NONOTUCK (NORTHAMPTON), AND OF COURSE FLORENCE TOO, WITH APPROPRIATE ATTENTION PAID TO ITS MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND FAMOUS CITIZEN, SOJOURNER TRUTH “I know histhry isn’t thrue, Hinnissy, because it ain’t like what I see ivry day in Halsted Street. If any wan comes along with a histhry iv Greece or Rome that’ll show me th’ people fightin’, gettin’ dhrunk, makin’ love, gettin’ married, owin’ th’ grocery man an’ bein’ without hard coal, I’ll believe they was a Greece or Rome, but not befur.” — Dunne, Finley Peter, OBSERVATIONS BY MR. DOOLEY, New York, 1902 HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON 1653 The land for Northampton was bought of its native inhabitants by John Pynchon. 1654 What had been, on the Connecticut River at the “oxbow,” the Native American village of Nonotuck or “Middle of the River,” had suddenly become, with the arrival of the 1st white settlers, a rather different sort of town from what it had been before. –But it was not yet renamed Northampton in honor of an undistinguished town in the midlands of Old England. 1655 At the new white settlement on the oxbow of the Connecticut River, the 1st white-folks meetinghouse was erected, and there it was determined that the town’s name needed to be changed from Nonantum to Northampton. 2 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON 1656 There was a witchcraft trial in Northampton, Massachusetts. 1658 The 1st court was held in Northampton. The 1st ferry service began there, across the Connecticut River. The Reverend Eleazar Mather was selected as the town’s minister. 1661 June 18: The 1st Church of Northampton was organized. 1662 A cemetery was begun on Bridge Street in Northampton. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON During a Nonotuck (Northampton) plantation survey, Mount Holyoke1 and Mount Tom were named respectively after Elizur Holyoke and Rowland Thomas. 1664 The 1st school was begun in Northampton. 1669 The Reverend Solomon Stoddard was called to become the minister in Northampton. 1675 Early in the year: Mary Parsons was again accused of witchcraft in Northampton, Massachusetts. She was tried and acquitted. 1. “Mount” Holyoke is a brushy hill 960 feet high. 4 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON It was in about this year that the regicide Edward Whalley died in hiding in the Connecticut River valley, in the district known as “the Hadley MA honey-pot,” inside the ox-box of the Connecticut River near present- day Northampton, in the house of Mr. Russell the minister, and was buried in a tomb just without the house’s cellar wall. His son-in-law Major-General William Goffe, also involved in the execution of Charles I in 1649, survived to hide on after him alone. Refer to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Gray Champion” (TWICE-TOLD TALES, 1837, 1851), in which Goffe makes an appearance: WALDEN: I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, –a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON September 19: During September, bands of warriors had been roaming the valley of the Connecticut River. The military garrison at Hadley MA had been growing, and provisions for these troops needed to be sent from the individual villages. On this day, while Captain Thomas Lathrop with 80 men were riding convoy for a wagon train from Deerfield loaded with threshed wheat on its way to the mill just north of the Hadley garrison, the convoy needed to traverse a narrow, swampy thicket with a brook, near what is now Northampton. During the extended period of time that it took to get the heavily laden carts across the brook, the soldiers had tossed their rifles atop the loads. Some were gathering the grapes that grew alongside the brook. Hundreds of warriors lay in concealment. When they opened fire, the captain fell immediately and only 7 or 8 of the whites would escape; not one of the Deerfield men who were driving the carts would survive. Captain Moseley and his troop of 60 soldiers were close enough to hurry to the scene. In among the corpses, one of the wounded, Robert Dutch of Ipswich, had been able to successfully play dead: Captain Mosely came upon the Indians in the morning; he found them stripping the slain, amongst whom was one Robert Dutch, of Ipswich, who, having been sorely wounded, by a bullet that raised his scull, and then mauled by the Indian hatchets, was left for dead by the savages, and stript by them of all but his skin; yet, when Captain Mosely came near, he almost miraculously, as one raised from the dead, came towards the English, to their no small amazement; by whom being received and clothed, he was carried off to the next garrison, and is living, and in perfect health at this day. For approximately six hours, neither side could gain the upper hand. Finally a troop of 100 Connecticut soldiers with a band of Mohegans arrived on the scene, whereupon the ambushers faded into the forest. The surviving soldiers straggled back to Deerfield and that night would be taunted by warriors who from a safe distance would wave items stripped from English corpses.2 The surviving soldiers returned the next day to dig a mass grave. The sluggish stream would be known as Bloody Brook. Shortly afterward, Deerfield would be abandoned and would be torched by Phillip’s warriors. In the town of South Deerfield MA a stone shaft marks the edge of the swampy area in which this ambush occurred. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR” (However, Samuel Sewall has it in his diary that “Sept. 13. Saturday, was that lamentable fight, when Capt. Latrop with sixty-four killed.”) 2. Among the corpses was that of Samuel Crumpton of Salem. His widow Jane Crumpton would remarry with Captain Richard More and help him keep his tavern. 6 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 7 HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON 8 Copyright 2013 Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON 1676 February 14, Monday: Mistress Mary Rowlandson sat in the native encampment and waited out her period of affliction, with her sick child upon her knees. CAPTIVITY AND RESTAURATION Sachem Metacom, back from his failed diplomatic mission among the Mohawk to the west, led the remaining Wampanoag warriors in a desperate raid on Northampton. In Boston, the Massachusetts Council was in debate over the probable effectiveness and cost of a proposal to defend the city by the erection of a defensive wall of stone or wood eight feet in height all the way across from the Charles River to the bay. “KING PHILLIP’S WAR” 1677 The white people surrounded their meetinghouse in Northampton with a palisade. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 9 HDT WHAT? INDEX FLORENCE MA NORTHAMPTON 1679 We have a record that in Northampton, Massachusetts during this year, a complaint of witchcraft was filed and some formal step such as petition or deposition was taken towards prosecution, but we have no record of anything further. William Goffe, regicide who had been living in secrecy for some years in the home of the Reverend John Russell of Hadley MA in the district known as “the Hadley honey-pot,” inside the ox-box of the Connecticut River near present-day Northampton, died at about this point after outliving his father-in-law Edward Whalley by some four years. At the neck of the ox-bow had lived a pastor Russell who helped them. Refer to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Gray Champion” (TWICE-TOLD TALES, 1837, 1851), in which Goffe makes an appearance: WALDEN: I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider, –a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried.