Williamstown Town (part 2 of 3)

This William Young married first a daughter of Zebediah Sabin, who had established himself early on 100-acre lot 41, on which the west end of the Sloan road abuts directly, and which continued the home lot of the Sabin family for much more than a century. This Mrs. Young died without children; when the husband married Currence Meack, a daughter of Dr. Jacob Meack, a German physician, the first of that profession to settle in Williamstown. His house is still standing much altered and enlarged on house lot No. 12, in the upper cemetery, just as one crosses the bridge over Hemlock Brook in the Main Street on the right hand going west. On account of his dwelling on its banks in the very early time, the brook itself was often designated the "Doctor Brook." Mrs. Currence Young had several children, and survived her husband many years. Her daughter, Zerviah, married Lorin Smith in 1833, and they spent their married life in the Young house, which is now owned and occupied by their son and heir, George Smith. The house has still a chamber in which the Freemasons are said to have met when there was a lodge at the South Part. Another daughter, Betsy Young, married Harry Johnson, who has descendants in Louisville, Kentucky. The only son of " Esq. AVilliam Young " went by the name of " Wicked Bill," and died in Canada. William Young went to Cambridge with the minute-men of Captain Samuel Sloan's company in 1775, and his powder-horn (still extant) bears date " ye 4th of May, 1775, Charleston." He carried the same powder-horn into the battle of Bennington, 1777. George Smith, his grandson, has a silhouette picture of him, hereby displayed in a woodcut, and valuable documents belonging to him. Also a silver shoebuckle, and other relics.

When the first Moses Young died in Brimfield, Sept. 25, 1781, his three sons and two daughters in Williamstown, Mrs. Stephen Davis and Mrs. Robert Harrington, were not pleased with the disposition of his property made by will shortly before he died, and they sent the following letter from here there, which is interesting on many grounds. The original lies now before the writer, and is scrupulously transcribed.

"Williamstown March C 1782 friends and Brothers after servis and all due Regards we understand there is a will signed By father-young and commited to your Care which for sume important Reasons we object against first Becaus he was Not of A sound memory secondly Becaus Persons Born free are Not subject to Bondage By the will of any man 3<* Becaus the persons are Coled Noncompus mentus that have been the instruments of Earning the Estate and for Ever ought to have the Benefit of it 4''^ Becaus we suppose it Not to Be the will of the Deceast as he inquired what thay was going to do when they asked him to sign the will and Persons then Present say that he was not himself - we Desire you to Omit the Execution of the will till you favour us with a Coppy - we Remain your Real friends Stephen Davis

This letter was written and copied by Stephen Davis, the husband of Kebeckah Young, an elder sister of the three brothers here. He was an able and influential man. He had gone to Lake George from Western in Captain Nathaniel Dwight's company, - enlisted on the news reaching there of the battle of Lake George, in August, while Dwight's company passed Fort Massachusetts and down the Hoosac, in September, 1755. In the Captain's manuscript papers are receipts given by Davis, and others, who were afterwards settlers in Williamstown, for pay and arms. Davis's home lot was No. 11 of the first-division fifty-acre lots, which he bought of Eli Cowles, in October, 1763, for £30. He subsequently bought two other lots in close proximity to this, and thus aggregated a farm which has always been regarded as among the best in Williamstown. It now goes under the designation of "Farm B," and is owned by John B. Gale (Williams College, 1842), whose "Farm A" is next north of it, and separates it from the "Meacham Farm," - all three on Green Eiver, to the west, and, in the reverse order, next and south to the house lots. Stephen Davis rose in the militia to be Captain, did excellent service in the Revolutionary War, and was a member of the Massachusetts Convention of 1779-80, called to frame the state Constitution. Elisha Baker was the other member from Williamstown. Jonathan Smith was their colleague from Lanesboro, and greatly distinguished himself in the councils and debates there.

Moses Young, the first of the name to settle here, and Susannah, his wife, brought up a very large family of children, all born between 1774 and the end of the century. He never left his original 100- acre lot as his own homestead, but settled his several sons on adjacent 100-acre lots, as they came to maturity, he holding the title to all the lands. He built for his own immediate family a large and strong two-story house, which is still owned and occupied by his grandson, Erastus Young, who pursues a policy with his sons, as to his own broad lands, similar to that of his grandfather; namely, giving them nominal ownership only to their farms during his life. This Moses Young died in 1819. Reuben, his firstborn, - which means in Hebrew " See ! a son ! " - became a prominent citizen at the South Part, and was commonly designated "Squire Young." He was a member of the Legislature in 1833. He lived and died near the east end of the Sloan road, north side, where the late Dr. Young lived. He once brought from Boston, in his satchel, some slips of willow, and a tree from one of these is still standing west of the house, and the little brook that crosses the road near by is often called ''Willow Brook." Reuben Young married Sally Meack, a younger sister of Currence, his Uncle William's second wife. They had no children.

Reuben Young's brother. Moses, five years younger, lived and died on lOO-acre lot 31, the lot next north of his father's old homestead, on the farm and in the house long afterwards owned by Augustus Hand, and carried on for him by a competent Irishman named Navin. This Moses, born in 1779, married on Stone Hill Lucy

Reuben Young

Brewster, a daughter of Mrs. Mary Brewster, the second wife of "White" David Johnson, who came here from Middletown, Connecticut, about 1763, and began the Bulkley farm there, and built the house on it torn down in 1828 to make room for the present brick house occupied by the Bulkleys ever since. Mr. Johnson's first wife was Phebe Cole, from Canaan, Connecticut, and their marriage was the first one celebrated here by the Rev. Mr. Welch. Moses Young and Lucy Brewster were the parents of Horace H. Young, a distinguished dentist in Troy, New York ; and of Betsey Ann YnuTur ^ho became the wife of Dudley W^hite, and later of

Titus Mitchell, of Ballston, New York ; and of Eliza A. Young, who was first a Mrs. Bardwell, and afterwards Mrs. Bristol, of Utica. Mrs. Bristol's body was brought to South William stown for burial Nov. 11, 1892, accompanied by her only son, Henry Bristol, of Chicago.

The third son of Moses and Susannah Young, born on the old homestead in 1781, was John, who married Clarissa Crofoot, born Nov. 21, 1786, and the two passed a very long life together on land inherited from Father Young, and still owned and cultivated by their children. They were married in December, 1807. Their son, Seymour, has carried on the farm for nearly fifty years ; and another son. Orange E,., has long been a dentist in Troy, associated in business there with his cousin. The Crofoot family was more highly gifted intellectually than the Young family ; both families probably came together from Ulster to Boston in 1718, in the very considerable migration of Scotch-Irish invited and facilitated by Governor Shute ; the Crofoots, or Crawfords, however, were of the people who had previously migrated from Scotland to Ireland, while the Youngs were native Irish ; the letter of the first Williamstown Youngs to their immediate kindred in Brimfield, quoted but a few pages back, resented the imputation put upon some of them by their own brethren, that they were ^^non compos mentus^' ; the records of Worcester, whither about a third of these immigrants passed in the autumn of 1718, make prominent among them both John and Eobert Crawford ; and there is probability, but no known proof, that the Crofoots of Williamstown were the progeny of these Crawfords working their way tvestward through the province gradually, with many other families of the same race, like the Blairs and the Duncans.

There were something like fifteen of the 100-acre lots located in a body towards the southeast corner of the town, and accommodated by what we now call the " Hopper road " and " Potter road " and '' Burchard road.'' Joseph Crofoot, then of Weathersfield, Connecticut, bought in October, 1768, of Ichabod Southwick, of Williamstown, for £60, 100-acre lot No. 12 on the Hopper road. Isaac Stratton and Samuel Clark, then the two principal men in South Williamstown, sign the deed as witnesses. Crofoot's wife was Elizabeth Clark ; and it is possible that she was related to Samuel Clark, who came here from Washington, Connecticut, in 1765. This farm, called for a century the " Crofoot farm," has been for a quarter of a century the farm of John Lamb, who, in conjunction with his excellent wife, kept the town's poor upon it for many years, until the town bought a small farm for that purpose at "Taylor's Crotch" in 1891.

Crofoot's family, which was large, lived for nearly twenty years in a log-house which stood a little back, that is, west, of the brick house which he proceeded to build in 1785, when he was sixty years old. He was a mason by trade, and he himself burnt the lime, and made the brick, and built the house. Limestone and clay lie contiguous upon a number of single farms in Williamstown. His granddaughter, Mrs. Anna Sherman, is competent authority for the statement, that on the very day he was sixty (June, 1785) he struck 3000 bricks with his own hand ; and she remembered, in 1877, to have seen in her girlhood brick-molds, and trowels also of many shapes, in the garret of the brick house. He lived to occupy and enjoy his new house for nearly thirty years. In 1811, a cheese-press weight fell on his foot, as he was busy in making the cheese, and crushed the big toe. Dr. Porter was sent for, who was then at the height of his reputation as a country surgeon, and said the toe must be amputated. " Strike home when you do strike ! " cried the old man, as he set his foot upon a block, and his son Joseph held him up, while the doctor with chisel and mallet excised the toe. He could not walk well after that, but would mount his horse on occasion and ride off like a boy. He had just entered his eighty-ninth year, when, being alone, he went, as he said, " to toggle the fire," and somehow fell upon it and was badly burned. He lingered, in great pain, from Monday till Friday, in July, 1813, when he died, and was buried in the Hemlock Brook ground at the North Part.

