Major Bibliographical References (Cite the books, articles, and other sources used in preparing this form on one or more continuation sheets.) Previous documentation on file (NPS): Primary location of additional data: - preliminary determination of individual listing (36 - State Historic Preservation Office CFR 67) has been requested - Other State agency - previously listed in the National Register - Federal agency - previously determined eligible by the National x Local government Register - University - designated a National Historic Landmark - Other _ recorded by Historic American Buildings Survey Name of repository: # Forbes Library, Northampton, MA - recorded by Historic American Engineering Record #_ NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No.
1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 1 Narrative Statement of Significance Summary The Ross Farm at 123 Meadow Street in the Florence section of Northampton, Massachusetts, meets National Register criteria A, B, and C in the areas of architecture, and ethnic, social, and political history in association with its role in both the abolitionist and communitarian reform movements in antebellum Massachusetts. It is specifically significant for its association with the Underground Railroad in the Commonwealth. Between the construction of the house in about 1825 and the Civil War, two separate occupants, Samuel Lapham Hill and Austin Ross, engaged in documented efforts to assist fugitives from slavery.
During Hill's occupancy, from 1841 to 1845, the property also was part of the complex of buildings and land owned by the Northampton Association for Education and Industry (NAEI), one of three Utopian communitarian groups organized in antebellum Massachusetts. Indeed, the Ross Farm is the only property still standing in Florence that was connected with the Association. Samuel L. Hill was a founder of the group and embodied the remarkable fusion of antebellum Utopianism and abolitionism. In 1845 Austin Ross purchased the farm from the Association, and he, his son, and grandson operated it for the next 80 years. Ross and his wife, Fedelia, who came to Florence after being excommunicated from their church in Chaplin, Connecticut, for their abolitionist fervor, were known for sheltering fugitives in their home.
The house is also significant architecturally as a distinctive example of early 19"-century farmhouse architecture that evolved in plan and design during the Ross tenure, and as a documented example of a dwelling that harbored fugitive slaves making their way out of the south on the Underground Railroad. The property is nominated at a state level of significance in all these categories, and it fulfils the Registration Requirements defined in the Massachusetts Multiple Property Submission for Property Type #1, a dwelling that harbored fugitives on the Underground Railroad. It has also been listed with the National Park Service's Network to Freedom.
Northampton Association for Education and Industry and the Farm at 123 Meadow Street According to historian Christopher Clark, the Northampton Association for Education and Industry was one of 119 communal societies established in the United States in the first six decades of the 1800s and one of forty-seven founded between 1841 and 1845.' Created in April 1842, the NAEI had been planned since 1841, the year that the Transcendentalist George Ripley founded the Utopian Brook Farm in West Roxbury, and Universalist cleric Adin Ballou created the Hopedale community in Milford. The "come outers" - people who withdrew from existing forms of civil and religious government - who founded each community aimed to develop functioning economic and social systems devoid of the perceived corruptions of the prevailing order.
Association founders identified among these evils the increasing divergence of "intellectual and manual labor" in American society, the economic and social (continued) 'Christopher Clark, The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995), 184. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 2 inequity of the nascent industrial order, intemperance, the oppression of some at the hands of more powerful others, and dissension in American churches over slavery and women's rights.
Yet, while abolitionists were among the founders of each community and each evinced some measure of commitment to abolitionism and equal rights, only NAEI articulated those commitments as among its bedrock principles.? In large measure, the founders of NAEI shared a rejection of sectarianism and slavery, as well as of other forms of oppression. In a reminiscence NAEI member Frances Judd characterized the founders and later members: "all were earnest in the anti-slavery cause; many were deeply interested in non-resistance; all were temperance people and some had suffered expulsion from the churches for their course on anti-slavery and other matters." Seven of the eleven founders were abolitionists before founding the association, and seven were from northeastern Connecticut, an early hotbed of abolitionist sentiment. Chief among the founders was George W.
Benson (1808-79), whose father had been a founding member of the Providence Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1790); a founder and officer of the Windham, Connecticut, Peace Society (1826); and the third president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society (1834). Benson Sr. had turned from his birthright Baptist faith to become a Quaker, but his son disdained religious affiliation on the grounds that it formed a "hindrance to this peoples advancement in Truth and holiness. »5 George W. Benson's sister Helen married William Lloyd Garrison, the nation's leader in the cause of immediate abolition of slavery. Physician Erasmus Darwin Hudson (1805-80) had been active in both the Connecticut and American Anti-Slavery Societies and had lectured against slavery with Benson; in 1842, the year NAEI began, Hudson traveled the lecture circuit with fugitive James Lindsay Smith.?
The antislavery views of Northampton native Hall Judd (1817-50) had triggered his excommunication from two churches, and his wife Frances Birge Judd was, if anything, a more committed abolitionist than he was. Judd's father Sylvester, a newspaper editor and historian, had helped fugitives on their way north through the Connecticut Valley in 1838. NAEI founder Samuel Lapham Hill was a birthright Quaker who had been excommunicated for marrying outside the Friends and joined the Baptist (continued) " Clark, in Communitarian Moment, 46 and elsewhere, has made this argument, which appears to be supported by an analysis of the founding documents of Brook Farm and Hopedale. 3 Frances P. Judd, "Reminiscences," in Charles A. Sheffield, ed., The History of Florence, Massachusetts.
Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence: by the editor, 1895), 116. * Ibid., 15, 26. 5 Ibid., 18. 6 Ibid., 45. James Lindsay Smith, Autobiography of James L. Smith (Norwich, CT: Press of the Bulletin Company, 1881), 62-67, describes their tour together and the reception they received in towns throughout Connecticut and Massachusetts. In his notebook Judd wrote, "June 1, 1838. Bought pair of second hand pantaloons - gave $2.25. Gave 50 cents to aid in transporting runaway slaves to Charlemont." Sylvester Judd Notebook, Number 1, June 1833-June 1841, 201, Forbes Library, Northampton, Massachusetts. Thanks to Steve Strimer of the Florence History Project for this information. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No.
1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 3 church after he moved to Willimantic, Connecticut, to oversee a cotton mill there. Hill founded that town's Male Anti-Slavery Society in 1836. A year earlier, after a mob attacked the church during a lecture of abolitionist Wendell Phillips, whom Hill had invited to speak He left the faith and, according to his son, "never again allowed his great mind and heart to be trammeled by a church creed." The founders of NAEI chose Northampton in part because of their interest in silk manufacture, often characterized as a "craze" throughout New England in the 1830s. Whether it was specifically pursued for the purpose or not, the interest in silk manufacture is often tied to antislavery: unlike cotton, silk was a fabric produced by free, not enslaved, labor.!
Abolitionists who supported the "free produce" movement - that is, the purchase of goods not produced by enslaved peoplecustomarily wore silk and linen as a protest." For its part, Northampton's fertile Connecticut River Valley location had already been chosen for an avowedly antislavery business enterprise. In the spring of 1838 the abolitionist David Lee Child had begun to grow beets on an acre of land in the "meadows" in order to make free- labor sugar from their roots. In 1840 he leased twenty acres of land in Florence for the same purpose. The business failed to make a profit and thus to support Child and his wife, author and editor Lydia Maria Child, and by 1841 she had moved to New York City to assume editorship of the National Anti-Slavery Standard. By 1847 the Childs abandoned the beet sugar experiment altogether.
New York merchant Samuel Whitmarsh had begun silk manufacture in 1835 on almost 300 of meadow in Florence. Part of this property was the 100-acre farm of Gaius Burt, who had settled in so-called Broughton's Meadow in 1798. (continued) ' Arthur G. Hill, "Biographical Sketch," in Charles A. Sheffeld, ed., The History of Florence, Massachusetts. Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (Florence: by the editor, 1895), 207; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 41. 10 Though some sources assert that "the Association saw silk manufacture as an alternative to cotton and the slavery system that supported its growth" (The Northampton Silk Route, brochure, Northampton Silk Project, 2002), research has so far found no NAEI founder who overtly stated as much. Nor has any evidence been found that NAEI members voiced an objection to the fact that George W.
Benson went into cotton textiles after leaving the association. ' Abolitionist Deborah Weston was one of them. On 3 May 1839 she wrote to her sister Anne Warren Weston from New Bedford, "In the evening I took tea by invite at the Emersons, & as I wore my best silk gown, all the company thought very well of me the Holmes were there, the Tim Coffins, the Mackies & Ellis Bartlett, Mr Emerson's assistant, who is an abolitionist." Ms.A.9.2.11, page 95, Antislavery Collection, Boston Public Library. On linen as a free labor good, see Deborah Weston, New Bedford, to Anne Warren Weston, 13 November 1838, Ms.A.9.2.10, page 69, BPL Antislavery Collection. 12 The Childs had earlier contemplated moving to a free-labor colony that abolitionist Benjamin Lundy hoped to establish in Mexico.
