A history of Williams College

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MII et og Il. West TOWNSHIP AND THE FREE SCHOOL . . . . WY II]. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE COLLEGE . . . . . . 42 IV. WILLIAMSTOWN OR ELSEWHERE? MAES Joo ei eh e104 V. A SECOND AND GREATER CRISIS SIME ven ec Lak VI. HicH TIDEs IN THE CALENDAR OF THE OLDER WILLIAMS . 154 MipeeeeE MIG OF ARANSITION . . . . . 6 6) e227

VIII. THe NEw WILuiramMs Me ree Se ar uiet et eee te 24k

IX. LooKiInG BEFORE AND AFTER . . . . ww 277 APPENDIX I. Inventory of Ye Late Eph™ Williams Chest Lien aw ua © x

Chapter I The Founder

For the first two thirds of the forty years and six months which comprise the lifetime of Colonel Ephraim Williams, founder of the college, biographic materials are few and meagre. The vital records of his native town, the will of his grandfather, and an unsigned ‘“‘Sketch”’ in the eighth volume of the ‘‘ Collections” of the Massachusetts Historical Society seem to be the only available sources of information. It appears that April 1, 1713, Ephraim Williams, Senior, of Newton, married Elizabeth, daughter of Abraham Jackson, a substantial and reputable townsman, and that their eldest son, Ephraim, Junior, was born March 7, 1715, or, by old style, February 24, 1714. On the 12th of April, 1718, and a few days after the birth of a second son, Thomas, Elizabeth Williams died, and her two children were practically adopted by their grandfather. From the date of his mother’s death until January 3, 1738-39, when Abraham Jackson, “‘ Being under the Decays and Infirmities of Age, But of perfect Mind and Memory, thanks be given to God,” executed his last will and testament, — an interval of twenty-one years, — no ref- I erence to the founder has been discovered in any contemporary document or publication. Of this last will and testament he was naturally one of the beneficiaries: ‘‘I give and Bequeath to my Grandson Ephraim Williams ...the sum of Fifty Pounds in Money to be paid... within Five years Next after my Decease.’’ Whatever the reason for discrimination may have been, and it is not now obvious, the younger brother received a much larger share of the estate than the elder. “I have expended a considerable Sum,” the testator observes, “for bringing up and educating my Grandson, Thomas Williams... and have put into the hands of his Father... one hundred and Forty Pounds in Money to be Improved and laid out to the Best advantage of my said Grandson.” !

The ‘‘Sketch,” printed nearly half a century after the death of the founder, devotes only two sentences to the long pre-Berkshire period of his career: “ For several years in early life [he] followed the seas; but by persuasion of his father relinquished that business. In his several voyages to Europe he visited England, Spain and Holland; acquired graceful manners ek a considerable stock of useful knowledge.”

Ebenezer Fitch, first president of Williams College and heretofore supposed to have been sole author of the “‘Sketch,’’ had an important collaborator. “I have received a letter,” the former wrote the Secretary

1 Will of Abraham Jackson, Registry of Probate, East Cambridge. Thomas Williams, a prominent physician and surgeon, settled at Deerfield in 1739 and died there in 1775. He entered Yale in the class of 1738, but did not graduate. In 1741 Yale gave him the honotary degree of A.M.

of the Historical Society, January 26, 1801, ‘‘from the Rev. Dr. Miller of New York, requesting information about the rise and progress of this institution, its friends, Library, Apparatus, courses of instruction, expenses of education, &c. In answering this letter I have nearly drawn up the historical account you desire. I wish to insert some further Memoirs of our Founder. ... These I have requested Dr. [Stephen] West of Stockbridge to furnish. He married Col. Williams’ [half]-sister.! I expect his response this week. I will improve the first opportunity after I get it to complete the account and send it to you.’’? The “further Memoirs,” therefore, of the ‘‘historical account’”’ embody the recollections and impressions of surviving members of the Williams family.