John Crofoot, eldest son of Joseph, reared here a family of ten children, all born between February, 1776, and April, 1792, one of them named Joseph and a twin brother with Benjamin, and all these moved as a family to Auburn, New York, after the death of the father. Joseph's second son was Mark Crofoot, who was in the battle of Bennington as one of a full company of sixty-five men from South Williamstown, and who seems to have been the wit of the family. His brother next younger, Joseph Crofoot, Junior, had a son named Joseph, and there were one or two more of the same name in the large circle before the patriarch died in 1813 ; and Mark used jocularly to designate the five Josephs - all here at one time - as " Old Joe, Young Joe, Young Joe's Joe, Cross-eyed Joe, and Toe-in Joe." Mark evidently thought, also, that there was scarcely room on the Hopper road for so many Crofoots as were accumulating there, for he moved from here with several other families about the same time to Granville, New York, where he died in 1818.

He was lame in the hip for life from a cold caught after wading in the Green River in a chase of a deer near Deer Hill. He was the father of Clarissa Crofoot, who was the wife of John Young, and who died here as his widow April 4, 1876 : John Young died May 12, 1857 : he was the father also of Orange and of Joseph 3d. The latter married Euth Williams here on Thanksgiving Day, 1811, and moved to Batavia, ISTew York, where he died Thanksgiving Day, 1812, aged twenty-four. His brother. Orange, married his widow, and they continued on the brick homestead here until it was sold to another member of the same family.

This farm changed hands a number of times before it was bought by John Lamb, the present owner; and the brick house was constantly occupied by at least one family for a little over one hundred years, when Mr. Lamb took it down and built another commodious wood house in its place ; and on one of the bricks, as they were taken from the old wall, was luckily noticed the word " Crofoot " neatly written upon the moist clay and perfectly preserved in every letter throughout the thorough burning and the century's service, - a pleasant and lasting memorial of a worthy family, whose name utterly disappeared from the town before 1830, and which does not appear at all in the church or College records.

William Young, still another son of the original Moses, was settled by his father on another 100-acre lot considerably south of the homestead on the same road. His wife was Lucy White, daughter of Peregrine White, who came to Williamstown from Hebron, Connecticut, about 1800, when Lucy was eight years old. They settled at first on Northwest Hill, and went thence to Westfield, Kew York, but returned after no great interval and located on Stone Hill, where the daughter was married in 1811. They spent their wedded life on this Young lot, but had no children. Mrs. Reed Mills once told the writer in her old age, that on her sleigh-ride to New Lebanon to be married, on a bitter cold day in the winter of 1816, they stopped to warm, both going and coming, with Mr. and Mrs. Young at their hospitable fire in this house where Hiram Smith has long lived at this end of the century. It is incredible in this more practical and comfortable generation, how thinly clad brides would then ride to their weddings in the depth of winter. Mrs. Young long outlived her husband. Her brother. Rev. Alfred White, was much with her in her later years, was much respected both as a man and a minister, and is buried beside her in the cemetery at the South Part.

Georgia, Vermont, June 4, 1818; and these, spending a long-continued married life on the original lot, and in the large house, transmitted both, under certain restrictions, to their sons Erastus and Justin, both of whom have reared families on the spot, and both are still tilling the ancestral acres. Harry Young, the last male scion of this long line to be mentioned here, led a highly respected life on another stretch of these broad Young lands ; and two of his daughters, Mrs. Rand and Miss Sarah Young, are, at the present writing, in 1892, cultured people held in esteem in the city of Troy.

If we pass over now from the Hancock road and Young neighborhood located upon it, to the parallel Ashford road, a couple of miles to the eastward, we shall strike a number of 100-acre lots, that call for a brief notice at this point, and especially No. 24, next north of Andrew Young's lot on the Ashford boundary. Twenty -four became in a few years, and remained for a century, the most populous lot in its number of families, of any one in this fifth division. The land was fertile, the Ashford Brook flowed through it diagonally, it was well served with roads, and enterprising and excellent i^eople first settled it. In August, 1766, Barnabas Woodcook, Junior, of Milford, Connecticut, seaman, bought this lot of Ephraim Seelye, landgrabber, for £30. It is evident that this Barnabas did not intend to abandon the sea, but that he did intend to assist his brothers Bartholomew and Nehemiah to keep comfortable, in his old age, their honored father. The following epitaph in the cemetery at the South Part is significant : " Here lies interred the body of Mr. Barnabas Woodcock, who was born in Dedham 25 Sept. 1710, and departed this life March 14, 1786, aged 76 years 5 months and 18 days." About the time his brother bought the lot 24, Bartholomew purchased lot 26 adjoining it to the west, and proceeded to settle upon it. The depression is yet visible of the cellar of the log-house which he put up on the east side of the road, just as one driving south is about to make the sharp turn to the left to cross the bridge and strike the south end of the Potter road. After some years of residence here, he built the substantial framed house still standing on the opposite side of the road near by, in which he spent his active life, selling this house and farm, in 1820, to his foster-son, Andrew Beers, for a consideration of ^2000, and buying for himself, at about the same time, the Isaac Stratton place in the south village, where he died. Nathan Rossiter and Lyman Hubbell, both then prominent in that village, witnessed the deed from Woodcock to Beers.

cock, as he was always called by his neighbors, the Christian name Bartholomew being quite too long for those busy times. He had an agricultural maxim and practice which was probably more or less current at that time, but has been supplanted by an opposite one, - he would never sow grass-seed on his land to stock it down, saying, ^' Land that will not seed itself is not good enough for me." The common usage is now among farmers in Williamstown, to sow a bushel of seed, for that purpose, to each acre. Any one passing Woodcock's original farm, going south, will be likely to notice on the broad meadow to his right, at some distance north of the house, a very large elm tree. Woodcock himself used to relate when the tree had become considerably grown, how he, while ploughing near the spot, had bent the little sapling down to the ground to break it off and be rid of it, when a chance suggestion' of his own mind, or, perhaps, of Andrew Beers, who lived with him, led him to spare it. It has been the pride of the farm for three-quarters of a century. Woodcock was in the battle of Bennington, with all his neighbors. His name is borne on several other muster-rolls of the Eevolutionary time. He did not, like his brother ISTehemiah, rise into influential positions in the town and in the state. Neither name is to be found on the records of the church. The epitaph of the one, however, marks a difference between the two, - " Erected to the memory of Nehemiah Woodcock he was one of the first settlers of Williamstown, a firm supporter of his Country's Eights and Independence." He died March 10, 1816, in his seventy-ninth year.

Andrew Beers came with the Woodcocks from Milford, and passed a long and honored life upon the same farm. He married Elisabeth Deming, and they both lived to be very old, but they never had children. Early in life he united with the church at the North Part, and was chosen a deacon in it in 1828. Eight years later fifty-one members of that church were dismissed in a body to constitute a new church at the South Part ; and Deacon Beers and Deacon William Dickinson, who had been chosen a deacon in 1834, became the first, and for a long time the only, deacons in South Williamstown. Elisabeth Deming united with the old church in 1806, and thirty years later was dismissed with her husband and the rest to form the new church. After 1820, they kept house by themselves in the Woodcock house, and both died not far from 1870. As they had no children, they adopted a nephew of Mrs. Beers, Eli Eix Deming, whom they well brought up, to whom they transmitted the farm, and who carried it on about fifteen years after their death and then migrated to Lawrence, Kansas, with other members of his own family. He united with the old church in 1831 ; and when he left town to go West about fifty years later, he was the only man in town bearing the name of Deming, which name li;vl ^^^^n very luinierous liere for a long time.

It was first brought here in a permanent way when Joseph Deming, of Weathersfield, Connecticut, bought 100-acre lot 23 in April, 1769, for £(yo. It was bought of Hezekiah Brown. Isaac Stratton and Daniel Burbank sign the deed as witnesses. Deming was sixtytwo years old at that time ; and his two sons, Titus and Aaron, came with him. Two other 100-acre lots to the west of this were soon bought, tradition says, at eight shillings an acre. The families localized themselves on these lots, and clung to them for three generations ; and by and by required for their convenience the east and west road (long ago discontinued) connecting the Ashford and Hancock highways. This cross-road runs straight along the north line of lots 27 and 28 and 29, bridging the Hancock Brook at a point where there is a small mill-privilege, which was utilized by the Deming families for several manufacturing purposes at different times. The father, Joseph, built his house near the east end of this cross-road, - a good house that was burned down in 1876. There was another house a little further west on the same road, understood to have been built and occupied by the son, Aaron, and meml^ers of his family. The Demings were diligent and thrifty. The fathers cleared off the lands, and the sons widened and improved the clearings. They occupied altogether about as much land, and for nearly as long a time, as their neighbors, the Youngs.

