, the biggest special meeting in town history. Procter himself was not present, but one speaker said he thought Procter wanted to improve roads leading into town rather than streets in the town center. Many stood up to urge acceptance of Procter’s offer. Others were worried about having to pay higher taxes. When the question was called, Procter’s offer was rejected by a narrow vote of 132–118. Procter was plainly disappointed and soon made plans to shift his summer and fall residence, and his horses, to Lenox, where there were already many horse people. By the summer of 1903 he rented a house in Lenox and had a string of twenty-four horses. After 1902 he did not open his Williamstown house. His sister Harriet was installed in a smaller house on Main Street on the Procter property, but Procter 122 Chapter 7 himself seems to have kept a room at the Ivy Inn on Main Street in town, perhaps to look after his property interests. In August 1907 he sold his Williamstown mansion, along with twenty-two acres—all of his land on the north side of Main Street—to the Kappa Alpha fraternity for $1: they had outgrown their stick-style house next door to the mansion, on the corner of North and Main Streets, built in 1877, and needed a new lodge. One wonders if James Bullock, son of his old friend Colonel Bullock, a member of KA and active as an alumnus in fraternity affairs, helped broker the deal. Procter continued renting in Lenox until 1911, when he seems to have bought a summer house outside of town, and the following year built a new house for himself in town; it survives today as the Gateways Inn on Walker Street. When Procter died of diabetes in 1920, at the age of seventy-three, he left an estate of $3.5 million. He had spent several months a year in Williamstown for about ten years. He built a grand house, which survived until 1968 as the KA Lodge, when it burned to the ground in a spectacular mid-January fire, started when a Williams buildings- and-grounds employee was trying to thaw a frozen pipe with an open propane flame. The KA house, built after all as a summer house for Procter, had no insulation. Indeed, it had channels behind the walls that allowed outside air to circulate—a kind of air-conditioning system. It must have been very expensive to heat, and frozen pipes must have been a common problem. Some traces of Procter’s time in Williamstown remain today. The church built with his stone survives on Park Street. A small house and a barn he built for his staff to the northwest of the mansion in the 1890s survive today, as does an old gnarled Camperdown elm behind the Williams Inn, said to have been planted by Procter. And the Procter name still has a place in the Williamstown area. In her later years his daughter Lillie, who lived in Greenwich, Connecticut, was divorced. She took back her maiden name and was again known as Lillian Procter. In 1929 she bought an eight-hundred-acre farm in nearby New Ashford from Mrs. August Belmont, and lived there for the rest of her life. She died in 1967. She and later her two orphaned grandchildren, Frederic William Procter Jr. (1921–91) and Patricia Procter Mason (1925–82), were buried in Westlawn Cemetery. Patricia’s son, Tom Greenwood, great-great-grandson of Harley Procter, still lives on the family estate The Hoosic and the Ohio 123 in New Ashford. Also living in New Ashford are dairy farmer Harley Procter Phelps Jr. and his son Harley Procter Phelps III. They belong to the very old Williamstown Phelps family. Cassius Phelps, grandfather of Harley Procter Phelps Jr., was a good friend of the original Harley Procter and to recognize that friendship named his son Harley Procter Phelps Sr. after him.

James W. Bullock By contrast, the Bullock family had a continuing influence in William- stown. James W. Bullock (1856–1928) may have been called Will by his parents, but by his college years (beginning in the late 1870s) everybody else called him Jim. His career at Williams was not remarkable, except for the fact that he was one of only a half dozen in his class of ’52 who came from outside New England and New York State. Along with two classmates who had graduated with him from Greylock Institute, he pledged KA. In his sophomore year he was elected class treasurer. In his junior and senior years he did a “partial course”—that is, he did not take a full load. Why he reduced his course load is not certain, but one guess is that he was out looking after his family’s property interests and was buying land himself. The first purchase in his own name was in April 1878, the spring of his freshman year, when he bought a farm from Daniel Phelps, and the second in August 1880, just before what would have been his senior year. Perhaps this explains why he replied to a class questionnaire in December 1880 by declaring that his “forte” was farming. He presumably had to take courses after his class graduated in June 1881 and was “reinstated” in his class and granted his degree in 1883. Jim Bullock returned to Cincinnati in 1884 to join his father’s business, A. D. Bullock & Company. By the late 1880s he was also acting as his father’s agent in Williamstown, seeing to the purchase of the Kellogg House and Mansion House. For a nominal sum he bought several parcels of land from his father in the early 1880s. And he acquired other land in Williamstown throughout the decade . He also tried to persuade his father to let him buy the Mansion House for himself. A telegram to his father in the Bullock Papers in Cincinnati, dated January 1889, reads succinctly: “Will give you twenty seven thousand five hundred dollars for Mansion House. See letter [to follow].” Colonel Bullock apparently 124 Chapter 7 declined to accept the offer, but Jim was to inherit the property two years later, after his father died. Jim Bullock made further investments of his own in Williamstown after his father died, including the Shand Farm off Bee Hill Road and the John Sherman farm on Cold Spring Road. In 1891, on the cobble of the latter farm—what is now known as Buxton Hill—he erected a tower to serve as an observatory. But it blew down in a November windstorm two months later. In the same year he married Margaret McCredie (1859–1936) from Albany, daughter of a Scottish immigrant who became a wealthy brewer. The first of their four children was born the next year. Bullock continued buying land, including lots on Hoxsey Street where the family already owned property and some wooded land on “the West Road” (the road to Berlin Pass) in 1902. Like his father, Bullock spent the winter in Cincinnati, where he pursued business interests. He was elected director of several local companies, in at least one instance succeeding to his father’s seat on the board. He hired Harley Procter’s architect Frederick Stickney to design a new house that he built in 1896 in the Vernonville (South Avondale) section of Cincinnati. And in 1897, after his brother, George, bought a company that manufactured electric motors and renamed it the Bullock Electric Manufacturing Company, he was named secretary and a director. Again following his father, he served as a trustee of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church. He also became a trustee of Berea College in Kentucky. And like his father, he spent his summers in Williamstown, arriving in May or early June and returning to Cincinnati in late October or early November. He shared his father’s interest in trotters and began buying and selling registered horses. He became president of the Williamstown Water Company (founded by his father) and (again following his father) vice president of the Williamstown Savings Bank. In 1895 he moved the Taconic Inn across Main Street to become the Greylock Hotel Annex and in 1900 improved the hotel by installing a hydraulic elevator, powered by water from Bullock’s Pond at the bottom of Flora’s Glen. He put in a series of managers, the most successful of whom was Henry Teague. In 1916 he added a “North Annex” to the hotel, later known, after the college acquired it, as Greylock Hall. But he also struck out on his own, becoming vice president of The Hoosic and the Ohio 125 the Village Improvement Society in 1896, at a time when the society, founded in 1877, was very active. Also in 1896 he became one of the first members of the new Taconic Golf Club. And in the same year be built a big new barn for his horses on his Meadow Brook Farm (formerly the old Richmond and Noble farms) on the east side of Cold Spring Road—it would become famous in later years as the “1896 House.” Bullock continued buying land in Williamstown but sold less than he bought. Was he waiting for the market to improve? Or did he discover that he just enjoyed owning land? In the meantime, Williamstown was developing its own “summer colony,” attracting wealthy families who, starting in the 1880s and increasing rapidly in the 1890s, sought to spend the summer season away from crowded hot cities and bought old farms or built summer houses. But as a summer resort Williamstown remained on a smaller scale than Newport or even Lenox. It especially attracted graduates of Williams College, who had developed an attachment to the place in their youth. As a Williams graduate, Bullock belonged to this world, but as a midwesterner among easterners, he may at first have felt on the edges. He would eventually become close friends with the son of Robert Cluett of Troy, who built Southfields, a substantial Georgian brick mansion, on Gale Road in 1910. (By comparison, Procter, who lacked a Williams connection and even a college degree, may have faced more social resistance from the summer people.) While in Williamstown Bullock at first lived in the Burns Cottage on the old Sherman Farm, at the corner of Cold Spring and Bee Hill Roads. By 1898 he had moved farther south on Cold Spring Road, to what he called Bide-a- Wee Cottage—Scottish for “Stay a While”—across from his barn. Still later, about 1924, he set about building a large house next door that he called Yeadon Farm, named after the village in Yorkshire where his grandfather was born. (In later years it was to be the Elwal Pines Inn and then one restaurant or other.) But he was not to live there long, for in 1925 he bought Southfields with 21.5 acres of grounds from George Cluett. Why he abandoned Yeadon Farm—which he sold in 1927—is not clear. Perhaps it was because he was disturbed by the heavy construction traffic along Cold Spring Road for the new Taconic Trail, then being surveyed and constructed. Perhaps it was because a handsome house in a very fashionable part of town had unexpectedly 126 Chapter 7 become available. (Cluett had built his own house across Gale Road— the present Pine Cobble School—and, after his parents stopped spending summers in Williamstown, had been using Southfields as a guest house.) Bullock renamed the house on Gale Road Yeadon Manor. Over his many years in Williamstown, Bullock was active in Williams College alumni affairs. He served on the Hospitality and Transportation Committee for the centennial celebration of the founding of the college in the fall of 1893. In 1904 he gave to Williams a plot of land on Fort Hoosac Place. In 1914–15 he was vice president of the Williams Alumni Association of Cincinnati and subsequently served for many years as president. In 1925 he gave to the college a lot on Belden Street, as well as a collection of Roman coins—they were formerly displayed in the Stetson Reading Room. He became involved in the Williams Loyal Legion (a military organization), probably through the college president Henry Hopkins (1902–8), who was a member, and later became its president. In his later years in Cincinnati Bullock continued to maintain a high profile. He was a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Cincinnati. He was an active member of the Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, eventually serving as its treasurer. He was trustee of the Home of the Friendless and Foundlings. And he was elected a director of a number of Cincinnati companies, not all of which had been founded by his father. In his final years Bullock began cutting back. In 1924 he and his wife moved out of their big Cincinnati house into the newly constructed Vernon Manor, a high-rise apartment building in which he had invested. In 1925 Bullock donated a 145-acre tract of land on the shoulder of Berlin Mountain, which he had acquired more than twenty years earlier, to a trust as a “wooded park” for the benefit of “the inhabitants of Williamstown,” to be known as the “Bullock Forest Reserve.” And in 1928 he and the minority stockholders sold the Williamstown Water Company to an out-of-state utility. When Bullock died on May 9, 1928, at the age of seventy-two, the obituary in the Transcript says he was “one of the best-loved and most highly esteemed members of the summer colony.” A month later, the obituary in the Williams Alumni Review reported that “Jim” Bullock—as everybody called him—was “a marked figure on the Williams campus for the past fifty years,” best known as one of owners of Greylock Hotel, The Hoosic and the Ohio 127 as president of the water company, as a longtime summer resident, and as a “heavy taxpayer.” (At the time of his death he owned about two thousand acres of land in Williamstown.) Bullock was survived by his wife, son Anthony, and daughter Margaret. In 1929 the family sold the Greylock Hotel to H. W. Dutton; the hotel business in Williamstown had suffered ever since construction of the Taconic Trail began in 1926. His widow continued to live on Gale Road. His son, Anthony, who had built a house to replace the cottage at the corner of Cold Spring and Bee Hill Roads, continued to spend summers there with his wife and young family—four children born between 1921 and 1930. Rita Hoar, who grew up next door on a Bullock-owned farm, remembered playing with the Bullock children in the 1930s, both at their parents’ house on Glen Road and at their grandmother’s house on Gale Road. In 1933 the family began selling off the farms that Anthony and James Bullock had bought. In that year Mrs. Bullock sold Sunnybrook Farm on Cold Spring Road to Art Rosenburg. And about this time the family sold the barn on the east side of Cold Spring Road to a buyer who used it as a small factory. (In 1939 it was to become the 1896 House Restaurant.) And in 1934 Mrs. Bullock sold the house on Gale Road. But the Bullocks also reacquired the Greylock Hotel: Dutton had found that business did not improve, especially when the town reconstructed Main Street in 1934. The Bullocks gave him a mortgage on the hotel, and when in the middle of the Depression he was unable to make his payments, the hotel reverted to the Bullock family. The summer colony was long gone, and the land that Bullock and his father had acquired in earlier decades now sank in value, as the effects of the Depression were felt. In 1935 Mrs. Bullock gave $15,000 to endow the James W. Bullock Scholarship at Williams—for a student from Ohio—in memory of her husband. She returned to Williamstown for the summer that year, but it was her last: she died in 1936. In 1937 her son, Anthony Bullock, offered to sell the Greylock Hotel to Williams College. The trustees accepted the offer (to keep the building from being developed for commercial purposes), over the objections of President Tyler Dennett, who did not want to spend college funds on a nonacademic project. Dennett already had a strained relationship with the trustees, and he resigned the next 128 Chapter 7 day. The college decided not to run the hotel as a commercial operation and demolished most of the building in February 1938. Only the hotel’s North Annex remained on the site until the Greylock Quad was built in 1965. Anthony Bullock and his family continued to spend summers in Williamstown until the late 1930s. But then their annual visits stopped, and the house on Glen Street was rented to Professor Roy Lamson (whose wife, Peggy Friedlander, was born and raised in Cincinnati). What was the lasting impact of the Bullock family in Williamstown? Bullock’s Tower blew down almost immediately. The Greylock Hotel is long gone. Bullock’s Pond in Flora’s Glen was later renamed Brooks Pond and is now silted in. But the Bullock Forest Reserve off Berlin Road still belongs to the town, though very few people have probably ever heard of it. Bullock’s Ledge, a fifteen-acre strip along Cold Spring Road, north of Sheep Hill, with a limestone cliff and former quarry, which once was part of Art Rosenburg’s Sunnybrook Farm and now belongs to the state, is known to a few botanists as a site of the rare hairy honeysuckle. The James W. Bullock Scholarship is still on the books at Williams. The principal has grown in value and provides for a significant award each year to a student from Ohio. The Bullock House on Cold Spring Road—Yeadon Manor—survived for many years as an inn and restaurant and is today the home of the restaurant Mezze. A car- riage house just to the south, perhaps built for the Bullocks’ Bide-a-Wee Cottage, still stands, converted to a residence. The livestock barn built in 1896 survives as the ’6 House. And the house on Gale Road in which Bullock spent his final years still stands on an eleven-acre lot.

Cincinnati Families and Williams College in the Twentieth Century During the forty-seven years between Jim Bullock’s graduation in 1881 and his death in 1928, young men from Cincinnati continued to enroll as freshmen at Williams, perhaps in part because Bullock served for some time as president of the Williams Alumni Association in Cincinnati. And since his death many more students have continued to maintain the Cincinnati connection. Three families in Cincinnati sent students to Williams over two and three generations. The close interrelations of The Hoosic and the Ohio 129 those families—the Geiers, the Strausses, and the Stones—suggest the way that the business and professional elites in midwestern cities in the same era tended to know each other and to send their children to the same eastern colleges, a not insignificant number of whom returned to Williamstown in their retirement years. One distinctive feature of the story is that at an early point, Cincinnati became identified as a good source for the German Jews that a few eastern colleges in the 1920s and ’30s were willing to admit. Frederick A. Geier (1866–1934), son of a German immigrant and founder of the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company, did not attend college himself, but once he had risen into the city’s business elite, and because of his school and church affiliations, he was in a position to hear from men in Cincinnati with a link to Williams College or Williamstown. He, Hollister, and James Bullock were fellow graduates of the same high school. As noted, George Hollister and A. D. Bullock were fellow parishioners at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church. At the Commercial Club, which Geier joined in 1906, he could have met J. W. Bullock as well as Harley Procter, both longtime members. He could also have met the younger Bullock at the University of Cincinnati, where Geier was a trustee from 1905 to 1910 and president of the board in 1909–10 and Bullock was on the Board of Visitors. And he could have met several members of the faculty who had graduated from Williams. His son Frederick V. Geier (1893–1981) enrolled at Williams in the fall of 1912 and pledged Zeta Psi. Before long he introduced two fraternity brothers, Henry (Stubby) Flynt and Gilbert McCurdy, to his sisters, and he soon had two brothers-in- law. Lifelong friends, both Geier and Flynt later served as trustees of the college. The connection with Williams extended through the Geier family. Geier’s younger first cousins Philip O. Geier Jr. (1916–2009) and Walter Eugene Lewis (Pete) Geier (1925–2009) graduated with the classes of 1937 and 1949. Both Phil and Pete returned to Cincinnati, where they spent their careers, Phil with Cincinnati Milling Machine, eventually rising to become president. Both married Cincinnati girls, but Pete’s wife, Peggy (1930–89), had her own Williamstown connection: she was the daughter of Anthony Bullock and had spent summers in Williamstown in the 1930s. 130 Chapter 7

When it came time for the children of this first generation of Geiers to go to college, it is not surprising that a number of them went to Williams, in two waves, four in the 1940s and two in the 1970s. One of them, Hank Flynt (whose mother was a Cincinnati Geier and his father a Williams alum), class of 1944, spent his career as a financial aid administrator and coach at Williams, and he and his wife lived on South Street in Williamstown for sixty-three years. Another, Phil Geier, class of 1970, after a career in educational administration, returned to Williamstown, where he and his wife built a house on Sloan Road in 2006. Of the children of this second generation, four (only one of whom grew up in Cincinnati) went to Williams. And of their children—great- grandchildren of Frederick V. Geier—two have recently graduated. There are other multigenerational Cincinnati families with Williamstown connections, and they in turn are linked to each other. James H. (Jimmy) Stone (1925–2008), class of ’48, born in New York City, was the roommate at Deerfield and at Williams of Pete Geier. Invited to Cincinnati one Christmas, he met one of Pete’s friends, Elizabeth (Lib) Asbury, from an old Cincinnati family. Jimmy Stone married her and settled in Cincinnati, where he founded the Stone Oil Company in Cincinnati in 1952. The Stones produced three Williams graduates. As is increasingly the case in upper-middle- class families, they did not settle in their hometown. After Jimmy and Lib Stone were divorced, he moved to New Orleans in 1981. Lib Stone remained in Cincinnati, and after her old friend Pete Geier’s wife died, she became Pete’s companion and an honorary member of the class of ’49. She lives in Cincinnati and maintains a condo in Greylock Village in Williamstown. She is the grandmother of a pair of Williams graduates. A third multigenerational Cincinnati-Williams family, linked to the Stones and the Geiers, are the Strausses. Carl Strauss (1912–2000) was a graduate of the class of 1933. He was one of a small number of students who went to Williams in the 1920s and early ’30s from established and wealthy German Jewish families in Cincinnati (already, by 1900, “the oldest and most cultured Jewish community west of the Alleghenies” and “the center of Reform Judaism”), including the Roths, the Rauhs, and the Freibergs, probably encouraged by Abram E. Aub, ’08, who served for many years as an officer of the Cincinnati Alumni The Hoosic and the Ohio 131

Association. It was perhaps encouraged too by an unofficial policy at elite colleges like Williams in the 1920s and 1930s designed to limit the number of Jewish students enrolling and to prefer assimilated German Jews to those from Eastern Europe. Strauss became the leading modernist architect in Cincinnati, designing a house for Jimmy and Lib Stone and then designing another for Lib after she and Jimmy were divorced. He and his two sons all graduated from Cincinnati Country Day, where all the Cincinnati Geiers had gone. Carl’s two sons went on to Williams in the 1960s, Carl A. (Tony) Jr., ’61, and Peter, ’63. Tony’s three daughters and Peter’s son also went to Williams in the 1990s. Tony spent his career as a teacher at Cincinnati Country Day, which had established and maintained close institutional links with Williams particularly because of Chuck Yeiser, class of 1943, who taught at the school from 1946 to 1971 and served as headmaster from 1971 to 1977. During his years as headmaster he directed a number of strong students to Williams, including the first African Americans from Country Day. After Yeiser retired, Tony Strauss, who taught from 1963 to 2007, became regional coordinator for the Williams Alumni Association of Cincinnati, and he too steered strong students to Williams. The other Cincinnati high school that had close links with Williams is Walnut Hills, a magnet public school that attracts academically strong students from all over the city. At a time—the late 1940s—when about three-quarters of the Williams freshman class came from private schools, Walnut Hills began sending significant numbers of students to Williams, after Fred Copeland, the dean of admissions at Williams, beginning in 1946, developed a close relationship with the Walnut Hills principal, Leonard Steuart. (Peter Stites, Walnut Hills 1944, Williams 1949, taught Spanish at Walnut Hills and assisted the Williams admissions operation in Cincinnati for many years.) Over the decades several Walnut Hills graduates have strengthened their ties to Williams and Williamstown: Dudley Bahlman (Walnut Hills 1940, but then Yale) was a longtime professor of history at Williams, and Hodge Markgraf (Walnut Hills 1948, Williams 1952) served even longer as a professor of chemistry. Dickson Whitney (Walnut Hills 1945, Williams 1949), whose two brothers followed him through Walnut Hills and Williams, acted 132 Chapter 7 as an adviser on Williams admissions from Cincinnati in the 1960s. In later years other Walnut Hills graduates with Williams connections eventually settled in Williamstown, including Jim Heekin, Bob McGill, and Gale Griffin. One other Cincinnati-area high school had a relationship with Williams for a few years beginning in the late 1950s. Highlands High School in Fort Thomas, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, sent a handful of students to Williams beginning with Bob Stegeman, class of 1960. (His parents knew Williams alumni, who invited Bob to attend a Williams alumni meeting in 1955.) Over the next several years three more Highlands High School graduates would go to Williams, including Bob Stegeman’s first cousin Jack Wadsworth, ’61, who married a Fort Thomas girl, became a Williams trustee, and sent two children to Williams. He solidified his ties to Williamstown when he established a company that developed the Porches in North Adams in 2001. Stegeman married a Cincinnati girl, too, and after a career in education retired to Williamstown in 2002, where he and his wife, Carol, built a house on the former Mount Hope Farm property. Some years later, Highlands High School graduated Mike Glier, who went on to Williams, class of 1975, and has taught studio art at the college for many years. The most famous Cincinnatian to teach at Williams was Irving Babbitt (1865–1933). Born in Dayton, Babbitt, who grew up in Cincinnati, taught at Williams for a year (1893–94) before going on to a distinguished career at Harvard. More recently, Tom Jorling (1940–) attended Summit Boys School and Xavier High School in Cincinnati and then Notre Dame. He taught at Williams from 1972 to 1977 and now lives in Williamstown. Linda Shearer, longtime director of the Williams College Museum of Art, left Williams in 2005 to spend a couple of years as director of the Cincinnati Museum of Contemporary Art. Paula Moore Tabor, former associate director of alumni relations at Williams, comes from Cincinnati, where she went to high school and then to Williams (class of 1976) with Lib Stone’s daughter Suzi. John Skavlem, Cincinnati Country Day and then Williams ’84, was formerly in the development office at Williams and later at the Clark Art Institute and a Williamstown resident. John W. (Jay) Thoman Jr. (Williams ’82), son of Cincinnatian John W. Thoman (Williams The Hoosic and the Ohio 133

’49), returned to Williams to join the Chemistry Department in 1988, where he fittingly holds the chair named after Hodge Markgraf—of Cincinnati; you can see him on Spring Street in a Cincinnati Reds hat. Williams graduates, emulating the example of Chuck Yeiser and Tony Strauss, still migrate westward to Cincinnati to be teachers, just as they did in the nineteenth century. Others, following in another old path, have taken up major posts as clergymen—or clergywomen, reflecting demographic changes in the college and the country. Larry Bronson, ’70, is the assistant pastor of a large Baptist church in Cincinnati. Sigma Faye (Sissy) Coran, who served as the Jewish chaplain at Williams from 1998 to 2004, is now the first senior female rabbi serving in a Cincinnati congregation. But a significantly larger number of Williams graduates now living in Cincinnati have, like their classmates, gone into two other professions, law and medicine. The number of students from Cincinnati has declined over the past sixty years. In academic year 1947–48 there were twenty-seven students enrolled from Cincinnati (including several whose student careers had been interrupted by the war), at a time when the student body was about eleven hundred. In 1955–56, as the college maintained the same size but looked more widely for qualified students, the number had dropped to eight. In 1960–61 it was eleven. Students from Cincinnati continue to apply—about twenty-five per year—but only two per year matriculate (when each class has about five hundred students). This probably reflects the fact that in recent years, legacies and established relationships with sending institutions count for less than they used to in Williams College admissions. Students now come from a much wider array of cities and schools, especially public schools. But Cincinnati is still producing academic leaders: Emily Balskus (a graduate of Ursuline Academy) was valedictorian of her class at Williams in 2002 (and is now a tenured professor of chemistry at Harvard). And the traditional feeder schools in Cincinnati are still sending students to Williams—one of them, Lauren Garcia, ’09, a graduate of Walnut Hills, was a member of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) champion women’s varsity soccer team. Lauren Garcia went back to Cincinnati, but a number of others who grew up in Cincinnati, drawn here by the college, remain full-time 134 Chapter 7

Williamstown residents: Mike Glier, Paula Moore Tabor, Tom Jorling, Bob and Carol Stegeman, Gale Griffin, Phil Geier, Linda Conway, and John Skavlem. As do several part-time residents—Lib Stone, Bob McGill, and Jack and Susy Wadsworth—if you can catch them on the wing. They are living evidence that the Cincinnati connection—a chain that begins in the early nineteenth century—extends into the present. CHAPTER 8  BIG DAYS IN A SMALL TOWN

One of the leading features of small-town life is the gathering at some central place, on several occasions during the year, of a substantial part of the population—young and old—for a parade, or a fair, or a ball, or other holiday festivities. These events are a means to bring everybody together and to reaffirm their participation in a small community. These town-wide events are a prominent part of the Williamstown’s annual calendar and have been going on for a long time. The Fourth of July has been celebrated in Williamstown since at least 1795. The commencement exercises at Williams College drew large numbers of townspeople beginning in 1795. Memorial Day has been observed in Williamstown since shortly after the event was established in 1868. Other town-wide events are relatively new: the Holiday Walk in early December dates from 1983. Some events, annual features for many decades, are no longer celebrated. The annual Fireman’s Ball took place on Easter Monday from about 1900 until the 1970s. The annual Williamstown Grange Fair, at the end of the summer, drew big crowds from the 1930s until the 1980s. Most of the town’s big days were annual events, but one of the biggest days in Williamstown was the celebration, in October 1953, of the two hundredth anniversary of the town’s founding in 1753. How these days were celebrated, with what kinds of activities, and with what changes over time can reveal a lot about the town and its history. Even the ones we continue to celebrate today have not always

135 136 Chapter 8 taken the same form. In some cases longtime residents can still remember the way the Fourth of July was celebrated in their youth. But very few old-timers survive to recall the “big days” in Williamstown in the days before the town’s bicentennial. Fortunately, evidence survives, and it is by means of old photographs, posters, programs, newspaper clippings, and other artifacts that it is possible to reconstruct how these occasions have been celebrated over the years.

The Fourth of July Independence Day has been an official Massachusetts holiday since 1781 and became a federal holiday in 1870. From 1795 to 1829 Independence Day celebrations, jointly sponsored by the town and the newly founded Williams College, were usually held in the college chapel—then located in West College and after 1828 in Griffin Hall. An account of the 1795 celebration appeared two days later in a Bennington newspaper:

The anniversary of the ever memorable event, which gave birth to the freedom of our country, was celebrated here with every demonstration of Joy, which the recollection of the horrors of servitude compared with the blessings of independence could inspire. At twelve o’clock a battalion of infantry and a company of cavalry, together with a numerous body of citizens, and members of the college, walked in process from the green East of College, to the meeting house. A well adapted address to Heaven was there made by the Rev. President Fitch, and an elegant and patriotic oration delivered by Mr. Tutor Dunbar, which was received with great applause by the audience. Several pieces of music adapted to the occasion were performed. Afterwards the company sat down to an elegant entertainment at Mr. Starkweather’s [a local inn].