It is not until November 3, 1742, that the biography of the founder becomes definitely legible. On that day a Berkshire Justice of the Peace made the following entry in his records: ‘‘ Personally appeared Eph” Williams, Jun. the Surveyor... Joseph Allen, one of the Chainmen, and made Solemn oath that in their Several Capacities ... they acted Honestly and faithfully according to their best Skill and Judgment. The other Chainman (Viz) Joseph Wattkins, being removed to a Considerable Distance Could not be Sworn.” ? The exact date of the arrival of ‘‘ Eph™

1 Dr. West, a graduate of Yale, chaplain at Fort Massachusetts for a year or more, vice-president of Williams College from 1793 to 1812, was a prominent clergyman in the Berkshires for sixty years. He married Elizabeth Williams, who died in 1804 at the age of seventy-four years. Elijah Williams, half-brother of the founder, was also a resident of Stockbridge at this time.

2 Fitch, MS. letter, Mass. His. Society, 41 F. 207.

§ Mass. Archives, Maps and Plans, xxxttl, 24.

Williams, Jun.,” at Stockbridge — an Indian Mission where his father settled in 1737 — is uncertain, but when he appeared before the justice he had been in that town long enough to become known as “the Surveyor.”

After the lapse of eighteen months when no trace of him survives, he reappeared and as representative of Stockbridge at the General Court for the session beginning May 30, 1744, and concluding the 25th of the next April. He served on two important committees, and “‘his politeness and address,’ it is said, “procured for him greater influence than any other person at that day possessed.”’ ? Then, in the summer of 1745, he received a captain’s commission and was assigned to the command of Fort Shirley — one of the small military stations established along the western frontier of Massachusetts. From thence he presently transferred his headquarters to Fort Massachusetts, a later and more important post between East Hoosac and West Township, — renamed North Adams and Williamstown, — and continued in active service until 1748 when the treaty of Aix la Chapelle brought King George’s War to an end.

During this desultory border struggle only one local event has much present interest or importance —the capture and destruction of Fort Massachusetts by a few hundred French and Indians under the command of Rigaud Vaudreuil, Town Major of Three Rivers, Canada. The disaster occurred in August, 1746, and when Captain Williams was absent in Al-

1 Journal, Mass. H.R., July 1, 1744. 2 Mass. His. Society, Collections, vil, 48. 4 bany whither he had gone to take part in a projected attack upon Montreal.' Two years later — the fort having been rebuilt meantime — another skulking band of hostiles made an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the exploit.

A few weeks before the second raid upon Fort Massachusetts Colonel John Stoddard, of Northampton, died. He wasthe man whom Ephraim Williams characterized in his will as ‘‘my great benefactor.’’ This event a ministerial friend — the Rev. Timothy Woodbridge, of Hatfield — made the occasion of a letter in which he set forth with unmistakable earnestness and perhaps with a shade of solicitude his conception of that happy warrior, —

“Whom every man in arms should wish to be.”

“T cannot forget you at Fort Massachusetts,”’ so this letter, written July 21, 1748, begins, ‘‘ but frequently paint you in my mind, sometimes laughing and in a merry mood, sometimes thinking. ... It is in the latter circumstances that I view you whilst writing, and here suffer me to say that to do what good we can in the Station which providence has assigned us is our indispensable Duty and [I] hope Constantly governs you. The opportunity that either you or I shall have to do any good in this world is but short and . . . the Supreme Judge will one day demand an account of our Conduct. Let us do nothing now that we will then be ashamed of... . You will allow me to add that it is but part of the business. . . of an

1 Stone, Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, 1, 225. Sheldon, History of Deerfield, 1, 543.

officer to instruct his men in their Duty as soldiers and see that they do it, but to suppress vice and... immorality, to inculcate sobriety, temperance and Christian virtue; ...and I hope that you will leave this witness in the breasts... of your soldiers that you have led them by your precepts and example in the paths of virtue. What a noble Example has Col. Stoddard left every military officer who had the happiness to be acquainted with him. ... Whilst I mention that great man whose face we shall see no more, I would Drop a tear with you over his grave. I know his Death must sensibly touch you. . . . Let his shining example continually live with us. I hope a good providence will preserve health to you and your Soldiers & save you from falling into the hands of the Enemy.” !

