Williamstown Town (part 1 of 3)

Williamstown Town

At a Court of Probate holden at Northampton within and for the County of Hampshire on the second Tuesday of November being the 1P> day of said month anno Dom. " 1755 p. Timothy Dwight Esq? Judge of said Court The foregoing will was presented for probate by the Executors therein named and Noah Belding one of the witnesses to the same personally appearing made oath that Col." Ephraim Williams Esq^. the Testator, signed, sealed, pronounced & declared the above instrument as and for his last Will & Testament in his presence and in presence of William Williams JuuT and Richard Cartwright the other witness to said will and that he the said Testator was of sound mind & memory when he did it and that he with the other witnesses above mentioned all signed as witnesses to the same in the said Testators presence, wherefore it is ratified approved & confirmed as the last Will and Testament of said deceased so far as to the conveyance of the personal estate of said deceased only according to the said Testators bequests of the same in the foregoing will

At a Court of Probate holden at Northampton within & for the County of Hampshire on the second Tuesday of December being the lOl** day of said month Ane Do* 1755. p. Timothy Dwight Esq*" Judge of said Court William Williams Junf another of the witnesses to the foregoing will personally appearing made oath in every respect as the above said Noah Belding did as is above certified wherefore the said will is ratified approved & confirmed as the last Will & Testament of said deceased as to the conveyance of the Real a« well as the personal estate agreeable to the Devises of the same in the foregoing will.

Hampshire ss. Probate Office Sept. 1, 1812. I hereby certify that the foregoing is a true copy of the last will and testament of Ephraim Williams formerly of Hatfield in said County deceased as recorded with the probate thereof in said Office

Rev. Stephen Williams, pastor at Longmeadow, son of the famous "Redeemed Captive" John Williams, of Deerfield, at that time sixty-two years old, was in Albany when the will was drawn, as Chaplain to his kinsman's regiment, but he evidently was not consulted, in reference to it, and it is plain that the relations of tlie two men were not any too cordial. An extant diary of the clergyman, as yet unpublished, for the year 1749-50 contains two or three memoranda^ in relation to the officer : - " Dined with Col. Williams." " This night was hurt by discourse of Colonel Williams with Colonel Choate : I dislike ye conduct of my kinsman." Stephen Williams had been Chaplain under Pepperell at Louisburg, in 1745, and after this service at Lake George under Sir William Johnson ten years later, he served in the same capacity in the same region under General Winslow in 1756. He was minister in Longmeadow for sixty-six years, 1716-82. One of his deacons, Nathaniel Burt, was killed in the battle of Lake George, alongside of Colonel Williams ; and his pastor published later an elaborate eulogy of him, and also married his widow.

More is probably to be learned from this his will of the personal characteristics of Ephraim Williams, than from all other sources put together. If the kind reader please, we will study now this document a little in detail, with a view to gain (if possible) a firm possession of some of the founder's leading qualities.

(1) He was a man of more than common gratitude. "Item. I give to Solomon and Israel Stoddard, sons of my great benefactor, John Stoddard, deceased, my two colts now at Northampton." When this will was drawn. Colonel John Stoddard had been dead seven years. He was son to Solomon Stoddard, second minister of Northampton, and own cousin to Jonathan Edwards, settled in Northampton in 1727, as colleague with his grandfather Stoddard, Thereafter, those two men, until the death of the Colonel in 1748, were the most influential men in New England, at once in church and state, as well in Boston as in Northampton. Edwards delivered a commemorative discourse on the death of Stoddard, in which he ascribed to him the highest native gifts of mind, a peculiar genius for public affairs, a thorough political knowledge, great purity of life, incorruptible principle, and sincere piety. " Upon the whole, everything in him was great, and perhaps there was never a man in New England to whom the denomination of a great man did more properly belong." Governor Hutchinson says : " He shone only in great affairs, while inferior matters were frequently carried against his mind, by the little arts and crafts of minute politicians, which he disdained to defeat by counter-working."

When Ephraim Williams came back from his foreign voyages to stay, and his father had moved from Newton to Stockbridge, and the thunder-heads of the old Erench War began to loom up around the horizon of New England, John Stoddard stood at the head of the political and military administration of western Massachusetts ; William Shirley was the able and excellent colonial governor at Boston, whose estimation of Stoddard was so high, that he practically left the direction of affairs at the west in his hands; and it was undoubtedly Stoddard's promotion of an untried man to the command of the " line of forts " from the Connecticut River to the Hoosac, and his steady support of him in that position, notwith- standing some things that looked dubious in a military point of view, that constituted the ''great benefaction" immortalized by Williams in his will. After so much lapse of time and change of circumstances, and after the benefiictor had been seven years in his grave, many men, most men, would have regarded an incident of that sort as a by-gone, something, indeed, to be cherished in the personal memory, but not something to be formally and legally emphasized and thrust forward into :ni"<^i""- Colonel Williams was a grateful man.

(2) He had more than the usual sense of what constitutes right and fair between man and man, without reference to the social position of the party of either part. This appears in numerous minute incidents in his career, and particularly in the letter which he wrote from Albany to Israel Williams, to accompany and explain the will. The writer has studied the original of that letter with care, and is certain that one passage in it is illegible, not in consequence of the gnawing of the tooth of time (the date is July 21, 1755), but in consequence of a purposed obliteration on the part of somebody (likely to have been Dr. Thomas Williams), in order to save his father's memory from a censure implied in the original phrases. Nobody in Stockbridge had been satisfied with the dealings, general and particular, of the elder Williams with the Indians there. He had left Stockbridge under the profound odium of a selfish and unchristian conduct towards them. In this letter the founder desires that the executors of his will " would inquire into the affair of the Stockbridge Indians, which my Honored . . . left in charge ; by no means let them be . . . I desire you to pay £20 to your nieces at a venture ujx>n . . . know that I owe them one quarter of it, but for fear I do, I will put enough in."

The Williams family, as such, were aristocratic in their tendencies, in their intermarriages w4th other families, in their political opinions strongly inclined to monarchy, and in their social instincts and practices haughty, even if not positively unjust towards the masses of men. The founder's father inherited from his own mother, Judith Cooper, a reckless acquisitiveness in relation to property, and a singular dulness of conscience in relation to the inherent rights of the poor and unbef riended ; and it seems likely that he transmitted something of these traits to several generations of his descendants ; but his eldest son appears to have been remarkably free from them; and Vherever we can touch his points of contact with the common soldiers, and with others who had no champion, he shows the broad sympathies and that quick sense of justice that mark the true and great man. The obliterations made in this letter, probably long after it was written, do the writer much credit, and cannot but throw discredit back on the paternal stock.

(3) Considering his broken youth and imperfect education, and considering, too, that he never had a permanent home during his manhood, the thoughtful and religious traits of Colonel AVilliams strikingly appear in those phrases of his will that give the titles of some of his books, and make careful bequeathments of them all. " Item. I give to my trusty and well-beloved friend, John Worthington Esq., of Springfield, my Chambers's Dictionary, with the whole of Pope's works, and some other books that came in the same box, now in his hands ; but if he dies without issue, then the above articles to be given to the eldest male heir in Colonel Israel Williams's family." This copy of the " Dictionary," or more properly Cyclopedia, of Ephraim Chambers, first published in London in two very large folio volumes, may, very likely, have belonged to the sixth and last edition, which appeared, with much new matter, in 1750, and became the basis of Dr. Eees's Cyclopedia in forty-five quarto volumes.

" Item. I give the remaining part of my library not yet disposed of (excepting my large Bible and Eidgley's Body of Divinity), to my beloved brothers, Thomas and Elijah Williams, to be equally divided between them ; but in case my brother Thomas dies, his part to go to his son Thomas ; and in case my brother Elijah dies without issue, then his part to be given to my cousins, William and Israel Williams [sons of Colonel Israel, of Hatfield], to be equally divided between them ; and it is my will and desire, further, that my cousin William Williams, above mentioned, shall have the perusal of the books hereby given to my brothers, Thomas and Elijah, any reasonable time, upon his desire." This William Williams was just turned of twenty-one, and had just been graduated at Yale when these words were penned; and he lived to become, perhaps, the most efficient agent in the carrying out of another, the central, clause in Ephraim Williams's will, as one of the original trustees of the Eree School and the College, and the first president of that incorporated Board. He will be hereafter designated in these pages as Deacon William Williams, to distinguish him from several others of the same name in the same general family.

" Item. I give to my brother Josiah, my large Bible and Eidgley's Body of Divinity." All these words taken in their connections, and taken in connection with the solemn commitment, at about the same time, of himself and others to the prayers of Israel Williams, " and you and your dear family to the Divine Protection," must be the words of a thoughtful and comprehensive and deeply religious spirit. Among the books that thus fell to his own brother Thomas, was "An Universal History from the Earliest Account of Time," in twenty large volumes, strongly and elegantly bound, published in London, in 1748, by "T. Osborne in Gray's Inn; A. Millar in the Strand ; and J. Osborn in Paternoster Row." These volumes, complete, have recently been presented to the Williams College library by tlie heirs of Dr. Thomas Williams. They were kept, till well into this century, in the old Williams house in Deertield. They passed through the hands, in regular descent, of Solomon and Henry and Henry. The last enters an interesting autograph account of them on the inner cover of volume first, in connection with their presentation to the College. Bishop John Williams, of Connecticut, an heir along this line of descent, has long been generous and intelligent in behalf of the College.