There they met George Kimball, who later told Child that "some wealthy gentlemen" in Boston would back him if he would produce beet sugar. Child went to Europe to learn the business and upon his return partnered with one Edwin Church, whose1837bookon sugarbeets recommended the ConnecticutRiver Valley ofMassachusetts as the ideal location for beet cultivation. See various letters of Lydia Maria Child between 1836 and 1841 in Milton Meltzer and Patricia G. Holland, eds., Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982), 54, 72, 115, 117, 141. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co.
MA Section number 8 Page 4 (Burt's farm eventually became the core of what is now known as the Ross Farm.) Burt built the first dwelling on the property (razed in the 1870s), and his son Theodore built the existing dwelling just west of the first house in ca.1825. ' Whitmarsh planted acres of mulberry trees on the tract, and built a brick factory for the manufacture of "sewing silk" (thread) and, later, various types of ribbons and silk vesting." Later in the year Whitmarsh incorporated the enterprise as the Northampton Silk Company. In 1841 they sold the property and fifty additional acres to Samuel L. Hill. Just as Hill was completing the purchase, however, he and others created NAEI, and in keeping with the association's commitment to communal ownership, the farm became part of its common property.!
Eventually, the NAEI acquired the silk company's four-story brick factory, its Mill River dam and waterpower site, a sawmill, some small workshops and outbuildings, and several dwellings with land - including the Ross Farm - amounting to 470 acres. In a circular aimed at recruiting members, the association stated its aim to organize the community "upon principles. .. the best calculated to fulfill the designs of God in placing man in this life." Existing educational and business institutions did not emphasize "the co-operation of man as an essential condition." For his own part Hill deplored "the competition so omnipresent and oppressive" of modern life. Association founders averred that contemporary society instead recognized "invidious distinctions [and] assigning the highest rank for other reasons than moral worth." The NAEI constitution stated the situation more critically.
It decried the divide between those who did productive labor and those who merely lived on the labor of others - or, as it elsewhere stated, "extreme ignorance and poverty in immediate juxtaposition with the most insolent licentiousness." It excoriated the "systematically warlike" nature of governments everywhere and the fact that political parties were "notoriously and characteristically destitute of principle except the love of place." Finally, the constitution criticized American religion for having organized itself into "hostile sects" and for replacing "audible and visible forms for the inward power of truth and goodness." The association would instead seek "the union of spiritual, intellectual, and practical attainments" and "the equality of rights and rank for all," its circular declared.
Among the seven constitutional principles the founders articulated was that "the rights of all are equal without distinction of sex, color, or condition, sect or religion."16 The NAEI operated a store, school, and common eating and living space for both families and single people who (continued) 13 Both houses are depicted on a map of Northampton dated 1831. 14 It is unclear how many acres of the Ross Farm property was planted with mulberry trees. "Historical Sketch of Florence," Hampshire Gazette, 2 April 1867, stated that the trees covered one hundred acres of the later Ross Farm meadow, while Sheffeld, History of Florence, 58, states that only fifteen acres of this meadow had the trees, at least initially. 5 «Historical Sketch » 25-26.
The association owned seven houses - the Ross farmhouse, the original Gaius Burt cottage next door, the Benson, Adam, and Mack houses, and "White's cottage." All were occupied by NAEI families. In 1844, nearly eighty members lived in the boardinghouse. See Sheffeld, History of Florence, 96. 16 See Sheffeld, History of Florence, 69-77, where the text of the circular and constitution appears in full; Hill's quote appears in Clark, Communitarian Moment, 32. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 5 became members. The former Whitmarsh mill contained the store, the boardinghouse, and three rooms devoted to making, finishing, and packing silk.
NAEI's silk growing department handled the trees and cocoonery; its agricultural department cultivated crops for the community's use." By early April 1842 thirty persons had joined the association, and by spring of 1844 NAEI had 120 members, the most it had at any one time. Over the four and a half years of its existence, NAEI attracted 240 members, and the association received at least 180 inquiries asking about or recommending membership for people who ultimately did not join. More than half of the association's total membership, historian Christopher Clark has noted, "had identifiable abolitionist connections or sympathies."I8 Several members and visitors noted that the collective commitment to abolition and equal rights was not only a principle.
The black abolitionist David Ruggles, who moved from New York City to Northampton in 1842 and became an NAEI member in the same year, wrote in the Albany North Star that the association "is founded on the high idea of the EQUAL BROTHERHOOD OF THE RACE. While the great majority of reformers are theoretical merely; the members of this Association are practical - endeavoring to live out the sacred principles of HUMAN EQUALITY."19 Frances Judd recalled that "when David Ruggles came here from New York to find a refuge, he was welcomed and treated as an honored friend, and so were many others.*20 When a New Bedford abolitionist wrote to ask about the admission of a man of color, NAEI secretary William Adam replied, "Of course, his color is not a disqualification but rather a recommendation to us.*21 "It was a place to extinguish all aristocratic pretensions.
There was no high, no low, no masters, no servants, no white, no black," Frederick Douglass noted after a visit to Florence in the early 1840s. "I found ...
that the men and women who were interested in the work of revolutionizing the whole system of civilization were also deeply interested in the emancipation of the slaves; and this was enough to insure my sympathy to these universal reformers." Clark has argued that association members embraced "black men and women among them as equals - one of the few places anywhere in the United States to do so in this period."23 This aspect of the association irritated the Newburyport Watchtower, which described the Florence chimeni Sil, Ciascd ar suegerad, Nditr s siris, Clmisiunesta, raris da canpilite ad noerceso ladies and (continued) 1 Other NAEI departments were lumber, cutlery, mechanical (which included shoe making), domestic (to take care of the boardinghouse and secure work for women), store, accounting, educational, and secretarial. Sheffeld, History of Florence, 89-90.
18 Clark, Communitarian Moment, 2, 61, 66, 76. 19 David Ruggles to Editor of the Albany North Star, reprinted in Liberator, 24 May 1844. 20 Judd, "Reminiscence," in Sheffeld, History of Florence, 117. 2' William Adam to John Bailey, 13 February 1843, cited in Paul Gaffiney, "Coloring Utopia: The African American Presence in the Northampton Association of Education and Industry," in Christopher Clark and Kerry W. Buckley, eds., Letters from an American Utopia: The Stetson Family and the Northampton Association, 1843-1847 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 143. 22 Frederick Douglass, "What I Found at the Northampton Association," in Sheffeld, History of Florence, 130. 23 Clark, Communitarian Moment, 7. 2 Ibid., 95.
NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 6 recommended by a member or a friend of the groupmay have limited black membership. Only four people of color are known to have been NAEI members - Ruggles, Sojourner Truth (who began speaking publicly on abolitionism only after coming to Florence), and the fugitives Stephen C. Rush and George W. Sullivan. Samuel Hill, the Ross Farm, and Fugitive Assistance Samuel Lapham Hill came to Florence in the spring of 1841 and resided in the house on the former Burt farm. He, like Garrison, was adamantly nonsectarian and nonpolitical.
Unlike the political abolitionists who split from the American Anti-Slavery Society to form the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, Hill refused to vote; he rather believed in the power of what Garrison termed "moral suasion" to eradicate slavery.? Committed to the association's aim "to work out an improved state of society," Hill became the NAEI's first and longtime treasurer. In addition, he was for some time the assistant superintendent of silk manufacture there and began, with his Willimantic associate Hiram Wells, a machine shop to produce cutlery and metal goods the community needed. Northampton abolitionist Seth Hunt later declared that Hill's name should "stand highest" on the list of "founders and upbuilders" of Florence; "he was a staunch friend of the poor and oppressed and a stout defender of free thought and the broadest religious toleration," Hunt wrote.?
Several examples of Hill's assistance to fugitives from slavery have been documented, but his son Arthur Gaylord Hill, born in 1841 on the Ross Farm, recalled it to have been systematic even though he could remember few specific "incidents" when asked about the subject in the early 1890s. "A good many passengers stopped 'five minutes for refreshments' at my father's, and conductors were often changed here," A. G. Hill wrote in response to a query from local historian Joseph Marsh. "On a few trips I was either conductor or assistant conductor. Quite a number of the through passengers temporarily took up their abode in Florence, the balmy anti-slavery climate here proving very (continued) 25 Sullivan, admitted as an NAEI member in early November 1843, left the community in mid-1844; see Dolly W. Stetson, Northampton, to James A.