The seven years of King George’s War were followed by seven years of peace. For the first half of this latter period — the years from 1748 until well on into 1752— Captain Williams seems to have remained at Fort Massachusetts, where life must have been somewhat vacant and monotonous. He had the respect and affection of the little garrison and that was something. ‘‘ His kind and obliging deportment,”’ Dr. West wrote, “‘his generosity and condescension greatly endeared him to his soldiers... . He frequently entered into the pastimes... upon an equal footing with them and permitted every decent freedom; and again, when the diversions were over, he, with ease and dignity, became the Captain.’’ His official duties,

1 Israel Williams, Letters and Papers, 1, 32. 2 Mass. His. Society, Collections, vill, 48.

such as making out muster-rolls, ordering supplies of medicine, provisions, and New England rum, were not burdensome. On one occasion the usual routine was interrupted by the appearance of a deputation of Indians, who claimed to own the land upon which the fort stood and wanted to be paid for it. These enterprising aborigines did not succeed in collecting their bill.

At least one parcel of books was forwarded to the founder in the months of relative quiet. It would be interesting to know something more about these books than that he was impatient to get them and that they were packed with care. ‘I will Do ’em up well,’ his half-sister, Mrs. Abigail Sergeant, wrote Thomas Williams, July 18, 1750, ‘‘Send ’em to ye fort [Massachusetts] Next week. They shall Be Sealed with orders not to Be Broke. Books gett much Damage by Transport.” ?

Tiring of the petty round of garrison life, Ephraim Williams spent the second half of this peaceful interval partly at Stockbridge where a serious crisis in the affairs of his family required attention, and partly at Hatfield, the home of an attractive cousin, Elizabeth Williams, to whom, if a persistent tradition may be trusted, he was by no means indifferent. But this intermediate period, wherever he may have spent it, was essentially a time of waiting and vacuum.

Viewed in their larger aspects these seven years must be reckoned merely as a truce during the long fight for North America, while the combatants took breath and prepared to renew the undecided struggle.

In this critical time of suspense, when it became evident that hostilities would presently be resumed, the most active and efficient leader among the colonials was William Shirley, Governor of Massachusetts. He drew up plans for fitting out four considerable expeditions which were to attempt the capture of as many French military posts — Crown Point, on Lake Champlain; Fort Beauséjour, in Acadia; Fort Duquesne, at the junction of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers; and Fort Niagara, dominating the passage between Lakes Ontario and Erie. This com- ~ prehensive plan received the formal approval of a council of war held in Alexandria, Virginia, April 14, 1755, at which General Edward Braddock, commander-in-chief of His Majesty’s forces, and five colonial governors were present.

The only one of these campaigns with which we are particularly concerned is that against Crown Point, a fortified post of great strategic importance, as it practically controlled the most practicable route from New York to Montreal. Since several colonies — Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York — were to take part in the expedition and jealousies abounded, it was not easy to find a satisfactory leader. Governor Shirley solved the problem by selecting a civilian for the position — William Johnson, who had lived in the Mohawk country seventeen years and developed remarkable skill in dealing with Indians. The Alexandria council, fully persuaded that a man who could manage the Six Nations would be able to capture Crown Point, not only confirmed his appointment, but declared him to be ‘“‘the properest person to have command of the expedition.’”’! Johnson himself, however, was not so sure about it and accepted the position with some reluctance and misgiving.?

The Massachusetts quota of troops comprised three regiments, one of which Hampshire County, then including the Berkshires, must furnish. Nobody in that county could undertake the task of recruiting it with any such assurance of success as Ephraim Williams. Every one liked and trusted him. ‘‘ His address,’’ Dr. West tells us, ‘‘was easy and his manners pleasing and conciliatory. Affable and facetious, he could make himself agreeable in all companies; and was very generally esteemed, respected and beloved.”’ 3 The four hundred and twenty “‘ private men,” whose names appear on the muster-roll of this Hampshire regiment, were readily secured. Commissioned as their colonel March 28, 1755, Ephraim Williams entered upon the final period of his military service — a brief period of twenty-three weeks and three days.‘ He seems to have perceived, indistinctly it may be, the momentous nature of the issues involved in the reawakened struggle. Though he had probably never heard of the ambitious schemes that fascinated daring spirits in the cabinet of Louis XV, — schemes to check the westward movement of English colonists by a chain of forts from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, and perhaps ultimately drive them out