(4) A quick sense of humor, well known on other grounds to have been characteristic of the founder, comes out even in his will. He bequeaths to John AVorthington " my French firearm, my case of pistols and hanger, in case the French donH get them!" Luckily, the French got nothing that belonged to him, except his life. His body was not rifled in consequence of the temporary retreat, nor his effects in his tent at the camp scattered. " ^ly firearm, now in my possession," went, as he willed, to his brother Thomas ; the sword and watch that he wore in the fight, and the sword that his brother Thonitis wore at the same time, are the property of the College, and formed the nucleus of the small historical museum now in Clark Hall ; and some other articles of utility and ornament on his person when he fell are in the hands of the descendants of his brother Thomas.

" Item. I give and devise and remit to the poor, distressed, and imprudent Captain Elisha Chapin, the sum of one hundred pounds, to be deducted out of the bond given jointly by Moses Graves and said Elisha Chapin ; the said hundred pounds to be remitted out of said Chapin's part ! "

(o) The magnanimity of Williams is shown in his will by his treatment of his half-brothers and half-sisters, as well as of some others. One would never know by the reading of this will, that the testator's relations were anywise different towards his uterine brother Thomas, with \vhom he had been brought up from infancy in the family of his grandfather Jackson, than those sustained towards his broil. ..v^ .T,wi i]i and Elij'^' :'M'1 l"'^ ci^f .vc A}>igail and Elizabeth and

Judith, who had been brought up in another family and under quite different auspices. ^^ Item. I give and bequeath unto my beloved brothers, Josiah Williams and Elijah Williams, and the heirs of their bodies, my homestead at Stockbridge, with all the buildings and appurtenances thereunto belonging, with all the stock of cattle, and negro servants now upon the place, to be equally divided between them, upon the following conditions, and not otherwise, viz. : That they pay annually to my honored mother [step-mother], for her support, twenty-six pounds thirteen shillings and four pence, and also, provided they fulfil the obligations I laid myself under, in a certain bond to my honored parents, for their support, and decent interment, exclusive of the money I then obliged myself annually to pay her; provided also, that they pay unto my sister Judith Williams, or the heirs of her body, the sum of one hundred pounds, and to the heirs of my sister Abigail Dwight, born of her body, the sum of one hundred pounds, to be paid them* severally, within twelve months after my honored mother's decease. In case my sisters Judith or Elizabeth should come to die without heirs, then it is my will that her, or their part or parts shall devolve to the heirs of my sister Abigail Dwight."

This sister Abigail, the first-born of Ephraim Williams's second marriage, born April 20, 1721, came to Stockbridge with her father's family in 1739, and was shortly after married to E,ev. John Sergeant, the Indian missionary there, and became the mother of his three children. Electa, Erastus, and John. The latter are referred to in Colonel Williams's will, - "I give it to my beloved cousins, Erastus Sergeant and John Sergeant, to be equally divided between them.'^ The missionary Sergeant died in 1749, and his widow not long after married Brigadier-General Joseph Dwight. The sister Elizabeth married Kev. Stephen West, who was, for a short time, Chaplain at Fort Massachusetts, and was settled pastor in Stockbridge from 1759 till 1818. She died in 1804. The third sister Judith married Eev. Ezra Thayer, of Ware, who was ordained there in 1759. The halfbrother Josiah was an ensign in Ephraim's regiment in the battle of Lake George, and was desperately wounded. His half-brother Thomas, who was the surgeon there, wrote to his wife three days after the battle, - " Twenty odd wounded in our regiment, and poor brother Josiah makes one of the number, having a ball lodged in the intestines, which entered towards the upper part of his thigh and passed through his groin." Nevertheless, like Dieskau, Josiah Williams survived his wound for a number of j^ears, though he ultimately died in consequence of it. The youngest half-brother, Elijah, bom in 1732, lived an honored life in Stockbridge, and died there in 1815. The house is still standing in West Stockbridge, which he built and occupied for twenty-five years ; and he was mainly instrumental in having that township set off in 1774 from the old " Indian Town.'*

(6) ^^Item. I give and bequeath to my beloved cousins, James and John Gray, sons of James and Sarah Gray, fifty acres of land lying north of the great pond, so-called, bounded upon land of their father, James Gray, on the east, by Josiah Jones's land on the west, by the great pond on the south [Stockbridge Bowl], and the town line on the north, to be equally divided between them." There are two reasons for referring now to this particular bequest; first, to discover the painstaking action of Williams^s mind, to include in his benefactions all his relatives (even those by marriage), as well as to secure by means of other parts of his small fortune certain ends of public benevolence ; second, to show how and how widely the Williams blood entered the leading families of western Massachusetts, particularly this Scotch-Irish family of Gray, with which the writer also is lineally connected. Sarah Williams, own sister of Ephraim Senior, and three years older, the two youngest children of Captain Isaac, himself son to the progenitor Robert of Roxbury, married John Marsh, of Hadley, in October, 1718. Her husband dying, she married James Gray, then of Hadley, a weaver, one of the Scotch-Irish immigrants of 1718 into Worcester. They were married in July, 1732, and had these two sons, James and John, mentioned by name in Colonel Williams's will, as above. They were thus his own cousins.

In February, 1749, James Gray, "Weaver," and Sarah, his wife, sold their lands in Hadley, and bought in the following October of Ephraim Williams Junior, " Gentleman," 200 acres of land in Stockbridge " on the north line of the town by the Great Pond," etc. In February, 1762, Sarah Marsh Gray having in the mean time died in Stockbridge, June 1, 1759, James Gray, "Weaver," and James Gray, Junior, " Gentleman," sold this land to Charles Stone, of Guildford, Connecticut, for £264. Notice that the father in his old age is still " weaver," and his son, by virtue of being the nephew of Ephraim Williams, Senior, is " gentleman." So it went in those days. Twelve days later the same two parties, under the same styles, bought fifty acres in the heart of Stockbridge village, for £264, " bounded by land of T. Woodbridge, and of the heirs of John Sergeant, and of land of Samuel Brown and James Wilson, with dwelling-house, orchard and growing grain."

The story of these youngsters of that time, James and John Gray, and specially of the former and elder of them, may afford some instruction and more amusement. The Williams influence got James Gray appointed a sergeant in one of the companies of Colonel Pepperell's regiment, which accompanied Governor Shirley's central expedition against the French and Indians, in 1755. As General Braddock commanded at the southward, and Sir William Johnson to the northward, so Governor Shirley personally led the centre up the Mohawk Biver towards the Great Lakes. Shirley's own regiment, so-called, and Pepperell's, though paid by the king and counted as English regulars, were in fact raw provincials just raised in the colonies, and all hands wore their gay uniforms with an awkward air. Sergeant Gray wrote as follows to his brother John in Stockbridge of his status in the army : " I have two Holland shirts, found me by the king, and two pair of shoes -and two pair of worsted stockings ; a good silver-laced hat (the lace I could sell for four dollars) ; and my clothes is as good scarlet broadcloth as ever you did see. A sergeant in the king's regiment is counted as good as an ensign with you ; and one day in every week we must have our hair or wigs powdered." More fortunate than young William Shirley, who went in a similar capacity with Braddock, and was killed, young Gray returned to Albany with the broken expedition, and kept some position in the army : for he writes a letter from Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1757, " to Mr. William Williams at Hatfield." In this letter he sends his " duty to your honored parents," that is to say, to Colonel Israel Williams and his wife. His correspondent in this case became the Deacon William Williams, of Dalton, of whom much will be said in the sequel.

The name of this James Gray, Junior, appears in a ludicrously aristocratic light in the earliest records of the Court of Common Pleas of the county of Berkshire. This county was set off from the old county of Hampshire in 1761. The court followed closely the old common law forms, and insisted on great strictness in pleading, even in cases in which Parliament had by statute long before relaxed the formalities. At the September term, 1768, of the New Berkshire Court, a writ was brought by George Wilmot, of Hartford, "Gentleman," plaintiff against James Gray, Junior, of Stockbridge, " Gentleman," defendant. The defendant came into court and prayed that the writ might be abated for these reasons : -

1. For that he the said James long before the purchase of this writ, by a good and lawful commission from Francis Bernard Esq., Captain General of his Majesty's Province of Massachusetts Bay, was appointed, constituted and made a Major of a Brigade to the forces raised by the said Francis Bernard, to be employed in his Majesty's service, in the year of our Lord 1762, under the command of His Excellency Gen. Amherst, and therefore that he has not his proper addition given him in said writ, for that he should therein have been called James Gray, Esquire, and not James Gray, Gentleman.