Stetson, 26 July 1844, in Clark and Buckley, eds., Letters from an American Utopia, 49. Rush arrived in May 1843. William Lloyd Garrison wrote in the Liberator, 2 August 1843, that Rush was "a fugitive from the land of chains, whips and bowie knives, and six months ago stood under the lash of the driver as a beast of burden"; he was impelled to escape when he learned that, as Garrison noted, "Massachusetts had given succor and protection to George Latimer," the fugitive who escaped from Norfolk, Virginia, to Boston in October 1842. Rush left NAEI in April 1846 but soon afterward asked to be readmitted.
"I have tried the people out," he wrote to Hall Judd on 7 July 1846, "but I don't find no place like the association yet for I believe that they live out a principle that the world no nothing about." Rush's letter is bound into Records of NAEI, 4:26, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester. Thanks to Steve Strimer for this information. 26 "Historical Sketch," 25. 27 Quoted in Sheffeld, History of Florence, 205. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 7 attractive to them."28 Hill then stated that his father most frequently brought fugitives to "the Kingman's in Cummington, but occasionally our living freight was delivered to a Mr.
Crafts' house in Whately."29 Three years later, Arthur Hill provided somewhat more specific detail about his father's activity to Underground Railroad chronicler Wilbur Siebert. "Our station was on the line from Hartford going North, though sometimes we had passengers who would come up part way through the Hudson River Valley or diagonally across from the Pennsylvania line. Most of those who came to us came via Southampton (10 miles from Florence) and were brought to us by a Mr. Lyman (whose first name I do not recall) or some one of his neighbors. Our deliveries were usually made to a little circle of abolitionists at Cummington Mass, eighteen miles northwest of Florence, of which circle Mr Kingman was one of the centres. Sometimes our passengers were sent through Whately about ten miles north of Florence up the Connecticut River Valley, to a Mrs.
Crafts.*30 Whether Hill received fugitives at his home between 1841 and 1845, when he lived at the Ross Farm, as well as in the home he occupied at 33 Maple Street afterward, is not known. His son Arthur was only four in 1845 and surely did not begin to help his father until about 1850, though what he told Marsh and Siebert may have been based partly on stories recounting events before he was born or in his infancy. Fugitive narratives and the retrospective accounts of fugitive assistants and their families strongly suggest that passage up the Connecticut River Valley was common among fugitives." Basil Dorsey, who escaped Maryland slavery in 1836, eventually reached the home of black abolitionist Robert Purvis outside Philadelphia; Purvis went (continued) 28 Arthur G. Hill, Florence, to Joseph Marsh, 31 January 1893, quoted in Joseph Marsh, "The 'Underground Railway,' in ibid., 164.
2 Richard Kingman operated a tavern on Main Street in Cummington, northwest of Florence; now 41 Main Street, it is a local historic site called Kingman Tavern. James M. Crafts, born in Whately in 1817, did not profess any direct fugitive assistance when he wrote to Wilbur Siebert in 1896. "Of course everything of the nature of assisting runaway slaves on their journey was kept very close," Crafts wrote. "And young fellows were considered likely to be leaky. So we were not made the assistants in the keeping of secrets of that kind. - Yet I have distinct recollections relative to the fact that Mr Osee Monson was always credited with the honor of being the leader in assisting the poor black men to escape." Crafts, Orange, MA, to Siebert, 24 July 1896, Siebert Notebooks. Arthur G. Hill, Boston, July 18, 1896, to Siebert, Siebert Notebooks.
31 Writing in 1900, Aella Greene of Springfield wrote that fugitives coming to the central Connecticut coast from New York City took one of "two routes of the Underground system" into Massachusetts and possibly Vermont and Canada. These routes converged at Northampton, and from there a "spur track" existed when it was necessary "to blind the pursuer of fugitives." Greene wrote, "The runaways were sent over the hills from Northampton and Florence to Cummington, where they were kept in hiding until the hunters, supposing them gone forward up the valley had pursued them and had returned from their fruitless search in that direction and abandoned the quest and gone home." Fugitives then recrossed the hills to proceed further north up the valley. Greene's sources are, however, unknown.
Aella Greene, "The Underground Railroad & Those Who Operated It - III: Well- Known "[Outlaws]" of Westfield, Northampton, Amherst and Other Towns - The Chester Branch, A [Bit] of the Way in Vermont," Springfield Republican, 1 April 1900. This three-part series was reprinted in pamphlet form in 2006 by Collective Copies, Inc., in Florence. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 8 with Dorsey to New York and there placed Dorsey "in the hands of Joshua Leavett, the editor of The Emancipator, who sent him to Connecticut to find employment on his father's farm.*32 The Leavitt farm was actually in Charlemont, Massachusetts, a valley town north of Florence.
There Dorsey and his family lived until about 1844, when they moved to Northampton. In 1838 James Lindsay Smith fled from Northumberland County, Virginia, to New Castle, Delaware, and then to Philadelphia. Fugitive assistants there sent him "with a letter directed to David Ruggles" (who moved to Florence in 1842) of the New York Vigilance Committee, and Ruggles in turn sent Smith off with "two letters, one to a Mr. Foster, in Hartford; and the other to Doctor Osgood, in Springfield." Smith took a steamboat to Hartford and another to Springfield, where he found his way to the home of Samuel Osgood, pastor of Springfield's First Congregational Church. By 1842 he moved to Norwich, Connecticut, Ruggles's native place, where he lived the rest of his life.
Probably in 1839 or 1840, William Green, a fugitive from Maryland's Eastern Shore, was taken aboard a vessel by a willing captain to Philadelphia and was sent on to Ruggles in New York; Ruggles likewise sent Green to Osgood in Springfield.3 The presence of numerous fugitives in Springfield is at least suggested by the fact that fully 29.9% of the city's 1855 black population claimed slave-state birthplaces. Only in New Bedford, whose fugitive population is documented to have been substantial, was the proportion of southern-born blacks as high. Arthur G. Hill noted that the NAEI members' feelings about equal rights - "that the brotherhood of man included all of whatever color or shape of head," as he put it - encouraged some fugitives to remain in Florence rather than continue their flight.
"Here at any rate was a house of refuge for the ill-treated wanderer whether from Southern slavery or Northern barbarity," he stated. "Many residents of color therefore soon made this their home and were fraternally greeted and guarded."4 In 1843 Sophia Foord, who taught the NAEI school for a time, noted in a letter to the fugitive assistant Robert Adams, then living in Pawtucket, "This is becoming or has already become quite a depot for fugitives - one left here on Thursday & another arrived the day following who will probably tarry a short time.
He is quite intelligent, speaks of having been kindly treated by a Mrs Adams of Providence [illegible word] day last week, who it is presumed is your mother - He says the slaves escape so frequently that their masters say the abolitionists must have a rail road under ground, that many more would run away were it not for the belief they are (continued) 32 Purvis quoted in R. C. Smedley, History of the Underground Railroad in Chester and the Neighboring Counties of Pennsylvania (Lancaster, PA: Office of the Journal, 1883), 356-61. "Basil Dorsey," Hampshire Gazette, 2 April 1867, states that "gentlemen connected with the Anti-Slavery Standard sent him [Dorsey] to Northampton," but the National Anti-Slavery Standard, the newspaper to which the Gazette must refer, did not begin publication until 1840, four years after Dorsey's escape.
See National Register Nomination Form for the Dorsey-Jones House, Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts (2004). 33 Smith, Autobiography; Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green (Formerly a Slave), Written by Himself (Springfield: L. M. Guernsey, 1853). Green was a Springfield resident at the time he published this narrative. 34 A. G. Hill, "Florence the Mecca Sanctuary of the Colored Race," Arthur G. Hill Papers, Forbes Library, Northampton, MA. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co.
MA Section number 8 Page 9 taught to cherish that abolitionists at the North would beat them."3 Sixteen fugitives, fourteen by name, have so far been identified as Northampton residents, if only briefly, in the 1840s and 1850s.36 Judging by the 1850 federal census, Florence appears to have been a more hospitable place for people of color than the rest of Northampton. Almost 37% of Northampton's black population lived in Florence, whose population was only 17% of the total population of Northampton. People of color were 9.6% of Florence's total population, compared to 1.9% of the population of the rest of Northampton. Only two of Florence's fifty-six people of color (3.5%) did not live in their own households (and both lived in the homes of former NAEI members), while thirteen of Northampton's eighty-four people of color did (15.5 %).3?
Two instances of Samuel Hill's assistance to specific fugitives who opted to remain in Florence have been documented. In 1852 Samuel Hill sold three acres of land to Basil Dorsey, a fugitive who had been living in Florence since 1844. However, in that transaction Hill reserved one acre, with its dwelling house, where the fugitive William Wright was then living. 38 The dwelling was the "oil mill house" that David Ruggles had purchased about 1846, and in which he had lived until some point before his death in 1849. Hill had come into possession of the house as one of the administrators of Ruggles's estate, so it was clearly he who rented the house to Wright after it had been moved to South Street in Florence; it still stands at 47 Florence Road.