The news story concluded with a list of the toasts to the president, governor, and the principles of the revolution. In 1799 and 1801 the main oration was delivered by Ezekiel Bacon, a Berkshire County lawyer and anti-Federalist (later elected to Congress), who used the occasion of his address to make a thinly disguised attack on the Federalists and to reassert the principles of liberty and equal- ity. Beginning in 1828 exercises were held in the new college chapel, in Big Days in a Small Town 137

Griffin Hall. Organized by the sophomore class, they included a reading of the Declaration of Independence and several orations, including speeches from members of the college Anti-Slavery Society and the Temperance Society; it was common in New England in that era for champions of abolition and temperance to link their cause to that of national independence and to promote it on July 4. Ladies were invited to attend, but the events were planned and executed by men. The ceremony was followed by a dinner. In 1839 the celebration was not jointly sponsored by the town and college but was conducted by “the Young Men of Williamstown.” In 1841 a Williams student put up a flag on the Fourth of July—and was punished for it by the faculty with a fine: July 4 happened to be a Sunday, and Sabbath observance rules trumped patriotic displays. On July 4 in 1860, the Williams College baseball team played against Amherst in Westfield, Massachusetts. During the Civil War, celebrations in the North focused on preserving the Union. By the late 1860s attention centered not on the country’s independence from Great Britain but on the need to “bind up the nation’s wounds” after the Civil War. According to a Williams College magazine in 1867, the event that year “passed off quietly enough. The heat was almost intolerable, and begat a drowsiness, which was disturbed only by the occasional report of some sleepy cannon in the distance or the snap of some solitary firecracker.” In another Williams College student magazine in 1872, a Fourth of July celebration was said to be “no longer the occasion it was before the ‘recent unpleasantness.’” Only a few years earlier, there was “a good deal of noise” from cannons and firecrackers, a fair amount of drinking, a dinner, and speeches. But now—since the end of the Civil War—“the whole thing has a sort of tired-out, after-dinner air, which compares sadly with former glories.” By late in the century there were “Field Days” in North Adams and Adams, but the occasion was marked in Williamstown only by small boys lighting fireworks. In 1901 the Grand Army of the Republic organized town-wide celebrations “to educate the young to realize the importance of the day.” The educational part consisted of a formal address at the Opera House. The fun part was a baseball game (between Civil War veterans and their sons), a band concert, and a parade after the address to a site on the 138 Chapter 8

Williams campus (near the present hockey rink) for fireworks. In 1902 sponsorship shifted to the Good Will Club, which put on a Field Day at Weston Field. But in 1903 there was only a joint church service, with a sermon on “the significance” of the Fourth of July. Organized celebrations lapsed until 1916, when another Field Day (to benefit town playgrounds) was held at Weston Field. The big draws were a speech from Congressman Allen Treadway and an “Automobile Parade”—the first cars had come to Williamstown only about a decade earlier. There was another big celebration in 1917, just three months after the United States entered the war. A display ad in the Transcript the previous day urged readers, “Be Sure to Come to Williamstown . . . The Small Place of Big Things.” The Transcript covered the event with a major story in the next day’s paper. The first subhead reported that “Governor at Williamstown Delivers Notable Extemporaneous Address, Re-dedicating the Fourth as the Birthday of Democracy Throughout the World.” The governor in effect redefined the Fourth of July for the modern era—not just the birth of our country but the birth of world- wide democracy. The second subhead declared that the celebration was the “Biggest Demonstration in History of College Town.” Fourth of July Field Days lasted through the remainder of World War I, no doubt swelled by the surges of patriotic fervor while American troops were fighting in France. The governor was also scheduled to speak at the celebrations in 1918, designed as a benefit for the Red Cross. Apart from the speeches, there were to be a parade with floats, “Community Music” from a “Great Public Chorus,” a “Midway” (what would later be called a carnival), baseball games, and even “Free ‘Movies’”—at a time when moving pictures were just becoming popular. When the governor had to cancel, he was replaced by Mrs. August Belmont, the international ambassadress of the Red Cross, who had just returned from France; she apparently gave a stirring address. But when the war ended, some of the enthusiasm for Fourth of July celebrations seem to have declined, and although there was a Field Day in 1919, the practice then lapsed . Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, the day was marked mostly, as noted, by the loud report of fireworks, set off by the boys of the town. Accidents were common. Newspapers carried ads for fireworks and for pistols that would fire blanks, with an “extra loud report.” Big Days in a Small Town 139

Newspapers also typically reported the next day on the various hands, fingers, and faces that were injured and the occasional fatality. It was legal to sell and buy fireworks in town, so long as they were less than six inches long. But by 1920 selling fireworks was illegal, and by 1938 there was a town law against setting them off. Retailers complained that the ban was bad for business. Beginning in 1947 the local Lions Club sponsored a Field Day at Mitchell School, with a parade, featuring decorated floats built on flat- bed trucks. There were contests for best costume and best child’s float, athletic events, carnival rides, and food booths. In the evening was a dance, followed by fireworks, attracting crowds up to ten thousand and more. Over the years the “carnival” part of the event was extended to three days. For almost four decades it was the biggest day of the year in Williamstown. The Lions Club Field Day was designed as a service project and fund-raiser to benefit vision and hearing charities. Revenue came from admission tickets ($1), food booths (organized by the Lions), and a 25 percent share of the 75-cent carnival ride tickets (put on by an outside vendor). Expenses were primarily for the fireworks. The Lions often cleared about $4,000. But it took them three days to set up and three days to clean up. As time went on, they found it harder to recruit club members to run the event, and the carnival operator found that the increasing cost of liability insurance premiums made the business unprofitable. The last Field Day was in 1985. From modest beginnings in 1986, the Fourth of July parade from Southworth School to Spring Street (or to Weston Field) has grown into the major event of the holiday. Oratory is no longer an important feature of the Fourth of July in Williamstown, but the parade, the live music, the open-air hot-dog lunch, and the reading of the Declaration of Independence all derive from long-established celebratory practice. (The reading of the “British response,” now an occasion for snickering and booing, was never part of the traditional nineteenth-century celebration.) The evening Steeplecats baseball game in North Adams carries on the holiday tradition of athletic contests on the Fourth of July. From 1989 to 1992 there was a scaled-down fireworks display event on the Fourth of July at Mount Greylock Regional High School, preceded by a hamburger-and- hot-dog barbecue sponsored by the Lions. But 140 Chapter 8 the fireworks ended in 1993. They returned in 1999 and again in 2003, jointly sponsored by the town and the Chamber of Commerce as part of the town’s 250th anniversary. But when local businesses decided not to continue their underwriting, the town declined to assume the entire burden, and public fireworks on the Fourth of July in Williamstown again came to an end. The nights of July 3 and 4 were often marked by private firecrackers and even unlicensed fireworks. But in 2014 fireworks returned to Williamstown. The Fourth of July in 2014 began with the traditional parade, but the parade route led to the Clark Art Institute on South Street, where a free picnic lunch was served, courtesy of the Clark. Early that evening was a free band concert, in the outdoor amphitheater just to the south of the red Manton Building. Unfortunately, rain fell for most of the day, and crowds were held down, but as darkness fell the skies cleared for a display of fireworks on Stone Hill. Beginning in 2017 the site for fireworks shifted to the Taconic Golf Club, where they were sponsored by the club, the town, the Chamber of Commerce, and the Rotary Club.

Williams College Commencement The commencement at Williams College, held annually since 1795, has ever since then been one of the “biggest days” in Williamstown each year. Over the years it has seen many changes. It originally took place in early September and gradually moved forward on the calendar. By 1883 it was held on July 4. It originally occupied just one day, but soon expanded to several days and, by 1821, to six days. It originally took place at the meetinghouse in what is now Field Park, moving to Chapin Hall on the Williams campus in 1912, to Mission Park in 1956, and to West College Lawn in 1987. For its first century, the central element of commencement was oratory: each graduating senior gave a speech. Up until about the Civil War, commencement was a town-wide event, resembling a country fair. By the late nineteenth century, it had become primarily a closed college event, although the crowds of faculty, students, families, and alumni tended to take over the town for a week. Beginning in 1987, in its procession and spacious outdoor location, it once again attracted large numbers of townspeople. When the ceremony moved to the smaller Library Quad in 2017, the event had little room for townies. Big Days in a Small Town 141

For the first commencement in 1795, the procession began at West College and ended at the meetinghouse in “the Square” (what is now Field Park), a building that was judged to be “small and incommodious”— the college provided funds in 1798 for constructing a larger meetinghouse on the site. “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Town” were among the guests—so at the outset commencement was an event that conjoined town and gown. Exercises included an oration “on female education” and another on “the iniquity and impolicy of the slave trade.” After the ceremony, “a decent Dinner was provided . . . for the Gentlemen of the Clergy.” Celebrations quickly expanded to four days, including a prize speaking contest. The program on Commencement Day consisted primarily of orations by graduating students. On the evening of commencement day, a “Commencement Ball” was held at a local assembly hall. Beginning in 1821 a day during commencement was set aside for alumni, who had just formed the oldest college alumni society in America. In 1823 the crowd at commencement was estimated to be about two thousand. From 1827 to 1831 there were fireworks at night. From 1828, when Griffin Hall was completed, the procession began there, marched west on Main Street through an open archway in the center of West College, and up Main Street to the meetinghouse. The most vivid account of a mid-nineteenth-century Williams commencement was provided by the great American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne, who passed through Williamstown in August 1838 on a tour of New England. He recorded his impressions of the event in his journal, later published as American Notebooks:

Wednesday August 15th, 1838. I went to Commencement at Williams College. . . . At the tavern were students with ribbons, pink or blue, fluttering from their buttonholes, these being the badges of rival societies. There was a considerable gathering of people, chiefly arriving in wagons or buggies, some in barouches, and very few in chaises. The most characteristic part of the scene was where the pedlers, ginger-bread sellers, etc. were collected, a few hundred yards from the meeting-house. There was a pedler there from New York State, who sold his wares by auction, and I could have stood and listened to him all day long. Sometimes he would put up a heterogeny of articles in 142 Chapter 8

a lot, as a paper of pins, a lead-pencil, and a shaving-box, and knock them all down, perhaps for nine pence. . . . Sometimes he would pre- tend that a person had bid, either by word or wink, and raised a laugh thus, never losing his self-possession or getting out of humor. . . . The people bought very freely, and seemed to enjoy the fun.

Most of the participants were apparently townspeople and even farmers who had come in from neighboring towns. And the well-watered celebrants began to get boisterous:

A good many people were the better or worse for liquor. There was one fellow, named Randall I think, a round-shouldered, bulky, ill-hung devil, with a pale, sallow skin, black beard, and a sort of grin upon his face—a species of laugh, yet not so much mirthful and indicating a strange mental and moral twist. He was very riotous in the crowd, elbowing, thrusting, seizing hold of people; and at last a ring was formed and a regular wrestling match commenced between him and a farmer-looking man. Randall brandished his legs about in the most ridiculous style, but proved himself a good wrestler, and finally threw his antagonist.

The crowd was surprisingly heterogeneous, reminding us that nineteenth- century Williamstown had a population of free blacks, many of them living in White Oaks:

There were a good many blacks among the crowd. I suppose they used to emigrate across the border, while New York was a slave state. There were enough of them to form a party, though greatly in the minority; and, a squabble arising, some of the blacks were knocked down, and mistreated. . . . There was not the quiet, sullen, dull decency of our public assemblages, but mirth, anger, eccentricity, all manifesting themselves freely. There were many watermelons for sale, and people burying their muzzles deep in the juicy flesh of them. There were cider and beer, and many people had their mouths half opened in a grin, which, more than anything else, indicates a low stage of refine- ment. A low-crowned hat, very low, is common. They are respectful to gentlemen. Big Days in a Small Town 143

Twenty years later a letter to the Pittsfield Sun, dated August 3, 1859, noted that for some residents of Williamstown, commencement was an occasion that you just had to endure: you made your way “with difficulty into the heated and densely crowded assemblages”—it took place in August in those days—“to witness its exercises” and saw “the same gestures and listened to the same kind of speeches.” But for most people in town, the correspondent declared, commencement week is “of the greatest importance of any event of the year. It is a season for the reunion of families at their old homes, and other social gatherings. Those who have never made it their homes take this occasion to visit the place, for at this time they meet many old friends and acquaintances, and they eat, drink, and make merry together. . . . The boys flock down from the mountain side after their yearly card of gingerbread. . . . The girls, too, are not backward in coming forward, and bringing out things both new and old to edify and interest the country youth.” There are a couple of other vivid accounts of mid-nineteenth-century commencements. One comes from Keyes Danforth, a Williamstown native who published articles in the North Adams Transcript about his childhood (later republishing them in 1895 in book form as Boyhood Reminiscences). Danforth was born in 1846, so when he describes commencement, he was probably writing about events in the 1850s.

On the morning of commencement day the alumni used to form in procession at the old chapel [now Griffin Hall] with the band in the lead, the under-graduates next, with the alumni following, with the trustees and officers of the college bringing up the rear. The procession moved up the south walk through the West College to the old meeting-house on the hill. The streets were lined with carriages, the horses prancing at the sound of the music, and the hill in front of the church was packed with human beings watching and waiting for the procession, as none but ladies were allowed in the church till the alumni arrived and took their seats. When the church was reached, while the band continued to play in the vestibule, the procession separated, and the trustees and alumni marched up two by two from the rear through the passage-way formed by the under-graduates. When the last of the line of trustees and alumni had entered the church the fun began. The crowd would force in the ranks of the students and 144 Chapter 8

rush for the open doors, where stood [the college marshals], with their wands of office in their hands with which they would attempt, but in vain, to beat back the crowd. Those of the crowd who succeeded in gaining admission to the church would stop there but a short time, for the attraction to them was located outside to the west of the church, where were to be found the eating booths, the music, and the shows of all kinds which for the country people were the real commencement.

The publication of Danforth’s articles must have prompted others to think back to the old days and remember the commencement celebrations as they used to be. In 1892 a letter in the North Adams Transcript at commencement time recalled the “good old days” fifty years earlier, when commencement was “the most conspicuous and important [public event] of the year in these parts.” While the ceremonies took place in the old meetinghouse, crowds gathered outside, “where the gingerbread eating and the drinking, shouting, and fighting were in progress. It was a slim commencement indeed which did not yield a large crop of fights.” But people’s memories apparently conflicted, for in the following year as commencement approached, another letter appeared in the Transcript, challenging the report that “the old commencement days at Williams . . . were especial occasions for the gathering of fighting men and for drinking.” The letter writer begins by recalling attending commencement during his own childhood:

One, who as a boy in those days always attended the exercises back of the [old Congregational church], cannot remember these gatherings as having any other features than those of a general holiday for those not of a literary turn of mind, for farmer boys and their sweet- hearts, and the younger class of the community intent on having a good time. Oyster stews, pork and beans, gingerbread, sweet cider, lemonade, peanuts, watermelons, pop-corn and whips were sold as at the present cattle-shows. This citizen can remember but a single instance of drunkenness at those gatherings. On a hot afternoon he sat in a farmer’s wagon, one of a hundred or so hitched to a board fence to the north of the long open greensward sloping towards the west. Suddenly a tall, gaunt fellow appeared with a huge watermelon on his shoulder. The equipoise under such staggering circumstances as that Big Days in a Small Town 145

watermelon maintained on the fellow’s shoulders was wonderful. But an unusual lurch, and it came to the ground and was wrecked. Two lads who devoured the remains afterward became famous, one as a Chicago lawyer and the other a brave general in the late war.

These memoirists were thinking back to “the old days,” when commencement was held in the second Congregational meetinghouse, long since burned down. From 1868 commencement was held in the third meetinghouse, constructed on the site of the present First Congregational Church, with financial assistance from the college, which needed a larger building to accommodate a larger graduating class. There were fewer orations on commencement day, replaced by a “rhetorical contest” between sophomores and juniors on the day before commencement. Admission to the meetinghouse had to be limited to students, their families, faculty, and alumni—there was no room for townspeople. Celebrations lasted for a week, including a “Senior Promenade” (said to be “the social event of the year”), from 1888 class dinners for alumni, and from 1891 a baseball game between Williams and Amherst. Beginning in 1905 there were only four student speakers at commencement. From 1912 the exercises were held in the newly constructed Chapin Hall. The academic procession began near Lawrence Hall, passed by Hopkins Hall (where the faculty contingent joined) to Jesup Hall (where alumni joined), to the president’s house (where the president and trustees joined), and finally into Chapin Hall. From 1928 fraternity reunions became part of the week’s events, and in 1941 quinquennial class reunions were held. The Amherst-Williams baseball game at commencement continued until 1960. In the mid-1940s, during the war, graduating classes were small and ceremonies were held in the Faculty House and in Thompson Memorial Chapel. From 1950 through 1954 commencement was held on the lawn to the north of Chapin Hall in the middle of the college campus. From 1956 to 1978 it was held in Mission Park and from 1979 to 1986 on the lawn to the north of Hopkins Hall. Beginning in 1987 it took place on West College Lawn. Townspeople watched the procession, sat in lawn chairs on the hillside under the trees, and listened to a famous speaker. Beginning in 2017 a construction project adjacent to West College Lawn required that commencement be moved to the Library Quad, 146 Chapter 8 with views of the west facade of Stetson Hall and of Pine Cobble. The town is still represented by the sheriff of Berkshire County, who walks at the head of the procession and formally opens and closes the ceremony. (For sixteen years, from 1962 to 1978, he was John Courtney, father of current town clerk Mary Courtney Kennedy.) Some elements have remained the same since 1795—the academic procession passing by the president’s house (now Sloan House), colorful academic garb, and the awarding of degrees to graduating seniors, one at a time. As has long been the case, some degree candidates appear to be hung over. Some traditional elements have taken new forms in today’s commencement. The senior dinner and dance on the Wednesday of commencement week is a descendant of the old Senior Promenade. Serious oratory is still at the center of the exercises, though the main commencement address is given not by a student but by an honorary- degree recipient. Prize speaking has shrunk to the contest in which a committee awards a prize to the best student speaker (from a group of three seniors). Reunion weekend, separated from commencement since 1961, derives from the old class dinners and fraternity reunions formerly held during commencement days. Now returning alumni take over the center of town, especially on the Saturday of reunion weekend, one week after commencement, for another parade, which passes by Sloan House on Main Street, turns down Spring Street, and ends at Chandler Gym for the annual meeting of the Society of Alumni. Marching at the head of the parade is the fiftieth reunion class.

Memorial Day Memorial Day, formerly called Decoration Day, was invented in 1868, to decorate with flowers the graves of Union soldiers who had died in the Civil War. Ceremonies were sponsored in cities and towns by local posts of the Grand Army of the Republic, a national Civil War veterans organization. Ceremonies began in Williamstown in 1870, when the C. D. Sanford GAR Post from North Adams led a procession from Spring Street to Eastlawn Cemetery and back again to the Soldiers’ Monument on Main Street, where Williams students welcomed them. For several years the ceremonies were conducted by the newly organized E. P. Hopkins Big Days in a Small Town 147

GAR Post in Williamstown, with stops for speeches at Eastlawn, Westlawn, and the college cemetery. By 1873 a Williams College publication referred to the observances as “a beautiful custom.” In 1874 speeches were given on the campus by Williams professors, with “large numbers of citizens” in attendance. A contingent from Father Mathew’s Temperance Society was present. But after 1874 there appears to have been no ceremony until 1892. Beginning in 1892 the event—now called Memorial Day (although the older name, Decoration Day, remained in use)—was sponsored by the E. P. Hopkins Post, reorganized in 1891 after a period of inactiv- ity. Veterans raised the flag at the old Union School on Spring Street, across from their headquarters, and paraded through the streets to the Congregational church, where a Williams professor gave an address. A midday meal was served at the Opera House on Water Street. Those three elements—parade, oratory, and lunch—have remained part of Memorial Day observances ever since. Over the next twenty years celebrations would expand to fill the whole day: decoration of graves in Eastlawn, Westlawn, and Southlawn Cemeteries, with a ceremony at Soldiers’ Mound up at the top of Eastlawn and a parade to the Congregational church (or the Soldiers’ Monument or the Methodist church) for speeches. Beginning in the 1890s the afternoon was devoted to a baseball game at Weston Field between Williams and Amherst. Over the years attendance at the game grew to six thousand. Also beginning in the 1890s fire trucks joined the parade. (Fire trucks have followed the vets ever since.) The parade in 1895 included “boys from the anti-cigarette league”—as with the temperance society twenty years earlier, local one-issue groups saw an opportunity to reach a big audience. But time marched on, and by 1910 there were so few Civil War vets marching—men thirty-five years old when the war ended were now eighty years old—that an organization of “Sons of Civil War Veterans” joined the parade. The parade in 1918, when the country was again at war, was one of the most elaborate ever. By 1920 only ten Civil War vets were able to march, and vets from other wars, including the recently concluded world war, filled the ranks. Memorial Day was changing from an event honoring the Civil War dead to an event honoring all men who died in wartime. And in 1930, the GAR having faded away, 148 Chapter 8 the local American Legion post took over responsibility for the parade and ceremony. The year 1950 was the first time that the ceremony took place in Field Park. As late as 1960 a reading of the Gettysburg Address, first instituted about 1909, was part of the program. The baseball game was dropped from the schedule (attendance having declined), replaced by an afternoon visit to Southlawn Cemetery. In 1968 Memorial Day, until then celebrated on May 30, was officially moved to the last Monday in May. Since about 1970 the form of Memorial Day in Williamstown has been fixed. A parade winds from Spring Street up to Field Park for a solemn ceremony conducted by the local American Legion post honoring by name all veterans who have died during the previous year. Afterward, those attending the ceremony are invited to the legion headquarters (for many years on the corner of Spring and Walden Streets and since 2014 on Water Street) for an informal lunch.

The Fireman’s Ball The Fireman’s Ball, sponsored by the Gale Hose Company, was held annually from 1897 until 1972 as a benefit for the Fire Fighters’ Benevolent Fund. Beginning in 1899, the ball was usually held on Easter Monday, at first at the old Opera House on Water Street and in later years at several locations on the Williams College campus, the auditorium or gymnasium at Mitchell School on Southworth Street, and Mount Greylock Regional High School. In the weeks before the event firemen went door to door throughout the town to sell tickets. In the early years tickets were a dollar apiece. The ball’s format was established almost immediately and varied little for seventy-five years. It began with a concert of classical and popular short pieces of music by a small orchestra, then the “Grand March” of firemen with their wives or teenage daughters, and then a series of twenty-four numbered dances, followed by a midnight supper. Guests received an elaborate printed program. Attendance at the first ball was estimated at five hundred and in later years sometimes reached that number. For many years the event was regarded as the kickoff of the Williamstown social season. Big Days in a Small Town 149

A newspaper story on the Fireman’s Ball in 1898 described it as “the most largely attended and most successful ball in the recent history of the town” and declared that it was already destined to be an “annual” event. The headline to a story on the 1919 ball reported, “Firemen’s Guests Dance till Dawn.” By the 1940s—perhaps because of the war— attendance had declined. In 1942 guests numbered “about 250.” Outside the ballroom there were others who celebrated the event in their own way: the story reported that, as was customary, a false alarm was turned in during the ball.

The Grange Fair For much of the twentieth century the Williamstown Grange put on an annual fair at its Grange Hall on Green River Road at the end of the summer. It was the town’s “country fair.” Beginning as a “fair and flower show,” it displayed flowers, fruits, and vegetables grown in Williamstown’s farm gardens. Prizes were awarded for best in each class. The fair went on for three days. Crowds numbered more than a thousand each day. One of the biggest events was the horse pull. Pairs of horses, typically Percherons or Belgians, dragged “stone boats” weighted with heavy stones or concrete blocks, with more weight added after each round. Each team, working one at a time, pulled until it could not pull any- more. Sometimes the winner would pull only inches on its last round. Horses competed in the 2,800- and 3,200-pound class (based on the combined weight of the team). But as draught horses were replaced by tractors on local farms, the horse pull gradually ended, and the fair developed over time into a “charity horse show.” The Rotary Club had sponsored several horse shows as fund-raisers in town in the 1940s. In the early 1950s the Grange put on a horse show for children riders, and in 1958 the show expanded into a major com- petitive event for adult riders, attracting contestants from all over New England. This lasted until the mid-1970s, when the event reverted to a children’s horse show. The fair ended in 1985, as the Grange, like the Lions in the same year, found it increasingly difficult to get younger members to take over responsibility for mounting the event. 150 Chapter 8

The 1953 Bicentennial One of the biggest events in the town’s history was the recognition in 1953 of the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Williamstown. The year was marked by the raising of the “1753 House” in Field Park, the publication of a new town history (Williamstown: The First Two Hundred Years), and the production of an original play, On Hemlock Brook, about the construction of the blockhouse in West Hoosuck in 1756. Celebrations during “Bicentennial Week” (actually nine days, from September 25 through October 3) included the dedication of the 1753 House, a parade and block dance on Spring Street, a band concert and open-air “community sing,” performances of On Hemlock Brook at the college’s Adams Memorial Theatre, the publication of a Bicentennial Edition of The Village Beautiful (a pamphlet promoting tourism), and a soap-box derby.

The Holiday Walk The first municipal Christmas tree was erected and lit in front of the Masonic Hall on Main Street, opposite Water Street, in 1919. A Christmas Walk began in 1983, when two Water Street merchants organized an evening event on the first Saturday in December, with luminaria along the sidewalks, period costumes, a visit from Santa Claus, and rides for kids in a horse-drawn wagon. Beginning in 1985 (just as the Lions Club July 4 Field Day and the Grange Fair ended), the event expanded, as if to fill a vacuum: it moved to Spring Street and was renamed the Holiday Walk. Sponsored now by the Chamber of Commerce, and held in the afternoon while the street is closed to traffic, it was designed to kick off the holiday season and to promote retail sales. It included live music (both Dixieland and Christmas carols) and a “penny social” at Lasell Gym. Beginning in 1990 the organizers added a “reindog parade” down Spring Street and the auctioning of decorated tabletop Christmas trees at the Congregational church.

The Decline of Big Days Today the Holiday Walk is one of four remaining “big days” in Williams- town. The other three—the Memorial Day parade, Williams com- Big Days in a Small Town 151 mencement, and the Fourth of July—are crowded into a six-week period extending from late May to early July. On other occasions during the year the town swells with visitors, but those days tend to be annual fixtures on the Williams College calendar—Family Days (formerly called Parents Weekend), Homecoming, and Reunions—rather than town-wide events that bring town and gown together. Columbus Day—still a state holiday in a state with many citizens of Italian origin—has become detached from its original purpose and serves now as the peak of the leaf-peeping season and the means to create a three- day weekend. Like the Holiday Walk, it has become underpinned by commerce and officially renamed Indigenous Peoples Day. The Fireman’s Ball is a thing of the past, as is the Grange Fair. And Williamstown’s celebration of the Fourth of July is a shadow of its former glory. There are probably a number of reasons for the decline in the number and scale of civic festivals, some of them specific to Williamstown, some having to do with the changing nature of public holidays, and some of them a reflection of changes in national life. A Grange requires a local agricultural base, and there are very few working farms left in Williamstown. (The local Grange continues to meet, but its membership has fallen off steeply.) The town’s economy depends far more on tourism than it once did, and while tourists visit local museums, they are not likely to take part in local festivities. Memorial Day, as noted, once had a quite specific purpose: to decorate the graves of Civil War soldiers. Very few people now visit a cemetery on Memorial Day, although a group of veterans still tries to visit every cemetery in town—some so small they are hard to find—and decorate the graves of soldiers. Residents were once asked to remember the soldiers who died in the Civil War and when they died off were asked to honor those who died in World War I or World War II. The largest Memorial Day observances in Williamstown were probably those held during World War I, a war that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy; it probably helped boost the number of participants in the parades in 1917 and 1918. Vietnam and the military interventions in the Middle East may have made many people ambivalent about remembering military sacrifice on Memorial Day. And for those who do participate in the ceremonies, the focus of the memorial itself has become diffuse: we are now asked to remember not those young soldiers who 152 Chapter 8 died in combat but elderly veterans who died in their beds at the end of a long life or those who once served in the armed forces or are cur- rently serving. (The line separating Memorial Day and Veterans Day has blurred.) And with the end of the draft and the rise of a volunteer army, very few families have a son or daughter in military service. The Fourth of July celebrations once served as occasions to remind ourselves of the significance of our hard-fought independence from Great Britain. But for all the flag waving, few celebrants at Fourth of July parades today are focusing on the events of 1776. The patriotic oratory that once stirred and captivated audiences for hours has long been replaced by the fleeting spectacle of a line of community groups holding up banners and throwing candy. The banners carry no patriotic slogans—they simply advertise the group’s name. Perhaps some who listen to a reading of the Declaration of Independence are moved once again by the stirring language, but others are merely amused at the haughty “British reply” delivered each year by an actor from the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Some reasons for the apparent decline in public celebrations in Williamstown reflect broad changes in American public life. The rise of the two-career or two-job family means fewer volunteers—especially women—are available to put on elaborate events. The increase in the number and variety of entertainment and athletic options tends to fragment a town, most of which might once have gathered to watch a community baseball game. But there is no reason to think that total participation—in weekly tennis, squash, or paddle tennis groups or in walking or hiking groups—is down. Some argue that there has been a general decline in civic spirit. If that is the case, you might expect that attendance at Williamstown’s annual town meeting has gone down. But in fact attendance goes up and down, depending on the leading articles on the warrant. And attendance in recent years is about what it was fifty years ago. (Town meeting is not one of the big days in Williamstown. If 10 percent of the registered voters attend, that’s a big turnout. Complaints about low attendance were already commonplace in 1950.) Others argue that communal participation of all kinds has declined, that we are becoming a nation that even “bowls alone.” But it may be that public events are simply taking different forms: there may be fewer adult baseball leagues (the large local employers who once Big Days in a Small Town 153 fielded teams have now largely disappeared), but there are more youth soccer leagues and adult golf leagues and tournaments. There are probably just as many people celebrating the Fourth of July as there ever were at the holiday’s height (and for decades, as noted, it was a rather quiet day in Williamstown). Once the parade is over, many of those who waved flags from the sidewalks head off to family or neighborhood picnics, others for an afternoon of swimming, cycling, or hiking. For them, it’s a big day. CHAPTER 9  A TALE OF TWO CITIES—AND A COUNTRY TOWN Boston, New York, and Williamstown

For many years Roger St. Pierre hung a two-sided sign outside his barbershop on Spring Street that declared, on each side, that the shop was “Three Hours from Fenway Park.” It could just as well say “Three Hours from Yankee Stadium,” and not only because Roger preferred Yankee pinstripes. On any given day, about half of the people who walked into St. Pierre’s barbershop were Yankee fans and half were Red Sox fans. This estimate is corroborated by a study, based on Facebook “likes” done by the Harvard Sports Analysis Collective, again showing that the Yanks and Red Sox draw about evenly in Williamstown. This essay began as an attempt to figure out why that should be so. It’s not just a question of baseball loyalties. Even though William- stown residents instinctively think of themselves as citizens of the Com- monwealth of Massachusetts, when they used to walk past the barbershop to the old Williams Newsroom, according to another unscientific count, they were just as likely to pick up a New York Times as a Boston Globe. And it’s broadly understood in Williamstown that about half the people in Williamstown are, generally speaking, oriented toward Bos- ton, the other half oriented toward New York. The first group is more

154 A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 155 likely to head to Boston for a long weekend, to see the Red Sox or the Patriots, or to go to the Museum of Fine Arts or to Mass General and Brigham and Women’s. Or to take a flight from Logan. The second group is more likely to head down to New York, to see the Yankees or the Giants, or to go to the Met or to Columbia-Presbyterian or to Memorial Sloan Kettering. Or to take a flight from JFK. What accounts for this fifty-fifty split in Williamstown between Bostonians and New Yorkers? The easy answer is that Williamstown is about equidistant from Boston and New York. You just travel east to get to one and south to get to the other. Mapquest says that it’s 156 miles to Fenway Park and 158 miles to Yankee Stadium. And distance seems to matter to people, whether they are heading into the city or out to the country. There’s an old story that when Sterling Clark considered where to build a permanent home for his art collection, he thought about distance. In 1950, when Clark (a New Yorker) made his decision, the country was settling into the Cold War, and many people worried that the Soviet Union, which had exploded its first atom bomb the previous year, would be tempted to attack American cities and cause widespread destruction. Clark’s collection, so he thought, might be safer out in the country, as far as possible from the big cities, obvious targets for Russian nukes, but not so far as to be beyond the reach of museumgo- ers. So, according to the folklore, Clark looked for a country town that was about equidistant from New York and Boston—and came up not with Cooperstown, where his family had long owned property, but with Williamstown. But the answer to the question does not really seem to lie in a mileage chart. Time is surely more important than distance for travelers—not how far away Boston is but how long it takes you to get there. And a moment’s reflection will tell you that New York and Boston have not always been about three hours away. The Mass Pike was after all not built until the mid-1950s, and the Taconic Parkway dates from the 1930s. This means the question needs to be reframed: Has it always been the case that Williamstown seemed to be oriented culturally and politically as much toward New York as toward Boston, and if so, why? Is there something in this Massachusetts town’s past that inclines half of its residents to take their bearings from New York City? When you look into the history of Williamstown, you discover that the story is more complicated. 156 Chapter 9