2. Because the plaintiff calls himself of Hartford in the County of Hartford, Colony of Connecticut, whereas before and at the time of the purchase of said writ, he lived at and belonged to Albany in the County of Albany, in the Province of New York, and ought to have been so called.

3. Because the plaintiff hath given himself the addition of Gentleman, whereas the said James says the plaintiff is not a Gentleman, and ought to have been called George Wilmot, Yeoman, and not George Wilmot, Gentleman.

The court after consideration and inquiry ordered, that the writ abate, and the said James recover his costs. The judges at that time were William Williams, of Pittsfield, a nephew of John Stoddard and of Colonel Israel Williams; Perez ^larsh, of Dalton, a son-inlaw of Colonel Israel Williams ; John Ashley, of Sheffield, a descendant of John Pynchon, of Springfield ; and Timothy Woodbridge, of Stockbridge, out of a long line of clergymen, and a great-grandson of the Apostle Eliot; the sheriff of the court was Elijah Williams, of Stockbridge, the youngest son of Ephraim W^illiams, Senior. James Gray was own cousin of Elijah Williams.

In January, 1768, James Gray, Junior, Esq., sold to Dr. Marshall Spring, of Watertown, Massachusetts, lifty-two acres of land in Stockbridge, on the road from the meeting-house to the Great Pond, for £100. His wife, Sarah vSpring Gray, signs with him the deed of transfer; and she outlived him in Stockbridge nearly thirty years. The epitaph upon his tombstone there is as follows : -

(7) '^Item. It is my will, that in case one of my aforesaid brothers die without issue, then the whole of the above bequest revert to the survivor, and the heirs of his body, provided he fulfil the above obligations laid on them both ; but in case my said brothers die without issue, then my will is that the above-mentioned estate be sold, and the money be put out to interest, and that the said interest shall be used for some pious or charitable purposes, as the propagating Christianity, the support of the poor in the County of Hampshire, or for schools on the frontier, in the county aforesaid, to be at the direction of my Executors, hereinafter named, and after their decease to be at the direction of the justices of the sessions for the county aforesaid."

This clause in the founder's will lets the penetrative reader deeper into his inmost character, and manifests forth better the real spirit and purposes of his life than any other clause of his writings, or than any other action of his life. He had not had the opportunity usually accorded to young men steadily to unfold, under the constant scrutiny of his contemporaries, the broad choices and best courses in life. His early manhood had been more or less perturbed, and more or less migratory by land and sea. Indeed, he had never had a true home of his own in his conscious life. His last ten years were spent in the military service of his native colony, - passing as an officer from pillar to post. Fort Massachusetts was as much his domicile as any other place. He had lived some time with his father in Stockbridge, and had even represented that town one or two years in the General Court. He had also dwelled, more or less, in Northampton, with the Stoddards and other relatives ; he calls John Stoddard in his will " my great benefactor " ; he also speaks in the same of "my sorrel mare now at Northampton," and of "my two colts now at Northampton."

Still, he was evidently drawn, in the later years, by somewhat different and stronger ties, to Hatfield as a transient home, - to the roof-tree of his kinsman and friend, Israel Williams ; " my beloved friend and kinsman," he denominates him in the will. He bequeaths to him the sorrel mare just mentioned, " and my bald colt now at Sheffield." ^^ Item. I give and bequeath to my beloved cousins, Eunice Williams, Jerusha, Elisabeth, and Lucretia Williams, daughters of Israel Williams, Esq. and Sarah his wife, the sum of twenty pounds each." ^^ Item. I give and bequeath to my loving cousin, Elisabeth Williams, over and above the twenty pounds above mentioned, my silver cream pot and teaspoons." Here it comes out. " The lady that Col. Williams did not marry," toasted at the Jackson Supper of 1859, was, in all human probability, Elisabeth Williams, of Hatfield. The reference is undoubtedly to her in the founder's last letter to Colonel Israel : " I have altered my mind since I left your house, for reasons, as to what I designed to give (which should have been handsome) to one very near to you." The reference of the strong tradition in the family that he intended to marry some one (which came down to the present writer direct, through the late Mark Hopkins, who belonged to the family by straigiit descent) was, beyond question, to Elisabeth Williams, of Hattield. The tradition in his family, as it came down in Berkshire, is silent as to the " reasons " wiiich led the Colonel to change his mind as to the amount of the bequest to her ; the tradition in her family, as it has come down to the present in Hampshire, takes on the color that she rejected him in their last interview. She afterwards married, at any rate, Elisha Billings, Esq., of Conway, and Dwight Whitney Marsh (Williams College, 1842) is a descendant of that union, and publicly voiced, in a humorous way, the tradition of "rejection" at the Commencement dinner here in 1892. Her elder sister, Jerusha, also mentioned in the will, married William Billings, Esq., of Conway.

Now, for a man only forty-one years old, subjected to such strange and changing environments as his, having acquired a moderate fortune by his own exertions, to propose, of his own motion, on a not unlikely contingency, "that the above-mentioned estate be sold, and the money be put out to interest, and that the said interest shall be used for some pious or charitable purposes, as the propagating Christianity, the support of the poor in the County of Hampshire, or for schools on the frontier in the county aforesaid, to be at the direction of my Executors, hereinafter named, and after their decease to be at the direction of the justices of the sessions [Probate Court] for the county aforesaid," indicates a far-reaching benevolence and a Christian depth of purpose every way remarkable. Nor is it once only that he puts this general disposition of his estate upon a possible or probable contingency ; he recurs to the same six times more in the course of the will, the last time as follows, after providing for the free school in the West Township, and contingently, also, for one in the East Township, he adds ; " But in case the above provisos are not complied with, then it is my will and desire that the interest of the above-mentioned moneys be appropriated to some pious and charitable uses, in manner and form as directed in the former of this, my last Will and Testament."

(8) We come at last to that peculiar clause of the Colonel's will, which has immortalized his name in the name of a town and a college, and which has steadily altered and uplifted, for a century past, the entire development of the western end of Massachusetts. This clause is distinct in character and purpose from the general one quoted under the last head, and indicates a different phase of mind and heart from that as also characteristic of the personal donor. That indeed refers, also, in a general way, to " schools on the frontier in the county aforesaid ^^ ; but this, on the other hand, is a specific appropriation of definite moneys for a single "free school," placed in a described locality, " forever," on two clean-cut conditions, both of which were actually met, "but in case the above provisos are not complied with," the moneys were to revert to the general and above-mentioned pious and charitable uses.

" Item. It is my will and pleasure and desire that the remaining part of lands not yet disposed of shall be sold at the direction of my Executors, within five years after an established peace, and the interest of the money, and also the interest of my money arising by my bonds and notes, shall be appropriated towards the support and maintenance of a free school (in a township west of Fort Massachusetts, commonly called the West Township), forever, provided the said township fall within the jurisdiction of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, and, provided also, that the Govenor and General Court give the said township the name of Williamstown ; and it is my further will and desire that if there should remain any moneys of the above donation, for the said school, it be given towards the support of a school in the East Township, where the fort now stands."

Ephraim Williams was, at any rate, a bachelor; it is possible, perhaps even quite probable, that he had then recently been disappointed in the expectation of a future marriage with Elisabeth Williams ; he v^^as already well forward in a military campaign that would certainly prove personally hazardous, and very likely to prove fatal ; the natural coveting for personal remembrance after the inexorable has been confronted, which possesses, more or less, every man of culture and character, was without question felt by the lonely officer, as he saw around him at Albany, and more and more day by day, the instruments and agents of sudden death in the shock of battle ; he had no child to perpetuate his memory, his relatives of the name were extremely numerous throughout New England, he himself had done and suffered nothing as yet, to give him a passport over more than one coming generation, and even his old sergeant (John Hawks), by an heroic defence of Fort Massachusetts against Vaudreuil, had attached his name to that locality more lastingly than its commander; to an elect and serious spirit like his own, it was, under all the circumstances, a God-given impulse to shape a sentence or two in his last will and testament, that might be likely in its results, not only to secure the lasting good-will and gratitude of some of his old comrades in arms along the Upper

Hoosac, but also to attach his name iu a distinctive form, and for a definite reason, to a beautiful spot of earth sure to possess its loyal dalesmen till the end of time ; and so, there came out of his human longings and aspirations the right and vital word, - '' provided also, that the Governor and General Court give the said township the name of Williamstown."

They did. When the town was incorporated, ten years after this, that is to say, in July, 1765, the " West Township," dear to the Colonel's heart, became *' Williamstown," never to be changed. While the ColonePs motive in the name was doubtless strictly personal, and appropriately so, and while any such end of personal remembrance as lay in his mind has already been reached a thousandfold, and will be met in swelling volume till human memories shall fade out, the name of the Town and the College is also felicitous as helping worthily to perpetuate the memory of several other members of the Williams family who played well their part (though much subordinate to his), in the direct or indirect upbuilding of the Town and the College and the country. Let us briefly run over some of these services of the Williams family.