Aaron Deming died March 12, 1837, lacking twenty-seven days of being ninety-three years old. Two unmarried daughters always lived with him, and his two sons, Joseph and Salmon, lived in the other part of the same house, which was a custom also with the Young families. The father, Joseph, had died in 1783, in his seventy-sixth year. Captain Joseph, the son of Aaron, died in December, 1870, seventy-nine years old. Nelson Deming, Captain Joseph's son, a man of admirable character, was the last of the name to operate the little mill on the brook, and the last of the name in town of the line of Aaron. His widow was the last person in Williamstown of either sex or of any age to bear the name of Deming. An easy lesson fell to the officiating clergyman to be given at Nelson Deming's funeral, namely, that the world is passing away and the lust thereof, to families as well as to individuals.

of junction of the two roads from the north, - the old road from Taylor's Crotch to the Ashford line, running wholly through 100- acre lots, and the road from the south hamlet to strike the other at right angles, running diagonally over a dead level of the second division of fifty-acre lots. Here Titus Deming reared his sons, David, Martin, Francis, and Moses the Mormon who died in 1873 ; and his daughters also, Betsey, Sally, Sybil, and Nancy. Their mother, Sybil, died in 1844, aged eighty-two years. This Martin was the father of Eli Rix, who was adopted and reared by Deacon Andrew Beers. Francis inherited the farm, and brought up in the ample and good-looking two-story house, two sons and one daughter. The eldest son was Richard Titus Deming, called from his grandfather Titus, a graduate of the College in 1852, and a classmate of the present writer. He was born in 1825, and was about three years older than the average age of his classmates, a tall and straight and fine-looking man, who assumed to say of the society of which he was a member, - " The Sigma Phi does not aim to exhibit scholarship, but to develop the practical man and the gentleman." He did not, accordingly, attain to a rounded education in his college course ; and going afterwards to New York to study and practise law, the common belief and report was, that he was the means of bringing his father into severe pecuniary embarrassment, and that his own life was shortened and made useless by excesses and immoralities. He died, it was said, in the street, in 1868. At any rate, the homefarm was sold out of the family, and his younger brother, Dow Deming, an intelligent and estimable man, removed to Lanesboro, where he is successfully tilling a good farm.

Aaron Deming was in the battle of Bennington. He and his brother Titus were out repeatedly in the militia service during that war. The following list, compiled from the church records, contains the names of all the members of the Deming family who were members of the local churches : -

The 100-acre lot that fell by chance to Rev. Whitman Welch, the first minister, was No. 7, situated on the east side of the Hopper road not far from the " Crotch " ; and over this lot passes to this day the Burchard road to the centre of No. 16, where stands the Burchard house, which was built under extraordinary circumstances 115 years ago, and which is occupied at present by Chauncy Whitney. Samuel Burchard was from Danbury, Connecticut. He came early. In 1771 he owned five of the house lots, but it does not appear that he ever lived in the village. We run across him first as living on what is now called the Stratton road, east side, on No. 57 of the first-division fifty-acre lots, where William Hall lived for a long time, and after him George Ford, and now Abner Town. The house stands a little way back from the road. In all probability a farm was first cleared here by Burchard, who had a family largely grown when he came. They soon moved, however, to this 100-acre lot 16, reaching it through the Dominie's lot. Burchard and his wife, Elizabeth Hamilton, were members of the church. The father was several times out in the Revolutionary militia service, and one of his sons was so much afraid of being drafted for the war, that he wore round an overcoat in summer, pretending ague. The mother was a notable woman, and not afraid of anything. The late William Torrey used to tell from his father, a contemporary, that while the men folks were off in the war, Mrs. Burchard herself struck the brick for the present house, the clay being taken out from the cellar, and her girls carried out the moist forms from the moulds to dry. Exactly in what service the ague patient was then employed, tradition saith not. In their old age the Burchards bargained away their farm ; the good lady, still active and economical, carried off and threw away a cartload of stuff from the house, old shoes and other such trumpery, and then when the bargain flew off, she went out and carefully gathered up the old things and brought them all back again.

This Burchard family must not be confounded with that of Joseph Bircliard, wlio originally cleared up the Samuel Foster farm on Bee Hill, a sixty-acre lot of the eighth division, whose son Amos, after a considerable residence in Treadwell Hollow, went with his own children, and with at least four of his brothers and sisters, to Cattaraugus County, New York, where, with other families from here, they helped to found another Williamstown.

The minister, Mr. Welch, sold off his lot No. 7, next north of the Burchards's lot, to two men of New Milford, - with which town he kept up close connection, - Ruggles and Hubbell, for £30, April 11, 1769. He had previousl}'" '^"^'^ ^^'^^ lirm>;.^ lot .%. wliioh ramp to him.

as the first settled minister, in gratuity, and which drew for him, in succession, meadow lot 51, fifty-acre lot (first division) 48, fiftyacre lot (second division) 51, pine lot 53, oak lot 5. He also bought and sold other lots upon occasion; for example, the meadow lots Nos. 24 and 25 in the "Great Meadow" on the Hoosac (£40), in June, 1766. He seems to have been an intermediary, or agent, in the good sense of those terms, between those of his former townspeople in Connecticut, who wished to buy lots up here, and those of his own people who wished to sell them. A good number of Milford and New Milford citizens settled here, first and last. He seems to have been very ready to help them in their selection of lots, and to sign their deeds for them as a witness. He also bought and sold lots on his own account, but not to any extent, or in any manner interfering with his duties and good name as a pastor. He was here as an ordained minister just ten years (1765-1775), the most critical decade in the history of Williamstown ; and he probably did more than any other person, in that decade, to make the place attractive and the settlement permanent. He gathered a church of between seventy and eighty members in that brief time ; for, while there is no list of them then, at the time of the settlement of his successor, Eev. Seth Swift, in 1779, there were seventy-nine members, and we fortunately know their names.

Some time during his pastorate, Mr. Welch bought lands on Green River, at the east end of the Main Street, and probably on both sides of the river. The only evidence as to the place of his residence while he was pastor here is the following : Chloe Bingham, who is now about eighty years old, and has always lived in one spot at the west end of the Green River bridge, has often repeated what she heard from her mother, - the eldest daughter of Theodore Boardman, whose home was near the same spot, and who was a contemporary of Mr. Welch, - namely, that the Welches lived directly opposite them, across Main Street, on ground just east of house lot 63, between that and the river. This was, indeed, outside of the house lots, and nearly a mile from his meeting-house ; but then it was so much the nearer to Fort Massachusetts, and it was by much the safer end of the straggling village, for the French and Indians had always come on from the northwest, and it was on Hemlock Brook, and not on Green River, that Captain Chapin and the Chidesters had been killed, in 1756. At any rate, on the 4th of May, 1775, just fourteen days after the news of the battle of Lexington had reached Berkshire, and only thirteen days after Colonel John Patterson's regiment of minute-men had left Berkshire for Cambridge, and, beyond doubt, in some living relation with those stirring events to the eastward, Whitman Welch deeded to Nehemiah Smedley eighteen and three-fourths acres of land, directly east of Green River at that point, "with an allowance for the Hic^hway'' (the present main road to North Adams).

Those eighteen and three-fourths acres from Wekii i.. .>umuii-s were evidently adjacent to, and became easily a part of, lands previously bought by Smedley, namely, firet-division fifty-acre lot 28, bought in June, 1765, and same division fifty-acre lot 29, bought in October, 1766. These Welch acres thus sold seem to include meadow lot No. 14 ; but it is remarkable that Cofiin's map of 1843 puts an interrogation point, as indicating *^some incongruity of the survey or other cause of doubt," after No. 14 of the meadow lots, as well as after Nos. 28 and 29 of the fifty-acre lots, which, with meadow lots 10 and 12 and 13, and oak lot 7, made up the noted Smedley farm. We cannot tell certainly on which of the lots the farmhouse (still standing) was put up in 1772. Smedley's oldest son, Levi, born Oct. 8, 1764, believed, in his old age, the house to have been built on the lot bought of Welch, which could not have been the case if the house were raised in 1772, for Welch did not sell till 1775. It is more probable that the house stands on fifty-acre lot 28, bought in June, 1765, of John ]\Ioffat, painter, of Boston, whither Smedley went personally to make the purchase. Besides Levi's own statement in favor of 1772 as the date of the house, there is a strong tradition in the family that the house was raised tlie day Levi was eight years old, and that numbers of men came from Bennington to the " raising." That would be Oct. 8, 1772.

The deed of the eighteen and three-fourths acres is in ^Ir. Welch's own handwriting. The complicated surveyor's description - the plot had nine separate angles - looks as if he had also surveyed it, which, as a college graduate of that time, he was doubtless able to do. The deed was never recorded, and was never questioned. The land remained in the hands of the Smedleys for longer than a century's time. The consideration paid was £75 10s. This was undoubtedly the money on which Welch himself, shortly after, went to Cambridge, and late in the autumn went up the Kennebec to Canada, in Arnold's column, in volunteer company with several of his own parishioners. Nothing is said in this deed about any buildings on the land; but Levi Smedley said, in 1829, "One of the barns now standing there is much older than the house," which is pretty good, though not conclusive, additional proof that the Smedley house was not erected on the land sold by Welch to Smedley.