In the early eighteenth century, before Berkshire County had been incorporated, what would later become Williamstown was then part of Hampshire County, which consisted of just about everything in the colony of Massachusetts Bay west of Worcester all the way out to the boundary with the colony of New York. The region was politically governed from Boston but militarily administered from Northampton, the seat of Hampshire County, and from Hatfield, the home of Colonel Israel Williams, who was in charge of the county militia. Berkshire County was not carved out of Hampshire County until 1761, by which time there was significant settlement in what is now the southern part of Berkshire County, together with growing recent settlement in what is now Pittsfield. Northern Berkshire County was the last part of the colony to be settled—because it was on the frontier, many potential settlers waited until the close of the French and Indian War about 1760, when it seemed safe to begin farming. Most of the very first settlers in what was laid out as the village of West Hoosuck and then (in 1765) would become the town of Williamstown came from the Connecticut River valley towns farther east in Massachu- setts Bay Colony, having been brought to the area as soldiers posted at Fort Massachusetts, beginning in 1745 and at the blockhouse at West Hoosuck. When disputes broke out between the soldiers at Fort Mas- sachusetts and the West Hoosuck blockhouse, and within West Hoosuck itself, the settlers looked to Colonel Williams in Hatfield to resolve the conflict and, when that failed, appealed to the colonial legislature in Bos- ton. In other words, they initially looked east. And when political issues arose, they continued to look east, as, for example, when, through the efforts of the Massachusetts General Court in Boston, the boundary line between Massachusetts and New York was finally settled in 1787, after nearly seventy years of negotiations, and more than nine hundred acres on the eastern slopes of the Taconics, already owned by Williamstown farmers, were added to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. But even before 1760 new settlers had begun to arrive in West Hoosuck not from the Connecticut River valley towns but from the northwestern part of the colony of Connecticut. They bought land from the original proprietors, many of whom had bought lots as an investment and never bothered to farm or even clear their land. The reason the new influx came from the south is not difficult to see: it is all about topography. The rivers A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 157 in this part of New England—the Connecticut, the Hudson, the Hoosic, and the Housatonic—all run north–south, and rivers make for relatively easy travel, both by water and by land. (Early colonial roads tended to run alongside rivers.) And settlers heading for what is now northern Berkshire County found it easiest to travel up the Housatonic and then alongside the south branch of the Hoosic to present-day Adams and North Adams or down the Green River to present-day Williamstown. They might also travel by water up the Hoosic River from the Albany-Troy area. But there’s a more fundamental reason than rivers. After all, the Con- necticut River flows south, but early inhabitants of the Connecticut River valley regularly traveled eastward to Boston. The reason early travelers to Williamstown tended to come from the south rather than the east—and it happens to be the reason the Housatonic flows south and the Hoo- sic starts out flowing north—is the presence of a north–south range of mountains on the eastern edge of present-day North Adams. Early settlers who lived in the Connecticut River valley thought of them as a giant barrier, making passage by foot or wagon difficult. As one early historian put it, they looked at the Hoosac Mountains “with dread,” not only because of their height but because Indians had often attacked Connecticut River valley towns from that direction. The mountains were a “formidable barrier to communication between the northern border of Massachusetts and the rest of the state.” That barrier was not really overcome until the Hoosac Tunnel was opened to railroad traffic in 1879. There was, of course, another barrier just to the west of the Hoosac Mountains, the Taconic Range, forming a north–south barrier between Massachusetts and New York. But because there were easier passes through the Taconics than the Hoosacs, especially the one between West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and Canaan, New York, Berkshire County in its early days tended to trade with the Hudson Valley in New York State, and even southern Vermont, rather than with eastern Massachusetts. The strongest economic and cultural links in Williamstown’s early years, however, were not with New York or with Boston but with western Connecticut. As noted, many of the earliest settlers came from Connecti- cut, especially from the valley of the Housatonic River, which flows south from Canaan to empty into Long Island Sound, just east of Bridgeport. These settlers included William Chidester, from Cornwall, Connecticut, who organized a group of neighbors to build the blockhouse in 1756 in 158 Chapter 9 what was then the settlement of West Hoosuck. Others were the Hors- fords, William and Josiah, who came from Canaan, Connecticut. At a proprietors’ meeting in 1760 they were elected town clerk and town treasurer. About 1763 William Horsford built a house on a hilltop on Main Street east of the town square. On the original site of the Horsford house, another Connecticut man, Samuel Sloan, from Norwalk, built a grand house that still stands there—formerly known as the Williams College president’s house, it is now called Sloan House. Between them, the two Horsford brothers had twenty-five children in Williamstown. Many of those children intermarried with another family from Connecticut, the Smedleys, who came from Litchfield. In 1772 Nehemiah Smedley built a house on East Main Street that still stands there. Connecticut families continued to migrate to Williamstown through the eighteenth century. In 1796 Agur Treadwell arrived from New Milford, Connecticut, and bought land in what is still called Treadwell Hollow. Other western Connecticut families who migrated to Williamstown in those early years were the Prindles, from New Fairfield, and the Hickoxes, from Woodbury. Their descendants were still farming in Williamstown 150 years later. Following in the tracks of the Connecticut farmers were lawyers and preachers. Daniel Dewey, a native of Sheffield, Massachusetts, just over the Connecticut line, and a graduate of Yale, settled in Williamstown in 1790. David Noble, from New Milford, another Yale graduate, read law and moved to Williamstown in 1770. Whitman Welch, called to be the first pastor of the Congregational church in 1765, was also from New Milford and a graduate of Yale. His three successors were also from western Connecticut and Yale graduates, helping to define and solidify a Williamstown–New Haven axis. It was relatively easy to travel between the two towns on early turnpikes. Because it was for many years the only church in town, and because even after 1792 there were only very small numbers of Baptists and (somewhat later) Methodists, the Congregational church’s orientation toward New Haven strongly informed the orientation of the town. The first president of Williams College, Ebenezer Fitch, was also from Yale, as was the third president, Edward Dorr Griffin. Not only did the college presidents come from Yale, but so did six of the nine trustees of the estate of Ephraim Williams and eight of the original thirteen trustees of A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 159 the college. After Williams College was established in 1793, its first Laws (1795) were adapted from the 1787 Laws of Yale. The original Williams curriculum, like that of most early colleges, was modeled on the curriculum at Yale, and the Yale curriculum of the Greek and Latin clas- sics, mathematics, logic, philosophy, rhetoric, and oratory, remained the model for most of the nineteenth century. Why Williams College looked south to Yale rather than east to Harvard is partly, as suggested, a matter of geography: it was easier to travel south to New Haven (118 miles away and just 10 miles from the Housatonic River) than to Cambridge (132 miles away and on the other side of the Hoosac Mountains). And it’s partly because Harvard, much older than Yale and Williams, jealously guarded the world of education in Massachusetts. In 1762, when a proposal was made to establish a new college in Hatfield, Harvard argued against it, claiming there was no need for an institution of higher learning west of Cambridge and that in any case it would be “prejudicial” to Harvard. In 1792, when the trustees of Ephraim Williams’s estate set about filing for permission to establish a free school, and then a college, in Williamstown, they petitioned the commonwealth for a charter, deferentially acknowledging Harvard as the “parent” of any Massachusetts college but claiming that a college in Williamstown would draw students from western Massachusetts who were then going to Dartmouth or Yale (as did several of the signatories of the petition themselves) and also draw in students (and their money) from nearby New York, Vermont, and Connecticut. Yale-educated trustees continued to dominate the Williams board into the 1830s, by which time more new trustee appointees were graduates of Williams than of Yale. But the total number of Williams trustees did not surpass the total number of Yale trustees until 1869. In 1899 Williams historian Arthur Latham Perry could say that “the relations of the College to that in New Haven have been down to the present day more abundant and intimate than to that at Cambridge.” Perry wrote when the then Williams president, Franklin Carter, was, in his view, altogether too much a Yale man, having begun his undergraduate studies there and taught there for seven years before becoming president of Williams. When he arrived as president in 1881, Carter brought in at least three Yale faculty colleagues with him, at a time when the Williams faculty numbered only fourteen. The Yale influence continued well into 160 Chapter 9 the twentieth century. In the 1960s, many of the eminent faculty at the college were Yale PhDs. Three late-twentieth- century Williams presidents, Jack Sawyer, Frank Oakley, and Hank Payne, studied at Yale. Both Sawyer and Oakley taught there. But for the town of Williamstown, the influence of Yale and Con- necticut began to wane back in the 1830s. One reason was a dispute that arose in the early 1830s between President Griffin of Williams, born in East Haddam, Connecticut, and the pastor of the Congregational church, Ralph Gridley, born in Mansfield, Connecticut. Both had been trained at Yale, but Griffin had graduated much earlier, in 1788, and Gridley twenty-six years later, in 1814. Gridley was ordained in Wil- liamstown in 1816. He was named a Williams College trustee in 1827, but he and Griffin fell out over religion. Both were, of course, Congre- gationalists, but Gridley in about 1832 became an enthusiastic advocate of “New Measures” in Congregational theology, emphasizing human freedom rather than innate depravity. He had learned these “New Mea- sures” (sometimes called “New Haven Theology”) at Yale, under Timo- thy Dwight, a professor of theology and also president of Yale Col- lege. President Griffin was a traditionalist and resisted the “New Haven Theology” that Gridley was now preaching in Williamstown, both to townspeople and to Williams students. Griffin moved to set up a separate “college church” where Williams students could be safely indoctri- nated with the traditional Calvinist theology that Griffin preferred. He made it difficult enough for Gridley that the latter resigned his offices as pastor and as college trustee in 1834 and left town. After his departure, Griffin, who had previously preached every third Sunday, took over all the preaching at the Congregational church, until a new pastor could be called, the Reverend Joseph Alden, a Union College graduate who had been solidly trained in traditional theology at Princeton Seminary. Griffin also acted to reduce Yale’s influence on the college’s board. After 1834 only two Yale-trained men were appointed Williams trustees. As the local influence of New Haven, and of Connecticut, declined, Williamstown did not look east to Cambridge and Boston but looked west to the Hudson River valley. Already in 1798 the General Court of Massachusetts had chartered the Williamstown Turnpike Corporation to run a road from Adams through Williamstown over Berlin Pass to Troy and Albany. There was also a primitive road to the east, cut by the A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 161

Second Massachusetts Turnpike Corporation, beginning in 1797, over Hoosac Mountain to Charlemont and Greenfield, but it carried little traffic, and in any case Troy was closer. It was easier for farmers who had grain, dairy products, or apples to sell to carry them west to Troy on the Hudson River than east to Greenfield on the Connecticut, especially if they chose to use the low passes through the Taconics to the south of Pittsfield. And from Albany or Troy, it was easy for goods and people to travel downriver to New York City. It was also practical for people from New York City to reach Wil- liamstown. Beginning in 1799 they could travel north on the old North- ern Turnpike (the foundation for what later became U.S. Route 7 and New York Route 22) or the older Albany Post Road (modern New York Route 9). By the 1820s Williams College was attracting as many students from New York as from Berkshire County. In the graduating class in 1838 there were only three students from Berkshire County, seven from the rest of Massachusetts, and eighteen from New York, mostly from the Hudson Valley and the Albany area. The trend continued for the rest of the nineteenth century. But the fact remains that Williamstown in the early nineteenth century was very isolated and had little contact with Boston or New York. A Wil- liams student who graduated in 1817 remembered that there was no regular stagecoach service and that newspapers and letters, brought by a mes- senger on horseback or a man in a one-horse wagon, arrived only about once a week from Boston, Troy and Albany, and Stockbridge or Pittsfield. Beginning in the late 1830s it was possible to travel to Williamstown by rail, and rail connections to the south, toward New York, were better than those to the east, toward Boston. The first railroads to reach northern Berkshire County were the Housatonic and the Berkshire Railroads, which beginning in 1840 followed the Housatonic River north from New Haven and Bridgeport and reached North Adams in 1846. Other early lines traveled up the Hudson River and up the so-called Harlem Valley, connecting at Chatham, New York, with the Boston and Albany, which ran to Pittsfield and North Adams. Rail travel to Boston came a little later. Beginning in 1841 you could catch a Boston and Albany train in Pittsfield. In 1859 the Troy and Greenfield Railroad made it possible to get from Williamstown west to Troy, but the line was not extended eastward through the Hoosac Tunnel to Greenfield until 1879. 162 Chapter 9

After 1879 it was about as easy to get from Williamstown to Boston by rail as it was to get from Williamstown to New York. In 1888 there were six trains a day from Williamstown to Boston on the Fitchburg Railroad (the trip took between five and six hours). There were three trains from North Adams to New York City, via New Haven, on the New Haven and Northampton Railroad (six hours, fifteen minutes), and another three trains a day to New York via Bridgeport on the Housatonic Railroad (six hours, fifteen minutes). Add to these the dozen trains a day that traveled down the Hudson River from Albany (the fast train took four hours), via the frequent rail service from Williamstown to Albany. Although you could get to Boston faster, you had more options going to New York. Railroads also made it possible for Williamstown in the late nineteenth century to develop into a summer colony, largely for New Yorkers. An 1890 guidebook included a full-page ad for rail service from New York to the “Berkshire Hills.” The guide noted that most owners of the big summer houses in Williamstown were New Yorkers. Harley Procter, who built a vast mansion on the site of today’s Williams Inn, originally came from Cincinnati, but when he retired he moved to New York. Colonel Prentice, who built Mount Hope, was another New Yorker; he began coming to Williamstown before 1910. Wealthy Bostonians seem to have come as far west for their summers as Lenox (where they mingled with New Yorkers), but few built houses in Williamstown. One might imagine that in the mid- to late nineteenth century, the Williams faculty would have looked eastward to Boston for their intellectual bearings. In that era, although Boston acknowledged Washington as the political capital of the country and New York as the mercantile and financial capital, it regarded itself as the “intellectual capital.” Boston was above all next door to Cambridge and Harvard, but was also the home base of Emerson and the transcendentalists, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was where the Atlantic Monthly, long regarded as the most intellectual of America’s magazines, was founded and edited by James Russell Lowell and edited later by William Dean Howells. Yet even during this era Williams did not seem to be oriented toward Boston and Harvard. One reason perhaps is Harvard’s continuing reluctance to acknowledge the presence of another college in the commonwealth, no matter how A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 163 old—Harvard did not drop its objection to the formation of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Williams until 1861. Another reason is that Williams College under President Mark Hopkins was devoutly Congregational and somewhat suspicious of Unitarian Boston. (Hopkins and the faculty may have distrusted Emerson, but the students clamored to hear him, inviting him to lecture in Williamstown in 1854 and twice in 1865.) Williams under Mark Hopkins didn’t hire Harvard men; it almost always looked within and hired its own. If Williams faculty had done graduate work, it tended to be at theological seminaries, especially Andover Theological Seminary, just outside Boston, which maintained traditional Congregational theology against the Unitarian impulse dominant at Harvard. So the collective Williams faculty under Hopkins could not be said to look to Cambridge for their intellectual bearings. Mark Hopkins himself looked equally to Boston (though not to Cambridge) and New York. In 1859 he declined an invitation to preach at the Harvard chapel, but his suspicions of Bostonian heterodoxy did not prevent him from including Boston as a major stop on his annual lecture tours. He lectured far more often in Boston than in New York—he gave four series of lectures at the prestigious Lowell Institute in Boston from 1844 to 1872. But he also maintained his connections to New York. As a young man he had lived and taught for a short time in New York City and in 1843, having spent some time in his youth studying medicine, was elected a fellow of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. In his early years as Williams president he was invited to become pastor of two different New York City churches and in 1850 to become the chancellor of New York University. He was president of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, headquartered in New York, for thirty years. He was offered appointments at both Andover Theological Seminary in 1847 and at Union Theological Seminary, in New York, in 1850. He received honorary degrees from both New York University, at midcareer in 1857, and from Harvard, in 1841 and 1886. Under President Franklin Carter, who looked outside for new faculty, Williams was more receptive to Harvard’s influence: Carter hired four Harvard men, but he was more inclined, as noted earlier, to hire from New Haven. Increasingly over the course of the nineteenth century, Williams College turned to New York not only for its students but also for its 164 Chapter 9 donors. During the long presidency of Mark Hopkins (1836–72), the college did not receive many benefactions. Several early donors, including Woodbridge Little and Nathan Jackson, were Berkshire County natives, though Jackson made his money after he moved to New York in 1810. In 1855 he gave the funds for Jackson Hall, once located in the Berkshire Quad. In 1858 he bought the big house Samuel Sloan had built and gave it to the college for use as a residence for the president and then endowed a professorship. In the 1840s Amos Lawrence, a rich Boston merchant and a friend of Mark Hopkins, gave a large sum to build a college library, but as a Bostonian he was an exception on the list of Williams donors. A more typical nineteenth-century donor to the college was another friend of Hopkins, David Dudley Field Jr., a Williams alumnus of the class of 1824, who had a distinguished legal career in New York. Among his many benefactions to the college was the Field Observatory that used to be located between Spring and South Streets in a neighborhood called the Knolls. Another friend of Hopkins, William E. Dodge of New York City (and founder of what became the Phelps Dodge Company), was a trustee of the college and in 1867 established a “President’s Fund” at Williams to endow the president’s salary. It was only after the retirement of Hopkins (who had little interest in fund-raising) that Williams began receiving major donations, and when they came the donors were predominantly New Yorkers, including Edwin D. Morgan, a New York City merchant and banker who became governor of New York and later U.S. senator; he was the donor of Morgan Hall in 1882. Another was Morris K. Jesup, given an honorary degree in 1881, who made several major contributions, including the money for Jesup Hall, beginning in 1897. The big donations in the late nineteenth century came from another New York banker, Frederick Ferris Thompson, class of 1856, who gave the money for the St. Anthony Hall fraternity house in 1886, Hopkins Hall in 1890, and the three Thompson Science Laboratories in 1892–93. His widow gave the money in 1904 for the Thompson Memorial Chapel. The turn of the twentieth century confirmed the college’s orientation toward New York. Thompson was followed in the early years of the new century by two New York lawyers, Alfred Clark Chapin, class of 1869, who gave the money for Chapin Hall (1911–12), and Francis Lynde A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 165

Stetson, class of 1867, president of the New York City Bar Association, who gave money for the Stetson Library in 1923. Governor Herbert Lehman of New York, class of 1899 and founder of Lehman Brothers in New York City, gave the funds for Lehman Hall, which opened in 1928. Several of these major donors were college trustees, including Thompson, Stetson, and Chapin. In the early part of the nineteenth century, trustees tended to be lawyers and ministers, many of them with a base in Berkshire County. It was only in the latter part of the nineteenth century that the college began to put on its board alumni who were capable of making a significant gift. Many were from New York. In 1917, for example, there were six trustees from New York City and only three from Boston. In the first half of the twentieth century, trains continued to be the primary means of getting to and from Williamstown and New York or Boston, but beginning in the 1930s long-distance travel by automobile in New England became more common, in large part because of the development of a highway system. And good new roads to New York preceded those to Boston. In the nineteenth century the old New England Route 4 was the primary route to New York—it survives today as U.S. Route 7 and New York Route 22. In 1925 proposals were made to develop the Taconic Parkway, and construction began in 1929, though it did not reach as far north as New York Route 23 until 1956 and the Mass Pike until 1963. By then you could reach the Hawthorne Traffic Circle just north of White Plains in about three hours. Boston was about the same, via the Mohawk Trail. The Mass Pike, built from west to east, was not put through to Route 128 outside Boston until 1957. The distance from Boston is measured not only in miles and hours. It’s also a political distance. In the entire course of Massachusetts history, there have been only two governors from Berkshire County, George Briggs, who served from 1844 to 1851, and Jane Swift, who served as acting governor for about a year from 2001 to 2003. Williams College received some state aid in the middle of the nineteenth century, and the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MoCA) got start-up funds from the state in the late 1990s, but, apart from that, northern Berkshire County has never received significant state money, and neither the town nor the college has thought it worthwhile to make sustained lobbying efforts. Local newspapers have long complained that 166 Chapter 9 the political part of Boston does not pay much attention to the needs of Berkshire County. One Berkshire Eagle columnist proposed in 1960 that Berkshire County secede from the commonwealth. This sentiment has deep historical roots: in 1779 farmers at a Berkshire County constitutional convention threatened to secede from Massachusetts and join Vermont. And in 1787 the rebellion of western Massachusetts farmers, led by Daniel Shays, against state tax courts, had substantial support in Williamstown. From the point of view of total travel time from Williamstown today, Boston and New York are about the same. Nowadays it’s still about three hours to Boston by car via Route 2 or the Mass Pike, about three hours to New York. By train it’s more convenient to get to New York than to Boston—if you want to go to Boston, you need to drive thirty minutes to Pittsfield, where you can catch one of only two trains a day. By comparison, you can drive an hour to Rensselaer, New York, where there are ten trains a day to Penn Station. And there are thirteen trains a day from Wassaic, New York, to Grand Central. But no matter which way you go, the total travel time (car plus train, not counting waiting time) is about the same. If you have to go by bus from the Williams Inn, it’s nearly five hours to New York via Route 7. It’s a little longer to Boston via the Mass Pike—but you have to take the New York City bus and change in Pittsfield. So with respect to travel time, it makes sense that half of us would incline to New York and half of us to Boston. The residents of town are about evenly divided. But the major cultural institutions in town, and those who are closely involved with them, are much more oriented to New York than to Boston. Williams College still regards itself, as it has from the beginning, as a “New England College,” and its athletic teams are members of the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC). The southernmost of its opponents is Trinity College, in Hartford. Two others are in eastern Massachusetts, three in Maine. The college legal counsel drives out from his office in Boston. The college’s investment office is located in Boston. But in other respects Williams looks to New York: for a much larger share of its students and prospective students (more come from New York than from Massachusetts and Connecticut combined) and its alumni. There has long been a strong alumni presence in New York, and that is where the only Williams Club in the country was once located, funded in 1913 A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 167 by another gift from the widow of Frederick Ferris Thompson. And by a natural process, as alumni get older and wealthier, the college looks more to New York than to Boston for its major donors and for its trustees. (In 2016 there were six trustees from metropolitan New York and only three from the Boston area.) When Williams determined to set up an academic presence in a major urban center, it established the short- lived Williams-in– New York program in 2005. Nonresident Williams faculty who commute weekly to Williamstown are almost three times as likely to live in New York as in Boston. There are reasons for the college’s New York orientation. The New York City metropolitan area has a much greater population than does Greater Boston, so it’s understandable that it would supply larger numbers of students and faculty. If you’re a fund-raiser for Williams, New York City is also where the big money is, in part because it’s the financial capital of the country and in part because there are so many more alumni than in the Boston area. Bostonians are reportedly more inclined to give generously to the many local cultural, educational, and medical institutions than to give outside the area. And if you’re not focused on fund-raising and just interested in urban life, the plain fact is that New York is the Big Apple and Boston, for all its cultural riches, is a small city. The Clark Art Institute has also long been oriented toward New York City. When the museum first opened in 1955, most of its visitors came from Berkshire County, as did most of its contributors. But from the beginning most of its major donors and its trustees have come from New York City. (There are exceptions: the Manton family and the Lunder family—each now has a building on the Clark campus named after them—are New Englanders.) In 2017, of its twenty trustees, nine came from metropolitan New York and only three from the Boston area. The Clark has an office in New York City but none in Boston, and its trustees meet in New York once a year. And in recent years far more of its visitors are New Yorkers—many of them second-homers in South County—than Bostonians, though visitors from eastern Massachusetts are now picking up. It’s no surprise that the Williamstown Theatre Festival is much more oriented toward New York than Boston. All but two of the artistic directors since 1955 have been New Yorkers, including the founding 168 Chapter 9 director, Nikos Psacharapolous. Almost all of the actors and directors who come to the WTF in Williamstown each summer are based in New York. Thirteen of its trustees come from the New York area, none from Boston. The WTF’s annual fund-raising fall gala is held not in Williamstown but in New York. And the WTF has an office on Forty- Second Street in Manhattan. But perhaps it is surprising that the New York City metropolitan area supplies to the theater festival more than two and a half times as many ticket buyers and almost four times the numbers of donors as does Greater Boston. Even Mass MoCA, although very dependent on money from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to get started in 1999, holds its annual fund-raising gala in New York City, and on its large twenty-nine- person board, at least eleven (including its chairman) are from metropolitan New York and none from Boston. More of its members (about 11 percent) come from metropolitan New York than from Greater Boston (8 percent). Again, there is a simple explanation: New York is the art capital of the country. The only local cultural organization that is more oriented toward Boston than New York is probably Tanglewood. It’s pretty easy to get to Lenox from Boston for a weekend, via the Mass Pike, and a number of Bostonians follow the symphony to Tanglewood during the summer season. Almost all of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s trustees and overseers are from the Boston area. And more of Tanglewood’s ticket buyers come from the Boston area (42 percent) than metropolitan New York (34 percent). But the New York orientation of Williamstown’s cultural organizations probably tells us more about the home base of the out-of- towners who support them than it does about the inclinations of Williamstown residents. This brings us back to where we started. Some of us are Red Sox fans, and some of us are Yankee fans. Which are which? You might suppose that those born and bred in Berkshire County or in New England incline more to Boston and those who have moved to the area (except those who moved from Boston) incline more to New York. But it’s probably more complicated than that. A lot of kids who grew up in Williamstown probably listened to Yankee games on the radio, broadcast from an Albany station. So all these years later, they’re still Yankee fans. And then there are some older New Yorkers who moved A Tale of Two Cities—and a Country Town 169 to Berkshire County and root for Boston—they used to be Brooklyn Dodger fans sixty years ago (and thus Yankee haters), and when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958 they transferred their loyalty to the Sox, perhaps on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. As time goes on, basic geography explains less and less of the tale of Williamstown and two cities. 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One of the enduring legends about the ancient rivalry between Williams and Amherst is that when President Zephaniah Swift Moore, second president of Williams College, decamped from Williamstown in September 1821 to become the first president of Amherst College, he took with him not only fifteen students—one fifth of the student body of the day—but a number of books from the Williams College library. Despite repeated efforts in the past fifty years to dismiss this story as nothing more than an amusing legend, it manages to persist and can still be heard repeated as scripture by alumni from either college. What explains the rise and endurance of the myth? It’s an old tale, but not an ancient one. It’s not found in the standard printed histories of Williams College, not in Arthur Latham Perry’s Origins in Williamstown (1894) or his Williamstown and Williams College (1904). Leverett W. Spring says nothing of the theft in his 1893 article on Williams College in the New England Magazine or his 1917 History of Williams College. And there’s nothing in William S. Tyler’s 1873 History of Amherst College (or his 1894 update) or in Claude M. Fuess’s Amherst: Story of a New England College (1935). But former Williams president

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John Chandler thinks he might have heard the story soon after arriving at Williams in 1955. And it was plainly in his mind when, as dean of faculty, he and Provost Joseph Kershaw made a field trip to Amherst’s newly opened Frost Library in late 1965 or 1966. President Sawyer was already thinking about how to remedy the perceived shortcomings of Stetson Library and sent them down to Amherst to take a look at a modern library that was regarded as a success. As Chandler tells the story now, he and Kershaw arrived unannounced and were spotted by somebody they knew who wanted to know why they were there. “We’ve come to retrieve our books” was their prompt answer—suggesting, as Chandler recalls, that the story must have been in “wide circulation” by then, and they thought they would have some fun with it. Where did the story come from? Back in 1873 Tyler had reported that in September 1820, when the academy that would later become Amherst College opened for business, the entirety of the library was “contained in a single case scarcely six feet wide,” but also that by October 1821 there were seven hundred volumes in the Amherst College library. Was there a sudden accession of books just before October 1821, or had there been seven hundred volumes in the “single case”? This “single case” was perhaps a multishelf bookcase, and perhaps the books were slim volumes, though seven hundred books seems like rather a large number for even a tall bookcase. Nonetheless, Fuess, in his 1935 history of Amherst, resolves the matter by declaring that the single case held all seven hundred books. But documentary evidence is lacking: the first printed catalog of the Amherst library, dated 1827, says nothing about the origin of the first books. Some of the original books bear the signature of President Moore himself, says Michael Kelly, head of archives and special collections at Frost Library. Perhaps they were brought by him as his personal property from Williamstown, or perhaps he acquired them after he arrived in Amherst and before he died in June 1823. At least one subsequent Amherst historian, F. Curtis Canfield, who gave a series of short informal chapel talks between 1946 and 1954 about the founding of Amherst, thought that the “single case” contained only fifty books— though he says nothing about bibliolarceny. Perhaps somebody at Amherst, about the time that the Frost Library opened in 1965, when the history of libraries at Amherst would have been a matter of some interest, on discovering that the origins of the The Theft of the Williams College Library 175

