The WPA American Guide Series: Local History Treasures for the Classroom Syd Golston

he Federal Writers’ Project was an arm of the Works Progress Administration, It is still difficult to find Leyden; it’s too Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s massive program to put the unemployed back to small to show up on the road atlas. At the Twork. The Writers’ Project was charged with producing an extensive guidebook Cushman Library in Bernardston, where for each of the 48 states; and more than 6,000 local newspaper writers, novelists, the History of Leyden, Massachusetts, poets, college professors, and local historians labored from 1935 to 1941 on these 1676–1959 may be photocopied, the American Guide Series volumes. They are commonly regarded as masterpieces in librarian gave us directions and we social history, unique in the literature of the United States. set off through picture postcard New England with autumn leaves, cows, and The guidebooks can be found in local Leyden, Massachusetts: The barns, stone walls and a covered bridge libraries, and several of them are com- Dorrilites or two. ing back into the market as paperback At 0.6 m. is the junction with Chapter VI of the town’s history is reprints of the original manuscripts. an unnumbered road. Right 4.5 called “The Dorrillite Years,” and con- They make wonderful classroom assign- m. on this road, which parallels tains a vivid description of the character ments, leading students to community Shattuck Brook, is Leyden (town, William Dorrill (the original spelling). sites they may never have explored, alt. 940, pop, 253, sett.1738, He was a giant of a man, 6 feet 5 inches to oral interview opportunities, and incorp. 1784), named for Leyden, tall and 300 pounds in weight. He was a to viewing their own neighborhoods Holland, where the Pilgrims Yorkshire-born Redcoat in King George’s as part of the panorama of American sought refuge for a time. army, taken prisoner at the battle of history. … In the last decade of the 18th Saratoga, who married and farmed in I visited one site in each of the state century, William Dorrell came Massachusetts after the Revolution. He guidebooks and interviewed someone to Leyden and began to teach a had several children and a prosaic life living there who could update the his- philosophy of life founded on in Northfield and Warwick before he tory of years ago: a farmer in Iowa, who the doctrines of free love and became the “Leyden Messiah.” A rev- remembered harvest suppers; a pair of the unalterable sanctity of life, elation came to him in 1790 while he sailors leaving Astoria, Oregon, for a animal as well as human. He was chopping wood near his home on month-long fishing trip; a firefighter gained followers who joined him Leyden’s Frizzell Hill—a voice called across the street from the abandoned in religious demonstrations that him from the heavens, he claimed, Waterman’s fountain pen factory in shocked the community until the thundering: “Render yourself a fitting Newark, New Jersey; the manager of the order was extinguished by Ezekiel sacrifice.” Olde Curiosity Shoppe on the Seattle Foster in 1800. Dorrell continued Dorrill preached from that hillside pier; and an Amarillo, Texas, rancher. to live in Leyden until, at the age about ideas radically different from the The example below required a simple of 94, he starved himself to death, general Congregational dogma of the hour’s research in a library, and an even declaring that he had lived long time. All days were holy, he said, so there briefer interview in a Massachusetts enough. should be no Sundays, and all animals town hall. It could have been a great —Massachusetts, A Guide to were holy, too, so no one might cause project for a high school student. Its Places and People, 1937, the death of any living creature. Dorrill page 563 professed an extreme vegetarianism— instead of leather boots, his followers

March / April 2010 69 Courtesy of Library of Congress

above: Poster for Federal Writers’ Project advertising “American Guide Series” volume on Illinois, showing outline of map of the state. (LC-USZC2-5191)

right: Frizzell graves (Followers of William Dorrill in Leyden) photo by Syd Golston

wore large wooden shoes made by one threatened to continue unless Dorrill Michael Metelica. The adherents origi- Ezra Shattuck, a member of the sect. renounced his beliefs and promised nally lived in a tree house, which was As the 1790s wore on, Dorrill intro- never to preach again; all the followers burned down, probably intentionally. duced more and more radical notions. departed in disillusionment. “Oh, they were druggies, no question,” Husband and wife became “perfect” When Dorrill tried to resurrect his says one woman. “The firemen could through Dorrilism, he asserted, and they reputation by walking on water, some- smell the marijuana in the burned out then had no need for physical fidelity. one removed the planks he had secretly tree house. Somebody wanted them out His meetings on the hill were wild, culmi- laid in the millpond, and he sank like of here. But here’s the odd part: there was nating in “bacchanalian songs and bawdy a stone. Later, Dorrill admitted that he a Bible in that tree, and it didn’t burn.” addresses” accompanied by a black fid- “just wanted to see how far he could go” We drove up Frizzell Hill, where the dler named Jack, according to a report with the people of Leyden. He did starve graves of the Frizzell family (original by the Revered John Taylor of Deerfield himself to death, just as the guide entry Dorrilites) lie overlooking the valley in the August 1798 issue of the Franklin describes. below, many of them dated from the early Gazette. Reverend Taylor was most upset People in Leyden today know about nineteenth century. One tall column tow- that Dorrill now proclaimed that he was William Dorrill and the Dorrilites, ers crookedly among the tombstones, and the Messiah of his generation, above the although all of this took place over 200 although it isn’t Dorrill’s, it’s a reminder law and able to do no evil, and that no years ago. When we happened upon the of an episode when neighbors went way arm of flesh could harm him. end of a church tag sale in the basement off center. Reverend Taylor’s report disturbed the of Leyden’s tiny town hall, the ladies churchgoers of Leyden, and it led ulti- showed us how to find Frizzell Hill mately to the downfall of the so-called where he lived and preached, and the NCSS President Syd Golston is an educational messiah. Captain Ezekiel Foster, who graves of Dorrill and his wife. administrator, curriculum writer, and historian. She had read the article, attended as a specta- The tag sale women added a fascinat- taught at all grade levels from 7th to college, spe- cializing in constructivist learning experiences in tor what became the final meeting of the ing postscript to the tale. Apparently, this local and women’s history. She has been an admin- sect. When Dorrill shouted “No man of part of the world still attracts a spiritually istrator in the Phoenix Union High School District flesh can harm me,” Foster simply came radical fringe, and in the hippie decades, in Phoenix, Arizona, since 2000, most recently as a forward and punched his lights out. He a commune was started in Leyden by one social studies specialist for the district.

Social Education 70