As Mr. Welch did not live to return from Quebec, Mrs. Welch, who was a daughter of Deacon Gaylord, of New Milford, went back to that town with two or three small children, was married again there, and lived to an extreme old age. She left growing in her garden here (wherever it was) some roses of the simple red variety, from an original root or two brought with her when she came. That she was highly esteemed here, and pitied in her strange widowhood, seems to be proven by the fact that Mrs. James Meacham and Mrs. Betty Cox transplanted the rose in memory of her, each to her own front yard, where they are still growing, much multiplied, with the present credible tradition attached to them, - a tradition that Bliss Perry has wrought out imaginatively, for publication, under the title, "The Colchester Rose." The Youth^s Companion of March 21, 1889, holds the story.

In the mean time, while these outlets of the fifth division were being slowly occupied, mostly by farmers from Connecticut who came up by the rude road over the watershed between the Housatonic and the Green rivers, a road siuce eulogized by Henry Ward Beecher, - " From Salisbury to Williamstown and thence to Bennington there stretches a country of valleys and lakes and mountains, that is to be as celebrated as the lake district of England or the hill country of Palestine," - matters were moving more briskly with the house lots and householders of the incipient village. Proprietors' meetings were held frequently, particularly during the year 1765, the birth-year of the town, and the first year of their ordained minister. Every item of common expense must pass sharp' muster in these popular gatherings, because every shilling of the money must come out of the individual pocket of the proprietors ; roads were laid out in all directions, and each day's work of man or team must be passed upon and voted "pay for," in proprietors' meeting viva voce ; the pine lots and the oak lots, all of both being located north of the " Greate Biver," were surveyed out by Jedediah Hubbell, and distributed by a " common lottery," in this year, 1765. The committee, under whom these surveys of the sixth and seventh divisions were made and reported, were Elisha Higgins and John Smedley and Thomas Dunton and Jonathan Kilborn ; and William Horsford, whose house lot was 44, directly north across Main Street of the later West College, was the faithful proprietors' clerk from the beginning of 1765 till 1774.

Of course, the need of the common mechanic arts of all kinds was soon felt in the now growing hamlet; and a curious concession was made in the proprietors' meeting of Jan. 14, 1766, to Joseph

Tallmadge, a shoemaker who had recently come from Colchester ; making shoes and tanning leather were trades, at that time, and long afterwards, in New England, closely allied, and often united, in the hands of one man ; Tallmadge had evidently asked the proprietors for the privilege of having a tan-yard on the common land in the Main Street, near what has long been called Hemlock Brook, but which was then called " Hudson " Brook, from Seth Hudson, whose house stood on its eastern bank ; and it was accordingly '* Voted to Give Leave to Mr. Joseph Talmadge to Sett up a tan yeard on the North side of the Highway on Hudson Brook of one Quarter of an acre of Land to have the use of Said Land ten year Not obstruct or Hinder Passing Provided He the Said Joseph talmage can agree with Mr. Ebenezer Cooley & obtain Leave of Him." Ebenezer Cooley then owned house lot 12, just west of the brook, north side, in front of whose lot the tan-yard would be. It is not likely that his consent was secured, for he sold the lot in June following, to "Isaac Searle Esq.," for £20. Searle was, at this time, the most forehanded man in the borough, though he had come from Northampton as a " cordwainer " about ten years before, and it was not like him to buy encumbered property, or to agree to have his own encumbered in that way. Another thing that makes it improbable that Tallmadge actually gained the permission of the owner of No. 12, is the fact that he bought, himself, the next March, house lot 13, directly opi>osite No. 12, on the south side of the highway, and only the width of that way above on the same brook, described in the deed as "at the westernmost end of main street." He X)aid £15 for his house lot.

Whether Tallmadge actually started a tannery at the north end of his own house lot 13 cannot now be determined; there is no direct proof that he did; tan-bark is one of the most indestructible objects in nature, and none of this has been thrown up there by plough or spade in the memory of living men while the early exists ence of a tan-yard on the east side of the brook close by is proven by such casual manifestations there ; and besides, Tallmadge only stayed on No. 13, with his newly married wife, Martha Marks, for three years, when he bought in April, 1770, his farm on Northwest Hill, on which he lived and died. This was fifty-acre lot No. 4. It was the ministry lot of the second division of fifty-acre lots, drawn by house lot 38. Tallmadge bought it of Samuel Smedley, and the deed was signed by Nehemiah and Aaron Smedley, as witnesses, all three of these brothers from Litchfield. This lot proved to be as productive as any parcel of ground in Williamstown, and has been often called the best '^ grain-farm " in town. Its northern line just grazes the Hoosac Kiver, and its southern line is the straight highway bounding the ends of the house lots lying in the northwest corner of the entire plat of house lots.

If Joseph Tallmadge had been content to confine himself to ploughing his fields and raising his crops, he would have been a prosperous and envied farmer. Indeed, he became and continued such, until in an evil hour he concluded to utilize a fine spring to the north of his house, whose clear waters drop down into a little stream that drops into Hemlock Brook just before the junction of that with the Hoosac, as a means of distilling brandy out of cider, which had then become exceedingly abundant in the town. Public opinion had not then turned against the distillation of brandy. Deacon James Smedley told the writer, that he as a boy had helped his father carry cider to this place to be distilled into brandy; his father was Deacon Levi Smedley, the head of perhaps the most precise and puritanic family in the town. Joseph Tallmadge did not forfeit his good name among his neighbors by setting up this still : there were at least three others put into operation not long after in different parts of the town, all by reputable parties. Nevertheless, the phrase above used, "in an evil hour," is well considered and appropriate. There was a generation of drunkards raised up in this town in direct connection with these four stills. Not one of the four families escaped personal demoralization and pecuniary losses. Tallmadge had four sons. Each of them became compromised in turn, both in respect of the personal habit and of the monetary ruin. The very locality, though naturally prospective and picturesque, became a by-word and a hissing.

The beautifully wooded little valley that runs across the farm with its stream and its spring has been called now for a long time "Flora's Glen," and A. L. Hopkins, who owns this and many adjoining lots, has lately built two expensive dams on this stream and thus made two lovely ponds, and also walled in the spring, that bubbles out on the very marge of the lower pond, making the whole region one of peculiar beauty and consequent attractiveness both to natives and strangers ; but the late C. E. Taft, who was more than twenty years postmaster, used to tell, that the whole place was a "turkey-shoot" when he was a boy, and that he himself had witnessed the scenes of drunkenness and fighting, that always in those days accompanied the cruelty and gambling of that so-called "sport." Many persons still living remember Phebe Holmes, an old colored woman, whether African or Indian was left in doubt, who lived and died in an old cabin on the little brook that flows past the College spring. Her husband, Holmes, a wellauthenticated Indian, was stabbed and nearly killed at one of these turkey-shoots near the " Still Spring." The name, " Phebe's Brook," commemorates in a pleasant way the poor and aged woman ; the only memorial of her husband is the turning of a point in the description of a brutal autumn festival, at once attracted by and affiliated with Joseph Tallmadge's cider-brandy.

After the public religious services of Thanksgiving Day, in 1892, the chief feature of which was a powerful sermon by John Bascom, on the nature and coming of the Kingdom of Heaven, the penman of these present lines visited alone the Still Spring and its neighlxjrhood. Gratitude to God for the many favorable local contrasts as between the first and last decades of the century was tinged and intensified by a personal gratitude for a lifelong and stimulating friendship with the fearless and profound and eloquent preacher of that Thanksgiving Day.

Joseph Tallmadge had five children : Martha, the eldest, born in 1768, married shoemaker Stone, of Hoosac, both excellent people in all the relations of life ; Joseph, the second, was born exactly two years after his sister, Feb. 27, 1770 ; the next son, Josiah, married Jan. 3, 1793, a Williamstown girl, Ada Hickox, and they became the parents of Mary Tallmadge Hosford, the oldest i^erson now living in town, and one among those most highly esteemed by everybody ; Ephraim, born in 1774, made his home elsewhere; and Asa, the youngest, born Oct. 1, 1776, who married Abigail Tyler, and reared a large family here, living on Northwest Hill, and in several other parts of the town, and manifesting in more directions than one (even to old age) the untoward influences of the cider-brandy still. His son, Edwin Tallmadge, and his daughter, Orcela Tallmadge Blakeslee, are the only persons now in town (besides Mrs. Hosford) perpetuating a respected name. Edwin Blakeslee, the husband, was lx)rn and bred in Howe on the upper reaches of the Deerfield River, in plain sight of the vestiges of old Fort Pelham. His grandfather, Caleb Blakeslee, was the composer of the famous minor hymn-tune, *' Windham," usually sung to the words, " Broad is the road that leads to death," etc., and very popular in New England for a century. He sold the copyright of the tune for thirty dollars, to his own and others' subsequent regret ; for the tune should have borne his name. He was the son of Seth Blakeslee, of North Haven, Coniiocticut, whence the son came to Rowe.