Amherst library could not be documented, remembered Canfield’s estimate of fifty (published in 1955) and idly or mock-solemnly speculated that the rest of those first seven hundred books “must” have been stolen from Williams in 1821. Seeking to confirm that speculation, perhaps somebody else, just happening to browse in Calvin Durfee’s 1860 History of Williams College, came across the passage noting that some Williams students in 1821, preparing to join President Moore’s migra- tion, voted at a meeting “to carry the library [of the two student literary societies] with them to Amherst.” But they did not notice the continua- tion of the passage, reporting that a second resolution to choose a committee to “carry this resolution into effect” was defeated. The sobersided Durfee was a member of the Williams College Class of 1825 and thus an eyewitness to the events. Another contemporary witness was Parsons Cooke, 1822, who told the story of the student debate in his Recollections of Rev. E. D. Griffin (1855) and saw some humor in it. Cooke notes that in 1821, a “movement was made to transfer the library, which belonged to the literary societies in the college . . . to Amherst College” but suspects that the proposal began as a “joke,” or at least should be regarded as one. The “project,” he says, was “so decidedly juvenile, that, had not its opposers been equally juvenile, they would have made no resistance to it, but would have enjoyed the sport of seeing how far that joke could be carried.” He is amused that the students of the time apparently took it seriously, even solemnly: “The parties joined issue in regularly called meetings, to discuss the question, whether the public good did not require that one of the libraries appertaining to Williams College should be removed to Amherst. The debates, and the ruling points of order in those meetings, as they now rise in memory, are really laughable. Never was a meeting more in solemn earnest. Never were a body of men more penetrated with the feeling that the fate of the nation depended on their action. Suffice it to say,” Cooke concludes, “the books did not move.” Whatever the source (and it seems unlikely that Durfee or Cooke had many readers in the 1960s), the story came to the attention of longtime professor of English at Amherst Theodore Baird. Shortly after his retirement in 1969, Baird wrote to Williams College librarian Lawrence Wikander about encountering the story, noting mischievously that he was disposed to believe it. Wikander replied conclusively that the story, 176 Chapter 10 so far as he could tell, had no basis in fact. He checked the printed catalogs for the Williams College library, published in 1812, 1821, and 1828, and found that none of the 1812 books were missing in either 1821 or 1828, which seemed to prove conclusively that no books were stolen in 1821. Baird wrote back somewhat sheepishly to say that he was persuaded. The originals of Baird’s letters and Wikander’s reply are found in the Williams College Archives. It is doubtful that the correspondence was ever widely known. But Wikander perhaps spoke to a few colleagues, and the story of the theft was probably reclassified as just that, a good story and still good for a laugh. When Williams gave an honorary degree to Amherst president Peter Pouncey at the 1985 commencement, President John Chandler read out a citation in praise of Amherst’s new president, remembering its first president but declaring that “this is not the day to cast doubts on the courage of Zephaniah Swift Moore, or to speculate about whether his luggage contained purloined books from the library of the abandoned college.” As Chandler now remembers it, the citation was heard with delight by the graduating seniors. But nobody, he thinks, “took the story as serious history.” Wikander’s discovery might well have come to the attention of Craig Lewis, Williams ’41, who served as director of alumni relations from 1975 to 1986 and in the late 1980s was commissioned to produce a history of the college in celebration of its bicentennial. Even though he had as much sense of humor as anybody else, Lewis perhaps thought that a tall tale had no place in a history that would be widely read and might last. His Williams, 1793–1993: A Pictorial History, published in 1993, is notably silent on the matter of the Theft. But the story was not dead. In October 1994 Williams president Hank Payne once again dismissed it as untrue. Speaking at the induction of the new Amherst president, his old friend Tom Gerety, Payne reported with mock solemnity that he had “unearthed” the Baird-Wikander correspondence and now declared that the alleged “dastardly larceny” never took place, and thus that the “battle of the books” was over. But it still wasn’t over. Ten years later, in April 2004, Rick Griffiths, professor and associate dean of faculty at Amherst, at an event celebrating the accession of the Amherst library’s millionth volume, made a few remarks about the library’s beginnings, declaring once again that The Theft of the Williams College Library 177 the removal of books from the Williams library was a myth: “Both the Amherst and Williams archivists assure me that contrary to a persistent but inaccurate rumor, the students who left Williams in 1821 to become Amherst’s first students did not bring books from the Williams library to start the college library collection at Amherst.” Still the story endured. And it spread, passed from mouth to mouth, stimulated no doubt by the traditional rivalry between the two schools and in particular by the loyal efforts of Dick Quinn, director of sports information for Williams, to provide colorful material for sportswriters on the occasion of a big Amherst-Williams game. Since at least the late 1990s, he has incorporated zesty references to the story in his press releases (and mock denunciations of President Moore as “the Defector”). The legend is routinely picked up and repeated by sportswriters and even by Williams undergraduates and alums. As the Amherst football game approached in November 2005, Williams Record reporter Julia Rominger, ’06, her invention heated by the occasion, suggested that Moore took with him fully “half of Williams’ students, faculty, and library books.” On the occasion of the one hundredth anniversary of the first Williams-Amherst baseball game in the summer of 2009, Jim Briggs, ’60, who managed the team representing Williams, when asked about the “defection,” was quoted as saying (perhaps tongue in cheek), “We’re sure [the decamping President Moore] took some of our library books, too.” Bloggers, trawling Williams websites, keep the story alive. Even the official Williams College website, in its brief biographies of its presidents, although it declines to endorse the story, in effect gives it continued life: “It is rumored that President Moore began the Amherst College library with books stolen from Williams, but there is no proof that this actually occurred.” Wikipedia regards the story as only a “legend” that remains “unsubstantiated,” an “apocryphal” tale told by Williams alums, for which there is “no contemporaneous evidence,” but still calls it “plausible.” Given the way the Internet works, as one website copies material from another, the story is likely to continue spreading. Other websites (for example, Answers.com, New World Encyclopedia) recycle the story and probably find plenty of receptive readers. But perhaps there’s another explanation for the endurance of the legend. Maybe the story of the book theft is now becoming part of the founding myth—one of the stories Williams fans need to tell and retell 178 Chapter 10 about how the rivalry between Williams and Amherst goes right back to the founding of Amherst itself, complete with a comic villain, the dastardly defector who sneaked off with books in his knapsack, a myth for a postmodern world. And the Amherst fans can smile with satisfaction at the idea of successfully stealing books from the Williams College library decades before it became common for undergraduate pranksters to carry off some treasure from the campus of an archrival. It’s all a little theatrical, as if part of an operetta, with no consequences in the real world—or no serious ones, anyway. In 1994, nearly 175 years after the Great Book Theft, Williams president Hank Payne told an audience at Amherst that he figured that, “at reasonable com- pound rates,” Amherst owed Williams “at least a million volumes.” And within a year or two, the Williams College Mucho Macho Moo-cow Marching Band presented the Amherst marching band with a bill for $1.6 billion in library fines for overdue books. By 2015 the story seemed to have receded, perhaps in part because at the Williams fall convocation in September 2014, the speaker, Ethan Zimmerman, ’93, who had seen an earlier version of this essay posted on the website of the college archives, cited its argument that the story of the theft is a myth. His lecture, later posted on his blog, is readily available to Internet readers. For whatever reason, when Williams met Amherst at homecoming in November 2015, the story did not appear in the game program. But old legends don’t disappear altogether, and it’s likely that before many years pass, it will once again make its appearance. CHAPTER 11  ALMA MATER AND HER CHOSEN BAND “The Mountains”

Most American schools and colleges have a school song—an alma mater—but few are as old as that of Williams College. Its school song, “The Mountains,” written in 1859 by Washington Gladden, of the Williams College Class of 1859, is the oldest alma mater composed by an undergraduate. Although many other Williams songs were composed over the years, the latest of which was introduced in 2016, “The Mountains” is the best known and for many singers the only one they know. Most of those who sing the song at alumni events and elsewhere probably do not pay much attention to the words of the song, rendered overfamiliar and even deadened by repetition. They know little of the circumstances of the song’s composition or of the poems and psalms that rang in Gladden’s ears as he wrote. They have probably never heard its middle two verses sung. But if the words of the song are given careful attention, they can reveal that “The Mountains,” although it grows out of nineteenth-century literary, religious, and patriotic traditions, gives form to a fantasy of rural retreat that still resonates today.

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Washington Gladden and “The Mountains” The author of “The Mountains,” Washington Gladden (1838–1921), is best known to the wider world as one of the great American churchmen of the nineteenth century. A Congregational minister, journalist, public lecturer, and prolific author, he was perhaps the foremost proponent of what came to be called the “social Gospel,” the practical application of Christianity to the social circumstances and problems of the day. Applied Christianity (1880) and Social Salvation (1902) are only two of his more than forty books. But Gladden’s interests were not limited to religion and public morality. He had a taste for poetry and cultivated it throughout his life, publishing a selection of his own verse in 1912. He took a deep pleasure in the contemplation of the mountain scenery of the Berkshires, where he passed his college years, and published a popular little travel book on the Connecticut Valley and the northern Berkshire Hills in 1869. In 1859, when Gladden was in his final year at Williams, as he later told the story, “The Mountains” was written during the winter break of his senior year, as he walked down Bee Hill (to the west of the town) one Saturday morning. From his first arrival in Williamstown he had been deeply impressed by the mountain setting. Founder and “conduc- tor” of the student Mendelssohn Society, he was already quite interested in music and composed a tune on his morning walk, later writing the words and fitting them to it. “The Mountains” was first published in a campus magazine and reprinted by Gladden in a small volume he put together and arranged to have published in June 1859, entitled Songs of Williams. The original song had four verses and a chorus. Those who can recite the words will recognize that they are very nearly, but not quite, the same as the words that are sung today.

1. O, proudly rise the monarchs of our mountain land With their kingly forest robes, to the sky, Where Alma Mater dwelleth with her chosen band, Where the peaceful river floweth gently by. Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 181

Chorus The mountains! the mountains! we greet them with a song, Whose echoes rebounding their woodland heights along Shall mingle with anthems that winds and fountains sing, Till hill and valley gaily, gaily ring.

2. The snows of winter crown them with a crystal crown, And the silver clouds of summer round them cling; The Autumn’s scarlet mantle flows in richness down; And they revel in the garniture of Spring.

3. O, mightily they battle with the storm king’s pow’r; And, conquerors, shall triumph here for aye; Yet quietly their shadows fall at evening hour, While the gentle breezes round them softly play.

4. Beneath their peaceful shadows may old Williams stand, Till suns and mountains never more shall be, The glory and the honor of our mountain land, And the dwelling of the gallant and the free.

The song apparently caught on immediately and has remained in the repertory of Williams songs ever since. Later, because Gladden was a public figure with a wider reputation, the song was printed in the Outlook (a church-related magazine with which he was affiliated) and in a collection of Gladden’s poems. Commonly sung over the years by undergraduates at “Class Day” and other celebrative occasions and by alumni at class dinners and reunions both on and off campus, it was included in the college’s centennial exercises in 1893, became part of the official Williams commencement program in 1937, and has been constantly reprinted. Understandably, since by the early twentieth century the song had become part of the culture of the college and seemed to be the property (so to speak) of all Williams students and alumni, little attention was paid to reproducing a scrupulously accurate text. Indeed, “The Mountains,” 182 Chapter 11 like many public songs in popular culture, has been slightly modified over the years by those who sing it. Current tradition has altered the final line of the first verse to read “And the peaceful river . . .” instead of “Where the peaceful river.” Gladden himself seemed to understand that the song belonged to those who sing it. In a letter to the campus newspaper in 1911, he noted that “The Mountains” is “not copyrighted and you are welcome to make any use of it that seems good to you.” He also acknowledged that generations of singers had “improved” the melody (originally marked 4/4 allegretto) “by doubling the length of the notes in the last line of the stanza [mostly eighth notes] and the last line of the chorus [dotted eighths and sixteenth notes].” As with many of our public and ceremonial songs, it has detractors (who find it difficult to sing). Factions have contested the speed at which it should be sung, as well as the pronunciation of winds, some claiming it should be pronounced to rhyme with minds. Most singers find it difficult to remember whether the echoes are “resounding” or “rebounding.” We might suppose that in Gladden’s day there was a vital collegiate singing tradition. The truth is somewhat different. As Gladden himself noted in his memoirs, singing at Williams in the late 1850s was moribund, and he consciously attempted to revive it. He apparently succeeded to the degree of inciting his classmates not only to sing songs but also to compose them. The various familiar genres at the time included the class song, the central theme of which is simply that the singer’s own class is the “best” of all classes, and the farewell song, in which the departing student bids good-bye to his beloved college days. Gladden’s “The Mountains” does not follow either of these patterns. It focuses instead on what was a common element in many of the 1859 songs—the surrounding mountains. Not surprisingly, Gladden and his fellow songwriters drew on a conventional “mountain” vocabulary. Fellow student Sidney Cooper’s “Alumni Song,” for example, begins “O give me a home ’neath the shadow of mountains.” Cooper sings of mountainsides “appareled with green waving wood”—the conventional metaphor of foliage as clothing appears also in Gladden’s song—and hears a “silver-ton’d flood” pouring through “dingle and dell.” Other mountain poets in Gladden’s Songs of Williams collection suggest the dimensions of the available literary language. The mountains rise, they tower over us, and they look down on smiling meadows and glassy brook. Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 183

By contemplating the noble mountains, the sons of Williams themselves become noble and free. Gladden’s poem, entitled simply “The Mountains,” appeared in a section of Songs of Williams simply called “Miscellaneous.” It praises the regal majesty of the local mountains through the four seasons of the year. The chorus suggests, however, that Gladden is equally interested in “song,” which, by means of a responsive echo as well as the natural sounds of wind and water, united singer and scene. Indeed, the repeated chorus serves as a kind of “echo” itself. By the final verse, emphasis shifts from praise to petition, from mountains that “proudly rise” to a wish that “old Williams” may “stand” forever in its mountain valley—by a process of substitution, the college itself takes on the central features of the mountains, their permanence, and will even outlast them. (When Gladden wrote, “old Williams” was only sixty-six years old.) Ultimately, praise goes not to the mountain setting but to the college itself, the “glory and the honor” of the “mountain land.” It must be conceded that the language and the sentiments of Gladden’s song, although manipulated with some skill, remain utterly conventional. “The Mountains” is no candidate for the Library of America volume of nineteenth-century American poetry. But its very conventionality gives “The Mountains” considerable interest as a reflection of mid-nineteenth-century American culture. By reworking the generic resources and the conventional vocabulary available to him, and by tapping deep currents of the literary, religious, and political heritage shared by his contemporaries, Gladden produced a memorable distilla- tion of a certain kind of pastoral dream.

“The Mountains” as Topographical Poem The literary currents that Gladden taps flow for more than 250 years through the poetry of the Anglo-American tradition. Songs of Williams was dedicated to the poet William Cullen Bryant, sometime member of the Williams College Class of 1813 and by 1859 one of the elder states- men of American verse. In an early poem about Williamstown Bryant had suggested that the surrounding mountains serve only to imprison the “wretched inmates” of the college: “Hemmed in with hills, whose heads aspire, / Abrupt and rude and hung with woods.” Bryant’s eye 184 Chapter 11 turns then to “the vales / Stretching in pensive quietness between,” to “venerable woods” and “rivers that move with majesty.” Gladden’s own description of the hills surrounding Williamstown in effect gently cor- rects his distinguished predecessor, who had followed an older poetic tradition in which mountains are savage, rugged, louring, and so forth. But he echoes Bryant in turning from mountains to peaceful valleys. Gladden defines the landscape as hills and vales, woods and rivers, brooks and meadows, reminding us that natural description in poetry derives not just from unmediated observation but also from traditional ways in which the human eye organizes a landscape and from literary conventions that embody those ways. Or to put it more simply, Gladden was able to see an arrangement of hill, valley, and river in part because he was conditioned to do so by his reading. But Gladden ultimately looks beyond Bryant and recapitulates with his own poem several traditions of nature poetry reaching back two and a half centuries through the English romantic poets and James Thomson’s famous The Seasons (1726–44) to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). It is reasonable to assume that a song about mountains written in New England in the nineteenth century would be influenced by the poetry of the English Romantics, poets who can be said to have rediscovered mountains as a subject for poetry. Gladden’s first line derives clearly from Byron’s “Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains”—the first line of his famousManfred (1817), a poem that entranced generations of readers and Alpine travelers. Although European observers did not think of mountains as “majestic” before the late eighteenth century, it was not uncommon by the middle of the nineteenth to think of a European peak—or of Mount Greylock, the highest in the Berkshires—as a king. Melville dedicated his novel Pierre (1852), written in Pittsfield, only twenty miles south of Williamstown, to “Greylock’s Most Excellent Purple Majesty,” sitting in “central majesty” amid a “grand Congress of Vienna of majestical hilltops.” Gladden himself, while conducting readers of his travel book through the Berkshires, calls Greylock the “King of Mountains.” Like Byron, his contemporaries Wordsworth and Shelley found the mountain scenery in the Alps to be rude, magnificent, majestic, glorious, and an awesome image of the infinite. But in “The Mountains,” Gladden does not see mountains as particularly awe inspiring. He does Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 185 not behold them with silent reverence, but “greet[s] them with a song.” In fact, he looks back beyond the Romantics to earlier ways of conceiv- ing landscape, perhaps half remembering a line in The Seasons where “the mountains lift their green heads to the sky.” Thomson’s poem, which attained wide and enduring popularity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the great model for poems on the majestic works of nature, as observed through the four seasons of the year. Gladden’s mountains do not inspire gloom or fear in large part because Thomson and his imitators taught the English-speaking reader to respond with delight to the “variety,” “beauty,” and “magnificence” in nature. Gladden’s song derives from a long poetic tradition, but its literary quality is modest. Much of Gladden’s language—“gentle breezes,” “peaceful river” “peaceful shadows,” “fountains” (that is, springs or streams)—is conventional, deriving from a diluted Thomsonian tradition. And his rhymes are often unsurprising—sing/ring, crown/down, sling/spring, stand/land. Gladden sometimes seems to settle for words that merely fit the meter of his tune. The poetical “for aye” (that is, forever) in the third verse probably comes in primarily for the sake of the rhyme. The central repetitions are rhetorically stirring (“The mountains! the mountains!” and “gaily, gaily ring”), but elsewhere they are merely redundant (“‘crown them with a crystal crown”). And his habit of ending a line with a preposition that allowed an easy rhyme (“floweth gently by,” “woodland heights along,” “flows in richness down”) would have made a careful rhymer like Pope wince. Occasionally, though, the lines display an attempt to adapt convention to local circumstance. “Crystal crown” is an unusual touch. In pastoral poetry it is usually liquid streams that are described as “crystal,” that is, transparent. Gladden, who composed the poem in midwinter, seems to be thinking of snow or ice crystals. “Silver clouds” in summer is another surprise. Instead of conventionally emphasizing the burning heat of the summer sun, Gladden remembers that clouds are not uncommon in a Berkshire mountain summer. But these clouds are not threatening: they wear their silver lining on the outside. The mountains’ “forest robes” are “kingly” because they are often purple, the color of kings, and they reach “to the sky,” a fitting detail since the summits of Greylock and its neighbors are covered with trees. “Scarlet mantle” is a specifically New England touch: it takes sugar maples, common in 186 Chapter 11

Gladden’s Berkshires but rare in English landscapes, to produce “scarlet” in October.” Gladden celebrates seasonal variety but finds within the variety the harmonious mixture of opposites. The high and the low, the “hill and valley” of the chorus, quite literally “ring” together in song. The mountains are a scene of “battle” (during a storm) and a site where “conquerors shall triumph.” But they are also a scene of “gentle breezes,” quiet and “peaceful shadows,” and a gentle “peaceful river.” The mountains rise up proudly “to the sky” yet harmonize with a river that flows quietly in a lateral earth-embracing motion. Even the curious order of the seasons in Gladden’s song—winter, summer, fall, spring—may suggest that he thinks less in terms of seasonal sequence than of harmonious opposites. In so doing, Gladden once again appropriates an ancient principle of pastoral landscape, the “harmony of opposites,” found commonly in topographical poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Gladden probably knew such famous English poems as Sir John Denham’s often-quoted Cooper’s Hill (1646), where “the steep horrid roughness of the Wood / Strives with the gentle calmness of the flood,” or Pope’s Windsor Forest (1713), “Where Order in Variety we see, / And where, tho’ all things differ, all agree.” It is worth noting what Gladden’s stylized description, shaped by pastoral literary tradition, leaves out. This nineteenth-century version of a rural landscape omits both sights and sounds of the bustling village of Williamstown, with its many collegiate, commercial, and residential buildings, as well as the busy agricultural life of the valley. A well- known contemporary panoramic painting, Williamstown, Mass., as Seen from Stone Hill, drawn in 1855 and published in 1856, shows a thoroughly cultivated scene: fenced pastures in the foreground, a carefully delineated town in the middle distance, and the mountains in the background, their lower slopes cleared for farming. In contrast, Gladden’s scene is not only preindustrial but preagricultural: the only sights and sounds are those of uncultivated nature. By 1859 the Williamstown of everyday life was not only thoroughly agricultural but also acquiring small-scale industry, driven by water power supplied by local rivers. It is perhaps not coincidental that Gladden’s song was published in the same year that the railroad was first extended from Troy, New York, Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 187 to Williamstown. When the machine entered the garden (to use Leo Marx’s terms), it became increasingly difficult to think of the remote and inaccessible Hoosac Valley as an unspoiled Edenic garden. As Marx shows in The Machine and the Garden (1964), many nineteenth-century American writers recorded the shocking (and symbolic) impact of the railroad on the peaceful sylvan scene. Gladden’s song, which leaves out the railway, is in this sense distinctly (though perhaps unconsciously) backward looking, commemorating and perpetuating a day that was passing.

“The Mountains” as Psalm and Hymn It will be noticed that Gladden’s song praises earthly mountains and makes no explicit mention of God. This might be thought curious in a poem written at a mid-nineteenth-century college where instruction was still strongly infused with religious purpose, by a man who went on to become a famous Christian preacher and apologist. The apparently secular delight in the natural world seems built not on a Christian foundation but on a naively animistic view of nature: mountains, dressed in royal robes, rise up in their pride, while winds and streams sing and hill and valley take up the refrain. But we in a secular world may be blinded to what our ancestors took for granted. Neither Gladden nor his fellow students would have felt it necessary to acknowledge that nature was underlain by God. In nineteenth-century New England, that went without saying. And in the strain of Christianity that the mature Gladden was later to preach in such essays as “Nature and the Supernatural,” God is immanent in the “continuity and uniformity” of his creation. “He fills every part of it with his presence; he reveals himself in every natural force, in every movement and process.” Nature is a “manifestation, in orderly ways, of the wisdom and the will of God.” As a young college student Gladden would have heard his teachers (like the famous John Bascom) remind him that we can discern God’s presence in the natural world. He would also have found in the recent work of the great art critic John Ruskin (who attracted a following at Williams) con- firmation of any disposition to view mountain scenery with both piety and delight. The fourth volume of Ruskin’s Modern Painters (1856) is 188 Chapter 11 devoted entirely to mountains in nature and art and to their influence on human intellect and temperament. Mountains, he argued in his closing chapters, “The Mountain Gloom” and “The Mountain Glory,” have the power of “exciting religious enthusiasm” and “purifying religious faith.” In later years Gladden was a great admirer of Ruskin and of his descriptions of mountains. His ringing line about “the glory and the honor of our mountain land” sounds a distinctly Ruskinian note. But we do not need to invoke the world of nineteenth-century Christianity or of Ruskin’s aesthetics to see how “The Mountains” is built within a religious frame. The mountain scene Gladden creates is constructed from elements that he and his fellow singers would have known from the language of the Psalms, whether in scriptural form or in the metrical versions that, for many Christians since the Protestant Reformation, were their primary experience of religious music. Gladden’s song might have been inspired by the opening lines of Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.” (The psalm writer often refers to his lines as “songs.”) The hills and mountains were in Gladden’s mind of course created by God, who as Psalm 90 says preexisted them: “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, . . . thou art God.” Gladden and his fellow students would have been regularly reminded that God created mountains, stars, and mankind by an inscription placed over the north door of the college observatory in 1838: “Lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath created thee.” By “greeting” the mountains, Gladden joins his voice to an ancient tradition of praise. His “song” blends with “anthems” of wind and fountains. “Anthems” too signals that his song is fundamentally religious: in the nineteenth century an anthem was a composition in which scripture and liturgy were set to music, and Gladden probably also remembered that in the eighteenth century an “anthem” was a composition sung by two voices or choirs, responsively. The attentive reader will object that Gladden’s mountains “proudly rise” and will observe that such praise is distinctly un-Christian. Pride and aspiration are, after all, regularly subjected to humbling and punishment in the scriptures. Indeed, at the coming of the Lord, “every mountain and hill shall be made low” (Isa. 40:4). Gladden chooses to remember other associations of mountains in the Old Testament. God Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 189 is worshipped on mountaintops, which are commonly places of holi- ness (Psalms 15, 24, 43, and 68). What is more (and apt to Gladden’s musical theme), mountains and hills “break forth before you into singing” (Isa. 55). And mountains provide an image of God’s power and his protection: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91). In Gladden’s version of this ancient reassurance, “Beneath their peaceful shadows shall old Williams stand, / . . . The dwelling of the gallant and the free.” Gladden’s context does not suggest biblical Palestine (I shall return to the modern note of “the gallant and the free”), but his image of protection—dwelling safely in the valley beneath the shadow of a high hill—is deeply scriptural. The most obtrusive suggestion that Gladden’s concerns are implicitly religious is, of course, the remarkable phrase “chosen band.” God promised protection to the “chosen people” of Israel. Gladden’s Puritan forebears thought of themselves as a chosen people sent on an errand into the wilderness of New England. (Early-nineteenth- century com- mentators on the Gospel of John noted that Jesus had also “chosen” a little “band” of disciples.) Gladden and his fellow Williams students might feel themselves “chosen” not because they had passed through some highly selective admissions process—they did not—but because they have somehow inherited divine favor and as a “chosen band” (a selective few joined not by social class but by a common religious commitment) are permitted to dwell with their alma mater in their “mountain land.” Although Gladden’s deity is feminine (I will also return to this), his conception is based on the traditional language of the psalms, where the Lord chooses to “dwell” forever in Zion, where those who receive God’s favor are said to “dwell” with him. To “dwell” with God is to receive protection both in life and in death, as in the familiar words of Psalm 23: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” Gladden is thinking not of an afterlife but of a kind of timeless present, where an archetypal “peaceful river floweth gently by,” perhaps recalling the “still waters” of the same psalm. But his final verse may even hint at a transition to death. He hopes that “old Williams” may stand in its valley beneath the “peaceful shadows” of the high hills until such time as “suns and mountains never more shall be”—that is, until Judgment Day. Can we perhaps hear an echo of the “valley of the shadow of death”? 190 Chapter 11

Many of the psalms are essentially poems of praise, or hymns, and Gladden’s song also belongs to the tradition of literary hymns prais- ing the natural world as the handiwork of God. In the famous “morning hymn” in book 5 of Milton’s Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve call out “To hill, or valley, fountain, or fresh shade / Made vocal by my song.” Hill, valley, and fountain are made “vocal” not simply because they echo human song, but because they are said to join their own voices in praise. The “winds,” says Milton, sing by breathing “soft or loud,” and “fountains” sing by “warbling . . . melodious murmurs.” (Remember that it is “winds” and “fountains” that sing an “anthem” in Gladden’s song.) Milton’s hymn, one of the most commonly anthologized passages from Paradise Lost well into the nineteenth century, served as a model for Thomson’s climactic “Hymn on the Seasons,” which closes his vast poem on that topic and in which “hills” and “valleys,” “brooks” and “woodlands,” and human singer too all join in the praise of the works of God. Here are the poetic ancestors of the joyous scene in Gladden’s chorus, the rhetorical high point of the song, in which plural singers “greet” the mountains with joy, the song “rebounds” along the “woodland heights,” and the “winds and fountains” echo not only one another’s song but their own two-part anthems until the whole natural world sings along with the human celebrants: “Till hill and valley gaily, gaily ring.”

“The Mountains” as National Song The landscape of Gladden’s song is a religious one. But, ruled by proud monarchs yet the home of the “gallant and the free,” it is also implicitly a political one. Initially, we might find it paradoxical that Gladden seems to celebrate monarchical power in a nineteenth-century republic, when some four score and three years earlier his forefathers threw off the monarchical yoke and renounced their allegiance to an English king. But there is reason to think that Gladden used the idea of mon- archy quite deliberately. Note first the fact that he praises “monarchs” in the plural, despite the etymological reminder that a monarch is a sole ruler. In this landscape (unlike that of England and unlike that of Byron’s Alps, where Mont Blanc reigns), there is not one king but many: Gladden praises not just Mount Greylock, the highest peak in Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 191 its group, but the various other mountains within his ken. Perhaps, like Melville, he is thinking of a “congress” of kings—including what we now know as Mount Williams, Mount Fitch, Mount Prospect, and Saddle Mountain. The subtle alteration of Byron’s “monarch” marks the difference between an old nation still ruled by one monarch and a new one in which, so it was said, “every man’s a king.” Americans had in effect not abandoned their allegiance to a king; they had only transferred it to a higher authority, either natural or supernatural. In “America,” the unofficial national anthem composed in 1832, a new set of words fitted to the tune of Britain’s “God Save the King,” “our King” is no mere mortal but “Great God” himself. When Melville dedicated Pierre to “Greylock’s Most Excellent Majesty,” he quite consciously recalled the days when European authors dedicated their works “to Majesty.” In dedicating his novel not to a human prince but to a “majestic mountain . . . my own more immediate sovereign lord and king,” Melville was (like Emerson before him in “The American Scholar”) practicing cultural politics, making a declaration of allegiance to a “monarch” on native American grounds. Gladden follows in this tradition. Furthermore, Gladden’s is a “mountain land,” and mountains are traditionally associated with political freedom. In his poem “Allegro,” Milton sings to the “Mountain nymph, sweet Liberty,” and the eighteenth-century poet William Collins in his “Ode to Liberty” seeks the “haunts of Liberty / On Wild Helvetia’s mountains bleak,” that is, in the Swiss Alps. As a republic, Switzerland had long been thought of as a mountainous bastion of liberty in the midst of European mon- archies. The association clearly endured into Gladden’s day, as the last line of “America” attests: “From every mountainside, let Freedom ring.” Indeed, it is not unreasonable to think of “The Mountains” as a national song, companion piece to the two national anthems composed and widely adopted in the early nineteenth century. Gladden celebrates “the glory and the honor of our mountain land, / And the dwelling of the gallant and the free,” just as Francis Scott Key in 1812 had saluted “The land of the free and the home of the brave.” And like “America,” “The Mountains” celebrates a just pride (“land of the pilgrims’ pride”) and hopes that this land may always be the dwelling of free men (“Long may our land be bright / With Freedom’s holy light”—a light both political and religious). 192 Chapter 11

But there are interesting differences, too. “America” is the land “where my fathers died” and is ruled by “our fathers’ God.” In “The Mountains” men dwell not with a father but with an “Alma Mater.” Francis Scott Key’s song celebrates the gallantry of the flag “whose broad stripes and bright stars were so gallantly streaming” and the soldiers who waved it. Gladden’s “chosen,” despite the military associations of “band,” are “gallant” and “free” but not soldiers. Perhaps Gladden invokes the idea of a “liberal’ education, thought suitable for a “free man” and designed to liberate the mind from prejudice and any narrow professional or practical concern and vigorously championed in Gladden’s own day by Mark Hopkins, longtime president of Williams. “Free” seems not to have any particular political meaning: although written only two years before the beginning of the American Civil War, “The Mountains” seems innocent of the regional conflict between free and slave states that had been dis- turbing the nation for at least a decade and was about to shake its foundation. For that matter, the song seems innocent of any other threats to freedom or of political concerns in the larger world. Its politics are abstract or allegorical: the mountains engage in battle with the “storm king’s pow’r, / And, conquerors [that is, as conquerors], shall triumph here for aye.” Perhaps only here does the larger world enter the pastoral retreat, but the battle is fought on the mountaintops. The “chosen band” remains quietly below, safe from the fray, or not yet called to it.