William Wright was one of the ten "fugitives from southern Slavery" who published a notice in the Northampton Courier urging town residents to attend public meeting (continued) 35 Sophia Foord, Northampton, to Robert Adams, 8 May 1843, private collection. Among them were Mary Sly, George Washington Sullivan, Stephen C. Rush, and Thomas H. Jones. Sly, said to have been born in either New Orleans or Natchez, worked for a time at the tavern run by Jeremy Warriner in Springfield; she escaped from her owner, a "Col. Trask," and it may be at that time that she came to Florence, where she was listed in the 1855 state census. She had returned to Springfield by 1860. See an interview with Sly's daughter, Mrs.
Julia Lee, in "Passing of the Old Tavern: Uncle Jeremy Warriner's Old Coffee House - Where He Entertained Such Notables as Kossuth and Jenny Lind," Springfield Homestead, 6 February 1907; see also "Jerry Warriner's Tavern," Springfield Weekly Republican, 31 January 1907, 13; and Sarah B. Merrick (Warriner's great niece by adoption), West Seattle, to Wilbur Siebert, 28 February 1907, Siebert Notebooks. 37 Thanks to Steve Strimer for providing the range of households listed in the 1850 census that were Florence households. Florence's population of 580 persons included 56 people of color in that year. 38 HCD 142:439. 39 Steve Strimer, "Benjamin Barrett/David Mack/David Ruggles/Hannah Randall House: A Provisional Interpretation of the Evidence: 47 Florence Road, Florence, MA" (Manuscript, 6 July 2006.
Hill later transferred the house and its one-acre lot to Hiram Stebbins, who in turn sold it to the African American laundress Hannah Randall. She, her daughters, and her grandson lived there until Randall died in 1883. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 10 on the Fugitive Slave Act in October 1850.40 Wright was listed in the 1850 Northampton census as a fifty-year-old black laborer who stated his birthplace as Massachusetts, clearly a deliberate falsification.
In 1850 Hill also helped Sojourner Truth, another former NAEI member, to purchase her own home in Florence, and he had his son Arthur copy Truth's narrative of her life, taken down by "a kind lady in another town," and printed it in pamphlet form. "We expected to work out an improved state of society," Hill later said of NAEI, "and make ourselves and friends happier." In his life after the association disbanded Hill continued what he termed the "honest, earnest efforts for a better life" that NAEI members had begun.* Facing stifling debt and, perhaps, growing discord, the NAEI began to unravel in the fall of 1845. *2 In October George W. Benson resigned, and he and the association divided the common property.
Benson purchased ninety acres and the four-story mill, which he quickly converted to a cotton textile mill with the backing of Northampton's Williston family, evangelical abolitionists whose assistance to fugitives has long been asserted.* The NAEI held the remaining 380 acres, the boardinghouse, several houses and workshops, the cocoonery, and the farm. Benson's purchase was designed to reduce the association's debt, but the enterprise proved no more tenable after the sale. NAEI disbanded in early November 1846, and Hill alone took on all of NAEI's liabilities, stock, and debt. He then developed a plan with his brother-in-law Edwin Eaton of Chaplin, Connecticut, to make it possible for former association members and others to own their own property and in so doing, Clark has suggested, be able to maintain some semblance of the social world they had created in Florence.
Hill plotted lots in the modern-day center of Florence, sold building lots, and provided financing. "It was a strong desire of Mr. Hill," one local historian noted, "that every man of family should own his little home place, and his influence was thus extended. Many poor men have been helped by him in the erection of homesteads, and whenever he has deeded land for that purpose he has stipulated that no intoxicating liquors should be sold on the premises." In addition Hill hoped (continued) 40 "To the Citizens of Northampton," Northampton Courier, 15 October 1850. The signers were Basil Dorsey, William C. Randell, Joseph Wilson, George Wright, "Losenberry," John Williams, Lewis French, William Henry Boyer, Henry Anthony, and William Wright. Like William Wright, George Wright stated his birthplace falsely, as New York, in the 1850 census.
Dorsey (Maryland), French (Virginia), Anthony (Maryland), Wilson (Maryland), and Williams (Kentucky) represented their birthplaces honestly. Randell, Losenberry, and Boyer do not appear as Florence residents in the 1850 census, and the 1855 state census shows only Dorsey and Anthony still in town. 41 Samuel L. Hill, Centerville MN, 2 February 1867, for "Historical Sketch," 8-9. 42 See Sheffeld, History of Florence, 101, on the rumored sources of discontent among association members. 43 According to Aella Greene, "The Underground Railroad & Those That Operated It," Springfield Republican, 8 April 1900 (reprint, Florence, MA: Collective Copies, 2006) J. P.
Williston sheltered fugitives at his house on King Street in Northampton and at his expense paid to move those who wished to move further north, "by train or team." Greene stated that Williston sent fugitives to Levi Graves "and a Billings or two" at Hatfield and employed fugitives at his Florence cotton mill, including Basil Dorsey. Other sources asserting a prominent Underground Railroad role for Williston include letter of Henry Shepherd, Northampton, to Wilbur Siebert, 2 October 1896; F. Bonney, Hadley, to Siebert, 18 September 1896; Arthur G. Hill, Boston, 18 July 1896, to Siebert; and Boston Evening Transcript, 31 March 1926, Siebert Notebooks. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co.
MA Section number 8 Page 11 to raise enough money through property sales to extinguish the association's debt. The plan was at least partially successful: as Clark has noted, "By the autumn of 1846 enough had been done to permit the community to end without a complete financial collapse."4 Hill took over the association's silk business and, after some early difficulty, founded Nonotuck Silk Company (initially Nonotuck Steam and Silk Manufactory, incorporated in 1855) with Northampton's Samuel L. Hinckley as a silent partner. The company made machine twist, sewing, embroidery, rope, etching, color-fast knitting silks, and silk hosiery and underwear, and it is believed to have made the first thread for sewing machines. By 1867 Nonotuck Silk employed 137 people at its Florence factory and another 87 people at a plant in nearby Leeds.
It became Northampton's largest employer and the state's largest producer of silk goods.4 By 1892 it had plants in adjacent Haydenville and in Hartford, Connecticut, and employed eight hundred people.* With two other investors Hill also financed former NAEI member Hiram Wells in the machine business that became Florence Sewing Machine Company, which by1867 employed nearly three hundred people; the popularity of itsFlorence model made it at least for a time one of the nation's leading sewing machine manufacturers. Hill also invested in the button and daguerreotype case factory of Alfred P. Critchlow; Critchlow is stated to have employed fugitives to work in this plant. By the 1860s R. G.
Dunn credit accounts state that Hill was at the very least "worth $100,000.348 With this substantial wealth Hill created four local institutions that bespoke his commitment to equal rights and social reform. With two other men he incorporated the Workingmen's Savings Bank of Florence. Like mechanics' banks and five cents savings banks, workingmen's banks offered low minimum deposits as a way to enable middling and working people to save and have their savings invested. In 1863 Hill and others founded Florence's Free Congregational Society, which aimed to accomplish goals much like those of the NAEL. Its articles of agreement stated, "We set up no theological condition of membership, and neither demand nor expect uniformity of doctrinal belief, asking only unity of purpose to seek and accept the right and true, and an honest aim and effort to make these the rules of life.
And, recognizing the brotherhood of the human race and the equality of human rights, we make no distinction as to the conditions and rights of membership in this society, on account of sex, or color, or nationality?"49 In 1864 Hill contributed $31,000 toward the $33,000 cost of a new schoolhouse for the district, he funded an evening school for working adults and children, and in 1876 he founded one of the first kindergartens to be created in the (continued) 44 "Historical Sketch," 27; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 181. 45 In the fall of 1852, when a separate post office was to be established in the district, residents assembled to choose a name. Dr. Charles Munde, who operated the water cure David Ruggles had established, suggested the name Florence, because that city was "the great silk emporium of Italy." See Sheffeld, History of Florence, 107; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 206.
46 "Historical Sketch, 26; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 162. 47 Sheffeld, History of Florence, 242; "Historical Sketch, 15; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 207. 48 Clark, Communitarian Moment, 213. 49 Clark, Communitarian Moment, 207; Sheffeld, History of Florence, 147-48. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 12 United States.