Ephraim Williams, Senior, father of the founder, was chairman of a committee appointed by the Legislature in January, 1739, " carefully to view the land situate on or near Hoosuck River ; and if they find the land accommodable for inhabitants, that they survey and lay out one or more townships of the contents of six miles square and Return a Plat or Plats thereof to this Court at their next May session with an account of the Quantity and Quality of the said land, so that this Court may dispose thereof as they shall think proper." Thomas Wells was joined with Williams in this affair, and in May the committee repaired to the Hoosac, and with the aid of Timothy Dwight and Nathaniel Kellogg, surveyors, partially laid out three townships, and submitted their report in June following.

We the subscribers have carefully viewed the lands on and near the Hoosuck River and finding the same very accommodable for settlement have by the assistance of Timothy Dwight Esq., and Mr. Nath. Kellogg, survey's, laid out three townships each of the contents of six miles square. Two of which are adjoyning and lye on Hoosuck River the other on Mayoonsuck, being the northem branch thereof about three miles northward of the lowest of the two towns all which will fully appear by the plans herewith humbly presented. We have not perfected all the lines occasioned by the Great Opposition we met with from Sundry Gent'n from Albany a particular account of which we are ready to lay before y'r Excellency and Honours if thereto required, and are your Excellency's and Hon's most obedient and dutiful servants.

The " Gentlemen from Albany," referred to in this report, represented the government of the province of New York, between which and the province of Massachusetts the boundary line was not finally settled till 1787. The report of Captain Williams excited a deal of interest in Boston, particularly on account of the alleged encroachments and activities of New York along on the Upper -Hoosac ; and a committee of the Council and House, to which the report was referred, very speedily reported in turn in the following words : " The committee to whom was referred the Keport of Captain Williams and Wells and their doings with the platt of the three townships lately surveyed and laid out at or on Hoosuck River &c.. Offer as their opinion that for the better securing the undoubted rights this governm't have to those and other lands thereabout lying in this province, that the most northerly of the three townships aforesaid of the contents of six miles square adjoyning thereto and southward thereof, which the said Williams and Wells had not time to take a survey of tho' well assured of it and accommodable for a town and whereon some few people have already got and inhabit ; Bee granted to such of his Majesty subjects as will effectually settle the same in the space of two years with fifty or sixty familys on each tract and give sufficient bonds therefor," etc.

Something, we know not now what, quieted the fears of the authorities at Boston in relation to Dutch encroachments at the northwest for several years, and then the breaking out of the old French War made New York and Massachusetts allies as against a common enemy, and the building of Fort Massachusetts in 1745 furnished a Yankee garrison sufficient to protect eastern interests in the neighborhood till the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ; so that nothing was done in the way of settlement until the new survey of the two townships in 1749, which followed different lines throughout from that of 1739, and which laid the western boundary of Williamstown (except at the northwest corner) considerably to the east of the New York line as finally adjusted forty years later. It is to the credit of the Williams family, and of the name officially given to the town in 1765, that the founder's father made the first survey, and confronted for the first time in loco the few Dutch inhabitants that had already straggled up the Hoosac towards the junction of its two branches, and threw bold protests into the face of the Albany " Gentlemen " who were pushing these stragglers from behind. The stragglers themselves receded down the river. Not a solitary Dutchman, or other squatter, cumbered the ground in any direction when the house lots were surveyed out in the spring of 1750.

The claim of New York to extend over the Taconics to the eastward, which had already been put forcefully forward in the southern part of the county of Hampshire, still hovered over the mind of Colonel Williams when he dictated his will in 1755; for he made it a proviso to his gift for the free school in the West Township, - "provided the said township fall within the jurisdiction of the Massachusetts Bay." It is a curious thing in this connection, that one of the most distinguished of the Williams family, Samuel Williams, a grandson of the original " Redeemed Captive," of Deerfield, surveyed and settled finally the boundary line between New York and Massachusetts in 1786-87, and so in the way of result added a very considerable area to the town of AVilliamstown, the southwest corner being thus placed 446 rods further west than the survey of 1749 made it. This Samuel Williams, who was a Harvard graduate and Professor of Mathematics, had a son, Charles K. Williams (Williams College, 1800), who became a governor and chief justice of Vermont; and the latter a son, Chauncey K. Williams (Williams College, 1852).

Colonel Israel Williams, of Hatfield, after the death of Colonel John Stoddard in 1748, had the direct military command of the western frontier till the end of the last French War. He planned the West Hoosac Fort, and controlled in the first instance all its relations with Fort Massachusetts. There was, indeed, a good deal of appealing on the part of the soldiers and settlers from him to the governor and Council at Boston ; a good deal of fault-finding and general abuse of the Colonel, which called out from him at length, in the way of personal defence, a long statement of his action and policy through a number of years, - a paper which has never yet been printed, but which must needs be read, in order to understand fully his great services in critical times to this whole region round about. There are reasons multiform and manifold why West Hoosac should have been named Williamstown. The fact that Israel Williams developed into a Tory, and could not even be '-' smoked into a Whig," is no reason for belittling his long and stout services to Williamstown and its vicinity.

The issue of the battle of Lake George was the deliverance for the time being, and practically for always, of the Upper Hoosac from the French and Indian attacks. Besides the chief figure in that victory, commemorated in the name of our Town and College, there were five other men of the same name, all his near kinsmen, conspicuous in the battle and its sequels. Williamstown might well have been so named even on account of the bearing on its history of these subordinate services alone. There were Stephen Williams, Chaplain ; Thomas Williams, Surgeon ; William Williams, or "Billy," so called. Surgeon's Mate ; William Williams, Quarter-Master ; and Josiah Williams, an Ensign, fearfully v»^ounded in the battle. Besides these six members of the Williams family and bearing their name, there was present there, professionally. Dr. Perez Marsh, who married Sarah, eldest daughter of Colonel Israel Williams.

The reasons are not far to seek - that is to say, they are not hard to find - why Ephraim Williams in his will gave the west town precedence over the east as the certain seat of the free school for the benefit of the settlers. So far as he himself held landed property in the two, it lay mostly in the east town. In 1750, the General Court had given him, in fee simple, a fine estate of 200 acres on the great bend of the Hoosac, reserving to the province ten acres of the same, on which Fort Massachusetts then stood, on condition that he build and maintain, for twenty years, mills for the use of the soldiers and the settlers on one of the branches of the Hoosac above near their junction. The mills were built. We know their place on the Ashuwillticook in the heart of the village of North Adams. On the other hand, he had drawn two house lots in the west town, Nos. 8 and 10, which would ultimately, if he held them, entitle him to two sixty-thirds of the entire township. His farm (the present Harrison farm) and his mills were doubtless worth then four times as much as his house lots and their chances.

Still his mind was clear that the free school should be set up in the west town, and only the remnants of the bequest (if any) go to the benefit of the east town. Why was this ? There were topographical reasons : the east town was relatively to the other a dell, a ravine, the two branches of the Hoosac rushing to their union between steep mountains and through very narrow valleys, the meadow on which Fort Massachusetts stood being the only broad and open space in the whole township ; while the two main tributaries of the Hoosac in the west town, the Green River and the Hemlock Brook, had made in the course of ages comparatively wide valleys for themselves parallel to each other and at right angles to the chief -vale of the Hoosac, the spaces between which were beautiful uplands having knolls of every variety of shape rising up out of relative levels, the encompassing hills no longer steep and ragged barriers, but receding lifts of then warm woods and now fresh green fields. The father had doubtless often told over to the son what his observant eye had caught on purpose to officially report, when he had rambled over these sunny hills and along these perpetual streams with his surveyor, Nathaniel Kellogg, in 1739 ; and the Colonel himself, especially after another committee with their surveyor had wisely laid out the house lots in 1750 at the northern centre of the oblong concave, must more than once in the five years have personally scrutinized with the zeal of a landowner present and prospective, and with the living interest in others of a proposed benefactor, these varied slopes and hills and levels, already oflBcially pronounced to be so " accommodable for settlement."

There were agricultural reasons, - the soldiers at Fort Massachusetts, during the ten years past, had all been brought up on farms to the eastward or southward, and were all looking forward, on their discharge from military service, to farm life on lands of their own; the heart of their commander had long been strongly drawn out towards them and their future interests, as appears from letters and arguments addressed by him in their behalf, to the General Court at Boston. The testimony is abundant that he had drawn out towards himself their respect and confidence to a remarkable degree. It was to the interest of all parties that they should ultimately settle on the best farming lands to be had in the province, and considerable numbers of them had already purchased such lands in actuality and prospective in West Hoosac; such lands as these were would be pretty sure to be taken up i)retty soon by actual occupants, while this was more doubtful in respect to the less eligible lands in the east town. The Colonel had noted well what almost everybody has an opportunity to see, namely, that where folks are there will be children ; and, consequently, on this ground too, he made provision for the school where it was most likely there would be scholars to attend it and profit by it.