1 Documentary History of the State of New York, 11, 379. 2 Correspondence of William Shirley, 11, 169.

8 Mass. His. Society, Collections, vitI, 48.

4 Mass. Archives, Muster-Rolls, Xctv, 7.

of the continent, — yet he did not fail to realize the necessity of putting an end once for all to the French peril. ‘I have a great desire,’ he wrote, — ‘‘I have a great desire Canada should be demolished.” * Albany, then a palisaded, frontier town of twenty-eight hundred inhabitants, was the natural base for the expedition against Crown Point, and on the 31st of May the Hampshire regiment began to move toward this rendezvous — ‘“‘each man being allowed 6 days for his march”’ of fifty or sixty miles. By the middle of July three thousand provincials and two or three hundred Indians had reached the camp. The personal letters of Colonel Williams, written during the two months he remained in Albany, four of which have been preserved, are unmistakably apprehensive and despondent. Especially is this true of the latest, dated Tuesday, July 22. Local conditions — what with the little army of undisciplined yeomanry and Mohawk Indians mustered for the expedition, the inadequacy of the commissariat, the primitive means of transportation, and the obtrusive evidence of confusion everywhere — were sufficiently unpromising, but during the preceding evening rumors reached him that the expedition against Fort Duquesne had met with a crushing disaster. Colonel Williams was greatly depressed by the news, and in this despondent mood wrote his final letter from Albany: ‘‘It is to be feared that General Braddock is cut to pieces and a great part of his army... . The Lord have mercy upon poor New England.” ? The period of delay continued eleven days after 1 Israel Williams, Letters and Papers, 1, 120. 2 Ibid., 1., 156. 10 this black Tuesday. On the 2d of August, Colonel Williams broke camp and set out for Great Carrying Place, a military station on the Hudson River about sixty miles above Albany.’ He made slow progress, and did not reach his destination until August 14. It was a hard trip and the men are said to “have been extremely beat out in hauling the battoes over the several falls.’’ General Johnson also arrived the same day “with about 20 Indians fit for war,’”’ ? and remained until August 26, in doubt what to do next — whether to move northeast to Wood Creek or northwest to the foot of Lake George.

Three of Colonel Williams’ letters, written during the time of hesitation at Great Carrying Place, have been preserved. From the tenor of the first, dated August 16, it would seem that some vague, undefined presentment of evil haunted him. ‘I hereby mourn with you in the loss of y’r Brother,’’ he wrote Israel Williams. “Pray God to sanctify it to all of us, & fit us for our own turns which will soon arrive — how soon God only knows. I beg your prayers for us all & me in perticular.”’:* In the last letter, dated August 23, personal considerations give place to anxieties about the conditions and prospects of the expedition, which could hardly fail to be disquieting. Other adverse elements were plenty, but, in the opinion of Colonel Wil-

1 The post had an unusual succession of names. A letter from Moses Porter — captain in Ephraim Williams’ regiment —is ‘ Dated at the Carrying Place, alias Fort Nicholson, alias Lydius fort, alias Tadmor in the Wilderness 16th of August.’’ The next letter, however, written at the same place two days later, gives his address as ‘‘ The Fort without a Name.”’ (Porter, MSS. letters, Mass. His. Society.) The modern name of the town is Fort Edward.

2 Israel Williams, Letters and Papers, 1, 170. 8 [bid., I, 170.

II liams, General Johnson could not capture Crown Point with his present force. Instead of three thousand men there ought to have been ten or twelve thousand. “If we should be beat,’’ he wrote, ‘‘our country is lost.” !

General Johnson finally decided to proceed toward Crown Point by way of Lake George and ordered the pioneers to hew a passable road through the fourteen miles of pine forest that lay between him and the foot of it.2 Leaving a garrison at Great Carrying Place, he started Tuesday, August 26, with the rest of his army for the new camp in a wilderness where “no house was ever before built nora rod of land cleared,’’® and reached his destination late Thursday afternoon. The secular activities and emergencies of the situation did not prevent a due religious observance of the two following Sundays, as preaching services, attended by Mohawks as well as colonials, were held on both of them. But the enemy —a mixed force of Indians, Canadians, and French regulars under the command of Baron Dieskau * — did not spend these Sundays in divine worship. Whatever they may have been about on the first of them, on the other they ‘‘ marched nine leagues, always through woods and over mountains,’ ® and reached the vicinity of the English forces. During the evening of the second Sunday — September 7 — General Johnson learned, and evidently to his surprise, that the invaders were in the neighborhood.