“The Mountains” as Fantasy of Retreat At the end of “The Mountains” the singer does not look forward to a larger world outside of his Berkshire valley. Many college songs of the day drew a contrast between quiet academic retreat, to be enjoyed in youth, and the noisy world of adult responsibilities. Gladden’s own “Parting Song,” written for his Williams class, looks ahead to the “hour of battle” and the “roll of signal drums.” As he explained in a prefa- tory note when the song was later republished, he had no idea in 1859 that barely two years later the nation would literally hear those drums. Gladden’s military metaphors in his “Parting Song” were “simply metaphorical,” as he put it, oddly and unconsciously prophetic though they were. (Other Williams songs from later years, such as “’Neath the Shadow of the Hills,” draw the same contrast between the cloister Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 193 and the marketplace, looking back at the sheltered college world from “the busy haunts of men.”) When Gladden ten years later wrote his little travel book about the Berkshires, he sounded this very note as he conducted his reader out of the Hoosac Valley: “Away from this pleasant valley some faces must turn at last. The shadow of Greylock that has fallen like a benediction upon the weary, must be forsaken for the shorter and hotter shadows of brown-stone walls.” But “The Mountains” imagines that perhaps it is not necessary to turn one’s face from the pleasant valley; perhaps some happy few can in fact remain in Eden. When Gladden himself returned to the Hoosac Valley as a visitor, he gave fuller expression to this dream. Drawing on biblical language, he imagines that the traveler who looks down into the valley as he comes over the mountains will say, “It is good to be here; let us make tabernacles and abide; for surely there shall never rest upon our souls a purer benediction.” But the fantasy is already present in his undergraduate song. In the first verse of “The Mountains,” the “chosen band” of college boys dwelleth beside the “peaceful river.” In the final verse they may have grown old but are still there. The singer hopes that “old Williams” may always remain “the dwelling of the gallant and the free.” The repetition of this potent biblical term—dwell also carried for Gladden the secular meaning of “remain as in a permanent residence”—implies that the chosen band longs to remain forever in its mountain valley. That land is dominated by “the mountains,” proudly rising and implicitly guarding the happy valley. (In a “Hymn” written for the dedication of Hopkins Hall in 1890, Gladden addressed the “flaming mountains,” asking that they “guard us still.”) But the presiding figure in the valley is “Alma Mater.” That term, not a dead metaphor, still had freshness in 1859, partly because Latin was still the foundation of every educated person’s training—alma mater means “foster mother,” literally “nourishing mother”—and partly because the term, originally a name given to Ceres (goddess of corn and harvests) and Cybele (nourishing mother of all the earth), had only recently been applied to colleges and universities, regarded as “foster mothers” to their alumni, that is, literally, “those who are nourished.” The “chosen band” then dwells in the valley with a presiding female figure, while the mountains rise above them. The mountains perform 194 Chapter 11 the traditionally male function of protection, while “Alma Mater” per- forms the traditionally female function of nourishment. The “chosen band” are in a protected state, a little enclosed world, like that of a child. It is in that state that they wish to remain, nurtured by a mother and guarded by fathers. We are invited by the song to think of a college as a little family. The feeding and housing are provided by the alma mater. The instruction and the guidance are provided by professors, who in Gladden’s day were of course all male. But the only male figures actually in “The Mountains” (apart from the band of students) are the mountains themselves, and perhaps we can see them as displacements of the faculty, clad not in academic gowns but in “forest robes.” It is not as fanciful as it may seem to think of mountains as professors, quite apart from their conventionally hoary heads, particularly in light of Ruskin’s famous declaration at the end of volume 4 of his Modern Painters that mountains are the “schools and cathedrals” of the human race and if we recall the remarks made by some notable visitors to mid-nineteenth- century Williams and Williamstown. Thoreau in 1844 thought it “would be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain,” perhaps a displacement of the traditional image of the learned man with his disciples gathered at his feet. And Emerson on a visit to Williamstown in 1854 apparently urged the students to “print the names of these mountains in your college catalogue with members of the faculty.” In this family, the function of the child is simply to be “chosen,” to sing, and thereby to be “gallant” and “free.” About the causes for which the gallant and the free are to serve, thereby perhaps winning “glory and honor,” the song remains silent. “Freedom” would ordinarily have suggested to Gladden’s readers the political and religious liberty for which men battled in the larger world, and “gallantry” ordinarily would have suggested military service—the college was, after all, named for a citizen-soldier. But without any external reference, “free” in effect perhaps means free from care, and “gallant” perhaps carries hints of its older meaning of “markedly polite and attentive to ladies”—seemingly out of place in a rustic and monastic setting, where the only lady is alma mater herself. In Gladden’s idyll of deferred ambition, engagement, and responsibility, the “gallant” puts on the costume of a soldier-lover but Alma Mater and Her Chosen Band 195 remains within a maternal orbit. His gallantry, like his devotion to freedom, is abstract. Both the official ideology of the nineteenth-century college as training ground for the professions and especially for the clergy and the example of Gladden himself, who went on immediately to take on responsibilities as a preacher and public lecturer, would contradict any suggestion that Williams undergraduates are encouraged to enjoy a prolonged adolescence. Gladden would perhaps have been aghast, or merely amused, at the suggestion that “The Mountains” embodies such a dream of irre- sponsible freedom. As an earnest young New Englander he no doubt thought he was preparing for a life of good works. But the language of the song conveys a sense of college life not as apprenticeship but as idyll and suggests that at some level Gladden himself could imagine the desire to remain in the protected valley. As he departed from college immediately after commencement in the summer of 1859, Gladden, so he reported later, reluctantly faced a sterner world of cares: “To turn my back on all that care-free college life and face an unknown world cost a pang.” And lest we think that there is something merely personal or anachronistic in the idea of college as prolonged adolescence, we should recall Thomas Gray’s famous “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College” (1747), perhaps the best-known poem in English about the blissful innocence of school days. Inhabitants of a shady “paradise” beside a river, and below the “heights” of Windsor, Gray’s schoolboys play among “happy hills,” without a “care” or responsibility “beyond today.” Colleges until recently were consciously founded as retreats from the world, and the idea of deferred responsibility remains a potent one in the minds of many graduating students. It is perhaps not too much to say that Gladden, like Gray, imaginatively fends off the expulsion from Eden. Gladden would not have put it in that way and probably would have denied any deliberate allusion to Gray. He might not have recognized how much his ways of seeing and feeling were shaped by what he read and by the cultural air he breathed. For us, further removed from the living tradition of English topographical poetry, the Psalms of David, the expansive patriotism of a young country, and the new fas- cination with mountain scenery, some archaeological work is required to uncover the layers of mid-nineteenth-century New England culture within Gladden’s song. 196 Chapter 11

The archaeological metaphor is misleading, however, since it implies that the past is dead and buried. Just as “The Mountains” is more than a pleasant college song, more than a mirror of mid-nineteenth-century New England, it is more than a historical artifact. It has become part of the culture of a living institution. By continuing to sing “The Mountains,” Williams alumni, no longer drawn predominantly from New England, no longer Bible readers, no longer only men, continu- ously construct the culture of the college. Even when they find the language of “The Mountains” stilted or quaint, they implicitly reaffirm their sense that their valley is a site of peace and harmony, blessed by guardian powers, and reaffirm that they belong to a lucky chosen people who wish to, and in some sense do, dwell always beneath the shadow of the mountains. CHAPTER 12  “YARD BY YARD” Line by Line and through the Years

“Yard by Yard” is one of the best-loved “Songs of Williams,” the college’s “fight song,” regularly sung at football games and at alumni meetings. But many alums only know the chorus : “Yard by yard we’ll fight our way . . .” Most probably realize that there’s also a “verse” (originally, “Come, all ye sons of Williams, sing . . .”) but would be surprised to hear that the song has a second verse. And almost nobody knows its history. Every twenty years or so, somebody looks back to rediscover the song’s origins and tries to straighten out the complicated story of its creation. The last time was in the 1970s, when one of the composers, Hamilton Wood, ’09, during an oral history interview preserved in the college archives, commented on his part in writing the song. Perhaps we’re overdue for another look, if only to reflect on the martial language of the song, to discover that “Yard by Yard” has roots that go back earlier than its official beginnings in 1909 and to remark the song’s recent history in the days since coeducation.

A Marching Song The complete lyrics of the song are worth repeating, since even those who can sing the song may be a little unsure of all the words. Here, in its original version, is the first verse:

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Come, all ye sons of Williams, sing, As we march on the field, Cheer till the hills and valleys ring, There’s never a thought to yield. We’ll back the team through every game, With them in every play. Fling out the purple, hail! For once again comes Williams’ day.

The song was clearly designed to be sung by the cheering fans as they— along with the team—“march onto the field,” expressing their determination to provide loyal support. At the climax of the verse it is imagined that a purple flag is “flung out” and “hailed” as a sign of impending victory (“Williams’ day”). The atmosphere is quasi-military. The “sons of Williams” march onto the “field” of battle—the music is marked “In march time.” With the flag flying above them, they are ready to fight and determined never to “yield.” Pronouns suggest a dual focus on fans and players. The singing fans refer to themselves and each other as “we” and “ye sons” and to the athletes as “the team” and “them,” but they so identify with the team that they imagine themselves marching onto the field. In one sense, the fans will “back the team” by providing moral support through their cheers. But the verb to back also carries a strong sense of “providing backup”—that is, physical or logistical support, from behind the lines. The military character of the song is confirmed by the chorus:

Yard by yard we’ll fight our way Through Amherst’s line, Every man in every play, Striving all the time. Cheer on cheer will rend the air, All behind our men, For we’ll fight for dear old Williams And we’ll win and win again.

Like a regiment of infantry in a classic ground war, the players (clad, like soldiers, in uniforms) are imagined as infantry, now not marching, but “Yard by Yard” 199 with great determination fighting their way “through Amherst’s line”— that is, through the defensive line of the opponent, but also through the front line that separates contending armies. (Now the “we” refers simultaneously to the fans and the players—both together are imagined as “fighting our way through Amherst’s line.”) Even the word striving hints at armed conflict. The main meaning of the word strive now is “to endeavor vigorously,” but the word also traditionally meant “to contend in rivalry” and “to contend in arms.” Like the infantry, with artillery support behind them, the players slowly but steadily gain ground—it is a cliché of military narrative accounts of painstakingly slow progress made by troops in infantry battles to say that they fight “yard by yard.” Meanwhile, the air is “rent” with cheers (metaphorically equivalent to the artillery shells that are designed to support the advance). Almost nobody sings the second verse, or even knows that there is one:

Amherst and Dartmouth may be strong, Mighty and full of steam, Oft have they been of no avail When they meet the purple team. Harvard and Eli both can tell When we have dimmed their fame. Ring out the triumph bell, For once again we’ve won the game.

Amherst, the archrival, is mentioned first. It is surprising now to hear the names of Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, no longer opponents of Williams teams. But when the song was composed in 1909, Williams was playing Harvard, Dartmouth—Ivy League teams—and even Army! Perhaps the verse is omitted in modern performance because it’s obsolete. But there may be another reason. It’s noteworthy that the military metaphor has been dropped. In its place are unrelated formulaic phrases (“full of steam,” “of no avail,” “dimmed their fame”) that seem now like dead metaphors. Maybe the second verse is no longer sung because, frankly, it’s not of the same quality as the first. As in the first verse, victory is declared. “Ring out the triumph bell” imagines that a “victory bell” is rung at each Williams victory, a tradition still found at a number of colleges and universities today. Williams 200 Chapter 12 professor Fred Rudolph remembered that when he was an undergraduate (1938–42), the chapel bell was rung after an important football victory at home. In earlier years it was the old bell in Goodrich Hall. That custom began in 1905, when Thompson Chapel was completed, replacing the old chapel in Goodrich and freeing up its bell for other uses. Thus, it would have still been a new tradition, enthusiastically taken up, in 1909, when “Yard by Yard” was composed. But no later than 1939 the Goodrich bell fell silent, and the Thompson Chapel bell took its place as the victory bell. The custom of ringing the bell after a victory over Amherst apparently lapsed by the early ’50s. (The class of 1998 tried to reinstitute the custom by dedicating its graduation gift to the refurbishment of the Goodrich bell.) In any case, ringing bell or not, this is a confident song of victors, not a song to rouse the spirit when the team is down. The phrase “once again,” in “once again we’ve won . . . ,” is repeated from the first verse (and is echoed by “win and win again” in the chorus). This team seems to win every time: every day is “Williams’ day.”

The History of “Yard by Yard” So the words read in 1909, when the song was composed. Lyrics are credited to Clarence F. Brown, class of ’09, and Lars S. Potter, class of ’10, the music to Brown and Hamilton B. Wood, ’10. All three were musical. While a student Potter was a member of the Mandolin and Banjo Clubs. (He went on later to become partner in a Buffalo broker- age firm and served as an alumni trustee from 1937 to 1942.) Clarence (Buster) Brown composed several songs while he was an undergraduate and was selected Ivy Poet for his class. He was also a varsity football player and captain of the hockey team. Brown went on to win some fame as the composer of “Armadillo Rag” (1911). Wood was perhaps the most musical of the three. From Worcester, Massachusetts, he was also an athlete—as a senior he started at center on the football team and ran track for three years. He too was a member of the Mandolin and Banjo Clubs, the orchestra, and the choir; head of the Glee Club; and a cheerleader. He wrote several songs while an undergraduate and was one of the editors of the 1910 edition of Songs of Williams. He was marshal of his class at commencement and (like “Yard by Yard” 201

Potter) later served as an alumni trustee. He retained his interest in music for years after his graduation, composing “Good Old Worcester Town” in 1917. Williams gave him an honorary degree in 1944, citing his contributions as president of the Worcester County Music Association and as “composer of some of our most cherished Williams songs.” With the words attributed to Brown and Potter and the music to Brown and Wood, one imagines the three students gathered around a piano, working out the words and music together. But the real story is a little different. The song we know as “Yard by Yard” originated in the spring of 1909 as two different songs, both of them entered in the “interclass singing contest,” a new Williams tradition then in its second year. Both Brown and Wood had entered songs in the 1908 contest, but neither Brown’s “Our Mother” nor Wood’s “Williams’ Sons” was awarded the prize. Songs composed by undergraduates were performed on what was then known as the “Lab Campus” (now the “Science Quad” or “West College Lawn”) by large choruses from the four classes, seniors massed in front of Jesup Hall, juniors beside West College, sophomores in front of the Thompson Physics building, and freshmen (as they were then called) in front of the chemistry building. It was apparently common for the music to be written first; once the class had approved it, words were fitted to the tune. Songs were judged by several members of the faculty—in 1909 they included two men who went on to become eminent senior professors, the then young assistant professors Karl Weston and William H. Doughty. Forty percent of the score was based on the performance of the song, another 40 percent on the “excellence of the composition,” and the remaining 20 percent on the attendance of class members. As Wood told the story many years later, “Both Brown and I had a song in the contest. When the contest was over we decided that his was a good verse and mine a good chorus, so we put them together.” Brown, in other words, had written the verse beginning “Come all ye sons of Williams, sing . . . ,” and Wood had written the “chorus,” “Yard by yard, we’ll fight our way . . .” The two songs are quite compatible, both set in 4/4 time, both built on military metaphor in which the cheering fans provide support from the rear (“we’ll back the team,” “all behind our men”). Few singers through the years have probably noticed that Brown’s song is adapted for almost any team sport played on a field or 202 Chapter 12 a court—“every man in every play” could refer to football, soccer, bas- ketball, or baseball—while Wood’s song can be nothing but a football song. Few notice or care that the “we” of the verse is the fans but the “we” of the chorus is both fans and team. What Wood doesn’t say is that neither Brown’s “March to Glory” (as it was called) nor the Wood-Potter “Yard by Yard” won the contest that year, nor does he mention Lars Potter, who contributed the words to his chorus. The occasion for combining the songs may well have been the publication of a new collection of Williams songs. Wood happened to be one of the editors. Perhaps with an eye to improving his song and making it more memorable, he may have spoken to Brown and decided to combine their efforts. What we now know as “Yard by Yard” was first printed in the 1910 third edition of Songs of Williams, where it was attributed to all three of the composers-lyricists. (Two other songs from the 1909 contest were also printed in the 1910 volume, the Hazelton-Johnson “Senior Song”—the contest winner—and “Sing We to Williams,” by Cady and Lehman.) “Yard by Yard” was reprinted in the 1916 and 1933 editions of Songs of Williams. By 1936, when Wood’s account of what he called the “inside story” of the song’s origin appeared, “Yard by Yard” had long been popular, but had apparently in some minds come to be attributed to Brown alone, so that Wood had to set the record straight. Less than twenty years later the question of attribution came up again, this time when an outraged alumnus, who had come to think the song was Wood’s alone, found out that “Yard by Yard” was being described as the result of a collaboration. A flurry of correspondence, preserved in the Williams College Archives, was exchanged in 1953. Wood dismissed the dispute as a tempest in a teapot. When a new edition of the Songs of Williams was produced in 1959, “Yard by Yard” was accompanied by a brief note that got the story mostly right, reporting that it was “a combination of two songs submitted in a class song contest,” but got the date of the contest wrong, giving the year as 1907 rather than 1909. Many years later, in an oral history interview in 1976, Lars Potter (whose name had been omitted from Wood’s 1936 account) retold the old story of the song’s origin, mistakenly remembering that his song (the chorus) had won the song contest in 1910 and Brown’s song (the verses) had won in 1909, and—turning the tables—omitting any mention of Wood. “Yard by Yard” 203

The Prehistory of “Yard by Yard” Even the composers could not remember the details of the song’s origin. What is more, they apparently did not remember—or never chose to reveal—that the words of the song have their roots in some earlier student songs. The rules of the song contest provided that “each song must be original and composed without extraneous aid.” There was additional incentive for originality: the song was composed at a time when intercollegiate competition in football was being formalized— the Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the U.S., predecessor to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, was founded in 1906— and every college wanted its own distinctive “fight song” to be sung from the sidelines. Many famous college fight songs—including those of Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Navy, Washington and Lee, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, and Minnesota—date from the years 1905–10. “Yard by Yard” is distinctive, but not wholly original. It is not surprising that some of the language of the song is conventional or formulaic. The opening words of the first verse, “Come all ye . . . ,” is a common folk-song opening phrase, where it serves as a summons to listen. Brown makes it into a summons to sing. The phrase is found in patriotic songs, hymns, and fight songs—“Sons of Williams” is found in several Williams songs that Brown would have known. “Fling out the flag [or “banner”]” is the euphonious title and first line of several nineteenth-century songs—an antislavery song of 1849 (“Fling Out the Anti-slavery Flag”), an 1848 hymn (G. W. Doane’s well-known “The Banner of the Cross”), and (oddly enough) at least two Australian songs, the 1887 patriotic song “Flag of the Southern Cross” (“Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross” is a kind of refrain) and an 1890 song celebrating laborers. “Hailing” one’s flag is another cliché. Northwestern’s loyal alumni sing “Hail to purple! hail to white! / Hail to thee, Northwestern” (“University Hymn”). “Dear old Williams” is a local instance of the formulaic “dear old X,” commonly found in college fight songs and alma maters from Wheaton to Wabash. Such conventional elements are almost inevitable: how many different ways are there to urge your favorite team on to victory? But in some respects it appears that Potter (who wrote the words of the chorus) consciously had in mind some famous songs of the day. Yale’s “Down the 204 Chapter 12

Field,” composed in 1905, one of the best-known and oft-copied fight songs, was probably one of the sources:

March, march on down the field, fighting for Eli, Break through the crimson line, their strength to defy. We’ll give a long cheer to Eli’s men, We’re here to win again. Harvard’s team may fight to the end, But Yale will win.

The chorus of “Yard by Yard” patterns its phrase “through Amherst’s line” on the Yale song’s “through the crimson line.” “Cheer on cheer . . . / All behind our men” closely resembles “give a long cheer to Eli’s men,” just as “we’ll win and win again” derives from the following line in the Yale song—“We’re here to win again.” The title and the opening line of the chorus—“Yard by yard we’ll fight our way”—apparently borrows from the well-known “Princeton Cannon Song” (1905), in which the Tigers are urged to “fight fight for ev’ry yard.” Potter’s chorus is generic enough that it could suit almost any college. Indeed, it is not surprising to discover that it has been adapted for other colleges. Former Williams professor Irwin Shainman, who graduated from Pomona College in 1943, remembered that “Yard by Yard” was frequently sung there, and not only when Pomona played its archrival, Occidental College: “Yard by yard, we’ll fight our way, / Through Oxy’s line . . . And we’ll fight for dear Pomona, and we’ll win and win again.” Shainman said he thought it was odd when he arrived in Williamstown in 1948 to join the Music Department that the Williams students were singing the Pomona song! Brown’s verses, as opposed to Potter’s chorus, are more adapted to Williams and to the Berkshires. The language of the first verse reflects the setting in Williamstown, surrounded by “the hills and valleys”— and probably alludes to the final words of “The Mountains” (1859), “ till hill and valley gaily, gaily ring.” The flag is a purple one—the color purple is prominent in many of the Williams songs in the previous fifteen years. Like the fight song itself, the color was a way of distinguish- ing the college, and its athletic teams, from those of its rivals. Brown was presumably also familiar with another Williams fight song, “Yard by Yard” 205 published two years earlier as “Marching Song,” composed by A. M. Botsford, ’06:

We march and sing as all along the line We raise our battle cry; The valley echoes, sending back a cheer For men who do or die. Then onward, steadfast, forward to the front, With hearts and voices strong The Purple floats above us, cheering For the team we march along.

Here is the same underlying metaphor of marching infantry, the valley echoing back the cheers, the purple flag flying overhead. The end of Botsford’s second verse—“We’ll back our team for ever. / Once again we sing our marching song”—might have prompted Brown’s “We’ll back the team in every way.” The end of Botsford’s chorus—“For this is Williams’ day”—is plainly the model for Brown’s “For once again comes Williams’ day.” Even flinging the purple flag has its source in a previous Williams song, “The Purple Team” (1909):

We will sing this song as we march along To old Williams and her fame. Fling the Purple wide, it has stemm’d the tide, For its sons are brave and strong.

The composer turns out to have been Brown, who was here borrowing from himself. “Yard by Yard” was republished in the 1926 Collegiate Song Book. It was perhaps its publication there that led to the song’s being adopted, and adapted, as the fight song of other colleges, like Pomona, that thought they lacked a good one. Probably the most famous rendi- tion of the song outside of Williamstown was heard in the 1953 movie Titanic, starring Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck. Just as the ship collides with the iceberg, a group of college-age men and women are seen gathered around the piano singing “Yard by Yard.” The last line we hear clearly is “Cheer on cheer will rend the air,” as the iceberg rips 206 Chapter 12 open—rends?—the hull. The movie’s producer (and one of its writers), it turns out, was Charles Brackett, Williams College Class of 1915.

“Yard by Yard” in Changing Times It’s good to rediscover where “Yard by Yard” came from and to see how it grew out of an era—before World War I—when a football game might innocently be compared to classic ground war. Nowadays we cannot go back to that more innocent time. When our team marches down the field yard by yard, we prefer to conceal from ourselves any memory of infantry pinned down on the western front, grinding out a few yards at a time, the artillery shells rending the air behind them or over their heads. We still sing the old songs—all of the well-known Williams songs date from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “Yard by Yard” appears in all post-1909 editions of Songs of Williams, including the seventh edition in 2017. But the song has been adapted to our changing needs. We no longer sing the second verse because Williams doesn’t— and can’t—compete in football against Dartmouth, Harvard, or Yale. Some of the words in the chorus have changed over the years, probably inadvertently, and not for the better. Some singers now assume they should sing “Every man in every way [rather than play], / Fighting [rather than striving] all the time.” And most singers now insert “For Williams” between beats at this point in the song. Just as the substitution of “fighting” for “striving” produces redundancy (compare “we’ll fight our way” and “We’ll fight for dear old Williams”), the inserted “For Williams” means that, together with “For we’ll fight for dear old Williams,” there are altogether too many fors in the chorus. It’s not uncommon for singers to substitute “as we march down the field” for “on the field” (as if remembering the Yale song). Other changes in the words have more official sanction, although the process whereby the words were changed has never been fully documented. When Williams began accepting women, it occurred to some that the words to some of the old songs perhaps ought to be changed, to recognize the presence of women among the undergraduates and (soon enough) among the alumni. The driving force seems to have been not young feminist faculty or students, but a Williams alumnus from the class of 1932, John English, who served as director of alumni “Yard by Yard” 207 relations from 1965 to 1975. In the spring of 1971, when there were only a few women transfer students on campus and before Williams had accepted its first four-year coed class (the class of 1975, which began at Williams in the fall of 1971), English wrote to two other alumni, Henry Greer, ’22, and Warren Hunke, ’42, editors of the 1959 edition of the Songs of Williams, suggesting that beginning in June 1971 (when the first women would graduate), the words to Williams songs should refer to “the men and women of Williams” and asking them to suggest “appropriate changes” to the lyrics of the Williams song in light of coeducation. In March 1972 Greer and Hunke proposed, among changes to other songs, that the first line of “Yard by Yard” be altered to read “Daughters and sons of Williams, sing . . .” They noted that they tried to keep the changes to a minimum, “both to preserve continuity and to facilitate learning the new versions.” English then consulted with several interested parties, including Irwin Shainman, Nancy McIntire (then assistant dean, with responsibility for women students), and at least one woman undergraduate with musical expertise. The change was adopted, though it is not clear whether it was formally endorsed or how the new language was made known. Over time other minor changes were quietly made, apparently to remove the remaining gender allusions. “Every man in every play” was altered to read “Every one in every play” and “All behind our men” became “All behind our friends,” although documents do not survive to show just when these revisions were made or by whom. Since 1989 the revised version of “Yard by Yard”—with all three changes—has been printed in the program distributed at the annual meeting of the Society of Alumni. Such revisions of the words of the old fight song may seem foolish to some older alums at a football game, when it’s plain that we’re singing about male players. But we should remember that those in the stands summoned to sing have probably always included both men and women, metaphorical “daughters” (wives, girlfriends, and mothers) as well as “sons.” And nowadays those on the field on the Williams campus are as likely to be women athletes as men. The original lyrics—“All behind our men”—are equally foolish when sung at a women’s soccer game. (Curiously, the version of the song appearing in the annual freshman “facebook,” What’s What, continues to be the original.) 208 Chapter 12

Anecdotal evidence suggests that today’s undergraduates—except for members of some varsity teams and the members of the marching band—do not know the words to “Yard by Yard,” or, for that matter, “The Mountains.” (When the new graduates are asked to sing the latter at commencement now, they are politely and knowingly reminded that the words are to be found “in your program.”) We are sometimes told that today’s students are very interested in singing and that there are more singing groups on campus than ever before. But it seems plausible to conclude that among the general student population, the habit of singing college songs—once thoroughly ingrained in students through the fraternity system, where pledges were expected to sing at dinner— has gradually disappeared. Nancy Roseman, dean of the college from 2000 to 2007, suspected that while undergraduates during her tenure were familiar with “The Mountains”—it is sung to first-year students by their junior advisers in Chapin Hall during First Days—few students knew anything at all about “Yard by Yard.” Looking ahead, we can perhaps be confident that the song will survive in one form or another, but (despite the updating of the language) it may increasingly come to feel like a relic of the college’s past. Knowledge of the college songs seems to survive among older alumni—those who learned them when they were students—but classes since the 1970s seem to need to rely on the words in the program. It seems unlikely that undergraduates will learn the songs unless they are expected or persuaded to sing them on stated occasions. Only time will tell whether young alumni will themselves learn the songs—probably by stumbling along after their elders—as they themselves grow older and their attachment deepens to the college and its old traditions. CHAPTER 13  WINDOWS ON THE PAST Stained Glass on the Williams College Campus

Stained-glass windows don’t attract much attention these days from the general public. We associate them with churches, especially in the Gothic or neo-Gothic style, and many of us perhaps have seen the splendid examples of Tiffany windows in the American wing of the Metropolitan Museum, especially the windows depicting landscapes, installed in grand American houses about the turn of the twentieth century, when the production of Tiffany Studios and the taste for their windows was probably at its highest. They are also commonly found on college campuses, especially those with buildings that date from the 1920s and earlier, including the campus of Williams College. Most of the stained-glass windows on the Williams campus are of the religious variety. They are in Thompson Memorial Chapel, and it has probably been a while since many visitors looked at them closely. There’s also a beautifully restored stained-glass memorial window in Goodrich Hall, which formerly served as the college chapel. And there was once a lot more glass on the campus, in at least four of the opulent fraternity “lodges” (now college residential houses) that lined Main Street. Some of the windows were designed to inspire religious feeling, some to keep alive the memory of beloved or admired faculty or alumni, and some

209 210 Chapter 13 just as elegant decoration. Looking carefully at the surviving windows, and rediscovering what we can about the windows that have gone, can tell us a lot about the college’s history, how it looked at itself and how it chose to present itself to the world, and what it valued, especially in the years from about 1880 to 1905, when the windows were installed. Most tourists and visitors in Williamstown notice Thompson Memorial Chapel (1905), an imposing Gothic Revival building on the Williams College campus, facing Main Street, with the tallest tower in town, clearly visible even from nearby hills. In the first half of the twentieth century, many of those tourists would have been directed by their guide books to tour the interior, which feels like a minicathedral. For a half century the students at Williams would also know the inside well, if only because they were required to attend church services on Sunday. But ever since the end of the chapel requirement in the early 1960s, and now that tourists spend less time on walking tours of campus buildings and more of their time at the town’s museums, fewer people go into the chapel except for memorial services and the annual Lessons and Carols service in early December. Anybody who enters the space, however, must remark on the light: all the natural light that enters the building is filtered through stained glass. Appropriate perhaps for a Gothic Revival building—its tower is modeled after the sixteenth-century tower of St. Cuthbert’s, a parish church in the cathedral town of Wells, England, and its choir resembles the apse of French Gothic churches. But it might seem slightly out of place on a campus and in a New England town with strong roots in Congregational tradition that looked out at the world through clear glass and typically regarded stained glass in churches as an unsuitable and even dangerous appeal to the senses rather than the mind, a vestige of Roman Catholic tradition that would have been purged in Martin Luther’s time if the Reformation had been complete. Who, then, wanted the new college chapel to look like a substantial Anglican (Episcopal) church? It was probably not the college president at the time, Henry Hopkins, an ordained Congregational minister. Was it the trustees, or was it the donor, Mary Clark Thompson, widow of the banker and philanthropist Frederick Ferris Thompson of the class of 1856, who had died in 1899? Probably it was neither one. Of the sixteen trustees in 1902, when the donation was announced, most were Windows on the Past 211

