By Prof. A.L. Perry of Williams College.
The recent centennial celebration in the town of Heath, Franklin County,
Massachusetts, has freshened up an interest in the history of the old
fort that was built within its borders, at the opening of the Old French
War in 1744, by the State of Massachusetts. The present writer, however,
has made a study for many years of that and its kindred forts, has
repeatedly visited and critically examined its site, and has in his
possession the chief movable memorials of what was indeed a small, yet
in its historical connections a deeply interesting, military outpost.
The first white men known or supposed to have ever penetrated the
original forests in the town of Heath were Richard Hazen and six others,
the surveyor and chain-men and their assistants, who ran the official
northern line of Massachusetts in the early spring of 1741. Besides the
surveyor himself, who was then a prominent citizen of Haverhill, on the
Merrimac, and his son of the same name, then nineteen years old, the
party consisted of Caleb Swan, Benjamin Smith, Zachariah Hildrith,
Ebenezer Shaw and William Richardson. Under an imperative order from the
Privy Council in England, Governor Belcher, who at that time
administered government over both Massachusetts and New Hampshire,
commissioned Hazen to run the ultimate line between the two, beginning
at a point three miles north of Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimac (now
Lowell), and extending on a due west course till it should meet His
Majesty's other Governments. This arbitrary decision of the Privy
Council in selecting the very southernmost point in the whole course of
the Merrimac, as the place meant in in the old Charter of Massachusetts
in the phrase "Merrimack River," instead of taking, as Massachusetts
claimed, the northernmost point of the river in Franklin, N.H., or as
New Hampshire had claimed, the point at the _mouth_ of the river,
robbed Massachusetts of a strip of territory fourteen miles wide the
whole length of the Colony, which New Hampshire had never before
claimed, but which her shrewd and unscrupulous Agent now extorted trom
the ignorance of English Councillors.
Hazen began his survey March 21, 1741. The English instructions required
a course due west, and Governor Belcher and his Council ordered ten
degrees for the then variation of the needle, which was not quite
enough, so that the line actually ran slightly north of due west, and
saved to Massachusetts at the west end of the line (in Williamstown)
about 1 deg. and 50 min. After the party left the Connecticut river on
April 6, they slept on snow at a depth of two or three feet every night
till they crossed the Hoosac river in Williamstown on April 12. "It
clouded over before Night and rained sometime before day which caused us
to stretch Our blankets and lye under them on ye bare Ground, which was
the first bare ground we laid on after we left Northfield." It was on
April 9 that they measured the present north line of Heath. Let the
clear-eyed surveyor describe in his own words the general situation of
the future Fort Shirley.
"At the End of three miles we came to a large brook running
Southeasterly and at the End of this days measure to another large brook
running Southerly, by which we took Our lodging. Here we tract a Bear
and therefore named it Bear brook, both these brooks being branches of
Deerfield River. The land this day was some of the best of Land and for
three miles together. The last year Pigeons' nests were so thick that
500 might have been told on the beech trees at One time, and they could
have been counted on the Hemlocks as well, I believe three thousand at
one turn Round. The snow was for ye most part three feet deep, the
weather was fair and wind Northwest."
Although Hazen named the last mountain on his line where he supposed the
eastern line of New York, would ultimately run "Mount Belcher," in honor
of the Governor who had commissioned him to lay it, the just
unpopularity of the line itself and Belcher's connection with it
immediately caused his recall from his government, and the appointment
of William Shirley in his stead. Belcher was Massachusetts born; while
Shirley, though British born, became one of the ablest and most
successful of all the colonial governors of Massachusetts. The building
of Fort Shirley in 1744 and the naming it after the new Governor, as
well as the building a little later of the two forts to the
westward,--Fort Pelham in Rowe and Fort Massachusetts in what is now
North Adams,--all within a couple of miles of the new boundary line,
showed a concern of the colony for its now greatly curtailed northern
limits, as well as a much greater concern for the defence of the
scattered settlements west of the Connecticut river from the French and
Indians, who had several well-trod war-paths to the English settlements
on the Connecticut and the Deerfield.