Like the Free Congregational Society, Hill stated that he would fund the kindergarten as long as it educated small children in a way "unmixed with ecclesiastical and theological exercises or influence" and remained open to all Florence residents "without distinction of race, nationality, or previous condition."° Clark has stated of Hill, "Keeping in the background, he was rarely mentioned by visitors. But in time he quietly emerged as the community's last main leader and principal arbiter of its fortunes," the man "eventually to become most closely identified with the community and its local influence. Austin Ross, the Ross Farm, and Fugitive Assistance The Ross Farm had been part of the common property of NAEI since 1841, and with the association's demise in July 1846 it fell to trustees Samuel L. Hill, Hall Judd, and Joseph C. Martin.
At first they mortgaged 305 acres in six adjoining lots, including the farm, to the trustees of Amherst College, and in October 1849 Hill sold the farm to Abel Ross of Chaplin, Connecticut, who had moved to Northampton probably about the same time as his nephew Austin Ross. Austin Ross arrived in Florence in March 1845 and probably lived at the 123 Meadow Street property from the time of his settlement there: Hill had moved to a new house in 1845, and it seems likely that he did so to make way for Ross. Austin Ross purchased the property from his uncle in July 1857.2 Austin Ross (1812-1902) and his wife Fidelia moved to Northampton to run the association's farm.
"When the water- cure was in operation," one local history notes, "he supplied that establishment with from 50 to 75 quarts [of milk] per day."s3 He continued dairying, to supply the village with milk, after the association disbanded and at any given time kept from twelve to twenty cows. Ross came from Chaplin to Florence about the same time as Joseph C. Martin, to whom he was related by marriage, and it is likely that he knew Hill and other NAEI members in Connecticut, where he had been an abolitionist. According to Clark, Hill and other Willimantic abolitionists were "in touch with a further group, in the small town of Chaplin, Connecticut, that fought a long battle over abolitionism and women's rights within the congregational church before being forced to give up" and leave it.
The antislavery movement in Chaplin had been, Clark has noted, "active and close-knit" and had existed harmoniously with the church until the schism in the movement in 1839-40. Martin, "one of the radicals," and others actively opposed the Congregational minister's efforts to keep women from speaking at revival meetings and his characterization of abolitionists as a "disorganizing" influence. Garrisonians, or "old organizationists," argued for the involvement of women as equals in antislavery reform because equal rights for all was a main tenet of the movement; "new organizationists" held that any focus on women difffused the movement's original focus on the plight of the enslaved. Chaplin abolitionists tried (continued) 50 Sheffeld, History of Florence, 148, 156-57; "Historical Sketch," 27; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 216. 51 Clark, Communitarian Moment, 166, 17.
52 HCD 114:269, 130: 325, 174:254 53 "Historical Sketch," 30; Clark, Communitarian Moment, 188. How many acres Ross initially farmed is unclear; his purchase from Abel Ross in 1857 included 116 acres. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 13 to compel the church to take a formal stand against slavery until 1843, when they decided to "come out"; the church excommunicated them, and within months Martin moved to Florence. Martin became a member of the NAEI in April 1844, and nine months later Ross arrived. Clark does not mention Ross as among the Chaplin objectors, but it seems almost certain that he was.
"In his early life he became an abolitionist," the Hampshire Gazette noted in its 1901 obituary for Ross, "and was dismissed from the Presbyterian church on account of his anti-slavery sentiments."4 His uncle Abel was probably also among them: on 6 March 1841 later NAEI member Erasmus Darwin Hudson wrote, "Last evening went to Friend Hill's with Geo. W. Benson, W. L. Garrison.... after the meeting went home with bro Abel Ross and Charles L. Fiskewho have been persecuted bytheirminister because they favor male and female equally participating in religious meetings. "Ss That Ross was an abolitionist is indicated by his financial support of the North Star, the antislavery newspapel Frederick Douglass began in 1847, and Douglass's later Frederick Douglass' Paper. 56 That he assisted fugitives was asserted in local histories and in numerous obituaries for both him and his wife.
"His home was used as an underground rail-road, sheltering fugitive slaves in their flight to Canada where freedom waited him," Florence's Anna Pauline Friedrick recalled. "Mr. and Mrs. Ross were ardent abolitionists, and their home served as a station of the 'underground' railroad,"" one 1902 obituary for Fidelia Ross stated, and Austin Ross's Hampshire Gazette obituary the year before noted, "During the anti-slavery times he was a successful agent for the underground railroad, and many a slave was gotten into Canada through his assistance." Ross's antislavery impulse is also evident in his membership in the Free Soil Party (Ruggles, Basil Dorsey, and Critchlow were all members as well), and his commitment to equal rights is demonstrated by his charter and lifelong membership in Florence's Free Congregational SocietyS?
In his 1893 account of Florence's role in the Underground Railroad, Joseph Marsh asserted one specific instance of Ross's fugitive assistance& He is said to have sheltered a fugitive whose last name was Wilson "about a year and a half in one of his chambers" and to have secured him work as a night watchman at the Greenville cotton mill (the successor to Benson's cotton mill, which failed in 1850). Arthur G. Hill recalled a fugitive named William Wilson, (continued) s4 Ibid., 44; Christopher Clark and Kerry W. Buckley, eds., Letters from an American Utopia: The Stetson Family and the Northampton Association, 1843-1847 (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004), 152 n. 149; Austin Ross obituary, Hampshire Gazette, 28 January 1901. 35 Hudson Family Papers, Special Collections and Archives, W. E. B. DuBois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Thanks to Steve Strimer for this excerpt. 3 See the "Receipts" column in North Star, 25 January 1850, and Frederick Douglass' Paper, 11 February 1853. 57 Henry S. Gere, Reminiscences of Old Northampton: Sketches of the Town as It Appeared from 1840 to 1850 (N.p., 1902), 61- 62; Obituary for Austin Ross, Hampshire Gazette. 58 Marsh, *Underground Railway,'" 167. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 14 but he did not state that he lived with Ross at any time.
NAEI member Dolly Stetson referred to a James Willson in three letters to her husband in 1844 and 1845, but this Willson left the community in May 1845 because, she wrote, "he is not a good workman." Because Ross did not move to Florence until March 1845, it seems unlikely that this man is the Wilson he housed for eighteen months. It is possible, however, that the Wilson at the Ross Farm was Joseph Willson, one of the ten fugitives who signed the Fugitive Slave Act meeting call in October 1850 and who sold a lot he had purchased in 1848 only three days after that meeting. Hill recounted Wilson's story twice, once referring to him only as Wilson and once as William Wilson; it may be that Hill simply recalled the man's first name incorrectly.
One of Hill's reminiscences states that Wilson came to Florence "before the decision of Justice Taney and its results," which would have placed his arrival at some indefinite moment before March 1857, when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger Taney upheld a lower-court ruling that Dred Scott was not free even though his master had often brought him into territories where slavery was illegal. Hill wrote of Wilson, "He decided to remain here, became a laborer, lived on Nonotuck St., got together a little money, tramped back to Virginia to try to rescue his son from slavery. After a few months he appeared with his son. Leaving him he went back to get his daughter. He was captured and kept in slavery again for several months.
He again escaped and arrived here with his daughter when the three started for Canada to happily breathe the air of freedom." In another account Hill noted that Wilson's son stayed behind in Florence during his father's second trip south because he was "confident that his father would again escape and decided to wait for him here. Sure enough, in a little while the old gentleman and daughter came, and after a short stay to rest and get a little money the whole party moved north to the queen's dominions." Whether this man or his son lived for some time with Ross, and whether Hill described the Joseph Wilson of 1850, is not known; no man of color by either name appears in Northampton censuses of 1855 and 1860. The Ross Farm's Later Years In 1870 the Ross household included Austin and Fidelia, as well as their son, Dwight, and his new wife, Mary.
Their daughter, Martha, still lived "at home," although the Rosses' third child, Edson, had left the house. Two farm laborers also boarded with the family. Ten years later, Austin and Fedelia shared the house with two farm workers and a hired housekeeper. Both Dwight and Martha, who in the meantime had married local merchant Robert M. Branch, had separate households. Dwight and his family lived in a house on Meadow Street east of the Mill River; the Branches address is unknown. By 1884, Austin Ross had built a new barn to the property at 123 Meadow Street, (continued) S9 Dolly W. Stetson, Northampton, to James A. Stetson, 26 May 1844, 20 February 1845, 4 May 1845, in Clark and Buckley, eds., Letters from an American Utopia, 36, 86, 106.
6° Joseph Willson purchased lot #4 in Bensonville Village lots on 12 October 1848 and was living next to Ezekiel Cooper, also an African-American from Maryland, at the time the federal census was taken in Florence in August 1850. Willson sold the lot on 26 October 1850. See HCD 125:307, 136:36. 6 Hill, "Florence the Meeea Sanctuary of the Colored Race"; Sheffeld, History of Florence, 166. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 15 but at more than 70 years of age, he had given over much of the day-to-day management of the farm and the milk delivery route to Dwight.