Congregationalists or Presbyterians—only one was an Episcopalian. When a trustee committee in 1895 reported on the need for a new chapel, while noting that the building needed to be “spacious enough for the present and increasing numbers of students,” it also remarked on the value of a “chancel window,” whose beauty might “charm and uplift.” (There were at the time two large stained-glass windows in Goodrich Hall, serving then as the college chapel.) “Chancel”—the area around the altar that may or may not also hold the choir—suggests that the committee may have had in mind the stained-glass windows common in the chancels of many Protestant churches, Presbyterian and Lutheran as well as Episcopal. Although correspondence between the donor and the president has not survived, there is no evidence that the college had any stylistic or denominational preferences. In fact, President Henry Hopkins, at his inaugural address in 1902, declared that while he intended to continue to make the college “wholly Christian,” he invited “every student to follow his own denominational preferences.” And at the laying of the cornerstone, he called the chapel a symbol of the “democratic catholic [that is, universal] faith of Williams College,” reasserting the old conception of the “Christian” college at a time when it was being challenged by modern science. Most visitors today sense what John Milton would have called the “dim, religious light” cast by the “storied windows.” But very few stop to consider the stories that the windows tell or sense that there are relationships among the windows. The decoration scheme is suitable for a college building donated by the widow of a philanthropist and suggests that the “Christian college” was clearly still in place. The main three- light window, the so-called Thompson Memorial Window, is high on the south wall. It was said by the unnamed artist at Hardman to illustrate “the corporal work of mercy,” with Jesus in the central light, surrounded by children, the lame and halt in one side light, the widow and the sorrowful in the other. Also on the south wall is a window showing the virtue of charity. The big window in the west transept shows “the promulgation of the teachings of Christ throughout the world,” suitable for a college that gave birth to the Protestant overseas missionary movement almost a hundred years earlier. The large window in the east transept shows the four elemental “Forces of Nature.” In today’s theoretical physics, those four forces are electromagnetism, the strong 212 Chapter 13 nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and gravitation. But in the popular physics of the day, they were thought to be electricity, motion, heat, and light (which physics now treats as forms of energy). The window shows these four “Forces” carried down to man by the angels at the behest of the Creator, reflecting an intellectual climate in which physics and theology, science and religion, had not yet parted ways. The “story” of the window is broadly compatible with the moral and natural philosophy in Mark Hopkins’s Outline Study of Man (1873) but is at least a generation out of date, taking no account of Maxwell’s theories in the 1870s unifying electricity, magnetism, and light or of Einstein’s proposal of a “special theory of relativity” in 1905, the year Thompson was dedicated. In the windows around the choir at the north end, angels play various musical instruments, as if accompanying the grand organ. In the four large windows along the west aisle are represented various figures from the Old Testament: kings, musicians, judges, husbandmen, war- riors, architects, prophets, and shepherds. Along the east aisle are figures from the New Testament or from Christian history: kings, an orator, a missionary, a historian, and the writers of the Gospels and Epistles. The most interesting windows, considering that they were designed in 1905, are perhaps the final two on the south end of the east aisle. One has six male representatives of noble human activities (a navigator, a soldier, a lawmaker, a singer, an artist, and a poet). The other has six matching female figures from the Bible, not only the familiar Martha and Mary, traditional representatives of the active and contemplative life, from Luke’s Gospel, but also the lesser-known Phoebe, Damaris, Lydia, and Dorcas, from Romans and Acts. (It is as if the designer uncannily anticipated that the college would one day include as many female students as men.) Who today knows that Phoebe was the first female deacon, Damaris and Lydia early converts, and Dorcas (also called Tabitha) a female disciple? But as many churchgoers in 1905 would have known, Dorcas, Lydia, and Phoebe share a feast day in the Lutheran and Episcopal Churches. These windows, repaired by the college in 1983 and in 2004 at considerable cost, are not the only stained glass in campus buildings. Also in Thompson Chapel and in Goodrich Hall are three memorial windows, installed when it was not uncommon for a revered teacher or alumnus to be remembered not by a statue or portrait or a wall tablet or Windows on the Past 213 plaque but by a memorial window. Battell Chapel at Yale, constructed in 1874–76, is filled with windows honoring the memory of revered faculty and may have been the implicit model for memorial windows at Williams, all of which were installed within six years of the dedication of Battell Chapel. The three existing memorial stained-glass windows were all originally installed in Goodrich Hall, when it was still the college chapel. The oldest of them is a window in memory of Professor Sanborn Tenney (1872–77), installed in 1879, the gift of the class of 1879. Tenney was a much-loved professor of natural history who had published a textbook on geology and died while on a geological expedition to the Rockies with his students. The window appropriately shows a figure standing before a table on which sits a geologist’s hammer and a hand lens. It also includes a biblical text from Jeremiah: “Now is the strong staff broken and the beautiful rod” (48:17). The design of the window also implicitly alludes to another well-known text from Jeremiah in which the powerful word of God is compared to “a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces” (23:29), reaffirming the traditional faith that the study of the natural world reinforced belief in the power and wisdom of the Creator. The designer’s name is unknown. The window was at some point taken down and stored in the basement of the adjacent Lawrence Hall, probably in 1905, when Goodrich, having been decommissioned as a chapel, no longer needed a religious window. Now that it was to be refitted as recitation rooms, what was needed was better light to read by, and clear leaded glass was thought to be a good medium. The stained- glass window was forgotten and not rediscovered until 1986, when con- tractors, working in the crawl space under Lawrence Hall, came upon a “large wooden crate partially buried in the dirt.” It turned out to contain a large (117-by-40-inch) window—the Tenney window. Thanks to a gift from the Tenney family in honor of the recently deceased Sally Tenney Osborne, a descendant of Professor Tenney and longtime town librarian, it was restored in 1998 by the Cummings Studio in North Adams and reinstalled in its original place as part of the renovation of the building. It can be seen in the west wall, behind the coffee bar. The second is a window, dedicated in 1880, in memory of Albert Hopkins (1807–72), professor of natural history and astronomy and an 214 Chapter 13 ordained Congregational minister who founded the Church of White Oaks in Williamstown in 1866. The window shows David the psalmist looking up at the night sky (appropriate for an astronomer) and the text is (in part): “The heavens declare the glory of God” (appropriate for a preacher). It was given by Charles Augustus Davison, class of 1845, and Abraham VanWyck VanVechten, class of 1847. The central part of the window was by an unknown American designer; the glass is American and attributed to Tiffany. When the window was moved to Thompson Chapel in 1905, it was supplied with surrounding lights designed by the Hardman Company—the Hardman name is seen in the lower-right corner—and installed in the east transept. The third is a window in memory of James A. Garfield, class of 1856, dedicated in 1882. Given by Cyrus W. Field, it acknowledges Garfield as “Scholar, Soldier, and Statesman.” (He began his career as a teacher, rose to the rank of general in the Civil War, and served eighteen years in Congress before being elected president in 1880). Made by Tiffany, the window was designed by John La Farge (1835–1910), the most notable stained-glass artist of his time. (He also designed four of the windows in Harvard’s Memorial Hall.) La Farge, a New Yorker, designed many windows for churches, chapels, and other public buildings throughout the Northeast. When he designed the Garfield window in 1882, he was still at the beginning of what would prove to be a long career but had already begun to make a name for himself with windows at Trinity Church in Boston and at George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore House in Asheville, North Carolina. He is the subject of a recent book, John La Farge: A Biographical and Critical Study (2012), by James L. Yarnell. The Garfield window shows two figures: Moses standing on Mount Pisgah and an angel pointing out over the Promised Land that Moses was fated not to enter—presumably a reference to the fact that Garfield (the Moses-like leader of his people) was president for only about six months before he was assassinated, on his way to his twenty-fifth Williams reunion in 1881. This window is in the west transept of Thompson Chapel, also moved there in 1905. (Why was the Tenney window not moved to the new chapel along with the other two memorial windows? It’s probably because the decorative scheme could accommodate only a pair of windows and because Tenney was frankly thought a less luminous representative of the college than Albert Hopkins or James Garfield.) Windows on the Past 215

More modest eye-level windows are found in the two spaces at Thompson Chapel’s east end. A visitor entering the east door (formerly the main entrance) walks into an anteroom and past a window of a standing armor-clad medieval knight, carrying a large sword in his right hand and a tall spear in his left and wearing a full mustache similar to that on the effigy of Edward the Black Prince (d. 1376), also sword- bearing and armor-clad, in Canterbury Cathedral. At the bottom of the window in Gothic script appears the legend “Right Makes Might,” a phrase made famous by Lincoln’s use of it in the final sentence of his Cooper Union address in February 1860 and quoted in following decades by many, including a famous Congregational preacher and editor with Williams connections. The window was apparently thought appropriate for a neo-Gothic building. And in the next room, along the east wall of the lobby, is a set of three purely decorative three-light stained-glass windows with a simple geometric pattern. Other stained glass on the Williams campus includes a set of five windows high on the north wall of Goodrich, visible in early photographs of the building and in a 1992 photo book, Williams College at 200. Three of them make up a set of small arched windows, set within a larger arch. The design of each window consists of a large Gothic initial above and a date below, surrounded by a band of triangular shields that echo the shape of the arch. In the top window is F and 1793. In the lower two windows are M and 1815 and a nearly unrecognizable G and 1821. The windows apparently serve as memorials to President Mark Hopkins’s predecessors, the first three Williams presidents, Ebenezer Fitch, who assumed office in 1793; Zephaniah Swift Moore, who became president in 1815; and Edward Dorr Griffin, who succeeded him in 1821 and served until Hopkins arrived in 1836. (The year 1793 is, of course, noteworthy since it was also the year in which the college was founded, and 1821 was the year in which the Society of Alumni was founded—and what is now called Goodrich was initially called the “Chapel” and “Alumni Hall”; the society met in the upper hall in the back.) The Moore window is the only public memorial on the campus to the president who saw fit to resign in 1821 and lead a group of students over the mountains to Amherst, where he served as its first president. Below the three dated windows, completing the group of five, are two Gothic-arched windows with simple geometrical designs. 216 Chapter 13

Another distinguished artist, La Farge’s contemporary Frederic Crowninshield (1845–1918), also designed stained glass for a building on the Williams campus, but unfortunately his windows are no longer to be seen: they were installed in a building that was dismantled in 1973 to make room for the old Sawyer Library (1975), now itself demolished. Crowninshield designed a series of six transoms to go over the windows in the ground-floor living room of the Sigma Phi fraternity house, a substantial stone mansion that once stood facing Main Street. Illustrating episodes from the Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene, they were installed in 1898–99. (Crowninshield had previously designed a window illustrating Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.) They were still there in the mid-1950s. When Joseph Demis, an Albany dermatologist, acquired rights to the furnishings of the building from the college in 1970, the windows had already disappeared. He said the windows were not there when he first saw the building in 1968. They were probably removed about 1963 when the building was first leased to the college and refitted for use as faculty offices. Demis died in 2008; nobody knows where the windows are now. The only image that survives is a photograph of the Sigma Phi living room in the Williams College Archives. Crowninshield, a Bostonian who spent much of his time in Rome, designed about twenty-five windows, mostly for churches in the Northeast. But very few of them have survived. He also designed two memorial windows for Memorial Hall at Harvard in 1888. The full range of his work is examined in a study entitled Frederic Crowninshield: A Renaissance Man in the Gilded Age (2010), by Julie L. Sloan and Gertrude Wilmers. The former is a stained-glass consultant and restorer, based in North Adams, who has restored a number of La Farge windows in New York and Boston. She has also published (with William J. Patriquin) The Berkshire Glass Works (2011), dealing with a company in Pittsfield, founded in 1847 and later owned by a Williams graduate, that provided glass for several windows by both Crowninshield and La Farge. A window attributed to John La Farge once decorated another former fraternity house on the Williams campus, Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall), on the corner of Main and South Streets, a building that now houses the Center for Developmental Economics. When the lodge, given by Frederick Ferris Thompson (founder of the Williams chapter Windows on the Past 217 of Delta Psi), was dedicated in 1886, it contained a large (five-by- eight- foot) window depicting Saint Anthony (the fraternity’s patron saint) standing in the Egyptian desert, on the landing of the front stairway. Dressed in a brown monk’s robes and surrounded by yellow glass, the figure, seen in left profile, appeared to point the way up to the fraternity’s secret chapter room, then located at the head of the stairs. Fraternity tradition held that it was a Tiffany window, but Williams historian Fred Rudolph said more than once that he had always heard it was by La Farge. Neither attribution is improbable, since the design- ers who worked on the building—Stanford White of McKim, Mead, & White was the architect, and Augustus St. Gaudens designed a large bronze relief for the paneled dining room wall in memory of Mr. Thompson after his death in 1899—were the best available. It is even possible but unlikely that St. Gaudens himself designed the window: while working at Tiffany in 1880 he designed his only known window, The Stoning of St. Stephen, for St. Stephen’s Church in Lynn, Massachusetts. La Farge and St. Gaudens had collaborated on other projects. The La Farge–Tiffany memorial window for Garfield had been installed only four years earlier, and La Farge also had strong links to the Delta Psi fraternity: one of his sons became a member of Delta Psi at Penn in 1888 and another at the chapter at Columbia in 1891, and a third designed the chapter house for Delta Psi at Yale in 1894. The youngest son of Cyrus W. Field, who had commissioned the La Farge window in memory of Garfield, was a member of Delta Psi at Williams. The strongest evidence in favor of La Farge is that he depicted Saint Anthony in an 1896 memorial window at Judson Memorial Church in New York and in an identical 1896 window at St. Anthony Hall at Yale. But no documentation of the Saint Anthony window in Williamstown survives, and there is no clear photograph of it. Yarnell does not comment on the window, and there is no mention of it in the manuscript catalog of La Farge’s works in the La Farge Family Papers at Yale. When the fraternity building was sold to the college in 1973, the window was removed and sent to the St. Anthony Club in New York City, where it hung for several years. When the club closed in 1978, the window was again removed, but its present location is unknown. A memorial window designed by Tiffany in 1883 once stood in the Kappa Alpha Lodge, not the white building with pillars (the former 218 Chapter 13

“Procter Mansion”) that stood from 1892 to 1968 on the site of the present Williams Inn, but in its stick-style predecessor, built in 1877, located a little nearer the corner of Main and North Streets, that was razed in 1911. It commemorated Dudley Field, class of 1850 and member of Phi Beta Kappa, a New York lawyer who died in 1880, and was commissioned by his father, the eminent lawyer David Dudley Field, brother of Cyrus W. Field, who had donated the Garfield window in the chapel. A large six-light window honoring Field as “Scholar and Jurist,” it depicted Socrates, a standing male figure in classical Greek dress, flanked by two seated female figures, Themis (the Greek goddess of justice) on the left and Sophia (goddess of divine wisdom) on the right. Above were a shield representing the laws of Justinian on the left, the Ten Commandments in the center, and the Field family coat of arms on the right, with the motto “Sans Dieu Rien.” Four other memorial windows once adorned the old KA Lodge, one dedicated to Thomas Thornton Read, class of 1841, who died in 1874, and another to Charles M. Freeman, class of 1852, who died in 1882. And about 1883 a pair of small windows by an unknown artist were installed in memory of Barclay Jermain, class of 1879, given by his father after the early death of his son in 1882. These two windows (15.5 by 32.5 inches) are now in a private collection in Vermont. They have a distinctly Kappa Alpha design program. One represents the front of the KA fraternity “key”—a diamond enclosed by a circle, which contains the letters KA and is surrounded by the symbols of the twelve signs of the zodiac. At right and left of the key are graphic representations of six of the zodiac, two naked infants for Gemini, scales for Libra, and more, together with their names, spelled out in English letters. The other window, representing the reverse of the key, shows a rising sun, and the letters C.G., referring to the Williams (G) chapter of the Kappa Alpha fraternity. It also includes Jermain’s name. And on the left and right are graphic representations of the other six signs of the zodiac, a ram’s head for Aries, a bull for Taurus, and so on. Four memorial windows made by Tiffany once decorated the library of a fourth fraternity house, Alpha Delta Phi (now Perry House), on the south side of Main Street. One was given in honor of three members of the class of 1857, Valentine Burt Chamberlain, George Dickinson Goodrich, and Elias Cornelius Hooker. The other three windows Windows on the Past 219 apparently commemorated Robert Washburn Gilbert (’77), Edwin Clapp Peck (’80), and Walter Lee Sanders (’89). On two of the windows a field of stylized green flower-like elements, with the emblem of the fraternity (a star, a crescent moon, and three Greek letters, alpha, delta, and phi), appeared above a panel with the name of the fraternity brother. The name panels have not survived. A third window represents a field of stars and the same emblem, within a pointed arch. The memorial windows, each of them about 72 by 36 inches, were installed at some point between 1895, when the building was constructed, and 1899, when they were mentioned in the Catalogue of Alpha Delta Phi, published that year. They appear on the Partial List of Windows published by Tiffany Studios in 1910 and were still in place in 1936, when they are mentioned in another fraternity catalog. After the fraternity house was sold to the college, the windows were removed (in 1968) and put into storage. They too, like the Tenney window, were “lost” until three of them were rediscovered, in packing crates by a buildings-and-grounds crew at the cow barn at Mount Hope Farm (which the college used for storage) in 1994. Turned over to the Williams College Museum of Art and cataloged in its collection (as 94. 1. 101. A-C), they are in poor condition and still await restoration. These are not the only Tiffany memorial windows in Williamstown. Two others are found in St. John’s Episcopal Church, on Park Street. Dedicated to the memory of Charles S. Huntoon (1822–84) and Olin White Geer (1866–84), they were installed in 1897 and 1900 and appear in the 1910 Tiffany Partial List. Two other windows, made by the noted English firm of Heaton, Butler, and Bayne, and installed in 1915, com- memorate Amos Lawrence Hopkins of the Williams College Class of 1863. Not surprisingly, given Episcopal tradition, St. John’s has twenty- three other stained-glass windows, including six from the period 1896– 1910, one of them designed by David Maitland Armstrong (1836–1918). But most of its stained glass comes from later decades, including a set of five lancets and a rose window, designed in 1925–26 by Charles Connick, the greatest stained-glass designer in the generations after Tiffany and La Farge, in memory of Alice Henry Carter, and a later (1936–45) matching set of seven in the sanctuary, six of them memorial windows and the central one given in 1938 in appreciation of her husband, the Reverend John Franklin Carter, who had served as rector 220 Chapter 13 for thirty years. Carter was a student at Williams for two years but no relation to Williams president Franklin Carter. A fifth fraternity house, Zeta Psi, now Wood House, has a large stained-glass skylight over the central stairwell, with the fraternity’s shield in its center and a pale yellow border. It was probably designed and installed in 1907. A sixth, Phi Delta Theta, now the Admissions Office, also built in 1907, had decorative Rookwood Pottery tiles around some of its ground-floor windows. The rediscovery of the Alpha Delta Phi windows, after being “lost” for more than twenty-five years, and the restoration of the Sanford Tenney memorial window in Goodrich, after it had been lost for more than eighty years, prompt some hope that the Crowninshield windows from the Sigma Phi house and the window depicting Saint Anthony from the Delta Psi house may one day turn up. One other window, though not located on the Williams campus, deserves to be mentioned because its central element is the Williams College seal. It is one of a series of thirty-six windows, designed about 1906–7, depicting the insignia or seal of thirty-six American colleges and universities. Made by the D’Ascenzo Studios of Philadelphia, it hangs in the Great Hall of Shepard Hall at the City College of New York campus, 160 Convent Avenue (at 139th Street), in New York City and can be seen online (search Williams College seal, D’Ascenzo studios). What conclusions emerge from this survey of the stained glass installed in college buildings? The first is that there is comparatively little stained glass on the campus, perhaps because Williams is and has been less wealthy than universities such as Harvard and Yale, which have considerably more glass. What glass there is is a product of and an expression of a particular historical and cultural moment—the period from about 1880 to 1905—when the popularity of stained glass was at its peak and when colleges and universities were building chapels. (In fact, the art of making stained glass is still alive at Williams. In recent years students in a winter-study course have learned how to cut and paint glass and assemble it into windows. Their work is exhibited annually in the atrium corridor of Schow Science Library.) The stained glass now in place on the campus constitutes a historical representation of a Williams of long ago. It represented the old self- consciously “Christian college” of the late nineteenth century and the Windows on the Past 221 college of circa 1900 that had not rigorously separated science and religion, still regarding nature as the handiwork of a creator God. Much of the glass that has disappeared also represented a bygone Williams, the world of fraternities, in which a young man’s loyalties were as much to his fraternity as to his college. Glass in two of the buildings that have served as the college chapel has survived and indeed has been carefully restored. But it is to be suspected that few of today’s students or faculty look at it with any close attention or have much sympathy with the world it represents or familiarity with the biblical texts that the windows illustrate. And few on the campus today could identify Sanford Tenney, Albert Hopkins, or James Garfield. This raises the larger question of who it is whom Williams over the generations has chosen to remember, a matter of renewed urgency on college campuses today. Williams has not hesitated to honor its cultural heroes, but it has tended to do so by naming a building after them. And those remembered have by and large fallen into four cat- egories: former college presidents—each of them, except for Zephaniah Swift Moore and Henry Hopkins, has a building or at least a large hall named after him; revered teachers, from Arthur Latham Perry to Karl Weston; distinguished alumni—in the 1960s and 1970s, when the college built two dormitory complexes, it seized the opportunity to memo- rialize notably unrecognized alumni, from Samuel John Mills (class of 1809) and William Cullen Bryant (1811) to Washington Gladden (1859) and Samuel Chapman Armstrong (1862); and major donors, from Thompson and Stetson to Bronfman and Paresky—buildings named after them, except for Thompson Memorial Chapel, are not strictly memorials, the donors still living when the buildings were begun. It is rare for a bricks-and-mortar memorial to be established for a recently deceased person. One exception is the Symmes Gate, given in 1936 by the parents of a Williams undergraduate who with two classmates died in a shipwreck in 1935. Another is the stone table 715 Molecules, dedicated in 2011 to the memory of J. Hodge Markgraf, ’52, longtime teacher and administrator who died in 2007. Williams has not chosen to erect memorial statues to individuals—the Civil War soldier in front of Griffin Hall is a generic figure—though there is a bust of President Tyler Dennett, a gift of the class of 1904 (of which he was a member) on the occasion of its fiftieth reunion in 1954. It long stood in the lobby of 222 Chapter 13 the old Stetson Library. But it has commissioned or accepted portraits of all but the last two Williams presidents—two of them were painted while the subject was still in office—and of notable faculty, trustees, and benefactors. Portraits of those who served in the past fifty years still hang in public places; portraits of those who served earlier hang discreetly at Elm Tree House at Mount Hope or have been quietly put in storage. The college once permitted the placing of memorial tablets in the lobby of Thompson Memorial Chapel—there are eight such tablets, including one for President Franklin Carter—but no tablet has been placed there since 1934. It is more common for a deceased alumnus to be remembered by a prize, such as the William Bradford Turner Citizenship Prize, established in 1921 in memory and honor of a member of the class of 1914 who died in 1918 at the end of World War I and was posthumously awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor; and the Grosvenor Cup, established in 1931 by the classmates of Allan Livingston Grosvenor, class of 1931, in his memory. Unlike the college’s memorial windows, installed in the era of the “Christian college” and recalling those whose accomplishments were founded on their faith in and their obligations to God, the memorial prizes, better known now than the windows, remember and honor virtues—concern for community, integrity, and reliability and obligations to the college, to fellow students, and to self—that center on what we owe to each other, reflecting a new college culture. But those memorial prizes were established eighty years ago, and the culture of the college has changed a good deal since then. Would a new memorial prize now remember and honor “distinguished achievement in any field,” as does the college’s Bicentennial Medal, first awarded in 1993, or perhaps, in the spirit of today’s Claiming Williams program, service toward achieving the goal of a diverse community? CHAPTER 14  THE PREHISTORY OF COEDUCATION AT WILLIAMS COLLEGE, 1961–1969

It is widely understood that John Sawyer, president of Williams from 1961 to 1973, led the college through major changes in three significant areas: the residential system (“houses” replaced the old fraternities), the curriculum (new majors, new courses in non-Western cultures, a new academic calendar), and coeducation. Of these three changes, the last was probably the most transformative. Most discussions of the history of coeducation at Williams begin with the events of 1969, when the first exchange students arrived from Vassar, and when a trustee-faculty committee recommended that the college become fully coeducational, starting in September 1971. But coeducation at Williams had what might be called a “prehistory.” Sawyer did not, as some have suggested, arrive at Williams with a two-stage plan: first phase out fraternities, then phase in women. But almost from the moment he arrived as president in 1961, Jack Sawyer was thinking about how women might be included at Williams.

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The First Four Years, 1961–65 Soon after he arrived, Sawyer initiated a process that led to transformative changes. As is well known, when he took office on July 1, 1961, he found on his desk a petition from a group of Williams undergraduates, led by Bruce Grinnell, ’62, urging changes in the fraternity system. Within three months Sawyer appointed the Angevine Committee, to advise how best the college might respond. And he appointed a faculty Committee on Forward Planning, to advise him on curricular issues, “relationships to other educational institutions nearby,” and possible “additions to the community that could best serve or enhance our mutual purpose.” Sawyer’s language in his charge to the committee is vague, and we cannot be sure that he was already hinting at the “addition” of a new college in town. But even before he took office in July, Sawyer drafted notes for his induction speech, scheduled for the following October, including references to “Enlarging/enriching Community” and “Another College.” Within a week of his induction Sawyer sent Professor Clay Hunt, a member of the Committee on Forward Planning, to speak to the president of Bennington, to inquire about any interest in faculty exchanges, to expand curricular opportunities for students from both colleges. And within about a month of his induction speech, Sawyer was in touch with Sarah Blanding, president of Vassar. He probably contacted her because he had read in the New York Times the previous spring that in a speech to the Vassar Club of New York, she had predicted a dark future for women’s colleges and had indicated that Vassar might be looking for cooperation with other colleges. In any case, Sawyer and Blanding met, perhaps in Poughkeepsie, and then apparently in Williamstown, where he showed her Mount Hope Farm, a fourteen-hundred- acre estate three miles south of town and a potential site for a new women’s college. Blanding was interested enough that she pursued the idea with her board chair, and a meeting between the two presidents, and a pair of trustees from each college, was set up in New York on January 18, 1962. At the Williams trustee meeting two days later, Sawyer, apparently planting a seed, advised the trustees that the Mount Hope property, with its palatial Elm Tree House, would probably become available for purchase when its ninety-year-old owner died. Sawyer suggested the possibility of buying the property to put a The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 225

“coordinate girls’ college” there. Although he had been in office only six months, he already knew—perhaps because the Ford Foundation was encouraging it—that a good college president will look ten to fifteen years ahead and get his trustees to look ahead, too. In the next several months Sawyer pursued this idea with Blanding, sending her on February 28 a “white paper” laying out the main lines of what he proposed as “the joint sponsorship of a new college for women,” to be located in Williamstown. Another surprise: Sawyer’s first idea about coeducation was apparently not to invite an existing women’s college to move to Williamstown but to set up a new college. (One wonders now why Sawyer might have thought that Vassar would be interested in such a project.) Blanding asked her two trustees to review the “white paper”; they soon replied that so far as they could tell, the proposal looked to be far more advantageous to Williams than to Vassar, and in April 1962 Blanding called Sawyer to tell him that Vassar did not think the idea would work. He replied, expressing hope that she would keep the door open. Meantime, Sawyer was keenly aware of events on other campuses. On April 13, 1962, a Yale faculty committee recommended that “the University keep in its view for ultimate adoption the entrance of women to the freshman class.” On April 24 Sawyer sent to Blanding a copy of the story in the New York Times about the Yale report, which had been unanimously endorsed by Yale College faculty. He suggested to Blanding that it foreshadowed Yale’s “move toward the admission of women.” Two days earlier, on April 22, there was a brief op-ed piece in the Times signed by “F.M.H.,” “The Trend to Coeducation,” citing Blanding’s 1961 speech on the future of women’s colleges and “some talk at Williams about a ‘coordinate’ future, with regrets over the twenty- mile distance to Bennington.” (What this “talk” was is mysterious, since nobody at Williams except Sawyer and two trustees knew of the discussions with Vassar.) Sawyer also sent a copy of this clipping to Blanding. It’s clear that he was urging her to keep an open mind on his proposal. And it also looks as if Sawyer may himself have been feeding reports about the “talk” at Williams to F.M.H., the Times’s chief education writer, Fred M. Hechinger. The archives at Vassar show that Blanding and her advisers continued to think about a possible affiliation with Williams but reconceived 226 Chapter 14

Sawyer’s proposal: a June 2, 1962, internal Vassar report weighs the pros and cons not of a jointly sponsored new women’s college in Williamstown but of selling the Poughkeepsie campus and moving Vassar to Mount Hope. It is plausible that this was Sawyer’s intention all along, that joint sponsorship was an opening gambit, that he hoped Vassar would come to the conclusion that moving to Williamstown made more sense than starting a new college. Although the Vassar archives contain no document detailing a formal decision by Blanding about how to proceed, the Vassar report raised so many “basic questions” that it seems quite clear that this revised proposal was also shelved. Perhaps, as Sawyer said thirty years later, Blanding, having decided that she would serve as president for only two more years (she would indeed retire in the summer of 1964), determined to leave the whole matter to her successor. Sawyer did not give up on Vassar yet. But in academic year 1962–63 he focused on other possibilities. In September he sent Joe Kershaw and Whitney Stoddard, both members of his Committee on Future Planning, to inquire if Skidmore might be interested in moving from Saratoga Springs to Williamstown. Sawyer had by now apparently set aside, if only temporarily, the idea of starting a new women’s college. He then invited the Skidmore president to lunch in Williamstown in early October. But Skidmore had already confirmed plans to start construction on a new campus nearby the following spring and declined to discuss relocating to Williamstown. Why, one might ask, did Sawyer approach Skidmore next and not another of the “Seven Sisters,” women’s colleges with an academic reputation closer to that of Williams? It is not difficult to find an answer: Radcliffe and Barnard already had coordinate relationships with Harvard and Columbia. Bryn Mawr was at that time already arranging for cross- registration at both Swarthmore and Haverford. Smith and Mount Holyoke had a potential natural coordinate partner—Amherst—much closer to home. Wellesley was even farther from Williamstown and had several men’s colleges in the Boston area from which to choose: indeed, by the fall of 1966, Wellesley was engaged in discussions with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about cross-registration. Sawyer seems to have spent much of the fall of 1962 working on laying the foundation for a capital campaign to be announced the following year and on a major grant application that went to the Ford The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 227