Street in 1847 ; Thomas Mole had built the very first one the year previous, during which the street had been opened by S. V. R. Hoxsie; George Koberts, and Charles Spooner, and Edwin Sanderson, and Frederic Sanderson, the two last in company for awhile with Edwin Blakeslee, all tailors, occupied houses on the same street within a twelvemonth. Blakeslee has practised his trade in this town and its immediate vicinity for more than fifty years. An eccentric and disagreeable character, JSTathan Hoskins, who was graduated at Dartmouth College in 1820, a classmate and (as he always claimed) a room-mate, too, with Rufus Choate, was the seventh in order to build a house on Spring Street. All these houses were hastily and cheaply constructed, the ground was originally low, and otherwise seemed unsuitable for houses ; Daniel N. Dewey, then treasurer of the College, opposed the opening of the new street, and Hoxsie was angrily compelled, owing to the situation of a corner of College ground, to make his lay-out narrow and inconvenient of entrance ; nevertheless, the new street was a necessity of the time in affording homes to many of the young artisans of the village; it has been pretty steadily lifted and improved as a place for residerjce, the town high-school building was erected upon it in 1866, and business of various kinds kept creeping in along its whole length until in 1892, by the removal into it of the postoffice, and the bank, and several stores and places of recreation and amusement, it became, and will probably remain, the chief business street of. the town.

The next public meeting of the proprietors to that which gave the concession to Joseph Tallmadge for a tan-yard, was occupied mainly with the vexed question of roads in the different parts of the town, - a point that made constant friction and open dissatisfaction for several years. The principal clause in the warrant for this meeting was as follows : " To See if the Proprietors will Chuse a new Commetee to Lay out E-oads wheare they are Needed and give them Power to Prise Land that are and Shall be Laid out for Eoads and to make Return to the Proprietors of the Sum or Sums and to Give the sd Commetee Power to Exchange Roads for Roads or Sett of Common or undivided Land to make Restitution for Land taken out of the Lots for Roads Belonging to any Person Whatsoever lying in this town." This article was voted bodily April 26, 1766, and a strong committee, consisting of Richard Stratton, and Benjamin Simonds, and Jonathan Meacham, and Samuel Kellogg, and Thomas Dunton, chosen to carry it out ; but at the next meeting. May 15, a fortnight later, the vote was reconsidered, and it was agreed "to give the Road Commetee no Power only to Lay out Eoads and to veu others Roads in order to Exchange and to veu Common Land in order to l\ay for Land wheare it will sute and Bring their Doings to the Proprietors for Exchange." William Horsford had become obnoxious to some of the proprietors in connection with these road and land difficulties, and there Avas a clause in the April warrant, - " To See if the Proprietors will Chuse a New Clerk," - on which the May meeting " Voted in the Negative."

Civil government, under any and all circumstances, everywhere, is always an awkward instrument by means of which to reach the true ends for which government itself is instituted; the radical reason for this is, that the persons selected to administer the government, no matter on what plan, are always possessed of the same selfish tendencies, which, in the masses of men, make governments needful at all; all men esteem their own private interests higher than the interests of their fellows, and when these two seem to come into collision, are ready, unless restrained, to sacrifice the rights of others to their own apparent gains ; this is the universal fact that makes governments necessary ; but, unluckily, the governments are compelled to be administered by men of the same soi-t in this respect as all the rest, and political constitutions are framed with the express purpose of restraining this selfishness of the governors, as laws are enacted to restrain that of the governed ; neither the one nor the other are ever wholly effective, and consequently the organization and continued administration of governments are always accompanied with frictions and difficulties and wrong-doings. This is just as true of local governments of small circumference, as of national governments of the widest, - just as true of West Hoosac and Williamstown, as of the state of Massachusetts in 1780, and of the United States in 1789.

The early roads here made endless trouble and contention, partly because individual proprietors cut roads to their outlying properties at their own cost, expecting to be reimbursed by their road becoming a public road, or by exemption from taxation for other roads ; and partly, because it was impossible to foresee in what directions population would ultimately become thickest, so as to demand public highways. At the next meeting of the proprietors, in chronological order, Oct. 9, 1766, another set of unavoidable difficulties confronted them ; namely, matters of taxes to meet current and past expenditures. " Voted to Raise Nine Shillings on Eaich Right to make up old Rearridges." " Voted and Chose Jonathan Meacham, Stephen Davis and Elkanah Parris a Commetree to sell the Land of the Proprietors that are Delinquent in paying their Rates." " Excepted the account of the Commetree of the Greate River Bridge which is £48 12 3." Then follow accounts of several publicly advertised " Vandues," " Published in the Boston Prints as the Law Directs," at which the lands delinquent went oif, for the most part, pitifully low, many of them to Ephraim Seelye, the land-grabber. One oak lot, No. 12, was bidden off by Benjamin Simonds, for Is. Ad. 3 farthings an acre. The only possible income for the propriety arose from lands, either the tax voted in the proprietors' meetings on each " Right," as it was called, or the small sums realized from the sales of the lots of those owners who refused, or were unable to pay, or had withdrawn from the settlement altogether, abandoning their lands. This aggregate income was always inadequate to the necessary expenditures. This led to frequent misunderstandings with the successive treasurers. The first treasurer, as we have learned already, was Isaac Wyman, long clerk and commander, both at Fort Massachusetts and West Hoosac Fort ; but as treasurer of the proprietors of West Hoosac, he soon fell into distrust and troubles, and left the place entirely, and went to Keene, New Hampshire, where he was very prominent and much trusted, becoming Lieutenant-Colonel under Stark, in 1775, and appointed Colonel, in July, 1776. The second treasurer was Josiah Horsford, one of the early Connecticut soldiers here, whose wife was Jemima Smedley, and whose house is still standing as the kernel of the later Whitman house, now owned and occupied by Dr. Woodbridge ; and he kept to the post patiently and uprightly till 1766, when Samuel Kellogg was chosen in his place. There were frequent '^ reasonings " and '' reckonings " with the treasurer in all these years.

It may be easily gathered from all the foregoing that the stated proprietors' meetings were not specially attractive places to the proprietors themselves. The same is betrayed also by a clause in the warrant for such a meeting issued Kov. 24, 1766. "To Se if the Proprietors will Pay those men that attend the meetings of Said Proprietors." Though at the meeting thus called it was " Voted to Drop this articiel," its admittance into the public warrant reveals another large obstacle in the way of the practical administering of such a pure democracy as that was. All were on an equality of privilege within the government; but all, or nearly all, were poor; great sacrifices were required of all in order to build up and keep agoing the little rustic commonwealth, - roads and bridges and a meeting-house, and the ordination and salary of a minister, were to be provided out of their own slender gains or reserves ; frictions between officers and non-officers, and between individuals as such, were certain to arise under such circumstances, and between the minority and the majority on many questions passed upon; an obvious way of manifesting those dissatisfactions was to stay away from the authorized and only legal gatherings for governmental purposes, and at the least it took time and trouble to attend them ; and so, as the meetings grew thin, it occurred to somebody to try the experiment of a paid attendance. In their poverty, it is surprising that this should have been even proposed; more surprising, a great deal, than that bank directors and other members of corporations in our own day should be actually paid out of the common fund for participating in the common counsels of the body corporate.

Any five of the proprietors could, at any time, by request made to their clerk, secure the issuance of a public warrant by him, calling a legal meeting, the warrant stating in order the items of business to be acted on at that meeting, and no other business could then be legally transacted. The painstaking and fidelity manifested in general by the various committees raised to prepare the reports on which public and final action was to be taken, is proven and illustrated at length in the minutes of the proprietors, to which reference may be had. The original copy of these minutes is in the office of the town clerk of Williamstown ; and the writer is possessed of a copy of that, made at his instance and expense, and sworn to as to its exactness before Keyes Danforth, justice of the peace, and Charles S. Cole, town clerk, Dec. 4, 1878.

We will give two specimens of these reports of committees, because we believe that the reader of the future will be pleased to see them just as they were rendered, bad spelling and all. The first is the report of Richard Stratton and Benjamin Simonds on a new buriallot, the original lot for that purpose at the end of the North Cross Street having been proved unsatisfactory, presumably on account of the steep hill by which alone it could be reached.

October the 1 AD 1706 we the Subscribers being chosen a Commetee to Provide a better Place for a burying yard Have attended the Business and the Best Place we Can fiend is the frount of mr John Newbre Home Ix)t : No : 14 and Part of the Street Joyning to it we Suppose to Begin att the South East Corner of s** Lot and runs Eight rods into the Lot Northward and 12 rods and an Half west and 5 rods into the Street we take of mr Newbre Land Half an acre and Half a Quarter we sopose to Give Him £2 10 0 for it what we take from the Street is a quarter and Half a quarter and 2 rod and an Half of Ground.

north ; and it is one of the current ideals of the town at present, that it be again much enlarged towards the north so as to have the shaded Hemlock Brook its eastern boundary for a considerable stretch, and be beautified throughout, as the lay of the land invites to ornamentation suitable to God's sown field and the burial-place of the fathers. Also this report is evidence enough of the little esteem had by the early settlers for the fifteen-rod Main Street west of the Hemlock Brook. It did not seem to them that so wide a street would ever be needed so far from the Square. This committee proposed a burial-lot of one acre, five-eighths off from one end of a house lot, and three-eighths out of the Main Street. The proprietors had granted leave conditionally only a few months before, to Joseph Tallmadge, to take one quarter of an acre for a tan-yard out of the street at almost the same spot, " not to obstruct or hinder passing." Passing was the main matter with them, and scarcely at all a broad and beautiful avenue for the future. The west end of the Main Street has never recovered from this levity of the original proprietors. It is nowhere of the full width, and much of the way quite narrow and neglected.