And there were historical reasons why the west town should have the preference in this regard. As we have seen already, he himself had assisted quite a number of his garrison to buy and pay for their house lots in West Hoosac. One family there, well known to him, had already two children, a boy and a girl, when this will was drafted in Albany. It has been said and is credible, though the authority for it is not distinct, that the Colonel had given some intimations to his men of his intention to do something for them, in a general way, as settlers upon these fertile lots, of which he was a co-purchaser with them. We have seen that the proprietors of West Hoosac learned, in general terms, of this bequest not very long after the will was probated in November, 1755. They do not seem to have been surprised at all by its terms, and they took simple and natural action in sending Benjamin Simonds, the father of the two children but just referred to, down to Northampton to get a copy of the will. The charge for this service was extremely small.. It can scarcely be questioned that Simonds expected, in the person of his children, to become a speedy beneficiary of his commander's gift ; but while he lived to see the free school open in 1791, and the College open in 1793, and twelve classes graduated in order from the latter, his youngest child was twenty years old when the school was opened. Very few, if any, of the children of actual settlers, prior to the incorporation of the town in 1765, ever received any direct advantage from the commander's charity, - so wisely and broadly did his executors construe their duties under the will in favor of a school of high grade, when once it might be established.

In quitting now for good the will of Colonel Williams, we quit also all further direct references to his motives and character. If we have not been able to reproduce so long after his death a living image of the man as he was, going in and out among men, it is because the data do not exist for such a vivid picture. Nearly every extant writing of the Colonel, whether epistolary or other, has been given and commented on in these pages at length. The reader may thus construct for himself, as well as the writer for others. The impression produced on the latter's mind by these long-continued studies is of a man attractive in person and manners, ambitious, scholarly beyond his opportunities, broad-minded in victory over strong temptation to be otherwise, democratic in the midst of a very aristocratic generation. Christian in and to the core even if not in form, influential in his life through obvious purity and strength of motives, able to receive from and impart to the very able men of his time, and through the divine blessing and happily concurring circumstances and obstacles overruled for good, powerful through a single clause in a simple will to maintain through many generations, not only his own name fragrant as ointment poured forth, but also the two causes dearest to his heart, - education and piety.

John Worthington, of Springfield, one of his executors and an intimate acquaintance, has left on record the following remarkable judgment : ^' Humanity made a most striking trait in his character, and universal benevolence was his ruling passion : his memory will always be dear."

The chief source of present knowledge of the slow developments of Williamstown as a self-governing body controlling all local affairs by the major part of votes in a legal assemblage, from the first meeting of the few proprietors, Dec. 5, 1753, till the end of that century, are the records in the old "Proprietors' Book," so called, of their duly warned meetings and votes from time to time. It is thus that we learn in detail, through a single example, the best lesson that New England has had the privilege of teaching to the world at large. The roots of all our civil politics, municipal and state and national, are uncovered and displayed at this ix)int. In preceding sections and chapters we have often referred to, and quoted from, these precious records, with a view of exhibiting the individual and social condition of the primeval settlers in this loved valley ; is it not our function, also, to remind the later generations of the way in which self-respecting and liberty-loving and rights-defending citizens of a great Republic made up of co-equal states were trained here from the very beginning ?

In the fall of 1753, there were about sixteen proprietors of house lots living on their respective lots, and fulfilling the conditions prescribed by the General Court of the province of Massachusetts Bay requisite to their owning these lots, and the further rights coupled with such ownership. This province, or colony, was then living and acting politically under a formal charter, granted to it for that purpose by William III., king of England, in 1691. Most of these sixteen proprietors had been previously soldiers in Fort Massachusetts under the pay and direction of this province, which had built the fort, and maintained in subordination to the mother country a war against France. Isaac Wyman, then in nominal command of the fort in time of peace, and at the same time the most conspicuous of the West Hoosac proprietors, drew up a petition to the General Court at Boston in behalf of all the proprietors, himself and several others subscribing it, asking for formal organization as a "Propriety" ; that is, to be authorized and empowered by a major vote, in regularly notified meetings, to divide and apportion the lands held common, to lay out and construct needed highways, to raise money by taxation of themselves to defray the charges of laying out lands and roads and any oth'^r necessary charges, and to agree upon a method of calling legal meetings in future.

In the House of Representatives, Sept. 10, 1753. Read [this petition of Wyman's] and voted that William Williams Esqr one of his Majesty's Justices of the Peace for the County of Hampshire Issue his warrant for Calling a meeting of proprietors of the west Township at Hoosuck so called Directed to one of the principal proprietors of said Township, Requiring him to set up a notification in some pubHck place in said Township setting Forth the time place and occasion of said meeting fourteen Days Beforehand which meeting shall be holden in said Township and such of the proprietors as shall be present at said meeting are hereby authorised and impowered by a major vote to Determine upon a Division of all or part of the Lands in said Township not already alloted also to Choose a Committee or Committees to lay out the same also to Kaise monies to Defray the charges that may arise by means of laying out said land also for Clearing Highways as also to Choose proprietors Clerk Treasurer assessors and Collectors and also to agree and Determine upon a method for calling meetings of said proprietors for the future.

Sent up for Concurrence : T. Hubbard Spk?". In Council Read and Concur.^ Tiiof. Clerk Deputy Secry Consented to W. Shirley A True Copy per Thos. Clerk Dep^y Secry

William Shirley, one of the ablest and by far the most interesting of all the colonial governors of Massachusetts, had returned from England only just in time to sign, as governor, this bill for politically organizing the inhabitants of West Hoosac, some of whom had served as " centinels '^ in Fort Shirley, built in 1744, and named after him. Almost everybody of prominence in Massachusetts, during the last half of the last century, touched in some relation or other this remotest corner of the colony ; and local students of its history may well feel a sort of gratulation that the governor's own autograph is appended to their humble magna cliarta, rather than that of Spencer Phips, who, during Shirley's long absence in England, had acted as governor, and had signed most of the papers relating to the line of forts, and to the surveys of the two townships. In 1755, Governor Shirley was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in America, and planned the expedition of that year against Niagara, which he led in person as far as Oswego, where his son John died in the service only about a month after his elder son, William, was mortally wounded with General Braddock at the forks of the Ohio.

Colonel William Williams, of Pittsfield, in some aspects of his remarkable career more potent than any other member of the family in that generation, took the next hand in helping to organize into a self-governing community the few determined settlers on the Upper Hoosac, his official mandate to them being worded as follows : -

Provance of the Massachusetts Bay. Whereas I have received special Directions from the great and General Court of this provance at their sessions in Sep- , tember last to Issue my warrant for Calling a meeting of the proprietors of the west township at Hoosuck so called Directed to one of the Principle proprietors of the s'd Township requiring him to set up a Notyfication in some publick place in s'd Township seting forth the time place and occasion of s'd meeting fourteen Days beforehand, s'd meeting to be held in s'd Township and such of the proprietors as shall be present at s'd meeting are by Said order of Court authorized and Irapowered by a major Voate to act and Determine upon the following articles, Vizt. To agree upon a Division of a part or all the lands in said township

Not allready allotted = to Choose a Committee or Commiteses to lay out the same = to Choose a Commite to lay out high ways = to Raise money to Defray the Charges of laying out the Lands and highways and Clearing the same or any other Necessary Charges = To Choose a proprietors Clerk. To Choose a proprietors Treasurer To Choose proprietors assesors. To Choose a proprietors Colector or Colectors. To agree upon a method for Calling meetings for the future.

Hampshire ss. To Isaac Wyman one of the proprietors of the said west Township at Hoosuck Gent?. Greeting you are hereby Required to Notifye and wanie the proprietors of sM Township that they assemble at the House of Mr. Seth Hudson in s'd Township on wensday the Fifth Day of December next at Nine of the Clock in the four noon to act upon the fouregoing Articles as they shall think proper by Setting up in some publick place in said township an attested Coppy of the foregoing order of Court and this warrant by you Sygned fourteen Days before the time of said meeting.

The two foregoing papers and the one to be appended to the present paragraph - namely, the record of the votes passed and of the persons present at the very first legal meeting of the proprietors - are the three most venerable political documents in the history of the town. It is reasonably certain that all the men chosen to offices and appointed as committees in this primal meeting were present and participators. There were eleven of them. Their names were these : Allen Curtiss, Isaac Wyman, Seth Hudson, Jonathan Meacham, Ezekiel Foster, Jabez Warren, Samuel Taylor, Josiah Dean, Thomas Train, Gideon Warren, Ebenezer Graves. Substantive political power passed over, then and there, into the hands of these men and their successors. Xot so complete, indeed, was this jurisdiction as that conferred twelve years later, by the same body, in the act incorporating the town, but it was complete so far as it went ; and even the town and the town-meeting under the Provincial General Court were not what these became twelve years later still, under an independent state Legislature. Power, in all its gradations, is agreeable to men, and it is to their credit as men that it is so. These eleven came together under the modest roof of Seth Hudson, and went out from it to perform, in due time, their several functions, with a decided accession of self-respect, with a new sense, the sense of citizenship, - a corporate sense of self-guidance as towards self-chosen ends. The room in which they met on that day has remained essentially unchanged until this day, - one hundred and forty years, - although the house has been removed down Hemlock Brook, about half a mile from its original location. Hudson drew house lot 9, and built his house near its northern end, on the eastern bank of the brook, called for some time, from this circumstance, Hudson's Brook. Captain Hudson, or Dr. Hudson, as he was indifferently called, because his medical and military education had been but indifferent, was a leading member and the last survivor of the original proprietors.