Foundation in December. In the application Sawyer focused on plans for curricular reform. Although he declared that it was Williams’s intention to “remain a first-rate 4-year men’s residential college,” he noted that, looking ahead over the next ten years, the college’s “further thoughts” included “the addition to Williamstown of a second college institution” and reported that “we have already initiated exploratory discussions” about “helping a first-class women’s college come into being as a coordinate institution to Williams.” What the grant application shows is that Sawyer’s plans, as he looked ahead, were not for Williams to go coed but to remain a men’s college, growing slightly to twelve hundred undergraduates. His first priority was curricular reform; longer-range “further thoughts”—not yet plans—were to help establish a new coordinate women’s college in Williamstown. In January 1963 he corresponded amicably with Sarah Blanding. At the final faculty meeting of the year, in May 1963, he told the faculty only that “discussion had taken place concerning the possibility of another educational institution in Williamstown.” The following month Sawyer was able to announce that Williams had been awarded a matching grant of $2.5 million from the Ford Foundation for “overall educational development.” Coeducation was not the only thing on Sawyer’s mind in 1962–63. During that academic year the so-called Standing Committee, chaired by trustee Talcott Banks, was beginning to implement the recommendations of the Angevine Committee, and Sawyer was spending a good deal of time explaining to alumni groups what the college was doing about fraternities and why. He was also encouraging the faculty to take a fresh look at the curriculum. Minutes of faculty meetings show that many new courses were brought forward by departments, especially in the emerging field of non-Western “area studies”; two new majors were created, in religion and astrophysics; and various faculty voices were calling for full-scale “review” and “reform” of the curriculum. During the academic year 1963–64 Sawyer seems to have realized that curricular reform might be easier to achieve if designed and presented as curricular expansion. Adding courses would make it possible to add more students. He asked Joe Kershaw, newly appointed provost, to analyze the economic implications of increasing enrollment from twelve to eighteen hundred. (Before coming to Williams in 1962 as a 228 Chapter 14 professor of economics, Kershaw had run the economics department of the Rand Corporation.) What may have been in the back of Sawyer’s mind is that there were obviously two ways to increase enrollment: add men or add women. While Kershaw was beginning to show that increasing enrollment and holding the faculty level could mean bringing in more revenue without adding equally to cost, Sawyer in October closed a deal to buy Mount Hope Farm from Lenox Hill Hospital—Mrs. Prentice had died in June 1962—with half of the cost provided anonymously by a foundation that Sawyer had lined up. The purchase of the property did not mean that Sawyer’s plans for a coordinate college had matured: his primary concern over Mount Hope, and that of the trustees, was to head off what they worried would be inappropriate development if some other buyer acquired the property. The Green Mountain Race Track in Pownal had just opened earlier that year, bringing an unend- ing stream of cars through town during racing season (which ran into October). There were worries about touts and gamblers, and there was talk that investors in the racetrack were interested in buying Mount Hope and building some kind of “resort” there. Sawyer worried that it might be little more than a “high-class bordello.” It appears, then, that Sawyer and the trustees bought Mount Hope without any clear idea of what they would do with it, but they knew that they wanted to control development and discussed plans to sell off some parts of the property for appropriate residential development on parcels that fronted Green River Road and Hopper Road. But in Sawyer’s mind the center of the property might be the site of a coordinate college. On October 31 Sawyer told the faculty that “a central portion of the land would probably be reserved for future educational uses.” The faculty began thinking about “educational uses,” and soon there were rumors that Mount Hope would be the site of a new coordinate college for girls or the site of a new graduate program in art history. (This was well before the faculty approved such a program in 1967 and long before the Clark built what is now its Manton Center in 1973.) By January 1964 the rumors reached the ears of the editors of the Record (the student newspaper), which reported that since it now appeared that a graduate art program would be sited in Elm Tree House at Mount Hope, “campus speculation” about “coeducational expansion” The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 229 had now focused on another site, Denison Park. This was a residential area between the foot of Spring Street and the Knolls, with a small green space in the middle, encircled by several large houses, including the Susan Hopkins House, long owned by the college. It is not clear who started the speculation about coeducation in Denison Park. It may even have been Sawyer himself or one of his advisers. Many years later Sawyer reported that after Vassar “broke off” discussions about a coordinate college at Mount Hope, “attention turned” to Denison Park, presumably because an in-town location was thought more attractive. That apparently means his attention. But in fact Sawyer was still pursuing Vassar in January 1963, and discussions were not “broken off” until the summer of 1964 or even March 1965. Furthermore, there are no signs that the college took any action to plan for its presence in Denison Park until 1966, when it began quietly buying property there. A campus plan prepared by the Architects’ Collaborative (undated, but probably early 1964) shows no new buildings south of Walden Street, suggesting that professional campus planners had not yet been asked to consider that area for a coordinate college. Perhaps by leaking words of a project in Denison Park, Sawyer in January 1964 just wanted to send up a trial balloon. In any event, he continued his exploratory conversations with women’s colleges. On January 10, a few days before the “campus speculation” reported in the Record, Sawyer met with a representative from the board that governed Pine Manor Junior College, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, where it shared a campus with Dana Hall, a girls’ secondary school. The approach to Pine Manor is puzzling. Sawyer and his advisers had been thinking that it might be possible to start with an existing junior college and build it up into a four-year college with higher standards. But Pine Manor at that time was a college with a very modest academic reputation. How did Sawyer imagine that a relationship with Pine Manor might strengthen Williams? (It would certainly require that admissions standards at Pine Manor be raised and the quality of faculty improved.) As it happened, Pine Manor was already making plans to move to its own campus in Chestnut Hill, which it did later in 1964, so Sawyer’s approach came to nothing. It was probably also in the spring of 1964 that Sawyer approached Elizabeth Hall, the president of the new “early college” that would open its doors in the fall of 230 Chapter 14

1966 as Simon’s Rock. The idea for Simon’s Rock was to enroll bright high school juniors who were already ready for college and provide a four-year curriculum. While plans for building a campus near Great Barrington were still at an early stage, Sawyer asked Hall if she might be interested in establishing her institution in Williamstown rather than Great Barrington. She declined. Meanwhile, Sawyer had not yet abandoned all hope about Vassar. In the spring of 1964 he asked a Williams alumnus in Chicago for an intro- duction to Alan Simpson, the incoming president of Vassar, then finish- ing up as dean at the University of Chicago. The alumnus was unable to arrange a meeting but reported to Simpson in June that Sawyer would like to discuss “some ideas for mutual cooperation between Vassar and Williams.” Simpson said he would make a point of looking Sawyer up when he moved east to Poughkeepsie. That same month, as part of his Vassar campaign, Sawyer also presented an honorary degree at the Williams commencement to Sarah Blanding, and while she was in town Sawyer gave her a tour of Mount Hope. It sounds as if he had not given up on Mount Hope, either. In academic year 1964–65 Sawyer continued working on two elements in the coeducation project: luring a women’s college to Mount Hope Farm and, since that might fail, studying what else might be done with the property. In October he hosted a meeting at Mount Hope with five trustees, senior administrators, alumni, and local business leaders to discuss “Future Use Concepts” and “Development Concepts” for Mount Hope. In November, having learned from the controversy over the Angevine Report the importance of keeping his various constituencies well informed, he placed a story in the Williams Alumni Review under the headline “What Uses Do You Support for Mount Hope?” The story included the trustee “guideline” that “priority should be given to using the core of the property for an allied educational purpose,” a school or college or a graduate school. It was probably also at this time that the college approached a foundation requesting funds to found a girls’ college at Mount Hope. In December 1964 Sawyer and his advisers apparently decided that the time was right to let students know what they were thinking and what they were ruling out. In an interview with student editors of the Record, Sawyer, when asked about plans for coeducation or a coordinate The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 231 college, said that Williams had no “plans” for going coed or for increasing enrollment. (This was accurate, though close to disingenuous, since he and the provost had been studying the economic implications of increasing enrollment for nearly eighteen months.) But implying that a coordinate college seemed to make more sense, he added that reduc- ing the number of men “would not seem a wise decision.” Another story in the same issue of the Record was based on an interview with Dean Benjamin Labaree, who was quoted as saying that a “women’s extension” was a topic for “serious future consideration.” A third story in the paper was based on an interview with Professor Fred Rudolph. Rudolph’s comments seem to have been carefully aligned with Sawyer’s, but he went a little further, saying he believed that “an increase in size or coordination with another college in Williamstown is inevitable.” He contrasted a coordinated relationship with another college to coeducation, which would mean doubling the size of the college. “It would be wiser to have another college.” Rudolph is then quoted as saying that a “coordinate, but not coeducational women’s college, tended to be favored in faculty and administration discussion as the optimum coordinate institution.” The appearance of three stories on plans for coeducation may suggest acute curiosity on the part of the Record editors, but just as likely was a sign that Sawyer and his advisers decided in advance to talk about the idea of a coordinate college in order to gener- ate support or just to send up another trial balloon. Rudolph was clearly part of Sawyer’s inner circle on this matter, probably because he was already an acknowledged expert on the history of American higher education, author of Mark Hopkins and the Log (1956) and The American College and University (1962). Sawyer and Rudolph knew each other as students at Williams—the former was a senior when the latter was a freshman. As Sawyer reported to the trustees the following month, he asked Rudolph to study the pros and cons of a new coordinate college and other options, including coeducation. The trustees seemed wary of committing themselves about Mount Hope, instead endorsing an educational institution as only “one of the possibilities” for developing the property. Rudolph did not submit his study to Sawyer until September 1965. In it he carefully weighed the advantages and disadvantages of establishing a new women’s college at Mount Hope and of various other options, including a new senior college for women; a 232 Chapter 14 transplanted junior college; a new coed college, jointly sponsored with Bennington; a new men’s college; and an expanded Williams College, with six to eight hundred more men or a coed Williams with six to eight hundred women. Since he was not asked to make a recommendation about which option seemed best, Rudolph declined to make one. It would appear that Sawyer was still at this stage considering a variety of options and did not want to foreclose any. Meanwhile, Sawyer continued to look for a women’s college that might be a partner. But there seemed to be very few options, and this may have made him consider institutions that were not at Williams’s level. If he saw the matter as Rudolph did, he was perhaps balancing the risk of associating with a lesser college against the financial risk of starting a new coordinate college. During spring vacation in March 1965 he met privately with a representative of Bradford Junior College, located in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and then beginning to think seriously about its future. (It would become a four-year coed college in 1971.) According to Sawyer’s notes of the meeting, Bradford was located in a “crowded” and “difficult” setting, had a liberal arts curriculum, and had a president who was planning to retire soon. Of the junior colleges Williams might consider, Bradford now seemed to Sawyer to be the “most likely, if any.” Among the disadvantages of bringing in a junior college, Rudolph was later to point out, was the problem of a disparity between academic standards at Williams and those of any junior college it might attract. Of the ideas Sawyer was considering, it seems the most likely to have been rejected by the Williams faculty. Two days later he met his own advisers, including Rudolph, to discuss various possibilities: according to Sawyer’s notes, the group’s first choice was moving a four-year women’s college, Wheaton (in Norton, Massachusetts) or Wells (in Aurora, New York), to Williamstown. Second choice was working with a two-year college that wanted to become a four-year institution, and Bradford was the best one. Third choice was “starting from scratch” and establishing a new four-year women’s college at Mount Hope. Why Wheaton? There may have been reports that the Wheaton faculty was beginning to talk about the desirability of coeducation: in 1970, 75 percent of them would vote in favor of coeducation. But in 1965 Wheaton’s president was not interested in moving: when approached, he countered (perhaps facetiously) The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 233 by suggesting that Williams move to Norton. There is no evidence that Sawyer approached Wells. The same week Sawyer contacted Alan Simpson at Vassar to inquire about the status of his 1962 proposal. Simpson told him it was a “dormant proposition.” Discussion about what to do with Mount Hope continued, prompted by Rudolph’s study; at its April 1965 meeting the trustees, when briefed about Rudolph’s progress on his uncompleted report, suggested that he consider the option of establishing a two-year senior college for women in Williamstown. The idea was apparently that the brightest female grads of a good junior college might want to enroll in a new senior college at Mount Hope for the last two years of a four-year degree. A few days later, a college administrator who must have gotten wind of Rudolph’s study wrote to him to say that he thought locating a college at Mount Hope was a bad idea, that it would be better to have it in town. He was strongly in favor of either adding a coordinate college or having Williams go coed and added that based on what he could tell, the distinction between coordinate and coed was “becoming less and less important.” This was one of the first signs in the ongoing discussion that coeducation, rather than a coordinate college, might be in Williams’s future. Rudolph thought enough of the letter that he sent a copy to Sawyer. Thus ended the first four years of Sawyer’s presidency, and although he had promoted the project with trustees, administrators, and students and made persistent efforts to attract a women’s college to Williamstown, Sawyer was apparently no closer to achieving this goal than he was when he took office four years earlier. But in fact the groundwork had been laid and the several constituencies informed and brought along. Looking back on Sawyer’s efforts from 1961 to 1965, especially from the vantage of today, but even of 1969, one might well ask why he was initially interested in a women’s coordinate college rather than full coeducation. The reasons are probably several. First, coeducation would mean a radical transformation of Williams, but adding a coordinate college to the existing institution would mean that the essential core of Williams—Sawyer often called it a “fine old college”—could continue unchanged. Despite the fact that he brought about bold changes at Williams, Sawyer, as a number of observers have noted, was by nature and by principle a cautious, conservative man. Coordinate education 234 Chapter 14 was a less radical step than coeducation. Second, Sawyer thought that adding a coordinate college would be more acceptable to the college’s various constituencies—faculty, students, and especially trustees and alumni—than going coed. He strongly valued consensus and thought he could build a consensus around a coordinate college more easily and quickly than around coeducation. Third, in the early 1960s there were examples of apparently successful coordinate colleges—Tufts and Jackson, Brown and Pembroke. And many of the single-sex colleges in the early 1960s—including Yale, Vassar, Wesleyan, Amherst, and others—were considering establishing a coordinate college. Hamilton College had in March 1965 received a charter from New York to open a new coordinate institution, Kirkland College, in 1968. It was only in the later 1960s that the tide against coordinate colleges turned and they rather suddenly came to seem “obsolete.” Finally, adding a coordinate college with its own distinctive curriculum was, Sawyer apparently concluded, the most efficient way to achieve what might have been for him an even more important objective at the time—broadening and modernizing the Williams curriculum.

The Second Four Years, 1965–69 For the next two academic years, from the fall of 1965 to the spring of 1967, Sawyer and the trustees focused on what might be done with the Mount Hope property. Early ideas—about an art program—had fallen off the table. In July 1965 Sawyer approached trustee John Lockwood, asking him to chair a committee on the Future Development of Mount Hope. In November the committee was appointed and an executive secretary hired—an unusual step, since trustee committees, even the Angevine and Standing Committees in 1961–63, did not have dedicated full-time staff. Using the property for a new college was on the table, but it was only one of five different areas that the committee explored and was not assigned any special priority: separate subcommittees, with trustee and nontrustee members, were appointed to consider an environmental center, a center for industrial or scientific research, a reposi- tory or deposit for archives, a conference center, and a “co-ordinate educational institution.” Note that at this stage coeducation was not mentioned. The options The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 235 were a four-year women’s college, a two-year women’s senior college, or a women’s college for specialized study. Subcommittee members included Sawyer, Rudolph, Labaree, and acting provost John Chandler. There were also some non-Williams members: the president of Barnard, the former president of Vassar, and the director of Simon’s Rock, each probably chosen by Sawyer to represent different forms of women’s education. Care was taken to put out the word to alumni (in an article in the Williams Alumni Review) about the mission of this trustee committee even before it held its first meeting on December 10. At this meeting the consensus was that a coordinate college at Mount Hope was an “excellent” idea. Meantime, Sawyer had not abandoned all hopes of cosponsoring a new women’s college with Vassar. In August 1965 he wrote to President Alan Simpson, saying that he was still ready to discuss his 1962 proposal for a jointly sponsored college. And in late October 1966, when Vassar’s Committee on New Dimensions was considering several options, but before it began serious discussions with Yale, Sawyer invited Simpson to Williamstown and showed him three possible sites for a “women’s college,” Mount Hope, a 40-acre site in Denison Park, and the 170-acre Cluett Estate on Gale Road. It’s characteristic of Sawyer that he continued to pursue Vassar and also that he tried to keep open several options. He was apparently beginning to think that an in-town location might be a better site for a women’s college than Mount Hope Farm. From August to December 1966, the college, which already owned several parcels in Denison Park, was buying additional property in the neighborhood. The Mount Hope Committee continued to meet for the next year and a half, but it quickly realized that using Elm Tree House would require considerable investment: a lot of basic maintenance had been deferred, and the pipes bringing water to the house from Waubeeka Springs were leaky. If there were to be a college at Mount Hope, and if students might take a course there and another one at Williams, hundreds of students would need to drive back and forth to town along a narrow, twisting road. By late spring 1967 the Mount Hope Committee’s work was suspended. Although all the options were considered, the only viable proposal to emerge was an environmental center, and the college decided that Mount Hope was not an appropriate site. In June 1967 the Mount Hope property was put up for sale. (It would be eleven years before the property was sold.) 236 Chapter 14

But the idea of a coordinate college was very much alive, discussed at both trustee and faculty meetings. And in April 1967 a new committee was established, again chaired by trustee John Lockwood, “Co-ordinate Education and Related Questions.” (The very name suggested that the committee was to look into the idea of a coordinate college but was not to be limited to that form.) Like the Angevine Committee, this was a joint trustee-faculty committee, with Rudolph as vice chair and Provost Steve Lewis as executive secretary, along with several senior faculty- administrators and two very junior faculty. As with earlier committees he appointed, Sawyer wanted a mix of seasoned members and young enthusiastic ones, those long familiar with Williams and those who probably felt unconstrained by Williams’s single-sex tradition. Don Gifford of the English Department, an influential faculty member, was on the record in favor of coeducation. There was meant to be some overlap between the two Lockwood committees: trustees Talcott Banks and Pete Parish from the Mount Hope Committee were also appointed to the new committee, along with Wayne Wilkins, who sat with the trustees in his capacity as president of the Society of Alumni. Sawyer knew by now that both Lockwood and Parish were interested in a coordinate college but were wary of full coeducation. Better to have them on the committee than on the outside. When a recommendation emerged from the committee, it was likely to be the result of a consensus that would include the more conservative-minded trustees. It was this new committee that would eventually—two years later— recommend that the college become coeducational. But that was not what the committee was thinking when it began its work. Indeed, when Sawyer wrote again to President Simpson of Vassar, in mid-May, reporting on the appointment of the new Lockwood Committee, he obliquely suggested that Vassar might want to do something similar. There is “much to be said,” he wrote, for “old liberal arts colleges” to create “new entities.” Sawyer was probably still thinking an arrangement for joint sponsorship of a new college might work out, but Simpson replied two weeks later to say that by this point, Vassar was thinking about establishing its own coordinate college or even going coed. Two days after Sawyer wrote to Simpson, there appeared a long article in the Record under the headline “College Moves to Co-ordinate The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 237

Education,” reporting, “Faculty, alumni, administration, and townspeople were almost without exception in favor of introducing women to the Williams setting.” Interestingly, so the reporter went on, “the most adamant opposition came from students,” who apparently worried that the presence of women would distract them or would bring radical changes to the all-male bastion they were used to. Sawyer himself was reported to say that “a co-ordinate girls’ school” might “enlarge and enrich the college.” Those verbs are striking: they are the same ones—enlarging and enriching—that appear in the notes he drafted six years earlier, when he was preparing his 1961 induction speech. The new committee set about its work immediately but cautiously. When Lewis drew up in May 1967 a “Very Preliminary List of Planning Questions about Coordinate Education,” Lockwood responded that the list assumed Williams wanted to set up a coordinate college, and he wanted to begin without that assumption. This suggests that there were differences of opinion on the committee from the outset, even on basic questions. The committee proceeded slowly, gathering information about coordinate education as it was being practiced on other campuses. During the 1967–68 academic year it began to focus on three possibilities: a coordinate college in Williamstown, an exchange program with men’s and women’s colleges, and some kind of shared “facility” in New York or Washington, where students from Williams and other small-town liberal arts colleges might spend part of the school year, overcoming isolation and drawing on the riches of an urban environment. On December 10 Lockwood hosted a meeting of representatives from Amherst, Smith, Vassar, Wesleyan, and Sarah Lawrence to discuss both exchanges and the “shared urban facility.” In February 1968 he presented an interim report to the faculty on the committee’s work to date. Meanwhile, Lewis, in his capacity as provost and through his training as an economist, was modeling the effect of increasing enrollment, by adding six hundred women—or six hundred men—to the college. And in his capacity as executive secretary of the Committee on Co-ordinate Education and Related Questions, he was visiting coordinate colleges. In March 1968 he reported to the committee that at the classroom level there was not much difference—from the point of view of the students or faculty—between coordinate education and coeducation. Also in March 1968 Rudolph reported to the faculty that the Lockwood 238 Chapter 14

Committee was focusing on a proposal for a separate coordinate college, and in the March 13 faculty meeting there ensured a period of active discussion. Labaree, echoing the language of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision, questioned whether a “separate” coordinate college would be inherently “unequal.” Rudolph was probably reporting faithfully as vice chair of the committee but in his capacity as a Williams historian had already drafted an essay for the Alumni Review, titled “Joint Education of the Sexes—at Williams,” designed to provide some historical perspective on the present situation. His essay reported on an 1871 proposal to admit women to Williams. As Rudolph explained, that proposal led to a divided review committee, with both a majority report, reflecting “timidity of caution,” and a minority report. In the end, as Rudolph told the story in a dry ironic manner, “caution prevailed” and “the forces of tradition” were triumphant. The episode, so Rudolph implied, had obvious implications for the Williams of 1968. But the essay never appeared: it was said by reviewers at the alumni office that it would be “better another time,” but it may have seemed to them to be putting too much pressure on cautious, traditional-minded trustees. In the spring of 1968 the Lockwood Committee would also have been aware of what was happening at Vassar. In November 1967 the Vassar trustees voted not to accept Yale’s offer to move to New Haven and began seriously considering alternatives. Six months later its Report on the Education of Men at Vassar assessed those options, from setting up a coordinate college in Poughkeepsie to admitting men to Vassar and drawing attention to difficulties that coordinate colleges elsewhere had faced. But the report made no recommendation about which form was better. Then, at the end of May 1967, in what was later described as a “stunning reversal,” the Vassar faculty voted overwhelmingly—102– 3—in favor of coeducation. Six weeks later the Vassar trustees voted to make Vassar coed. This was a preview of what would happen at Williams one year later. But at the end of academic year 1967–68, the Lockwood Committee was still focusing on a coordinate college. In June the committee discussed another interim report, drafted by the committee chair, and in August published it in the Alumni Review, reaffirming that it was continuing to review the idea of a coordinate college, an exchange program, The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 239 and a shared urban facility. While some on the campus were beginning to lean in the direction of coeducation, the Lockwood Committee was not yet officially ready. Academic year 1968–69 was to bring the issue to a head and a decision. In early September Jack Sawyer and Dean of Faculty Dudley Bahlman met with their opposite numbers from Vassar to discuss a Williams-Vassar exchange—to begin just four months later. In October Sawyer and the president of Smith convened a meeting of ten New England liberal arts college presidents to discuss a broader ten-college exchange program that might begin in September 1970. By establishing exchanges with women’s colleges, Sawyer was in effect setting up a test of one of the Lockwood Committee’s ideas. At the time, some thought an exchange was a means of deferring coeducation, perhaps indefinitely. In retrospect, others (including Sawyer himself) have argued that it turned out to be a means of “preparing the way” for a coordinate college or full coeducation. Other groups on campus were equally active: students formed a Student Committee on Co-ordinate Education and set up a schedule of visits to other campuses. A faculty committee, chaired by Gifford, studied what changes to the curriculum might be needed if women students were to take Williams courses. There was much discussion within the subcommittee and elsewhere about what kinds of courses female students would want to take. Most assumed at the time that women would prefer the arts and languages and not be inclined to study hard sciences. (These assumptions soon proved to be completely wrong.) Although the Gifford Subcommittee focused primarily on proposed reforms of the Williams curriculum and did not take a position on coordinate versus coeducation, there was already a growing consensus among the faculty that coeducation was the right choice. As policymakers were well aware, events were moving rapidly on other campuses as well. In September Princeton released a study by one of its own faculty arguing that the coordinate college model was outmoded and recommending coeducation, both for Princeton and implicitly for other colleges. Also in September Union College decided to accept women transfers beginning in September 1970—Sawyer sent a copy of the report to Lewis. In October Bennington said it would go coed the following year. And in November, at the end of what students proclaimed 240 Chapter 14 as “Co-Ed Week,” Yale announced that it would accept women students beginning the following September. These events added strength to the growing sense among some Williams administrators that coeducation was the right path for Williams, too. But trustees were not yet in agreement. One wrote that Williams was different from Princeton and that coordinate education might be better for Williams. Another thought that Yale had acted precipitously, in response to student agitation, and that Williams should be careful to act deliberately. If Jack Sawyer had decided by the fall of 1968 that coeducation was the way to go, he did not say so publicly. Concerned always to build consensus, he told his provost at the time that “you have to bring people along.” The beginning of 1969 brought some convergence, though no explicit endorsement of coeducation. In early January the Gifford Subcommittee recommended to the faculty Curriculum Committee that when Williams began teaching women, it should have a single faculty and a single curriculum. The full faculty, responding to an invitation from Steve Lewis, voted to endorse the Curriculum Committee’s recommendation to “undertake the education of significant numbers of women,” but it did not yet specify coeducation, leaving it to the Lockwood Committee to decide, based on further study, what form, coeducation or coordinate education, it ought to take. The Williams faculty, which apparently trusted Sawyer to do the right thing in the right way, declined to get out ahead of the trustees. (During academic year 1968–69, and indeed for the entire decade of the ’60s, the faculty were more preoccupied with proposals for curricular change than with the inclusion of women.) A Record story reported that 81 percent of the students who responded to a poll were now in favor of including women, either in a coordinate college or by having Williams go coed. Sawyer and his senior staff worked quietly and patiently to move the trustees along. Sawyer was in regular touch with Lockwood, reporting in one letter on the faculty vote and arguing that the move toward the inclusion of women was not a mere academic fashion but a “durable trend with solid educational merits” and in another that the committee’s report should not be regarded merely as a “trial balloon” but should present the committee’s decided views, adding that it was important to build a “growing consensus.” The provost reported to the Lockwood Committee in January that, because (so he thought) female students would probably choose many underenrolled The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 241 courses in art, music, and languages, adding women would bring it additional revenue without adding an equivalent amount to faculty costs and without significantly increasing class size. At their meeting at the end of January 1969, the trustees approved a resolution declaring that they “respond favorably” to the reports of the Lockwood Committee, the vote of the faculty, and the student studies and that they invited a “specific recommendation” from the committee by the June trustee meeting. There was as yet nothing in writing to indi- cate that the college was ready to commit to coeducation, but according to one insider’s report, the trend of trustee sentiment was pretty clear when one powerful and conservative trustee who had resisted coeducation observed finally, “This seems like the right thing to do.” The decisive moment in the move to coeducation came at the next trustee meeting, at the end of April 1969. In retrospect, we can see that this was simply the final step in Sawyer’s patient and shrewd campaign to “bring people along.” But for some on the ground at the time, it was not inevitable. The month began inauspiciously. On April 5 a group of black students took over Hopkins Hall as part of their campaign to press the college administration for a black residential house. Lewis, sidetracked from his work with the Lockwood Committee, was desig- nated as Sawyer’s point person and was involved in intense discussions with the students until they agreed to evacuate the building three days later. Lockwood himself was engaged in completing the report to be presented at the upcoming trustee meeting. On April 10 he wrote to a Vassar vice president that he was not yet ready to reach “final conclusions.” He wanted, he said, to defer any final decision for a year, pend- ing an assessment of the student exchange program. He was not yet sure if the exchange would turn out to be merely a “temporary stopgap” or even a “substitute for ever admitting women full time.” Something happened to change his mind between April 10 and the trustee meetings on April 24–26. The Student Committee on Co-ordinate Education, having tellingly renamed itself the Student Committee on Coeducation, issued its “Final Report” on April 23, forcefully recommending coeducation rather than a coordinate college. Its report was unanimously endorsed by the College Council and presented the next day to the Lockwood Committee. Second, John Chandler, now the president of Hamilton College and just elected a Williams trustee, spoke 242 Chapter 14 confidentially to the Lockwood Committee, reporting that relationships between Hamilton and Kirkland, its new coordinate college, were not without problems: coordinate education was an expensive proposition, since it involved a lot of duplication, two registrars, two deans of students, and so forth, and close and constant coordination ate up a lot of meeting time for administrators. Lockwood Committee members were sobered by the report. (It was not news to Sawyer, who had already had several confidential conversations with Chandler about coordinate education at Hamilton and Kirkland.) By April Sawyer had pretty clearly made up his mind, probably in part because of what Chandler told him, that coeducation was less expensive than coordinate education and because he could see where consensus was building. It was probably he who suggested to Lockwood that he might want to have Chandler meet with the committee. Although the committee did not leave complete minutes of its delib- erations, it seems clear from the flow of correspondence that its members were also cumulatively influenced by the events of the previous nine months on other campuses—particularly the Princeton endorsement of coeducation in September 1968 and the Yale decision in November to go coed the following year. When the trustees at both Trinity and Colgate voted in January 1969 for coeducation, it looked like a national trend: If Williams did not go coed, wouldn’t this mean that all the best female applicants would be scooped up by its rivals? And there were those reas- suring internal reports from Kershaw and Sawyer: coeducation would be economically manageable and would in fact be less expensive than setting up a new coordinate college. Taken together, these were apparently reasons enough to convince the holdouts, including Lockwood, that coeducation was the preferred option. When the full board of trustees met on April 25, it received a report from the Lockwood Committee, recommending, first, that the college continue the exchange program, expanding it in the fall of 1969 to include students from twelve colleges, and, second, that the college “enroll significant numbers of women students as regular members by 1971.” The key decision had been made: although some members of the Lockwood Committee had apparently been warming to the idea of coeducation for some months, it was not until late April that the entire committee was ready to decide and to go on record. The report was The Prehistory of Coeducation at Williams College, 1961–1969 243 endorsed and signed by the entire committee, which by then included, beside the chair, Lockwood, and vice chair, Rudolph, trustees Harding Bancroft, Talcott Banks, Van Alan Clark, and Pete Parish; Society of Alumni president Wilkins; and faculty members Gifford, Lewis, Fred Copeland, Sam Matthews, Irwin Shainman, Jim Skinner, and William Stine. (One detects Sawyer’s hand in strategically reshaping the committee for academic year 1968–69. Of the five trustee members, two had been elected to the board just one year earlier and were unlikely, as Sawyer knew, to feel held back by earlier board decisions. It is probably not coincidental that one of the new trustees had five daughters.) The committee recommended that the board of trustees review the report and bring it to a vote at its final meeting of the year, in early June. On May 27 Lewis asked the faculty to endorse the Lockwood Report, which it promptly did, on May 29, by voice vote, without dissent. And on June 7 the board of trustees formally accepted the recommendation of the Lockwood Committee to admit women beginning in September 1971, twenty-seven months hence. What does this review of the prehistory of coeducation at Williams say about the style of Jack Sawyer’s presidential leadership? It confirms the judgment that Sawyer was at once a cautious conservative, concerned to preserve the best of a “fine old college,” and a far-seeing visionary, anticipating where the college might be ten or fifteen years hence and what could be done, practically speaking, to help the college, as he said shortly before he took office, “realize its potential.” As a pragmatist, he looked for his opportunities. He considered several different problems (the limitations of an isolated single-sex college, a narrow curriculum, the adverse financial consequences of keeping enrollment at twelve hundred) and several different solutions (changing the residential system, increasing enrollment, bringing in women, coordinate and coed) all at once. (This perhaps led him to consider some ideas that now seem to have little merit, or chance of success.) He was very concerned—especially after June 1962—to build consensus among his several constituencies—faculty, students, trustees, alumni— about the rightness of the major changes on which the college planned to embark. He was also strategic about shaping those constituencies, choosing trustees—and they were chosen with major input from him— who could help advance his agenda and appointing the right trustees 244 Chapter 14 and faculty to key committees. He was very concerned about process, patiently working through trustee and faculty committees. But he was also ready to work privately, on his own, or with a couple of trusted faculty or trustees, to explore an idea before it was ready to be presented to a larger group. He was persistent, even dogged, in pursuing an idea that he thought had merit: he wouldn’t take no for an answer from Vassar from more than three years. But he was gracious about it and took pains to maintain good relations with anybody who might be in a position to help the college. And finally, that he might have been the first Williams president to understand the importance of print media in advancing his agenda—via articles placed in the Williams Alumni Review, interviews with the editors of the Record, copies of newspaper clippings forwarded to his presidential peers, or suggestions for stories passed on to a New York Times education reporter. It is not surprising that in 1963 he put the president of Time, Inc., on the Williams board of trustees and that in 1968 he added the executive vice president of the New York Times. Sawyer did not enter office in 1961 with a grand plan. He had too much good sense and political wisdom to draw up a blueprint in advance, but he began his presidency with some basic ideas—realizing the full potential of a liberal arts college and developing an “enlarged” and “enriched” community. His genius was in figuring out, as he went along, how and in what forms those ideas might be harmoniously and productively implemented. SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Brooks, R. R. R., ed. Williamstown: The First Two Hundred Years (1953), expanded in 2005 as Williamstown: The First 250 Years, 1753–2003. Danforth, Keyes. Boyhood Reminiscences: Pictures of New England Life in the Olden Times in Williamstown (1895). Durfee, Calvin. History of Williams College (1860). Lewis, R. Cragin. Williams, 1793–1993: A Pictorial History (1993). Norton, John. The Redeemed Captive (1748). Perry, Arthur Latham. Origins in Williamstown (1894). ———. Williamstown and Williams College (1899). Rudolph, Frederick. Mark Hopkins and the Log: Williams College, 1836– 1872 (1956, expanded edition 1996). Spring, Leverett W. History of Williams College (1917). Wright, Wyllis E. Colonel Ephraim Williams: A Documentary Life (1970).