But, after all, the route by the Hoosac River had been and continued the
main path from Canada to New England for the French and their savage
Indian allies. Whether they came down the Hudson to the mouth of the
Hoosac at Schaghticoke, or struck that river on the flank at Eagle
Bridge, there was a well-beaten trail--the old Mohawk trail--along the
north bank of that river all the way from Schaghticoke to what is now
North Adams; and, in continuation of that river trail, the "old Indian
path" over the Hoosac Mountain, directly over the line of the present
Hoosac Tunnel, led down to the upper reaches of the Deerfield river and
so down to the Connecticut at old Deerfield. It became, therefore, of
great moment to Massachusetts to defend the line of the Deerfield in the
French and Indian war of 1744-48. A few private houses were fortified in
what is now Bernardston, and two or three more further west in
Coleraine, particularly Fort Lucas and Fort Morrison, the owners being
assisted by grants of men and supplies from the General Court; and
during this war and more especially the next and last French war, the
Indians often lurked with hostile intent in the vicinity of these
extemporized forts, and not infrequently surprised and killed and
scalped men from the little garrisons, and carried women and children
into captivity to Canada.
But the first regular fort built to protect the valley of the Deerfield
and incidentally also the line of the Connecticut, was placed by
Massachusetts in the present town of Heath. It was built wholly at the
public expense, and garrisoned by regularly enlisted or impressed
soldiers, and named Fort Shirley from the enterprising Governor of the
Province. John Stoddard of Northampton was then Colonel of the militia
of Hampshire, a designation at that time including all of Massachusetts
west of the Connecticut River; he was Shirley's right-hand man for this
end of the Province, and it was under his general direction that Forts
Shirley and Pelham and Massachusetts were erected.
The letter is still extant in Stoddard's own hand, dated July 20, 1744,
in which Capt. William Williams is ordered by him "to erect as soon as
may be" a block-house sixty feet square "about five miles and a half
from Hugh Morrison's house in Colrain in or near the line run last week
under the direction of Col. Timo. Dwight by our order." In the same
letter, Williams is directed to employ soldiers in the construction of
the fort, carpenters to be allowed "nine shillings, others six shillings
a day old Tenor." Several other directions are given, and the main
outlines of the fort are prescribed; some bills are still extant giving
items of money paid out for many different parts of the work; six of the
original hewn timbers of the building are in good preservation today in
the barn of Orsamus Maxwell in Heath, each stick telling some tale of
the original mode of construction; so that, from all these sources of
information, a pretty accurate idea of the old fort can be made out
to-day, 141 years after it was built.
For the outside, white pine logs were scored down, and then hewn to six
inches thick and fourteen inches high; and the scores worked 48 days
on these, receiving £14, 8s. for their work, and the hewers 24 days,
receiving £10, 16s. The walls of the fort were twelve feet high, thus
requiring nine courses of these timbers laid edgewise one above another,
each being doweled to the one below by red oak dowel-pins, two of which
were pulled out of their quiet resting places of 141 years' duration, in
a good state of preservation, by Mr. Maxwell and the writer, Sept. 5,
1885. Those ends of these timbers that came to the four corners of the
fort were dove-tailed into each other in the well known manner, so that
there were straight lines and strong locking at the corners; and it so
happens, that three of the six timbers preserved are corner timbers, and
show at one end the exact mode of locking.
There were two mounts on two corners of the fort 12 feet square and 7
feet high; and the houses and barracks within the fort were 11 feet wide
with shingled roofs; and the mount-timber, the insides of the houses,
and the floors, were all hewn, presumably of the same width and
thickness as the wall-timbers. Undoubtedly the whole parade in the
middle of the fort was also floored in the same way, as the site of the
fort was and is low and wet.
The fort was built in this manner during the months of August,
September, and October, 1744; and on the 30th of the last mentioned
month, Capt. Williams commenced to billet himself and the soldiers under
his command at the fort. He remained there all the winter and spring;
about the 1st of March he enlisted 14 of his men for the Louisburg
Expedition, at Col. Stoddard's request, whom he took to Boston; but was
not himself allowed to embark, and returned to his fort; while later in
the season, under a strong call for reinforcements for Louisburg by
Gov. Shirley, Williams took 74 able bodied men to Boston, recruited by
himself in less than six days mostly in the Connecticut valley, and was
given a Lieutenant colonel's commission in the regiment destined for
Louisburg commanded by Col. John Choate. They sailed in June, 1745, but
the fortress had been taken before they arrived, and the regiment with
Williams as acting Colonel was detained there to do garrison duty.