In 1890 Austin conveyed title to the 122-acre farm to his son, and parents and son exchanged houses, with Dwight taking charge of the homestead. In 1901 Martha Jane Branch was deeded a lot of land on the southeast corner of Meadow and Prospect streets. Her address in 1900 was 48 Meadow Street, opposite her parents' retirement house at no. 61. Austin died the following year.® At Dwight Ross's death in 1917, his obituary described the Ross Farm as "one of the largest in the Connecticut valley," and it further noted that Dwight was known throughout the valley as "a tobacco raiser and for many years as a producer of milk.*63 When the 1910 census was enumerated, Dwight was a widower, and his son, Alfred L.
Ross, and Alfred's wife, Florence, were living with him on the farm, with the son described as the "foreman." Dwight conveyed the farm to his son in 1915.64 The 1920 census indicates that Alfred, his wife and two daughters were the farm's sole occupants following his father's death. The census recorded his occupation as "tobacco farmer." Ross sold the farm, which amounted to 122 acres of land, to Richard J. Whalen, a buyer and packer of leaf tobacco from nearby Hatfield in 1927. The farm carried a $12,000 mortgage, and Whalen was financed by Hipple Bros. & Co., Inc. of Philadelphia, apparently a tobacco trader. Whalen became sole owner in 1928, but defaulted on his mortgage in 1931, which had been picked up by another tobacco trader, H. Duys & Co., Inc. in New York City.'s in 1930, the farm was rented to Frederick J. Wentzel, a 29-year-old born in Massachusetts to German parents.
He was listed as a "general farmer," although tobacco likely continued. Perhaps Wentzel had been operating the farm since Richard J. Whalen had purchased it in 1927. Alfred L. Ross was working as a laborer on a large tobacco farm in Enfield, Connecticut, when the census was taken that year. He was one of fourteen farm workers residing in a boarding house there while his wife and daughters resided in a rented home back in Florence. Their Massachusetts household also included two female boarders, an indication of economic hard times. Wentzel was followed by Lawrence and Edna Pratt as tenants before H. Duys & Co. sold the property to Harry W. and Minnie B. Marsh of Hatfield in 1939.
The Marshes moved to the farm and immediately sold a 4.38-acre parcel at the west side of the farm on Spring Street, and they sold a seven-acre parcel east of the Mill River in 1941 suggesting that they were covering losses on the farm with the sale of property. Another tobacco grower, Richard H. Blauvelt. bought the farm in 1946; he also bought 17 acres of land on the south side of Meadow Street and opposite the farm. The following year, he sold both tracts to Theodore Blauvelt, either his son or brother. In 1955 Theodore Blauvelt conveyed the farm to Blauvelt Tobacco Farms, Inc. along with five other tracts located in Hatfield.6 Theodore (continued) 62 HCD 431:469, 551:62. 63 Obituary for Dwight A. Ross, undated clipping in Branch scrapbook. 64 HCD 711:299. 65 HCD 834:161, 844:454, 871:369, 872:443. 66 HCD 940:495, 946:123, 998:136. 6 HCD 1000:394, 1012:354, 1204:58.
NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 16 Blauvelt and his family resided in the old farmhouse for 39 years, during which time he removed the piazza and other Victorian features it had accrued and "restored" the building closer to its original external appearance, at least frontally. Otherwise, the company used the existing buildings, adding only a two-story masonry building in which farm workers boarded. Blauvelt shut down the farm in 1972 and, after reserving the current 2.25 acres with the house and farm buildings for his use, sold the rest to Philip R. Cohn and Bradford R. Collins, who promptly filed a subdivision plan for 39 lots fronting on Meadow and Spring streets.
(Six of these lots on Spring Street have been built on.)6® The speculators defaulted on their $80,000 mortgage and the Greenfield Savings Bank foreclosed on the property in 1977. The bank sold the farm acreage to Pyramid Corporation of Hadley, the builder of mega-shopping centers based in DeWitt, New York. Development plans did not materialize, and that land was sold to its present owner, Allard's Farms, Inc., in 1978.° In 1986 Theodore Blauvelt sold the remaining 2.25-acre property to John Jay and Lois Shelley Schieffelin of Williamsburg, Massachusetts, and the Schieffelins sold it to current owners Alicia and Nooni Hammarlund in 2002, who use it principally as their residence.' Architectural Significance The original form, plan and appearance of the farmhouse built by Theodore Burt in ca.
1825 are still discernable, and as such, the existing house is a distinctive example of Federal-period rural architecture in Northampton and Hampshire County. Because of its date of construction, it is a transitional building that retains characteristics of 18th. century construction techniques (framing and center chimney) and façade proportions, while exhibiting early 19t. century innovations in room arrangement and decoration. The two-story, side passage plan form was modern and commodious, reflecting the better than middling status of its builder, Theodore Burt. Although exterior and interior surface materials have been renewed, the heavy timber frame, center chimney, and decorative woodwork have survived largely intact. The interior plan is notable for its compactness and interesting symmetrical organization.
An entry with staircase and a parlor occupy the public realm in the front of the house, with a large kitchen and small heated chamber in the rear. The front spaces have stylish woodwork in an up-to-date Federal style; the board architraves and parlor mantel have deeply profiled surfaces and simple geometric corner blocks. There were four chambers on the second story and a fifth in the attic. A significant distinction of the house is that fugitives from slavery were housed in one or more of these rooms during the period Samuel Lapham Hill and Austin Ross inhabited the house. Samuel L. Hill is believed to have harbored fugitives in chambers in the house as they followed prescribed routes up the Connecticut River Valley on the Underground Railroad. His son, Arthur G. Hill, provided accounts of his (continued) 68 HCD 1615:18; also HC Plans 80:32 & 37. 69 HCD 1977:347, 2018,232, 2046:66.
70 HCD 2778:13, 6994:80. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 17 father's activity, but he did not specify whether these actions took place during or after the family resided at Ross Farm in 1841-45. However, if the Hills' activities are unproven, there are solid accounts of Austin and Fidelia Ross hosting fugitives in their home and assisting them safely north. Additions were made to the house after the Civil War, so the Underground Railroad activities would have taken place in the original section of the house.
Austin Ross was a successful farmer; his rich bottomland along the Mill River provided the basis for a productive farm that supplied the expanding industrial village of Northampton with fresh milk and dairy products. By 1860 his household included his wife and three children as well as a revolving coterie of farm laborers and domestic servants. He enlarged the house with the addition of a two-story service wing, with a new kitchen on the ground floor and bed chambers for hired help above. He also expanded the narrow room in the northwest corner of the ground floor with a one-story addition on the west side of the house to make it more functional.
Farmhouses with barns connected to them by an intermediate building containing work and storage rooms became popular forms in the Connecticut River Valley in the 19* century, and barns with entrances in their gable ends are commonly positioned at the end of the linear alignment of house, connector, and barn. Austin Ross added a long ell perpendicularly to the east side of his new kitchen wing in a variant on the connected house and barn; but his barn, complete with its gable end front façade, was sited about 45 feet away. The ell contained a wood shed, stable, wagon house and, probably, privy. The large barn with a voluminous interior for storing hay was constructed later, and it would have replaced an earlier barn that may have been connected to the house and ell, but that is not known for sure.
The barn is a modern type that was built throughout the valley in the last quarter of the 19t* century as dairy farming became an important agricultural occupation, and increasing amounts of hay were grown and stockpiled for feeding and bedding cows through the winter months. These tall aisle barns were distinguished by their gable fronts with full transoms above the doors. A shed attached to theside of the Ross hay barn was where the cows were comfortably sheltered. Better barns had flush vertical siding, slate roofs, and highly ornamented rooftop ventilators, such as was the case at the Ross Farm. The barn was a far greater sign of Ross's fashionableness and status than the old Burt house in which he lived, although they had "improved" its appearance with the addition of shadowy roof eaves and a wide piazza on the south and east sides.
The addition of a tobacco barn (or two, the wagon house and stables originated as a tobacco barn) at this time illustrates the evolving history of the property and the Ross's' involvement in this regional agricultural innovation. Farm production gradually shifted so that tobacco was the principal crop. Dwight Ross's son, Alfred, was identified as a tobacco farmer after he assumed proprietorship of the property in 1920. The large tobacco barn on the property represents the type that was constructed throughout the valley, and now that tobacco growing is no longer a viable agricultural product, it is one of a diminishing number of intact tobacco barns in the region.