The second and only other specimen of early action that we will quote here, is in the form of a report from an important committee, consisting of Eichard Stratton and Thomas Dunton and Samuel Kellogg.

Williams Town December the 8 1766 we the Subscribers being chosen to Lay out and Exchange Roads for the Propriete we Have Laid a road from green River Bridge a South East Coarse Eighty two Rods to a burch tree marked H then Running South theirty five rods to the old Road wheare the first two rod road goes of to the South to a maple tree marked H the road runs through Derick webbs meadow Lot No 14 and through Nehe Smedly fifty acre lot No 28 the Road to be four rods wide and said webbs and Smedly to have the old Road in Exchangue for this We Have also Laid a two rod road from the above Said Burch tree East forty eight rods through sd Smedly fifty acre lot to a maple tree marked H thence a little to the North East Eight rods a Crost a Little Corner of mr. Kellogg Land to the old Road by the meadow Lots sd Smedley to have the meadow Road through his land to Pay for this.

This was the beginning of the present road of egress from out the east end of our village, towards IS^orth Adams. It was a forked road, starting single from the bridge, and dividing at the foot of what used to be called the " Smedley Hill," and afterwards " Deacon Foote's Hill" (who married a Smedley and passed a long life there), avoiding the hill, and striking the old path to Fort Massachusetts at a point further east. This straightened, and, of course, shortened.

the road to the East Town, besides avoiding a clay hill ; but, for some reason (perhaps because the ground was wet as well as clayey), the new road was not long maintained, and there has been, of late years, much talk of reopening it, or one corresponding to it, across the meadow land nearer the Hoosac.

The Derick Webb referred to in the above report as the owner of meadow lot 14, which not long after became a part of Nehemiah Smedley's farm, had been a soldier in the line of forts ten years before, became a very early settler in West Hoosac, and made his home on the plateau west of Green River, and east of the northeast quarter of the village plat. This was on hrstnlivision tifty-acre lot 34, high ground, that skirted the meadow lots on lowest Green River, and on the Hoosac as far as the Noble Bridge. In all probability Rev. AVhitman Welch had his home near to Mr. Webb's. The latter's meadow lot Xo. 14 joined his own home lot, though it lay mostly east of the river. Thomas Dunton, a man in Avhom apparently all the proprietors had confidence, a member of this very committee whose report we are considering, the father of five children, born 1762-1771, had pitched his place near the Noble Bridge on this same fifty-acre lot, where is now the hum of a huge cotton-factory and the bustle of a railway station. For some reason, partly, perhaps, because it was so sightly and defensible, this lot No. 34, which flanked the river on one side and the house-lot plat on the other, was early cut up into dwelling lots much more than any other fifty-acre lot of either division. A short time before the death of its late lamented owner, John M. Cole, he iX)inted out to the writer the remains of at least two cellars upon this plateau besides those of the three houses already referred to. It is quite possible that Derick W^ebb found his neighbors here too close ; for we find him moving on into Vermont, after a fashion that was much followed later, and making himself a new home in Sunderland, Bennington County, in tlie first company of settlers there in 17G6. When he sold his Williamstown lands in July, 1768, he is described as of '' Sunderland in the Province of New York so-called " ; and the deed was acknowledged in " Hoosack before John MaComb one of His Majesty's Justices," etc., in December, 1769. Derick Webb was the holder in 1765 of house lot 58 here, and sold to Joel Simonds for £40, three years later, 100-acre lot 9, and oak lot 38, and pine lot 41, all drawn by house lot oS.

Just midway between the two villages in Williamstown, on the Green River road, is a fair mill privilege (formerly much better than now), called in all the old records " Taylor's Crotch," from

Samuel Taylor, the first proprietor of land at the junction of the Green Eiver and the Hopper Brook, which constitutes the Crotch. Foreseeing that a mill would probably be needed there, the original proprietors sequestered ten acres of land, including the junction of the streams, for public purposes, and called it the " Mill Lot." It proves that population had already crept up the Green River beyond that point, when a proprietors' meeting on the 15th of October, 1767, " Voted to Give John Kriger Peter Kriger and William Kriger their heirs Liberty to Sett up a Grist mill att taylor's Crotch by the 1 Day of August Next on those Conditions that they have all the Land on the west Side of the West Branch except what is Necesery for Roads and as much of the East Side of the west Branch as is Nessery to Dam or flow for the use of the Corn mill With Liberty to Cutt any timber for the use of the Mill or Dam on the ten acre of Land theire Sequestered Provided they will keep sd mill in order Haveing a Sutable time to Repare said mill in when it is out of order they to Have the Privileges Solong as they keep a good mill and Nolonger." Under this public encouragement there came into town a family of Dutch millers, who were then living in Pownal below, and who became good citizens for a century, intermarrying with the Youngs and other old families, so that even the name has but recently died out here. " Krigers' Mills " is still the best established name of the locality ; for a year and a half after the above concession on the part of the proprietors to the three " Krigers," they voted to the same parties by name " Liberty to Sett up a Sawmill at taylors Crotch on the East Branch Provided they will Sett up a Sawmill by the first Day of may Next on these Conditions that they Build Said mill and keep it in Good Repare So Long and No Longer they to Have it Haveing a Sutable time to Repare Said mill in."

A clause in the warrant for a proprietors' meeting, to be holden in the new meeting-house, Oct. 9, 1769, reads as follows : " To See if the Proprietors will a Low or for Bid milstones Being Carred out of Town that are found on the Proprietors Land with out a Reasonable Satisfaction." In the record of that meeting these words are found in relation to that item of business : " articiel Dismissed by a Vote." Mr. Dale, the United States geologist, who is familiar with every part of the surface of Williamstown, informs that those supposed millstones could have been no other than the quartzites, still found in limited quantities on Stone Hill and near the top of East Mountain. Quartzites, he says, are not well adapted to become millstones; nevertheless, they were sometimes used for that purpose, and the reference can be to no other.

Some proprietors continued to be delinquent in the payment of the rates assessed upon them from time to time, for certain public expenses, such as roads and bridges, and at length the meetinghouse ; and public auctions were ordered, in order to sell off such portions of the lands delinquent as might satisfy these claims. Many lots became more or less divided up in this way, - titles disputable, and owners indifferent. Frequent parties from Connecticut, on their way through the town to new homes in Vermont, proved attractive to many families and intlividuals that had been less successful in their choices or less fortunate in their neighbors, and some of these dissatisfied ones passed on to the northward. The ix)pulation, as a whole, was considerably unstable. The element that proved the steadiest, that had been the most successful, and that became, about 1770, in the good sense predominant, was decidedly the old garrison element ; that is to say, the young soldiers became settlers, who had done duty in the line of forts in the French war, specially in Fort Massschusetts and in the West Hoosac Fort. These men, as a rule, became the stand-bys and the leaders while peace lasted, and the strong defenders of colonial rights and liberties in the next decade.

The solidity of some of those old soldiers is illustrated in connection with the story of the first meeting-house. It was a good deal of an achievement to build that house, under all the circumstances. It was first occupied by the proprietors for one of their own meetings, Nov. 7, 1768. At that meeting it was " Voted to Give Instructtions to the meeting House Commetee Concerning the Pew Ground also Voted to Build Pews Voted that Said Commetee Go on and Build Pews according to their Dischression and then Sect Said House." At the same meeting, adjourned, - " Voted Excepted the Hole of the account of the meeting House Commetee in the Hole - £149 14«. lid." Who were the persons entrusted with the delicate and muchdisputed questions about the first meeting-house ? The original committee to build consisted of Richard Stratton, and Xehemiah Smedley, and Samuel Sanford. Sanford was from ^Milford, Connecticut, the birthplace of Whitman Welch, the minister, and was probably put on this committee as the special friend of the minister; but, for some reason unknown to us, Sanford fell out before the work was done, and in March, 1768, the proprietors " Voted and chose Benjamin Simonds a Commete man in the Room of mr Samuel Sanford for Building the meeting House." Simonds's name is as indissolubly joined to the story of the Massachusetts Fort as that of any other man, unless it be Ephraim AVilliams ; and Smedley was a Connecticut soldier in the garrison at West Hoosac as early as anybody was, and his father had bought house lot No. 1, in October, 1752, which the son purchased in his own name, in March, 1758, and still held. There was great difficulty in determining the place of the new house of worship, as is shown by the clauses of the warrant for the meeting in April, 1768; namely, "to See if the Proprietors will appoint a Place wheare to Sett a meeting House or to Com into any measures for the Same " ; " to See if the Proprietors will agree with the town to Chuse a Place for the meeting House or to chuse a Commete for the Same " ; " to See if the Proprietors will forbid the Commetee to Raise the meeting House till such time as there is a Place legally appointed for the Same " ; " to Give Instructions to the Commetee of the meeting House that they may know How to Proceed concerning the Charges for Raising Said House."