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1753 House, 150 Bennington College, 239; relations with Williams, 224–25, 232 Abenaki, 3–6, 8–9 Bennington, Vermont, 57, 106, 117, 136, Adams Memorial Theatre, 150 225 Albany, New York, 7, 10, 13, 23, 31, 35, Berkshire County, 3, 8, 22, 57, 72, 74–75, 51–52, 73, 101, 108, 124, 157, 161–62, 168; 93, 102, 108, 112, 114, 117, 136, 146, Albany Road, 66, 48–49, 69, 72, 160 156–57, 161, 164–69, 180, 184, 186, 204; Alpha Delta Phi, 218–20 Berkshire County guide books, 53, 67, American Legion, 109, 148 71, 76, 85–86, 116–17, 162, 180, 193, 255 American Revolution, 92, 102 Berkshire Natural Resources Council, Amherst College, 226, 234; relations 67–68 with Williams, 137, 145, 147, 173–78, Berlin, New York, 43, 68 198–200, 204, 215, 237 Berlin Mountain, 44, 60, 67–68, 126 Andrews, Israel Ward, 111–12 Berlin Pass, 44, 46, 49–50, 52–54, 56, 60, Angevine Committee, 224, 227, 230, 234, 68, 124, 160 236 Berlin Road, 43–47, 49–56, 58, 62–63, Armstrong, Samuel Chapman, 93, 97, 65–68, 128 110, 221 bicentennial of Williams College (1993), 176, 222 Bahlman, Dudley, 120, 131, 239 bicentennial of Williamstown (1953), Baird, Theodore, 175–76 136, 150 Banks, Talcott, 227, 236, 243 Bide-a-Wee Cottage, 125, 128 Barnard, Selah, 35, 37, 40 Birchard, Amos, 50–51, 58 Barnard College, 226; relations with Birch Hill, 60, 69, 71, 81 Williams, 235 Boston, Massachusetts, 5–6, 10, 13–14, 18, Bascom, John, 187 23, 29, 33, 35, 72, 111, 119–20, 154–69, Bee Hill, 49, 59, 69–71, 83, 180 214, 216, 226 Bee Hill Road, 44, 46, 49, 55, 58, 69–71, Boyhood Reminiscences (Danforth), 74, 143 77, 80–83, 124–25, 127; Bee Hill Bradford Junior College, relations with Extension, 55 Williams, 232 Belmont, Mrs. August, 122, 138 Bradley, Ernest, 71, 80

247 248 INDEX

Briggs, Henry Shaw, 93–95, 98 Connecticut (colony), 8, 22–23, 25–26, Brookman family, 48, 52–55 28–30, 33, 41, 45–49, 122, 158–60, 166 brooks. See Flora’s Glen Brook; Haley Connecticut River, 4, 6–9, 12, 14, 35, Brook; Hemlock Brook; Sweet Brook 156–57, 161 Brooks, Robert R. R., 80–82 Crowninshield, Frederic, 216, 220 Brooks Trail, 60, 81–83 Crown Point, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 24, 41 Bryant, William Cullen, 75–77, 183–84, Currier Hall, figure 7 221 Bullock, Anthony D., 127–29 Daneau de Muy, Jacques-Pierre, 11–12, 16 Bullock, Col. Anthony, 77–78, 110, Danforth, Keyes, Sr., 73 113–16, 118–19, 122–23 Danforth, Keyes, Jr., 73–74, 143–44 Bullock, James W., 54, 67, 77–78, 110, Daniels, Frank, H., 78–79 113–16, 122–29 Deerfield, Massachusetts, 4–7, 9, 13, Burdick, Lyman, 72–73 15–16, 18, 35, 46 Delta Psi (St. Anthony Hall), 92, 164, Cain, William, 48, 57 216–17, 220 Carter, Franklin, 93, 98, 159, 163, 220, 222 Denison Park, 99, 229, 235 Catlin, John, 35, 37–38 Dennett, Tyler, 127, 221 Caves Trail, 84–86 Dewey, Daniel, 158 cemeteries: Eastlawn, 101, 106–8, 146–47; Durfee, Calvin, 175 Southlawn, 147–48; Westlawn, 118, Dutch Hoosick, New York, vii, 7, 10, 122, 147 24–25 Chandler, John, 174, 176, 235, 241 Dwight, Timothy, 74, 160 Chapin, Alfred Clark, 164–65 Chapin, Elisha, 20–21, 23, 24–25, 30–32, East College, figures 1, 3 35, 38, 42 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 76–77, 162–63, Chapin, Gad, 38, 40 191, 194 Chapin Hall, 140, 145, 164, 208 Chidester, William, 20–21, 26–32, 35, Faison, Lane, 80 38–39, 42, 157 farms: Beechdale Farm, 52–53; Bulkeley Cincinnati, Ohio, 77, 110–34, 162 Farm, 118–19; Charles Williams Civil War, vii, 51, 85, 91–109, 113, 137, 140, Farm, 118; Field Farm, 84, 86; Foster 146–47, 151, 192, 214, 221 Farm, 46–47, 49, 52; Foxcroft Farm, Clark Art Institute, 132, 140, 167 58, 61, 64; George Farm, 55; Leet Class of ’33 Trail, 60 Farm, 52, 55, 57–58, 66–67; Meadow Cluett family: George, 125–26, 235; Brook Farm, 125; Mount Hope Robert, 125 Farm, 55, 61, 132, 162, 219, 222, 224, coeducation at Williams, 197, 207, 226, 228–36; Noble Farm, 114, 125; 223–44 Peace Valley Farm, 44–45, 52–57, 61, Cold Spring Road, 59–60, 72–73, 77, 79, 63–64; Richmond Farm, 114, 125; 94, 114–15, 124–25, 127–28 Shand Farm, 71, 124; Sherman Farm, Cole Avenue, 107, 121 114–15, 124–25; Stone Hill Farm, 118; Columbia University, 56, 97, 217, 226 Sunnybrook Farm, 127–28; Yeadon Congregational church, 111, 160, 163, Farm, 125 180, 210–11, 214; First Congregational Field, Cyrus W. 120, 214, 217–18 Church, Williamstown, 144–45, 147, Field, David Dudley, 97, 164, 218 150, 158, 160 Field, Dudley, 218 INDEX 249

Field Park, 119, 140–41, 148, 150, figure 9 Griffin Hall, 136–37, 141, 143, 221, figures Fireman’s Ball, 135, 148–49 1, 3, 4, 7 Fitch, Ebenezer, 136, 158, 215 Fitch Trail, 83 Haley Brook, 54, 68 Flora’s Glen, 58, 69–83, 115, 124, 128 Hamilton College, 234; relations with Flora’s Glen Brook, 69, 77, 79, 81 Williams, 241 Flynt, Hank (Henry N. Flynt, Jr.), 130 Harvard University, 36–37, 65, 75, 132–33, Flynt, Henry N., 129 154, 162, 203, 214, 220, 226; relations Ford’s Glen, 74, 75 with Williams, 159, 163, 199, 204, 206 Fort Hoosac. See West Hoosuck Haskins family, 54, 56, 61, 65, 68 blockhouse Hatfield, Massachusetts, 30, 156, 159 Fort Massachusetts, 3–19, 21–22, 24–35, Hawks, John, 5, 12, 15 38, 40–41, 156 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 74, 141 Fortress of Louisbourg, 8, 10, 13, 17 Haystack Monument, 97 Fort St.-Frédéric, 6, 8, 13 Hazen, Henry, 10 Fort William Henry, 14, 31, 35–36, 40 Hemlock Brook, 18, 21, 25, 28, 44, 46, Foster family, 46–47, 49, 51 48–51, 54, 58–60, 69, 85, 114 Fourth of July, 135–40, 151–53 Hickox family, 46, 70, 158 Fredericksburg, Virginia, battle of, 94, hills. See Bee Hill; Birch Hill; Leete Hill; 103, 105 Phelps Knoll; Sheep Hill; Stone Hill French and Indian War (1754–63), 14, 17, Hoar, Rita, 79, 81, 127 20–40, 156 Holiday Walk, 135, 150–51 French settlements, 5–8 Hollister family: George, 113; Howard, French troops, 8–16, 18, 20–21, 24–26, 113–14, 129 31 Hoosac Mountains, viii, 157, 159 Hoosic River, viii, 4, 6–8, 10–11, 14–15, Gale Road, 119, 125–28, 235 21, 24–25, 28, 44, 51, 72, 85, 110, 157 Garfield, James A., 214, 217–18, 221 Hopkins, Albert, 74, 213–14, 221 Geier, Frederick A., 129; Geier family, Hopkins, Amos Lawrence, 57, 92, 219 129–31 Hopkins, Archibald, 92–102, 105–6 Gifford, Don, 236, 239–40, 243 Hopkins, Henry, 92, 126, 210–11, 221 Gladden, Washington, 179–96 Hopkins, Mark, 92, 99, 163–64, 192, 212, Glier, Michael, 132, 134 215, 231 Goodrich Hall, 200, 209, 211–13, 215, 218, Hopkins Hall, 145, 164, 193, 241, 220, figure 7 figure 7 Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), 105, Hopkins Observatory, 188, figure 4 137, 146 Horsford, Josiah, 29, 32–33, 41–42, 158 Grange Fair, 135, 149–51 Horsford, William, 27, 32, 41, 158 Greenfield, Massachusetts, 27, 59, 161 Housatonic Railroad, 117, 161–62 Green River, 25, 85, 121, 157, 254, Housatonic River, 8, 22, 25–26, 157, 159, figure 4 161 Green River Road, 118, 149, 228 Hoxsey Street, 116, 124 Greylock Hall, 124 Hudson, Enos, 29–3o Greylock Hotel, 59, 78, 115, 124, 126–28 Hudson, Seth, 27, 28–35, 38–42 Greylock Institute, 113–14, 123 Hudson River, 5–8, 11, 23–24, 31, 157, Gridley, Ralph, 160 160–62 Griffin, Edward Dorr, 112, 158, 160, 215 Hunt, Clay, 224 250 INDEX

Hunt, John, 35, 37 43, 85; Walker (1889), 53, 71; Walling Hunter property, 71, 82 (1858), 47, 70, 74 Hurlburt, Franklin, 111, 114 Markgraf, Hodge, 131, 133, 221 Maynard, Stephen (Dummy), 55, 78 Jackson, Prince, 73 McIntire, Nancy, 207 Jenkins, Jerry, 64 McMaster’s Caves, 84–87 Jesup Hall, 145, 164, 201 Melody, Thomas, 72 Melville, Herman, 184, 191 Kappa Alpha, 20, 118, 122, 217–18, figure Memorial Day, 135, 146–48, 150–52 10 Miller, John William, 80 Kellogg House (hotel), 115, 123 Mills, Samuel John, 221 Kershaw, Joseph, 174, 226–28, 242 Milton, John, 184, 190–91, 211 King George’s War (1744–48), 3, 5, 8–19 Mohawk Trail, 6, 8, 59, 165 Kirkland College, 234; relations with Moore, Zephaniah Swift, 173–77, 215, Williams, 242 221 Morgan Hall, 164, figure 7 Labaree, Benjamin, 231, 235, 238 Morley, Edward, 92 La Farge, John, 214, 216–17, 219 mountains. See Berlin Mountain; Lake George, 5–6, 31 Hoosac Mountains; Mount Greylock; Lanesborough, Massachusetts, 54, 93, 117 Petersburg Mountain; Taconic Range Lane Theological Seminary, 111–12 “Mountains, The” (song), 179–96 Lasell Gymnasium, 150, figure 7 Mount Greylock, 43, 53, 60, 75, 77, 100, Lawrence, Amos, 164 117, 4–85, 191, 193 Lawrence Hall, 145, 213, figures 4, 7 Mount Greylock Regional High School, Leete Hill, 48, 52, 67 86, 139, 148 Leet family, 47–48, 51–52, 55 Lewis, Cragin, 176 New York, New York, 18, 62, 97, 100–1, Lewis, Steve, 236–37, 240–41, 243 118–20, 130, 154–69, 214, 217–18, 220, Lincoln, Abraham, 94, 215 224, 237, 254, 257 Lions Club, 139, 149–50 New York Times, 82, 98, 100, 121, 154, Little, Woodbridge, 164 224–25, 244 Lockwood, John, 234, 236–43 Nims, Elisha, 18–19 Lord, Willis, 111–12 Noble, David, 48, 158 Louisbourg. See Fortress of Louisbourg North Adams, Massachusetts, 3–4, 10, 19, 54, 57, 59, 61, 74, 102, 106, 117, 132, Main Street, vii, 20, 27–28, 49, 78, 100, 137, 139, 146, 157, 161–62, 213, 216 102, 117, 121–22, 124, 127, 141, 146, 150, North Adams Transcript, 78, 82, 102, 116, 209–10, 216, 218, figures 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 9, 118, 121, 126, 138, 143–44 10; West Main Street, 69, 73, 114–15, North Street, 78, 115, 118, 218, figure 10 118–19 North Pownal, Vermont, 7 Mansion House (hotel), 115, 123 Northwest Hill Road, 75 maps: Barnes and Farnum (1904), 72; Norton, John, 3, 11–12, 16 Beers (1876), 71, 85, figure 5; Burleigh (1889), figure 6; Coffin (1842), 43, Oakley, Frank, 160 figure 2; Miller (1894), 85; Mills (1830), Oliver, Andrew, 31, 36–37 47, 70; “Proprietors’s Map,” 72; U.S. Opera House, 137, 147–48 Geological Survey topographical, Orleton Fields, 119–20 INDEX 251

Osborne, Sara Tenney, 62, 64–65, 166, Shainman, Irwin, 204, 207, 243 213 Sheep Hill, 59, 128 Sheffield, Massachusetts, 8, 158 Payne, Hank (Harry Payne), 160, 176, Shillito, John, 112–13 178 Shirley, William, 8–10, 14–18, 24–26, Perry, Arthur Latham, 19, 51, 77, 159, 29–30, 33, 35, 40 173, 221 Sigma Phi, 216, 220 Petersburg Mountain, 44, 54, 81 Simonds, Benjamin, 5, 18, 27, 28, 38, 42 Petersburg Pass, 43–45, 49–50, 52, 58, 60, Simon’s Rock College, relations with 64, 66, 81 Williams, 230, 235 Petersburg Road, 45, 49–50, 52, 57–60, Simpson, Alan, 230, 233, 235–37 71, 81–83 Skidmore College, relations with Phelps family, 85–86, 123 Williams, 226 Phelps Knoll, 85–86 Sloan House (president’s house), 146, 158, Pine Manor Junior College, relations figure 9 with Williams, 229 Smedley, Nehemiah, 27, 29, 158 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 38, 75, 93, 117, Smith College, relations with Williams, 156, 161, 166, 184, 216 237, 239 Pittsfield Sun, 119, 143 Southfields, 125–26 Pownall, Thomas, 35–38, 40 South Street, 74, 99, 119, 130, 140, 164, Pownal, Vermont, 7–8, 51, 54, 101–2, 107, 216 117, 228 Spring, Leverett, 173 Prentice, E. P., 162, 228 Spring St., 56, 106, 116, 133, 139, 146–48, Princeton Seminary, 160 150, 154, 229 Princeton University, 203–4; relations St. Anthony Hall. See Delta Psi with Williams, 239–40, 242 Stetson, Francis Lynde, 164–65, 221 Prindle family, 46, 72, 158 St. Gaudens, Augustus, 217 Procter, Harley T., 110, 116–25, 129, 162, Stickney, Frederick, 119, 124 218, figure 10 Stickney and Austin (architects), 119 Stinson, Bill, 52–53, 57, 65, 67 Reeve, Christopher, 66–67 St. John’s Episcopal Church, 120, 219 revolution. See American Revolution Stoddard, John, 16–17 Rice, Hart, 61, 63–64 Stoddard, Whitney, 226 Rigaud de Vaudreuil, François-Pierre de, Stone family, 129–32, 134 11–14 Stone Hill, 118, 120, 140, 186 rivers. See Connecticut River, Green Stone Hill Road, 77, 114, 118–19 River, Hoosic River, Housatonic River, Strauss family, 129–31, 133 Hudson River Sweet Brook, 85 Rosenburg family, 53–55, 67, 127–28 Rudolph, Frederick, 200, 217, 231–33, Taconic Crest Trail, 45, 48, 60, 81 235–36, 237–38, 243 Taconic Golf Club, 125, 140 Ruskin, John, 187–88, 194 Taconic Hiking Club, 60 Taconic Inn (hotel), 78, 116, 124 Sara Tenney Trail, 43, 66–67, 83 Taconic Parkway, 155, 165 Sawyer, John E., 160, 174, 223–44 Taconic Range, 7, 44, 157 Sawyer Library, 126, 216 Taconic Trail (Route 2), 45, 57, 60–61, Searl, Isaac, 27, 31, 36–37 66, 69, 125, 127 252 INDEX

Taft, Calvin R., 70–71 Wells College, relations with Williams, Tanglewood Music Festival, 168 232–33 Taylor, Samuel, 28–29, 32, 34, 38, 40–42 West College, 76, 136, 141, 143, 201, Teague, Henry, 59, 124 figures 1, 3, 4, 9 Tenney, Sanborn, Jr., 61–62, 64–65 West College Lawn, 140, 145, 201 Tenney, Sanborn (judge), 53, 56–59, 61, West Hoosuck (village), viii, 17–18, 205, figure 8 21–30, 32–35 Tenney, Sanborn (professor), 56–57, West Hoosuck blockhouse, 20–42, 150 213–14, 221 Weston, Karl, 201, 221 Tenney, Sara. See Osborne, Sara Tenney Weston Field, 138–39, 147 Tenney family, 45, 53, 56, 58–59, 63–64, Wheaton College, relations with 213, figure 8 Williams, 203, 232–33 Tenney window, 214, 219–20 White, Stanford, 217 Thompson, Frederick Ferris, 164–65, 167, Wikander, Lawrence, 175–76 210, 216–17, 221 Williams, Ephraim, 100, 158–59; at Fort Thompson Memorial Chapel, figure 7 Massachusetts, 3–4, 10, 12, 16–17, 30; Thompson Memorial Window, 211 in West Hoosuck, 23, 27–28 Thomson, James, 184–85, 190 Williams, Israel, 21–23, 25–26, 29–31, 33, Thoreau, Henry David, 74, 194 35–36, 38–40, 166 Tiffany, Louis, 209, 214, 217–19 Williams Alumni Review, 126, 230, 235, trails. See Brooks Trail; Caves Trail; Class 238–39, 244 of ’33 Trail; Fitch Trail; Sara Tenney Williams College buildings. See Trail; Taconic Crest Trail; Turnpike Adams Memorial Theatre; Chapin Trail Hall; East College; Goodrich Hall; Train, Thomas, 27–29, 42 Greylock Hall; Griffin Hall; Hopkins Treadway, L. G., 59 Hall; Hopkins Observatory; Jesup Treadwell, Agur, 45–46, 158 Hall; Lasell Gymnasium; Lawrence Treadwell Hollow, 43–69, 158, figure 8 Hall; Morgan Hall; Sloan House; Treadwell Hollow Road, 43–45, 47–50, Thompson Memorial Chapel; West 62–63, 65–67 College Troy and Boston Railroad, 51, figure 5 Williams College commencement, 75, Troy, New York, 18, 49–51, 57, 59, 73, 116, 135, 140–46, 176, 181, 195, 200, 208, 230 119, 125, 157, 160–61, 186 Williams College fraternities. See Alpha Turnpike Trail, 67 Delta Phi; Delta Psi; Kappa Alpha; Zeta Psi Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 7 Williams College Outing Club, 67, 81–82 Vassar College, 234; relations with Williams College presidents. See Carter, Williams, 223–26, 229–30, 233, 235–39, Franklin; Chandler, John; Dennett, 241, 244 Tyler; Fitch, Ebenezer; Griffin, Edward Dorr; Hopkins, Henry; Hopkins, Walden Street, 148, 229 Mark; Moore, Zephaniah Swift; Walker, Alexander, 52–53, 68 Oakley, Frank; Sawyer, John Walker family, 52–53, 55–57 Williams College, relations with other Warren, Jabez, 27, 28, 31–32, 39, 42 colleges. See Amherst College; Water Street, 41, 121, 147–48, 150 Bennington College; Bradford Junior Welch, Richard, 101–9 College; Hamilton College; Harvard Welch, Whitman, 158 University; Kirkland College; Pine INDEX 253

Manor Junior College; Princeton Wordsworth, William, 77, 184 University; Simon’s Rock College; World War I, Williamstown and, 100, Skidmore College; Smith College; 138, 147, 151, 206, 222 Vassar College; Wells College; World War II, Williamstown and, 151 Wheaton College; Yale University Williams Record, 177, 228–31, 236, 240, 244 Yale University: relations with Williams, Williamstown Grange, 135, 149–51 12, 131, 158–60; relations with Williamstown: The First Two Hundred Williamstown, 114, 120, 158 Years, 81, 108, 150 “Yard by Yard,” 197–208 Williamstown Institute of Politics, 100 Yarnell, James K., 214, 217 Williamstown Theatre Festival, 152, Yeadon Manor, 126, 128 167–68 Yeiser, Charles, 131, 133 Wood, Hamilton, 197, 200 Woodbridge, Timothy, 33–37, 39 Zeta Psi, 129, 220 DUSTIN GRIFFIN is professor emeritus of English at New York University. He was born in Brooklyn, raised in St. Louis, and has degrees from Williams College, Oxford University, and Yale University. For forty years he taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and at New York University. He has published eight books on English literature of the long eighteenth century, an edition of the writings of American architect Walter Burley Griffin, and a book on the history of Englewood, New Jersey. He served as a trustee of Williams College from 1986 to 2001 and has lived in Williamstown since 2003. Since then he has frequently delivered public lectures on the local history of Williamstown and Williams College. This page intentionally left blank estled in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, Williamstown is home Nto one of the most prestigious liberal arts colleges in the country, Williams College. In this engrossing and entertaining book, Dustin Griﬃn oﬀers fourteen vignettes that detail the local history of this ideal New England college town. Each chapter focuses on the stories behind a single feature that visitors to present-day Williamstown and Williams College might encounter, including a historical plaque marking the site of a colonial fort, town-wide holidays, a popular hiking trail, a stained-glass window in the college chapel, and a song that alumni sing at reunions. Well researched and written in an accessible style, Williamstown and Williams College is a must-have resource for anyone connected with Williams College—from students and parents to alumni—as well as residents and visitors who want to understand what makes this town unique.

“The quality of these essays—even the most lighthearted ones—is uniformly high. Williamstown and Williams College is an excellent, engaging, and enjoyable history.” —Francis Oakley, president emeritus of Williams College

DUSTIN GRIFFIN is professor emeritus of English at New York University. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and is a graduate of Williams College.

BRIGHT LEAF An imprint of University of Massachusetts Press www.umass.edu/umpress/brightleaf

Cover design by Rebecca S. Neimark, Twenty-Six Letters Cover art: Detail from Bird’s-Eye View of Main St., Looking West. Photogravure, W. T. Littig & Company, New York, 1906. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art and College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 1. Anonymous artist (American), A Part of the Easterly View of Williamstown Seen from the Fourth Story Old College, ca. 1798–1828, watercolor. The view is from “Old College” (1791–93), now called West College, eastward along Main Street with the original East College (1797–98), a large four-story brick building, on the next hilltop on the right. That building was destroyed by fire in 1841 and the present East College immediately erected on the same site. Note that in this watercolor Griffin Hall (1828) has not yet been built. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art. Figure 2. J. H. Coffin, A Map of Williamstown Drawn from Original Surveys, 1843. The map shows the sixty-two original house lots along Main Street surveyed in 1753 and larger lots surveyed in later “divisions.” James Henry Coffin (1806–73) was a tutor at Williams College from 1840 to 1843. Courtesy of the College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 3. Williams College, drawn by James Colt Clapp, ca. 1843, frontispiece in the 1843–44 Williams College course catalog. A view of Main Street from the southwest, across a cow pasture. West College, Griffin Hall, and the newly rebuilt East College are visible in the background. Clapp graduated from Williams in 1844. Courtesy of the College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 4. Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1850. Printed and distributed by I. B. Fischer Company, New York City. A view of Williamstown from the southeast, with the Green River in the foreground. West College, Lawrence Hall, Hopkins Observatory, and Griffin Hall are visible on hilltops in the center of town. Courtesy of the College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 5. F. W. Beers, Williamstown, from County Atlas of Berkshire, Massachusetts, 1876. The map shows the Troy & Boston Railroad, put through in 1859; the separate villages of Williamstown, South Williamstown, and Blackinton; along with major topographical features and major landowners. Courtesy of the College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 6. L. R. Burleigh, Williamstown, Mass., 1889. A bird’s-eye view of Williamstown from the southwest, showing all the buildings in town, drawn to scale, with the college campus in the center, the railroad and the mill district in the background. Major college buildings are numbered on the map and in a key. Courtesy of the College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 7. Bird’s-Eye View of Main St., Looking West. Photogravure, W. T. Littig & Company, New York, 1906, after a watercolor by Richard Rummell. On the left is the “Berkshire Quad,” including the not yet completed Currier Hall (1908), the original octagonal Lawrence Hall (1846–47), Goodrich Hall (1859), Lasell Gym (1886), and Morgan Hall (1882). On the right are Griffin Hall (1828), the newly constructed Thompson Memorial Chapel (1904), and Hopkins Hall (1890). At a client’s request, Rummell often included future buildings, such as Currier Hall, not completed until two years later. Courtesy of the Williams College Museum of Art and College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College. Figure 8. Ruins of the Tenney Camp in Treadwell Hollow, 2009. The nineteenth- century farmhouse, bought by Sanford Tenney in 1905 and later much modified, served three generations of the Tenney family until the 1960s. Photograph by the author. Figure 9. Main Street, Williamstown, 2011. Aerial photograph by Michael Miller. The photo, looking east, shows the Field Park rotary in the foreground and various college buildings on either side of Main Street. The slight south- ward bend in Main Street, where it passes between West College and Sloan House, is not typically noticed at ground level. Courtesy of Michael Miller. Figure 10. Harley Procter Mansion, 1897. Built in 1892 by a retired Procter & Gamble executive as a summer country house, it was sold by Procter to the Kappa Alpha fraternity at Williams in 1906 and used as its lodge until it burned in January 1968. The mansion was on the northwest corner of Main and North Streets, site of the current Williams Inn. Courtesy of the College Archives and Special Collections, Williams College.