Thirdly Voted by the proprietors to lay out all the medow land Lying upon the main River and the medow land lying upon green River as far as the first Brook or Creek in Equal proportion to Each Right in Said Township and one hundred accors of upland to Each Right ajoying to the medow land or as Near as they Can to Lay out the best land.

9ly Voted that the Roads to accommidate the medow Land shall be But two rods wide and all the Roads to accomidate the other Divisions two Rods wide allso.

Voted at said meetin that five or seven of the proprietors of said Town makin application to the Clerk of said Proprietors for Calling meetings for the future

Voted at s'd meetin to Lay out the land in said Town as soon as may be Convenant at a meeting Held at West Hoosuck Pursuant to the Court order on the fifth

When these few proprietors of house lots then and thus entered upon the axlrainistration of affairs in West Hoosac, the only points that had been already settled for them by committees of the General Court at Boston were the boundary lines of the town as they were laid out in 1749 much as they are now, and the village plat or house lots as another committee from Boston determined them in the following spring. What we still call the " Main Street " had been then surveyed out fifteen rods wide from the Green River to Buxton Brook, that is, 467 rods east and west in general trend ; and what we still call North and South streets was, at the same time, laid out six rods wide at right angles to the other, 265 rods north and south. The land covered by this extended Greek cross never became the property in any sense of the individual proprietors of the house lots that abutted upon it, and never came under the touch of the " Propriety " or the ''Town" as a whole, except superficially for the purposes of a roadway. These two highways were surveyed and donated by the province as a condition precedent to the sale of the house lots. Each householder was to have the privilege of them as a roadway, and nothing more. There were no owners of adjoining lands, no " abutters " in the legal sense, when these roads were laid out. They were conveyed by the commonwealth as commons in perpetuity to a possible body corporate not yet created.

While these lines are being penned, a wordy and acrid controversy is going on in South Street as to the right of the selectmen of the town to treat that road solely in its interest as a highway, without reference to the wish or will of the parties owning the lands on either side of it. The selectmen have exercised this right with obvious legality and propriety. The ordinary claim of abutting owners to hold the land to the middle of the road, and to control it for all purposes except a free passing, only applies to roads built on lands owned by individuals, who do not part with the fee simple of their land in order that a road may be built, but only convey an easement to the authorities for roadway purposes. The same principle of commons to be controlled by representative officials only applied to any roads surveyed and set apart as such by the proprietors as a body, before any of the lands were parcelled out to individual owners. In their first meeting, months before there was any private division of the land, they voted " to lay the roads at the end of each main street four rods wide," and also, " that the roads to accommodate the meadow land shall be but two rods wide, and all the roads to accommodate the other Divisions two rods wide."

return of the committee chosen to lay out the divisions, and also the return of the committee to lay out the highways " to accommodate said Town." Such highways, so accepted, before there had been any (the least) actual division of the lands, were clearly not subject to any abutters' rights, because there were no abutters at that time.

The next thing at the second meeting was : " Voted and agreed to Draw the medow lots and the first fifty accre Division as follows : Vizt Choose mf David King Surveyor to Draw for the Divisions of Land to Each Eight." At the same time, they voted and granted to Mr. King his accounts for laying out the first two divisions ; namely, the meadow lots and the first-division fifty-acre lots.

The sixty -three meadow lots Avere surveyed out at an average of ten acres each - the modern measurements pretty uniformly overrunning the ancient - along the Hoosac and Green rivers, single lots more frequently than otherwise crossing the rivers. A half-dozen of the lots were located on both sides of the last stretch of Broad Brook also. Beginning very near the division line between the two towns of East and West Hoosac, on the river, with meadow lot No. 1, the lots are numbered regularly down the river, without any break, until, in No. 37, the river takes a sharp lurch to the north, striking there the stubborn roots of Northwest Hill, enclosing what is now called the Biver-Bend Farm, when, in consequence, the meadow lots jump across to Broad Brook, and, after the junction of that with the main river, the lots continue on the Hoosac to the Vermont line, ending there in No. 46. Then they commence again in No. 47, in what would have been a part of the village plat if the southeast quarter of that had been completed towards the east, on Green Eiver, and, running regularly up that river to the south, complete their number - sixty-three - at what was then called (and long after) " Taylor's Crotch," or the junction of the Hopper Brook with the larger stream. Some of these meadow lots became afterwards the sites of important and permanent dwellings, in which the same family lived generation after generation. Such, for example, was No. 62, on which the Blairs lived for three long-lived generations, and No. 14, near which the Smedleys lived for four generations. As a rule, however, the meadow lots were low land, unfit at first for houses, and some of them were for a long time submerged. Samuel Kellogg, Senior, reported, in his old age, that the only way one could get over his own meadow lots along the river, at first, was by jumping from one prostrate log to another.

settlement of Williamstown, when, in this same spring, Mr. David King surveyed out and drew for each proprietor of an house lot a fifty-acre lot of the first division ; for this was intended to be the out-farm, or the nucleus of it, of each village proprietor. The theory of the house lots was that the people must live close together and near the church, or meeting-house, as they called it, so as to be able to defend themselves and their dwellings from incursions of the hostile French and Indians. The theory of the other divisions, and especially of the two fifty-acre divisions, was appar-' ently to furnish each villager with an upland farm, as much land as he would care to cultivate, with the due portions of pasture and forest, in addition to the home lot of ten acres and a meadow lot of the same area. This general plan, however, did not work well in practice. The fifty-acre lots, though they constituted the best lands in the town, were so scattered about all over the town as to be inconvenient of cultivation from the village. The village lot required a barn as well as a house, and the outlot would, in most cases, need another barn, or demand a far-carrying of crops and a tending of cattle at a distance from home. And so, even before the victories of Wolfe and Amherst dissipated the fear of the Indians, and more particularly after that time, the more thoughtful and enterprising villagers began to sell their house lots, and to make homes for themselves, as well as farms, on the outlots. For examples merely, Nehemiah Smedley sold his house lot No. 1, and slowly aggregated a fine farm for his family on Green River, near its junction with the Hoosac; and Benjamin Simonds sold his house lot No. 3, on which he had a home and tavern next west of Smedley's home, and bought the outlots on the Hoosac, constituting the River- Bend Farm, now owned and occupied by Sherifl: George Prindle.

The lots of the first fifty -acre division were remarkably scattered over the town, and it is difficult to discover the principle of their numerical location. The first three numbers (1, 2, 3) and the last three (61, 62, 63) were laid out directly to the east of Taylor's Crotch, and this may probably indicate an expectation of a greater development around the mill privilege there than has ever been actually realized. There was a *' mill lot " early laid out around the junction of the two brooks, of about seven acres, and Samuel Taylor became the first owner and improver of the privilege ; it then went into the hands of Asa Douglas of "Jericho," now Hancock, who sold, in 1769, his " right in mill place called Taylor's Crotch " to William Krigger. The Kriggers, a Dutch family from down the Hoosac, - William, John, Peter, Jolm George, - are characterized in old deeds as " Miller " or " Yeoman," and some of them carried on the sawmill and gristmill at the Crotch for two generations ; some members of this family bought parts of No. 50 of this division, which lies to the west of the junction of the brooks, and these parts have remained in the mill-estate till the present time ; and parties by the name of Sweet - whence the modern and transient designation " Sweets' Corners " - owned the lands around the mill till 1892, when the town bought them as a home for their poor.

Nos. 4, 5, and 6, of this division, were located north of the Hoosac E/iver, as were also Nos. 51, 52, and 53, and these were the only fiftyacre lots of either division in the White Oaks. Five of these lots, beginning with No. 7, lie in order south of the southeast quarter of the village plat, and east of South Street and the Stone Hill road ; while seven, commencing with No. 40, were laid out in order to the west of those highways and adjoining them, 46 and 49 lying to the east of the Stone Hill road towards the Crotch, while 48 is bisected by that road. Then four lots, 36-39, are located in order on the Green Eiver road, from north to south, just about half way between the village plat and the Crotch, and made up some of the best farms in town. The seven lots, 28-34, were cut out of low and fine lands on both sides of the lower reach of Green River, east and southeast of the hamlet, 35 flanking the north ends of about half of the house lots of the northeast quarter of the plat. Beginning on the boundary line separating the two towns, Nos. 12-21 flank the main road connecting them ; while 22 and 23 and 54-60 are all on the Stratton road towards its southern end.