It will be remembered that the " Town," as such, was incorporated in 1765 ; but this came, very slowly, to be able to confront, as an organization, the older and naturally stronger "Proprietary," which held in its own hands the times and modes of dividing up the lands among the proprietors, and which owned absolutely all the common and undivided lands of the town. At the April meeting, 1768, the proprietors refused to let the " town " have any voice in hxing the site of the meeting-house. They refused, also, to forbid their committee to raise the house till a place were legally appointed. They voted, the same day, to appoint themselves a place " to Sett up a meeting House-" They decided that each proprietor should have as many votes, for or against the " Square " as the place, as he was possessed of acres in the town. 9880 acres then voted for the location on the Square, and 5035 acres voted to the contrary, and finally (same day), "Voted to Leave it to the Discression of the Commetee to Provide for the Raising Sd House." In October, 1769, the proprietors "Voted to Raise one Pound on Eaich Proprietor Right to finish the meeting House and Some other old Rearriges." Also, "Voted Excepted accounts as follows to Benjamin Simonds and Nehemiah Smedley for finishing the meeting House : £4 8s. 3d." In March, 1770, it was "Voted to Build 2 Pews in the East End of the meeting House." Also, at the same time, it was " Voted not to Except the meeting House as finished." The records of the proprietors contain no further references to the erection and equipment of their meeting-house. It is plain that their building committee possessed their entire confidence both as men and as builders.

intersection of the Main Street by the two cross streets north and south, on nearly the highest ground in the entire stretch of the Main Street, which is one mile and three-eighths in length from Green Kiver to the west branch of Hemlock Brook; also as to the pewsystem and body pews, and two additional pews at the east end before the finishing ; and the same committee was directed finally " to seat " the meeting-house, that is, to arrange the families in the pews for Sundays according to some imaginary order of rank or social worth. For the rest, the committea seems to have gone forward at its own discretion, and to have done everything to the satisfaction of their constituents. The house continued to be used for the worship of God for just thirty years, - the only one so used in the entire town. Towards the last, for some unknown reason, Stratton seems to have retired more or less from active direction in the building, and left it to his younger colleagues, Simonds and Smedley. Simonds was forty -two and Smedley thirty-six in 17()8. It is a noteworthy fact, that, after building the meeting-house conjointly and thus demonstrating their capacity collectively, each of the three committee-men should have erected his own house not far from the same time, and that all three of these houses should be standing strong and in good repair and substantially unaltered in this year of Grace, 1893. All three are two-story houses, and 1773 may be fairly assumed as the avemge date of their erection.

Unluckily, the original seating of the meeting-house has not been preserved. There were certainly very few grounds of social distinc- \ tion among the proprietors of West Hoosac in 1768. They were all j farmers without exception ; even the minister and the doctor bought and sold and cultivated lots more or less, like all the rest. The minister was the only college graduate in the place. The doctor was Jiicob Meack, a German or Hollander, who had probably strolled up the Hoosac from Albany or its neighborhood. It is likely that he married his wife here, although her full maiden name has not been ascertained. " Betsey Meack, relict of Jacob Meack, physician : she departed this life 6 Nov. 1797, in her 57"' year." They reared five daughters here, born 1768-76, and all were married here; Hannah to John Kilborn, Junior, Currence to William Young, Esq., and Sally to Keuben Young, Escj. Their home was on Main Street, house lot 12, just over the east branch of Hemlock Brook, which was often called from this circumstance the " Doctor Brook." The house is still standing, thoroughly repaired, after having been occupied for two generations by the Kilborn family. Nearly every other proprietor, besides being a farmer, had learned and mnlfl practise some mechanical trade. One proprietor, doubtless, gained some little precedence over others by length of time passed in the settlement or its neighborhood, which tended so far forth to make prominent those who had been soldiers in the two forts ; the few who were well-to-do had, of course, the usual advantage over those more straitened by the res angusti domi; and a greater age, a better education, and any supposed superior personal merit, other things being equal, would serve as principles of grading in seating a small meetinghouse. Any Yankee has the privilege of guessing as to the slight precedence of 1768, after the minister and doctor.

1. Eichard Stratton would be likely to come first. He was older than the rest, came earlier than many, was well off, and he had three or four promising sons who had nearly reached to man's estate when he came hither to make his home, from Western, about 1760. He was moderator of the proprietors' meeting in 1761, and served in that capacity eight times more. There were sixty -three proprietors' meetings in all, from 1753 till 1802, and Stratton was moderator in one-seventh of them. No other citizen served so many times. Josiah Horsford served five times, and James Meacham five times, and all others a less number of times. The two most notable purchases of lands that Stratton made, were house lot 58 and threefourths of house lot 57, which is the lot that runs at right angles to all the rest of the house lots, on account of the lay of land and water at the east end of the southeast quarter of the village plat. He built his house on the front of 58 in such a masterly manner that it is a good house to this day, and has had a remarkable succession of owners and tenants. Stratton himself died in it, although we do not know the date ; Dr. Remembrance Sheldon lived in it many years at the beginning of this century ; Gershom T. Bulkley, the first postmaster of Williamstown, was long a tenant, if not an owner ; Captain Isaac Latham, also postmaster and a leading man, owned and occupied it ; and James M. Waterman, chairman of the board of selectmen longer than any other citizen has been from the beginning, is the present owner and occupant. The rear of this house lot is just as it was surveyed out in 1750. Some time after Eichard Stratton came also his brother Ichabod, who presently went away. Eichard's sons, Isaac and Ebenezer, who came with him, became leading men in the next generation. Isaac was the first settler at the south part, and continued the most prominent man there so long as he lived. In February, 1767, the father sold his " well-beloved son, Ebenezer, from parental affection," for £5, the two fifty-acre lots of the first division Nos. 54 and 33 (except te.n acres, north- east corner of 33), and pine lot 45, and part of meadow lot 53 adjoining the two larger lots. This virtual gift constituted Deacon Ebenezer Stratton's farm, on what we now call the "Stratton road," which he cultivated in whole, or in part, until his death in 1814. The father was commonly called " Deacon Stratton," and was a Baptist, but whether such when he came and when he helped to build and " seUt " the meeting-house, is a point impossible now to clear up.

2. Captain Isaac Searle may well have ranked second on the meeting-house scale in 1768. He was a dweller in Northampton in 1749, and sold land there at that time. In 1759, and afterwards, he was a considerable buyer and seller of lands in West Hoosac, and is designated as " cordwainer " in all those deeds. He located early on house lot 55, which is the house lot that skirts Water Street on the west, as that street opens up on Main Street. The Methodist meeting-house and parsonage now occupy a part of the front of No. 55, as do also Sherman's hardware store, and the old and long two-story house just west of it. Searle lived on the site of this house ; and it is more than probable that he built it in his old age. A little of the extreme west end of house lot 57, cut off to the west by Water Street striking Main at right angles, is now indistinguishable from the front of house lot 55; the old ''Union House," so-called, long kept as a tavern by " Uncle Jerry Hosford " and others, stood where the church now stands, and probably wholly on No. 57 ; if so, the present lumber-yard and opera-house of Waterman and Moore in the rear, are mainly on 57, and i)artly on the side of 55. The Union House and the present hardware store are said to have been built by David Noble, a prominent character we shall have to study in the sequel ; at any rate, Isaac Searle owned a good many lots of land on both sides of Water Street, all the after-drafts coming from house lot 55, other house lots too, and some of the after-drafts from them also. More than any one of his neighbors, Searle was getting rich under the circumstances. In the first year of the town government, 1765, he was taxed for £700 at interest. Only one other was taxed that year on interest money at all, and that was Nehemiah Smedley, for £126 in that form. Money makes the mare go ; and his increasing stores made Searle of too much consideration to be longer characterized as "cordwainer" in the deeds, of which there were many ; and he is " Gentleman " in this connection thereafter. He buys and sells lands, too, in other parts of the county, e.g., in New Marlboro ; and in the Vermont Gazette, 10th July, 1795, Isaac Searlo and sixty-two others were published lived to be married; Deliverance to Joel Baldwin, Amy to James Fowler, Amelia to Samuel Hawkins, - these three continued to live in Williamstown ; Mary to John Boynton, who moved to Cornwall, Vermont; Huldah to Warren Uibbs, who moved to Middlebury, Vermont; and Tryphena to Richard Kinney, and Olive to Moses McMaster, and both of these families removed to Georgia, Vermont. Mrs. Baldwin lived here to old age, and went by the name of "Aunt Dill " in the neighborhood where she dwelt, but finally migrated with her grandnephew, Lemuel, to Great Bend, Pennsylvania, within the memory of some now living.