Fort Pelham in Rowe was built by Williams before he left for Louisburg,
that is, in the spring of 1745; and in the autumn of that year we find
Capt. Ephraim Williams, a kinsman of the other, afterwards founder of
Williams College, in command of Fort Shirley and of the line of forts.
It is fair to presume that he was appointed to the command on the
withdrawal of the other in June; but which of the two built Fort
Massachusetts along the same line, or whether either of them, can not
now be stated with absolute certainty. It is probable that Ephraim
Williams saw to its construction under the Committee of the General
Court, of which Stoddard was Chairman; and at any rate he was in command
of the whole "line of Forts, viz. Northfield, Falltown, Colrain, Fort
Shirley, Fort Pelham, Fort Massachusetts, and the soldiers posted at the
Collars, Shattucks Fort, Bridgman's, Deerfield, Rhode Town, and New
Hampton," as early as Dec. 10, 1745. Just a year from that time he sends
in his account for the entire year,--"In which time he has had three
hundred and fifty men under his particular charge and government."
Because it was the first fort built by the Colony in that region, and
especially because Fort Massachusetts was captured and burnt by the
French and Indians in August, 1746, Shirley became very prominent in
that war, and was the headquarters of the successive commanders of the
line of forts. Massachusetts was rebuilt early in 1747, and thereafter
became the chief work; for both before and after the Peace of Aix la
Chapelle in 1748, it was perceived that the sites of Shirley and Pelham
had been ill-chosen, and that the route by the Hoosac was the one to be
kept open for hostile demonstration towards Crown Point, and the one to
be defended against hostile demonstration from all that quarter. Forts
Shirley and Pelham, accordingly, which were very differently
constructed, ceased to be of much military significance after the Peace,
though both were slightly garrisoned for several years after. In 1749
and a part certainly of the next year, there were five men only in Fort
Shirley, namely, Lieutenant William Lyman, Gershom Hawks, John Powell,
Samuel Stebbins, and Peter Bove. From June, 1725 till the end of May,
1754, one man in each constituted the garrison of Shirley and Pelham.
Archibald Powell held watch and ward on the heights of Heath and George
Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of
the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary
sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the
north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and
Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from
the picketed enclosure of Fort Pelham.
There was but one chaplain to the line of forts, Rev. John Norton,
appointed from Falltown in 1745, who passed from one to the other as his
sense of duty to each garrison might prompt; and Mrs. Norton with one
or two children lived in Fort Shirley for more than a year while her
husband was in captivity in Canada. Scouting parties of the soldiers
were kept constantly passing from fort to fort when not employed in
garrison or other duty; their allowance on the march was for each
soldier per day one pound of bread, one pound of pork, and one gill of
rum; while in garrison each man was allowed per day one pound of bread,
and one-half pint of peas or beans, two pounds of pork for three days,
and one gallon of molasses for 42 days. It is certain, that one or more
cows were kept by the garrison of Fort Shirley, perhaps on account of
Mrs. Norton and her children, for there was a cleared field around the
fort, and an old cow-bell half eaten up by rust was found not long ago
near its site, which site, it must be remembered, was several miles from
any habitation of men at any time in the last century.
After an existence of one hundred and forty-one years, the old well of
Fort Shirley, which was undoubtedly within the block-house and probably
in one corner of the enclosure away from the "parade," is able to tell
pretty thoroughly to this day the story of its own construction. Four
forest staddles about six inches in diameter, one for each comer of the
well, were set upright on the ground, and then ash planks rived from a
log about five feet long were pinned or spiked on the outside of these
staddles, beginning at the bottom; and this frame being placed on the
ground where the well was to be, the earth was thrown out over the
sides, and so the well was gradually sunk to the required depth, the
plank-siding being added gradually as the shaft was lowered. These rived
planks and the tops of the four corner-poles, that can now be seen and
fingered less than two feet below the surface of the ground, were not
very uniform in thickness, and of course have rotted off at the top by
time and exposure; but enough of both has been preserved till this time
by constant submergence in the water and in the unusually moist soil
above it to betray without any serious question the nature of the
materials used and the mode of their employment. One of the corner-posts
was a black birch and the bark on it is in a good state of preservation
at and below the surface of the water.