As a sort of sample of the farms early constructed out of these first-division fifty-acre lots, though it be more favorable and permanent than the average of them, a sketch of the Meacham farm, comprising Nos. 7 and 8, whose west ends touch South Street, and east ends Green River road, may be rightly placed at this point. Jonathan Meacham, from New Salem, a soldier, who had been in the settlement from the very first, an influential though migratory body, never succeeded in fixing his name to a single local habitation, as did James Meacham, his cousin, from the same place, also a soldier in Captain Nathaniel Dwight's company, working on the construction of Fort William Henry in 1755, who bought of Joseph Ballard, both then of New Salem, these two lots for £73 Ss. Sd. in August, 1761. Just a year later, he brought on his wife and family through the woods and over the Hoosac Mountain. His daughter Lucy was then six weeks old. She was the fourth child, and seven others were added here. Either on the way or soon after arriving, he was fortu- nate enough to kill c bear, which furnished the family what they quaintly called " pork " for a considerable time. Once, at least, they found a deposit of wild honey to be a welcome addition to their slender commissariat. Mrs. Meacham, whose maiden name was Lucy Rugg, brought along with her a root or two of a hop-vine. One hundred and thirty years has not yet exhausted the vitality of those roots, for the vine is growing yet by the side and in the crevices of the large rock on No. 7, near which they built their first log cabin. Their second house, which was framed and plastered, was built on a knoll to the southeast overlooking the Green Kiver road and a spring near it, which was doubtless the motive for the new location. Their third house was of brick which were burnt near the site of the new house, which was placed much nearer the house lots than either of the others, and the second house was drawn down to the brick one to serve as an L or addition, and it is still standing in that relation in this year of Grace, 1892, though now used as a worn-out and toppleover shed.

The first James Meacham, besides being a prominent farmer and citizen here for fifty years, was one of the two original deacons of the church, which he served faithfully in that capacity nearly as long. He was a good and constant Revolutionary soldier and petty officer, though, like many another such, he sympathized with the movements of Captain Shays and his men in 1787, and left his home openly one Sunday morning (gun on shoulder) to join them. He died in July, 1812, in his eightieth year, leaving the farm to his eldest son, James H. Meacham, bom here Christmas Day, 1769, who married Kabby "Warner, a sister of the famous Colonel Seth Warner, and who became even more prominent than his father in the affairs of the town during a long and useful life. He died in March, 1837, in his sixty-eighth year. The farm descended to his only son, James Meacham (there were five daughters, of whom one, Emeline, is still living at the old homestead), born Feb. 3, 1805, and died May 20, 1883. This Captain James Meacham was an excellent man and a good citizen. He enlarged his already large house about 1840, to accommodate, for their meetings and festivities, the Kappa Alpha Society of the College. They continued to meet with him for many years, until they procured ample quarters of their own in the heart of the village. James B. ISIeacham (Williams College, 1854) and a younger brother, now a merchant in St. Louis, are the present owners of the farm, which has never been alienated from the family during the century and a third of unintermitted ownership and occupation. Israel Meacham, youngest son of the original James, was a graduate of the College of the year 1797, and became a physician ; and Franklin Meacham, son of the late Captain James, born in 1833, was for many years a distinguished surgeon in the United States army.

The chief business of the third public meeting of the proprietors of West Hoosac, convened at the dwelling-house of Captain Allen Curtiss the 15th of May, 1754, was " To Draw for the Second fiftyacre Division in the following manner Choose Capt. Allen Curtiss to Draw a ticket to Each Eight for s'd Proprf '^ Also it was then and there voted, ^' To Clear the Road from the North Eand of the Cross Streeat in s'd Town to hampshear line one Eod wide and for the Proprf to work for two Shillings and Eight pence a Day.'' At the same time and place it was, in addition, " Voted and granted Oliver Averys and John Crawfourds accompt for Clearing part of the buriel-Place." As no other and further proprietors' meeting than this was holden for six years and a half, on account of the acute reopening of the French War, viz., until October, 1760, and most, if not all, of the householders re-entered the military service, and the new West Hoosac Fort became the centre and support of the settlement much as Fort Massachusetts had been before, - this is the proper place to say what needs to be said about the fifty-acre lots of the second division.

The very best farming lands in the entire town were distributed in this third drawing. They were surveyed out in two groups : Nos. 1-6 lay together north of the north line of the village plat, and on its prolongation towards the west ; and much of this land is now incorporated in the fine " Buxton Farms," of Colonel A. L. Hopkins ; some of it surrounds the elegant summer home of Mr. S. P. Blagden (Williams College, 1862), and the rest is laved by the lower reaches of Hemlock Brook. Nos. 7-63 lie altogether in a rectangular body on the southern central plateau of our Williamstown valley, the straggling village of South Williamstown being somewhat to the south, and to the east also, of the centre of this parallelogram of good farms. The first-division fifty-acre lots were scattered, without much reference to their numerical order, pretty much all over the northeast quarter of the town. Not so the second division. The first six lots were all contiguous on the lower slope of Northwest Hill, the southern line of all of them resting upon the straight line but just now described. Most of the rest of these lots were very symmetrically arranged, abutting upon one or other of the two parallel east and west roads constructed on purpose '^ to convean " them. For example, the north line of the lots, odd numbers 9-29 extending west to east across the plateau to Green River, abuts nearly at right angles upon the '' Woodcock road " ; while the south line of the corresponding even numbers 10-30, each odd opposite its even, juts down upon the same road.

Twenty-two of these lots were thus symmetrically disposed of, and made accessible by, the Woodcock road. Woodcock's own lot, still holding his cellar and the cellar a growing commemorative tree, being No. 27. John Torrey, of Middletown, Connecticut, bought No. 20 of Isaac Searle in 1766, and raised a very large family over a cellar still visible in a clump of bushes on the north side of the Woodcock road ; and his brother, William Torrey, established himself, about the same time, on Nos. 14 and 16. AVilliam Torrey died Oct. 30, 1820, in his seventy-seventh year. His son William spent a long and useful life upon the same premises ; his son Myron spent a life equally long and useful upon Nos. 10 and 12, parallel with, and just west of, his own. Myron's son. Homer Torrey, is present owner and cultivator of his father's farm ; and all four of these men, in their three generations, have been much employed as town officers, particularly as selectmen and assessors and taxcollectors.

A similar lay-out of eighteen of these fifty-acre lots, Nos. 31-48, was made on either side of the '* Sloan road," which stretches straight from the immemorial tavern in South Williamstown to "Oblong road." The south ends of the odd numbers, 31-47, running from east to west, abut on the Sloan road, while the north ends of the even numbers opposite, 32-48, strike the same road on its south side. By much the most remarkable family of those originally settling on these two tiers of lots was that of Samuel Sloan, of Canaan, Connecticut, blacksmith, whose original log house, built on the southern edge of No. 43, was standing well into the present century, and who opened the first tavern in what came to be the South Village, on another of these fifty-acre lots. No. 53, a site kept as a tavern ever since; while Sloan, rising up through all the grades of the militia service, became a General, and, rising up from the poverty of a journeyman artisan, with his kit of tools, through legitimate buying and selling, till he became the richest man in town, built for himself, at the very opening of the new century, by far the finest house in the town, now owned by the College and occupied by the president.

The rest of the lots of this important division, 49-63, with two unimportant exceptions, lay in a body at the South Part of the town and upon the most level area of land within the limits of the town. The junction of the Hancock Brook with the Ashford Brook to con.

stitute Green River falls upon No. 53, on the western edge of which is the tavern-stand so often referred to. The ten lots, 49-58, are contiguous with each other, run east and west, and the Green River, with its two tributary brooks, flowing for ages through that part of the valley, slowly flattened it almost to a dead level. The surveyor laid out these ten lots so that each of them is crossed by one of these streams. No wonder these lots took the eye of the very earliest proposed settlers at the "South Part," as this section of the town has always been called, and always will be. These lots were surveyed and distributed to the then owners of the house lots in 1754; but there is not a particle of proof that any one of them was built on prior to 1760. Renewed war rolled down the Upper Hoosac in that interval of time, until the English conquest of French Canada at Quebec and Montreal. Civil affairs were mostly at a standstill even within the village plat. Military exigencies controlled everything for six years. Lands, indeed, changed hands frequently. Speculators came and went. Richard Stratton and his two sons Isaac and Ebenezer, from Western, now Warren, all of them later among the most influential citizens of William stown, were among a very few others who came in that perturbed interval to cast in their lot, for better or for worse, with the soldier-men of West Hoosac. Richard Stratton bought, at different times, house lots 57 and 58, and at length built upon the latter the first twostory house erected in the borough, in which he died in an honored old age, and which is still standing substantially unchanged, having been the home for the past tliirty years of James M. Waterman ; about the same time, Richard Stratton, from " parental affection, etc.," sold his son Ebenezer Stratton," the firstdivision fifty-acre lots, 33 and 54, who occupied them as a farm during a long life, having his farm-house at lirst on a knoll near the southern limit of his farm, and afterwards, on account of winds and drifts, building another one near the northern limit of his land, much nearer to meetings for himself and to schools for his children, though both houses stood on the " Luce road," west side, the latter one, in which the good deacon died in 1814, standing till about 1880.