John S medley, Junior, married Elsie Williams, daughter of that Nehemiah Williams whose acquaintance we have made as living by the big rock near the Pownal line, on Northwest Hill, and as witnessing some of the surrendering soldiers of Burgoyne filing down the opposite Pownal hills. Smedley's home was not far from his father's, on fifty-acre lot No. 6, of the first division, whicli holds the famous Sand Spring; and the second John Smedley was the first known owner of that watering-place, which has had a vicissitudinous history as such ; and the tradition is still stirring, adown its appropriate lines, that old Aaron Smedley, born in 1750, who was a vagrant hunter, living mostly in Vermont, used, on his visits to his relatives in Williamstown, to frequent his nephew's rude bathingplace, for the benefit of his eczema. A third John Smedley, son of John, Junior, born April 21, 1780, married Mary Morse, moved afterwards to Clinton County, New York, returned to Williamstown in 1822, and then moved to Allen County, Ohio, where he died. This Smedley is more interesting on account of his posterity than from anything in his own biography. His daughter Lois, born March 12, 1783, was married to Reuben Stetson at Cornwall, Vermont, in July, 1801, and thirteen children were the fruit of that union. Mrs. Stetson died the last day of August, in 1866. One of her sons, named Lemuel Stetson, after one of her brothers, Lemuel Smedley, the same who took "Aunt Dill," in her old age, from Williamstown to Great Bend, Pennsylvania, became the father of Francis Lynde Stetson, born April 23, 1846 (Williams College, 1867), distinguished as a lawyer in New York, and particularly as bringing into his law firm President Cleveland, at the close of his first administration. F. L. Stetson's mother was Helen Hascall; and his father was in political and judicial life in the state of New York all tlie time (nearly) from 1835 to 1862.

pastor, is written in old deeds as of '' West Hoosuck," as early as 1761. He bought in that year, in company with Benjamin Simonds, one-half of two fifty-acre lots of the second division, - :N"os. 56 and 57, - which, two years later, became wholly his own, and on the latter of which he built, shortly afterwards, the first framed house in the South Part. It consisted of one room. The next year another room was added, in which Aaron Deming was permitted to live until he could house himself upon his own 100-acre lot, as already described. Burbank's lots were level and fertile and heavily wooded. The Ashford Brook crossed them both not far from their eastern end and but a little before its junction with the Hancock Brook, and the road to the south crossed them diagonally just about their middle. He had at first but one neighbor, and that was Isaac ^tratton, li-ving then in a log-house on No. 53, just north of the Hancock Brook, where that hastens to unite with the Ashford, in the same lot, 53, on which is the present site of the Sabin House, in the centre of the little village, - a site that has been occupied as a tavern almost ever since. But Stratton soon crossed the brook upon IN"o, 54; and built his house on the site occupied for life, a few rods South, on the west side of the road ; and he shortly after owned and cultivated No. 55, also, which lay between himself and Burbank. The latter' s own axe was the first to make clearings on 57 and 56, and his own plough was the first that ever stirred the rich intervale there. It was long called the Burbank farm. Let it be so called forever! His wife was Mary Marks, - likely to have come from Western, - and the eldest of their ten children was born in February, 1766. Both Burbank and his wife were original members of the one church, and their place of meeting was more than five miles from their home. The roads were rough, and over Stone Hill very steep both ways, but it is altogether likely that they were in their pew in the new meeting-house, after 1768, most of the Sundays of the year, and he was certainly often at the church meetings on week days. The same was true of Isaac Stratton, his next neighbor. Accordingly, we find the proprietors building a bridge for them over the Hancock Brook, in what is now the hamlet of South Williamstown, even before they built one over the Green River, at the eastern end of the north village, although there were many more settlers east of that stream than south of its tributary. The truth is, that Stratton and Burbank were pushing and prosperous young men, and soon became prominent.

that one of the seating committee, Richard Stratton, who would naturally take the first seat, by the vote of his two colleagues, much younger than he. Burbank's life was uneventful, except as he went out repeatedly in the militia during the Revolutionary War. He was in the battle of Bennington as a private, though his rank in the militia at that time was Lieutenant. His eldest son, Samuel, between eleven and twelve years old at that time, lived to tell William Dickinson, who told the writer, that his mother directed him repeatedly, on the memorable day of the battle, to put his ear on the ground and listen, and that he did so, and heard the sound of the cannon distinctly and more than once. The distance is twenty miles. This son, also, transmitted the never-to-be-forgotten remark of the father, when he had returned from that battle, in which a bullet had grazed his ear: -- After they had fired once and we had fired once, I'd just as soon be in the battle-field as in the potato field ! "

8. Isaac Stratton had a much more intimate and influential connection with the battle of Bennington than his brave neighbor Burbank ; but the story of that is best deferred until a later chapter may open up that whole subject. So far as appears at this late day, Isaac Stratton, more than any one else in the early times here, was under the dense shade of his father's good name and great activity. But they lived about five miles distant from each other, and the son easily held the first place at the South Part, as the father did more easily at the North Part. Richard Stratton's sons clung firmly to the old, established church order, as did also his wife, while he himself became a Baptist, and has no name on the Congregational church-record. This does not seem to have detracted at all from his influence and popularity. Isaac was his oldest chikl, and seven others followed, all born in Western. Isaac's birth fell in November, 1739, and he was consequently twenty-two years old, if, as is probable, the family moved hitlier in 1761. Tlie father seems to have been a man of property when he came. He bought, in April, 1762, what ever after continued to be his homestead ; namely, house lot 58, and a part of fifty-acre lot 34, directly north of the house lot, " and supposed to be about 13 acres." For this he paid Derick Webb £34, and Elkanah Parris and Isaac Stratton signed the deed as witnesses. It is reasonably certain that the older Stratton had bought, a year or two before this, the two fifty-acre lots at the south part, Nos. 53 and 54, which soon became the patrimony of Isaac, because the evidence is complete that Isaac built his cabin on No. 54 by the brookside in 1761, if not in 1760. Professor Kellogg, in "Field's Berkshire," wrote in 1829 from hearstiy : " It was not till about 1760 that Isaac Stratton, son of Eichard, began on the spot ever since occupied by a tavern in the centre of the village. He was there alone about three or four years." In September, 1766, the father, in consideration of £7, " together with that parental love and affection which I have and do bear to him the said Isaac Stratton my well beloved son," deeded the lots, 53 and 55, to the son. In August, 1767, the latter sold No. 53 to Samuel Sloan, who soon built and opened a tavern on the site of Stratton's cabin, while the latter moved south of the brook and established himself for life on a pleasant knoll on No. 54.

Isaac Stratton and Mary Fox, his wife, had two children born to them while they still lived north of the brook, and at least three afterwards at their permanent home south of it. Both were original members of the church, and he died in its communion ; while, after his decease in 1789, the widow married Eev. Clark Eogers and left the town with him ; but when she died in 1812 her body was brought back, and lies buried by the side of her first husband in the burialyard at the junction of the brooks. Besides military services of a high character under all the commissions in the militia up to Major, Isaac Stratton was early commissioned as a justice of the peace, and began to draw the simple legal writings needed in so primitive a community. He was town clerk also for a long time. He drew the entire confidence of the people in all parts of the town. He was pecuniarily prosperous in the then current usage of that term. After the definitive treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783, he prepared to erect for himself a new house of two stories and ample dimensions. The materials, for the most part, were close at hand, growing upon his own land. The timbers are still in place and in good preservation to the present time. "The rafters are long poles of quite uniform size, such as grew then luxuriantly on intervale land by the brooksides. A bit of white marble set in the chimney bears the legend legible yet : -

Stratton enjoyed his new house but four years, and passed on into a house not made with hands. His headstone in the cemetery nearly opposite the house to the eastward bears the simple epitaph : "Isaac Stratton Esq. died April 3, 1789, aged 50."

The precedence of Isaac Stratton at the South Part, both in point of time and general position over the other early and excellent settlers there, makes the appellation of " Stratton Mountain," appropriated to the huge wedge of rock and soil and forest, thrust northward into the acute angle formed by the Hancock and Ash- ford brooks, a good name to the mountain, and a fitting memorial to the man. On the same day in September, 1766, when Richard Stratton gave his son, Isaac, his farm in South Williamstown,he also gave his second son, Daniel, for £5, "together with that parental love and affection which I have and do bear/' etc., a good farm in the White Oaks, consisting of first-division fifty-acre lot No. 51, with parts of two meadow lots adjoining the main lot, and two oak lots convenient of access to the homestead. It has been noted already that the father also gave on similar terms to his third son, Ebenezer, an excellent farm on Green River, on which this son lived and died, the road leading to which has recently been christened by the town the " Stratton road."

Isaac Stratton'S House

9. Not much inferior in point of social consideration to Daniel Burbank was Thomas Roe, from Canaan, Connecticut, who bought of Asa Douglas, then of that place, for £30, in December, 1764, the fifty-acre lot next south of Burbank's, and the last in that tier of lots. Then follow in that direction the 100-acre lots, on which the Demings first sat down. The deed from Douglas to Roe was executed in Canaan, when the latter was twenty-eight years old, and his wife, Mary Welles, was three years younger. She was from Hartford. They undoubtedly began on their new lot in the spring of 1765. The deed was executed in Canaan before John Beebe, Justice of the Peace. Here they lived to have twelve children, of whom the eldest was Elisha, born Dec. 5, 1768. Their lot. No. 58, ran back to the Ashford Brook on the east, and was flanked on that side by Deer Hill, one of the foothills of the Greylock group ; and Elisha Eoe, as well as Samuel Burbank, reported in their old age to the youngsters that they used to see the deer sport and graze on the swell over the brook. Hence the name "Deer Hill."