The last incident to be mentioned at this time in connection with Fort
Shirley relates to the Rev. John Norton, his wife and daughter. Norton
was born in Berlin, Conn., in 1716; was graduated at Yale College in
1737; was ordained in Fall Town, since Bernardston, Mass., in 1741; he
was the first minister in that town, "but owing to the unsettled state
of the times," and to the fact that his people lay right in the angle
between the military line of the Connecticut and that of the Deerfield,
and had consequently as much as they could do, to maintain their
families exposed as they were, he labored there about four years, and
was appointed chaplain to the line of forts almost as soon as the men
were fairly in garrison. He was in Fort Massachusetts when it was
besieged and captured by an army of French and Indians in August, 1746;
went captive with the rest of the garrison to Quebec; returned,
exchanged, in just a year; and wrote an account of the siege, the
journey northwards, the captivity, and the return, a precious little
book, which he entitled after a memorable precedent "The Redeemed
Captive." His narrative begins as follows.--"Thursday, August 14, 1746,
I left Fort Shirley in company with Dr. Williams and about fourteen of
the soldiers; we went to Pelham Fort, and from thence to Captain Rice's,
where we lodged that night. Friday, the 15th, we went from thence to
Fort Massachusetts, where I designed to have tarried about a month.
Saturday, 16th, the Doctor with fourteen men, went off for Deerfield,
and left in the fort Sergeant John Hawks with twenty soldiers, about
half of them sick with bloody flux."
We can not now follow the good chaplain in his deeply interesting
narrative. He makes no mention in it of his family, but it is certain
from other data that he left Mrs. Norton and his young children in
garrison at Fort Shirley, and that just about the time of his return
from captivity to Boston, which was August 16, 1747, his little girl,
Anna, died at the fort and was buried in the field a little to the west
of it. Probably some soldier in the fort chiselled upon the rude stone
the inscription as follows:
Hear lys ye body of An'na
D: of ye Rev:
Mr. John Norton. She died
Aug; ye ---- aged ---- 1747.
This stone stood there in the bleak field exposed to the suns of summer
and the storms of winter for more than one hundred and thirty years. The
day of August on which she died and the number of years she had lived
have become illegible by exposure,--impossible to be deciphered. The
stone has lately been removed to Williams College, and with its
companion relic, a stick of one of the timbers of Fort Shirley, and a
few other memorials of the well and fort, are safe in a fire-proof
building.
The tradition is still lively in Heath, and it may well be an historical
fact for it has been handed down by an aged citizen there whose life
began with the century, that there used to come up from Connecticut on
an occasional pilgrimage to the site of Fort Shirley and particularly to
the grave of Anna Norton some of her relatives. This is very likely; for
John Norton became in 1748 a pastor in the parish of East Hampton,
Middlesex Co., Conn., where he died in 1778; and one may still read on
his tombstone there the following inscription:
IN MEMORY OF
THE REV. JOHN NORTON
PASTOR OF THE 3D CHURCH IN CHATHAM
WHO DIED WITH SMALL POX
MARCH 24th AD 1778
IN THE 63D YEAR OF HIS AGE.
He left several children. Among them an unmarried daughter, who lived
till 1825. It is no mean touch and print of vital human sympathy that is
left upon the sod beneath the great tree in Shirley-field by the figure
of one who came and came again from a distant place to catch, it may be,
a note from the dreary Past and drop a tear upon the grave of a sister
whom she never saw.
To his Excellency William Shirley, Esq. Capt. Gen. and Gov'r in Chief
of this Province, the Hon'ble his Majesty's Council & House of
Representatives in Gen. Court assembled--
The Memorial of John Norton of Springfield in the County of Hampshire,
Clerk, humbly showeth That in the month of February, 1746, he entered
into the Service of the Province as a Chaplain for the Line of Forts on
the Western Frontier and continued in that service until the Twentieth
day of August following, when he was captivated at Fort Massachusetts
and carried to Canada by the enemy, where he was detained a prisoner for
the space of twelve months, during which time he constantly officiated
as a chaplain among his fellow-prisoners in the best manner he was able
under the great difficulties and suffering of his imprisonment, and your
Humble Petit'r begs leave further to inform your Excell'c. & Honors that
besides the great Difficulties and Hardships that your Petit'r indured
during his captivity abroad, he and his family by means thereof are
reduced to great Straight and Difficulties at home. He therefore prays
your Excell'c and Honors would take his distressed Circumstances into
your wiser Consideration and grant him such Help and Relief as your
Excell'c, and Honors in your Wisdom and Goodness shall deem meet, and
your memorialist as in duty bound shall ever pray.