The Ross Farm is significant in a number of local historical and architectural contexts, with it role in the (continued) NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 18 philosophical underpinnings and the practical operation of the Underground Railroad having state-wide significance. The house is a distinctive example of early 19th-century domestic architecture in the area, and its surviving barns and outbuildings illustrate the course of farming in the region over a period of more than a century. Archaeological Significance Since patterns of ancient Native American settlement in Northampton are poorly understood, any surviving sites could be significant.
Many areas in the town are underreported, and few sites have been systematically excavated in the area. Native American sites on the Ross Farm property may contribute important information related to ancient subsistence and settlement patterns within the Connecticut River drainage and the importance of those activities along major tributaries of that drainage. During the Contact Period, an important regional core developed along the Connecticut River in the Hadley-Northampton locale. During this period, Native subsistence and settlement patterns focused on larger riverine village sites along the Connecticut River, with seasonal exploitation of nearby upland faunal and floral resources. Ancient sites on the Ross Farm property may contribute important information that identifies how these patterns evolved from earlier periods.
Archaeological sites in the area may identify similarities between ancient patterns of subsistence and settlement along major Connecticut River tributaries, and later Contact Period patterns that focused on the Connecticut River with seasonal exploitation of the uplands. Historic archaeological resources described above may contribute important information related to the early settlement and agricultural history of Northampton, 19t-century communal, utopian movements in Massachusetts, and the Underground Railroad movement in the Commonwealth. Additional historical research, combined with archaeological survey and testing, may locate evidence of the Parsons sawmill, whose precise location is unknown but may be located on the property.
Archaeological resources from the site of the Parsons sawmill may contribute important information related to the early settlement of Northampton, the architectural characteristics of 17" century New England mills, and sawmill technology. The earliest documented archaeological resources on the Ross Farm property are potential resources associated with the Gaius Burt farmhouse (1801), including barns, outbuildings, and occupational-related features (trash pits, privies, wells). Historical and archaeological research at the Burt farmhouse may contribute important information related to the architectural characteristics of early 18* century farmhouses in Northampton, and the importance of agriculture in early Connecticut River Valley settlements.
Important information may exist that identifies the internal configuration of the farmstead, its relationship to building patterns of farmsteads in other New England areas, and the focus and technology associated with agricultural production on the farm. Additional historical research combined with archaeological survey and testing in the vicinity of the existing farmhouse may also contribute important information related to settlement, agriculture, manufacturing, and social evolution. Structural evidence of barns, outbuildings, and detailed analysis of the contents of occupational-related features, may identify structures and features that were used by the inhabitants of both farmhouses, or reused by residents of the existing house.
Important information may exist related to the cultivation of silkworms, the operation of the (continued) NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number 8 Page 19 Northampton Silk Company, and the social, cultural, and economic lives of the farm inhabitants. Occupational-related features may be stratified so that different occupations of the house and activities can be isolated through time. Outbuildings and occupational-related features may also contribute important information related to the Northampton Association for Education and Industry, a communal utopian organization created at a time when several similar groups were created across antebellum Massachusetts.
Historical and archaeological information may exist that identifies the extent to which silk production supported the community. Building types, their organization, and artifact distributions may also exist that identify the extent the groups developed around a nondenominational, free religious society, abolitionist activities, and other ideals such as women's equality, temperance, vegetarianism, and peace. Additional historical research combined with archaeological survey and testing may contribute important information related to the Underground Railroad in Massachusetts and the role the house and its inhabitants played in that movement. Between 1825 and the Civil War, two occupants of the house, Samuel Lapham Hill and, later, Austin Ross, engaged in activities to assist fugitives in their escape from slavery.
During Hill's occupancy, from 1841 to 1845, the property was part of a complex of buildings and land owned by the Northampton Association for Education and Industry noted above. Austin Ross, a member of the Association, purchased the farm in 1846 and lived there until the late 1890s. The Ross family occupied the farm until ca. 1935. A significant distinction of the house is that fugitives from slavery were housed in one or more rooms of the house during both the Hill and Ross periods of occupancy. A further distinction of the Ross occupancy is that he was reported to have sheltered a fugitive for a year and a half in one of the house chambers.
Documented occupancy of the house by fugitives for extended periods of time is important, since it increases the potential for their occupancy to be recognized in the contents of occupational-related features and possibly in the architectural characteristics of the house, barns, and outbuildings. Since properties that harbored fugitives on the Underground Railroad are indistinguishable from similar buildings that were not associated with Underground Railroad activities, structural evidence of buildings in this type that survive in an archaeological context should also offer no additional evidence of their Underground Railroad association. Associated occupational-related features (trash pits, privies, wells), however, may contribute important evidence that documents Underground Railroad activities at these locations.
Subsistence refuse and material culture items associated with fugitives may have been deposited in hidden areas to conceal the presence of fugitives at these locations. On the other hand, refuse and material culture associated with fugitives may not have been hidden at all but deposited in normal trash deposits. By the mid 19t* century, trash deposits on residential properties may be more common in rural areas than urban settings. Hidden refuse deposits may characterize both urban and rural areas. Refuse deposits may contain evidence of africanisms or West African culture associated with Southern black fugitives that contrasts sharply with material culture items of Anglo homeowners or even northern blacks. Privies may also contain important macro-fossil evidence that indicates the presence of fugitives.
Parasitic and floral evidence may exist that indicates an association with diseases and parasitic conditions specific to West Africa or the American south. Occupational-related features can be an important archaeological resource type on Underground Railroad sites, since they can occur with both extant buildings and on archaeological sites. (end) NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co., MA Section number Page 1 Major Bibliographical References PRIMARY SOURCES Papers. Amherst, MA. University of Massachusetts. W. E. B. DuBois Library. Special Collections and Archives. Hudson Family Ancestry.com. U.S. Census Records, 1840-1880. Boston MA. Boston Public Library. Antislavery Collection. Cambridge MA. Houghton Library.
Harvard University. "The 'Underground Railroad' in Massachusetts." Vols. 13 and 14 of Notebooks Concerning the Underground Railroad. Material Collected by Professor Wilber H. Siebert, Ohio State University, Columbis, n.d. Milton Meltzer and Patricia G. Holland, eds., Lydia Maria Child: Selected Letters, 1817-1880. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1982 Northampton, MA. Forbes Library. Arthur G. Hill Papers. _.Hampshire County Registry of Deeds SECONDARY SOURCES Clark, Christopher. The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Clark, Christopher, and Kerry W. Buckley, eds. Letters from an American Utopia: The Stetson Family and the Northampton Association, 1843-1847. Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004. Gere, Henry S.
Reminiscences of Old Northampton: Sketches of the Town as It Appeared from 1840 to 1850. 1902. Greene, Aella. "The Underground Railroad & Those Who Operated It." Three-part series. Springfield [MA] Republican. April 1900; reprinted Florence, Collective Copies, Inc., 2006. "Historical Sketch of Florence," Hampshire Gazette, 2 April 1867. Judd, Frances P. "Reminiscences." The History of Florence, Massachusetts. Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Charles A. Sheffield, ed. Florence: by the editor, 1895. (continued) NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No.
1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co., MA Section number 9 Page - 2 Narrative of Events in the Life of William Green (Formerly a Slave), Written by Himself. Springfield MA: L. M. Guernsey, 1853. [Obituary of Austin Ross]. Hampshire Gazette, 28 January 1901. Sheffeld, Charles A., ed. The History of Florence, Massachusetts. Including a Complete Account of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Florence: by the editor, 1895. Smith, James Lindsay. Autobiography of James L. Smith. Norwich, CT: Press of the Bulletin Company, 1881. (end) Hill-Ross Farm Name of Property Hampshire,MA County, State 10. Geographical Data Acreage of Property 2.25 acres UTM References See continuation sheet. (Place additional UTM references on a continuation sheet) 1. 18 Zone 691120 Easting 4689240 Northing 2. Zone Easting Northing 3. Zone 4.
Zone Easting Easting - See continuation sheet Northing Northing Verbal Boundary Description (Describe the boundaries of the property on a continuation sheet.) Boundary Justification (Explain why the boundaries were selected on a continuation sheet.) 11. Form Prepared By name/title_Kathryn Grover and Neil Larson with Betsy Friedberg, NR Director, MHC organization Massachusetts Historical Commission _ date November 2007 street & number_ 220 Morrissey Boulevard - telephone 617-727-8470 city or town_ Boston _ state _MA _ zip code 02125 Additional Documentation Submit the following items with the completed form: Continuation Sheets Maps A USGS map (7.5 or 15 minute series) indicating the property's location. A sketch map for historic districts and properties having large acreage or numerous resources. Photographs Representative black and white photographs of the property.