Isaac Stratton, born in Western in 1739, and coming here with his father and older brother on attaining his majority, preferred to pitch his tent alone at the South Part on the second-division fiftyacre lot No. 54. He was the first settler on any one of the lots of that division. It is nearly certain that he located his first cabin there in 1760 ; and it is certain that he had no neighbor at all upon that splendid level of fifty-acre lots for three full years. Then Daniel Burbank, from Western, located to the south of him on No. 57, his first house being a framed building of one room, erected on the east side of the "Ashford road," which runs liere diagonally as straight as an arrow across the lots 53-58, Stratton's house being on the west side of the road, and just to the south of the brook, over which the town as soon as it was incorj^orated built a bridge for him and Burbank, even before they built a bridge over the Green River at the east end of the north village. Stratton built his second house, a large two-story one, on the same site in 1785, and the passer-by may still read on its chimney "I. S. 1785." Considering that he was the first settler in South Williamstown, and later proved attractive to valuable neighbors on every side of him, and considering the record he made for himself as a patriot Major in the battle of Bennington, the high mountain that rises up out of those farms (as it were) and overlooks them, and stands sentinel between the Ashford and the Hancock brooks, was delil> erately christened by the town in 1891, for all time, "Stratton Mountain."

At tliis same proprietors' meeting, in May, 1754, it was voted, as the next most important matter, to lay out a road, one rod wide for the present, from the north end of the " Cross Street," which was laid out (on parchment) six rods wide, and at right angles to the ''Main Street," which was to be fifteen rods wide, to the line of New TT;>iin><l>ire, so-called; that is to say, to "Hazen's Line," the present line separating Massachusetts from Vermont. West Hoosac was a very isolated spot in 1754. Hoosac Mountain, to the eastward, was high and broad, and had not then been tunnelled for a steam came to be collectible, it was found that many of the proprietors were non-residents, and their whereabouts unknown; and even when these delinquent rights, or portions of them, were exposed for sale at public vendue to meet these taxes, they fetched only a paltry sum, - such a drug, in the commercial sense, were lands here at that time. For example, at a public auction, Nov. 30, 17G3, William Horsford bought one-quarter of the right, that is, the undivided land of house lot No. 9, for thirteen shillings; and Isaac Searle bought another quarter of the same, at the same time, for fifteen shillings.

At their meeting, March 26, 17G5, the proprietors voted (1) '- To Lay out another Division of Land to Eaich Right of one Hundred acres; (2) Chose Richard Stratton, Jonathan Meaicham, Josiah Horsford, Samuel Kellogg, Titus Harrison, Ephraim Seelye, and Asa Johnson, Commetree men to Lott out Said Division ; (3) That there be Nine Shillings of money Raised on Eaich Proprietors Right to Pay for Laying out -'^ Land." At a later meeting it was voted, (1) " That the Publick Rights Shall be Drawn out by a Common Lottery " ; and (2) "That the Proprietors Will be Gin to chuse for their Hundred acre Lots the Seventh Day of June A D 1765."

Twenty-two of these 100-acre lots were located on Northwest Hill, Birch Hill, and Bee Hill, hills secondary to the Taconics, on pretty good upland, out of which came at length tolerable farms, though many of them are no longer ploughed and sowed, but are utilized as pasture and woodlands ; beginning with No 1 on the North Adams lx)undary line near Paul's, the public road there towards Williamstown running through Nos. 1 and 2 and just grazing the upper corner of 3, twenty-two more of these 100-acre lots skirt round the base of Prospect, turn up into the Hopper to Bacon's and beyond, extending also south in a continuous line along the Potter road to the New Ashford line ; and the remaining nineteen lots of this fifth division were placed pretty close together in the southwest corner of the town, nearly all of them on the Hancock Brook and its little tributaries. Numbers 45, 46, 47, and 51 of this division touch upon the Vermont line ; No. 1 only, as has just been said, is coincident in its east line with the line of North Adams ; Nos. 25, 36, and 37 rest on the southern line of the town; and Nos. 32, 33, 34, and 35 adjoin upon the original west line of the town, namely, the east line of the Gore.

These 100-acre lots proved attractive to a somewhat different class of settlers from those who had purchased the original house lots, those, namely, who had no objections to a sort of village life, and who looked to the after-drafts of their house lots to make up to themselves either in situ or by exchange, the requisites of an adequate farm. But 100 acres in one piece was enough in itself for an average farm. The village holder, who wanted an outlot or two, had, doubtless, in most cases, already supplied himself from the three previous divisions, - two of fifty-acre lots and one of meadow lots along the chief streams. Besides this, the new 100-acre lots of 1765 were mostly quite remote from the Square, and, moreover, had not in general been surveyed out from the more eligible patches of land. Clay predominated more than was meet (or meat) in most of the lots near the southern line of the town. For example, No. 25, which has always constituted the last farm in Williamstown on the Ashford road, and was very early cleared up by Andrew Young, from Western, now Warren ; and Nos. 31-35 on the Hancock road, which have always constituted the so-called " Young neighborhood," and Nos. 29 and 30, on which the Corbens originally settled, and some of the fifty-acre lots opposite them, became noted as clay farms.

A scene once in town meeting will illustrate the reputation of some of these lands. The late Dudley White, who owned a farm in the Corben district, had occasion to appeal to the town for some legal alteration of a highway in his neighborhood. This was wittily and successfully opposed by a neighbor of his in South Williamstown, Thomas Smith, a blacksmith, on the ground of the difficulty of making a road on such clay, alleging that, " if anybody should stand on any one corner of Dudley White's farm in the springtime and teeter, he could shake the whole farmP The Youngs, nevertheless, Moses and Andrew and William, all from Western, and the Corbens, Asa and Amasa and Joseph, from New Haven, Connecticut, and other early settlers on these 100-acre lots in the southwest, obtained a good living for themselves from off these lands, and transmitted to their heirs, fair farms and good houses.

Among the five shiploads of Scotch-Irish immigrants that landed at Boston in August, 1718, there were a very few Celtic-Irish families that had become attached to, and connected with, the Scotch people who had settled in Ulster a long time before. About one-third of those who thus entered New England at the invitation of Governor Shute, of Massachusetts, permanently tarried in Boston and Andover ; another third proceeded to Worcester that autumn, and made a permanent settlement there ; while the rest, wishing to look about more before they settled down, spent the winter and spring on the coast of Maine, and then sailed up the Merrimack

Kiver and made their settlement in and around Londonderry, New- Ham pshire. Among those proceeding very shortly after their arrival, from Boston to Worcester, was a remarkable Irish family by the name of Young. The patriarch of this family was John Young, who is said to have been over ninety years old at the time of the immigration. He died, at any rate, June 30, 1730, and was buried on Worcester Common. His son David, who was thirty-six at the time of the coming-in, died in Worcester, Dec. 20, 1776, and was buried by the side of his father. David's son William was a stone-cutter, and put up the double stone on the common in memory of his father and grandfather, holding the following inscriptions : ^ -

Besides William, the stone-cutter and rhymester, David Young had sons David, John, and Moses, all born in the old country ; and Moses was the ancestor of the Williamstown Youngs. His wife's name was Rebeckah, and they were married in 1736. They migrated from Worcester, and made a home near the boundary line between Brimfield and Western, now Warren. He became a constable in Brimfield, and among his papers are receipts from Harrison Gray, Treasurer of the province of Massachusetts, for moneys thus paid in by him in 1764 and 1765. He never came to Williamstown, but three of his sons and two of his daughters had made permanent homes here before the father's death, which fell Sept. 25, 1781. His son Moses, born April 25, 1747, came first and " went to chopping" on 100-acre lot 34, which is still in the hands of his descendants. Before he had made much of a clearing, he went home to Western, and brought back with him, his younger brother Andrew, who bought the 100-acre lot 25, on the Ashford road. Andrew had no children, but was otherwise a prosperous man, and built the two-story house on that farm which was burned down about 1880. Not long after Andrew came William, the third brother, two years younger than Andrew, and seven years younger than Moses. He settled in what is now the hamlet of South Williamstown, in a house that is still standing substantially as he occupied it, and as it had been built by Captain Samuel Clark, and came to play a conspicuous part in town affairs, and even in the politics of Massachusetts, as we shall see at length upon a later page. He was in the Legislature from William stown, in 1792, 1793, 1795, and in 1800-1808 inclusive. He was a Jeffersonian democrat, as have been most of the Youngs in Williamstown.