Additional items (Check with the SHPO or FPO for any additional items) Property Owner (Complete this item at the request of the SHPO or FPO.) name - Alicia & Nooni Hammarlund street & number _ 123 Meadow Street -telephone413-584-5887 city or town- Florence (Northampton) _ stateMA -zip code_ 01062 Paperwork Reduction Act Statement: This information is being collected for applications to the National Register of Historic Places to nominate properties for listing or determine eligibility for listing, to list properties, and to amend existing listings. Response to this request is required to obtain a benefit in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act, as amended (16 U.S.C. 470 et seq.).
Estimated Burden Statement: Public reporting burden for this form is estimated to average 18.1 hours per response including the time for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining data, and completing and reviewing the form. Direct comments regarding this burden estimate or any aspect of this form to the Chief, Administrative Services Division, National Park Service, P.0. Box 37127, Washington, DC 20013-7127; and the Office of Management and Budget, Paperwork Reductions Project (1024-0018), Washington, DC 20503. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No.
1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co., MA Section number10 Page 1 Verbal Boundary Description The property is bounded on the east by the center line of the Mill River, on the south by the northern edge of Meadow Street, and on the north and west by surveyed lines. See attached property survey and tax parcel map. See City of Northampton Assessors Map #22B Parcel #006. Boundary Justification The boundary represents the nominated property, which contains the buildings associated with the historic and architectural significance of the resource known as Ross Farm. Related farmland south and west of the nominated property are in separate ownership and have been excluded as not crucial to representing the primary context of the property's association with the Underground Railroad.
(end) Map ID A B C D E F DATA SHEET HILL-ROSS FARM, NORTHAMPTON (HAMPSHIRE), MA (UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN MA MPS) MHC No. NTH 153 NTH 2436 Component Name Farmhouse Hay Barn Tobacco Barn Stables & Wagon House Corn Crib Farm Worker Dwelling Date of Construction ca. 1825, ca. 1875 ca. 1880 ca. 1880 ca. 1900 ca. 1900 ca. 1955 Resource Type Building Building Building Building Building Building Status Contributing Non- contributing Non- contributing Non- contributing Non- contributing Non- contributing NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number Page FIGURES STORAGE 2 STY CONC BLOCK BLDG CORN CRIB BARN BARN 2½ STORY W/F HOUSE MILL S8> CENTERLINE *.
RIVER 45 45 BARN 8 AFPARTINEIIT (0DGArVE) 291.22'+ MEADOW STREET - 173.09'+ FIG.1: Site plan of nominated property. Letters correspond with entries on data list in Narrative Description (#7). Source: City pf Northampton Assessor Property Files. NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number Page FIG.2: First Floor Plan. North at top of page. [Drawn to scale by Jill Fisher, Larson Fisher Associates, Woodstock NY] NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number Page FIG.3: Second Floor Plan.
North at top of page. [Drawn to scale by Jill Fisher, Larson Fisher Associates, Woodstock NY] NPS Form 10-900-a (8-86) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet OMB Approval No. 1024-0018 Hill - Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA Section number_photos Page 1 Photographs All photographs by Neil Larson, 2006. Film negatives with owner Digital images scanned from negatives at National Register & Massachusetts Historical Commission List of Photographs PHOTO 1: View of south façade of house. PHOTO 2: View of house from southwest. PHOTO 3: View of house from north. PHOTO 4: Detail of stair in entry. PHOTO 5: View looking northwest in parlor. PHOTO 6: View looking south in kitchen. PHOTO 7: View looking north in parlor chamber. PHOTO 8: View of barn from southeast. PHOTO 9: View of barn from northwest.
PHOTO 10: View of tobacco barn form northeast. PHOTO 11: View of stables from southwest. PHOTO 12: View of corn crib from southwest.
(end) Northampton Assessors and Zoning Map #22B Nominated Property is Parcel #22B-066 BOUNDARY MAP 123 MeadowStreet, Northampton, Hampshire Co., MA ROSS FARM BEELSE sed Bar urtners Park URB Urbas Reddentist B URC Urban Resdenfal C URA URA Northampton Assessors and Zoning Map Parcel boundarics revizion date: 01 January 2006 ww.NorthamptonMA.gov e-mail: CityGIS(@NorthamptonMA.gos A*Sreet UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR NATIONAL PARK SERVICE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES EVALUATION/RETURN SHEET REQUESTED ACTION: NOMINATION PROPERTY Ross Farm NAME : MULTIPLE Underground Railroad in Massachusetts MPS NAME: STATE & COUNTY: MASSACHUSETTS, Hampshire DATE RECEIVED: DATE OF 16TH DAY: DATE OF WEEKLY LIST: 11/26/07 1/01/08 DATE OF PENDING LIST: 12/17/07 DATE OF 45TH DAY: 1/09/08 REFERENCE NUMBER: 07001360 REASONS FOR REVIEW: APPEAL: N DATA PROBLEM: N LANDSCAPE: N LESS THAN 50 YEARS: N OTHER: N PDIL: N PERIOD: N PROGRAM UNAPPROVED: REQUEST: Y SAMPLE: N SLR DRAFT: Y NATIONAL: N COMMENT WAIVER: N ACCEPT RETURN REJECT DATE ABSTRACT/SUMMARY COMMENTS: RECOM.
/ CRITERIA Accept A,BC REVIEWER PatricK Andnus DISCIPLINE Historian TELEPHONE DATE 1/8/2008 DOCUMENTATION see attached comments Y/N see attached SLR Y/N If a nomination is returned to the nominating authority, the nomination is no longer under consideration by the NPS. MA-Northamptou(HampshireCouuty)_Hill-Ross/.tif Hiu-Ross Farm Northampton, Hamyshira Co., MA PtOTOl: View o soutafacade of house MA_Northamptou(HampshireCo)-Hill-Ross2.tif Hill- Ross Farm Northampton, Htampshire Co., MA PHoto 2: Viewo house from southwest MA_Northamptou(HampshireCo)-Hill-Ross3.tif Hill-Ross Farm Northampton, Hampslurelo., MA PHoTo 3: View of house from north MA_Northamptou (Hampshire (o) - Hill-Ross 4. tif Hill-Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co. MA PHoTo 4: Detail of stair s) entry MA_NorThampten (Hamepshire(o)-Hill-Ross5.til Hill-Ross Farm Northamptm, Hamphire Co.
MA PHoTo 5: View looking nortuwest in par lot MA-Northamplou (Hampsire(o)-Hill-Ross6.tif Hill-Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co., MA 6: View looking souts in kitchen MA_Nortnanupton(HampshireCo)-Htill-Ross 7.tif Hill-Ross Farm Northamptm, Hampshire Co., MA PtoTo 7: View looking horth in parlor chauber MA_Northanpton(Hampshire(o)-Hill-Ross 8.tig Hill-Ross Farm Nor thamn, Hampshise Co., MA PhoTO 8: Viawol barn fram southeast MA-Northampton(HampshireC) -Htill-Ross9.fif Hil-Ross Farm Northampton, Haugshire Co., MA PHoto 9: Viewo barn from horthwest MA _Northampton (Hamupshire (o)-Hill-Rosslo.tif Hill-Ross Farm Northamptm, Hampshire Co., MA PoTo 10: Vieus) tobacco barn fram northeast MA- Northampton (Hampshire(o) -Hill-Ross I1.fif Hill-Ross Farm Northampton, Hampshire Co., MA PHoTo I!: View of stables from southwest MA_Northamptou (Htanpshire (o)-Hill-loss12.tif Hill Ross Farm Northamptn, Hampshire Co., MA PHOTO r2: Vicwo corn ciub frum sontumest SNE Jre LENSD The Commonwealth of Massachusetts William Francis Galvin, Secretary of the Commonwealth Massachusetts Historical Commission November 19, 2007 Mr.
J. Paul Loether, Chief National Register of Historic Places Department of the Interior National Park Service 1201 Eye Street, NW, 8* floor Washington, DC 20005 Dear Mr. Loether: Enclosed please find the following nomination form: Hill-Ross Farmstead, 123 Meadow Street, Northampton (Hampshire), MA Underground Railroad in Massachusetts MPS The nomination has been voted eligible by the State Review Board and has been signed by the State Historic Preservation Officer.
The owners of the property were notified of pending State Review Board consideration 30 to 45 days before the meeting and were afforded the opportunity Sincerely, Bttay Friedheg Betsy Friedberg National Register Director Massachusetts Historical Commission enclosure CC: Kathryn Grover and Neil Larson, consultants Alicia & Nooni Hammarlund Christopher Kennedy, Northampton Historical Commission Mayor Clare Higgins, City of Northampton Wayne Feiden, Director of Planning and Development 220 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, Massachusetts 02125 (617) 727-8470 - Fax: (617) 727-5128 www.state.ma.us/sec/mhc
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