1 Israel Williams, Letters and Papers, 1, 170.

2 Stone, Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, 1, 507.

3 Documentary History of the State of New York, u, 689.

4 “ An elderly man and very much of a gentleman.” (Captain Peter Wraxall, Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, V1, 1003.) 5 Ibid., X, 339.

I2

After a council of war, held the next morning, he ordered Colonel Williams, who possessed his confidence in a greater degree than any other officer of the staff,! to make a reconnoissance for the purpose of discovering their whereabouts and intentions. The latter left the camp, “‘ between eight and nine o’clock,”’ with one thousand colonials and two hundred Indians. Though an experienced frontiersman and familiar with the tactics of border warfare, he failed to protect his front and flanks with scouts and consequently fell into a disastrous ambuscade.

““My dear brother Ephraim,’ wrote Thomas Williams in a letter to his wife, “. . . was killed in the beginning of the action by a ball through his head.”’ ? The provincials, thrown into confusion by the sudden attack and the loss of their commander, fled toward the camp, which the enemy, in hot pursuit, attempted unsuccessfully to carry by storm. Though failing in their first dash, they did not give up the fight on that account. ‘The fire began between I1 and 12 of the clock,’ wrote Seth Pomeroy, lieutenant-colonel of Ephraim Williams’ regiment, ‘‘and continued until near five in the afternoon —the most violent fire perhaps that was ever heard of in any battle in this country. Then we beat them off the ground.’’* This

1 American Review, vil, 602.

2 Historical Magazine, vil, 212. Thomas Williams was surgeon of the Hampshire regiment. “It is said that one of our men, observing an Indian taking his aim at Colonel Williams, fired his piece at the Indian and shot him dead upon the spot; so that this worthy commander, and his savage slaughterer fell at once and probably at the same instant.” (Niles, History of the French and Indian Wars, in Collections,

Mass. His. Society, Fourth Series, v, 393.) 3 Seth Pomeroy, Diary, quotedin Trumbull’s History of Northampton, inconclusive victory was acclaimed far and wide ~ among the colonies. The Governor of New York appointed Tuesday, October 2, “‘as a day of public Thanksgiving to Almighty God’’! and Johnson himself received from King George “‘ the dignity of a Baronet of Great Britain.’’ One Massachusetts colonel, Timothy Ruggles, who sometimes spoke his mind with astonishing freedom, took a different view of the situation. ‘‘General,’’ he said to Johnson after the battle, ‘General, I hope the damnable blunders you have made this day may be sanctified to your spiritual and everlasting good.’ * The best that can be said for the expedition is that it achieved a qualified and negative success.

The body of Colonel Williams remained undisturbed on the spot where he fell until the morning after the fight, when it was recovered and buried under a neighboring pine tree. A week later Thomas Williams made an inventory of the contents of his army chest.2 Among the items in this inventory were not only such articles of a Berkshire gentleman’s wardrobe as a pair of leather breeches, a broadcloth coat with yellow metal buttons and a French bearskin coat, but also eleven books —a species of baggage which none of the other New England colonels, though two of them, Timothy Ruggles and Phineas Lyman, were college graduates, seem to have inur, 269. ‘Our cannon... were heard down as low as Saratoga,” Thomas Williams wrote, ‘‘ notwithstanding the wind was in the north and something considerable.”’ (Historical Magazine, VII, 212.)

1 Documentary History of the State of New York, 698.

2 Jonathan Smith, in Proceedings, Mass. His. Society, XLVIII, 43.

8 Appendix I.

cluded in their outfitting for the campaign. What were the books which Ephraim Williams did include among his necessaries? Four of them — a New Testament, the Psalms of David, an Annual, ‘‘The Court and City Kalendar,’’ and Bland’s “Military Discipline’’ — one might expect to find in the list, but that is hardly the case with the others, ‘‘Roman History ... By wayof dialogue,’ ! the “ Independent Whig”’ in two volumes, and ‘‘ Cato’s Letters”’ in four. The history is perhaps less surprising than the remaining six books, written by Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard, whose names can scarcely be called household words at the present day. They are a series of vigorous, aggressive, hard-hitting essays on a great variety of subjects social, political, theological, and academic. While they may not rival the “ Letters of Junius” in declamatory invective, like them they belong to the literature of protest, assailing in particular the High Church propaganda of the day and in general anybody and everybody who “played the devil in God’s name.”’ That they would stir up controversy was to be expected. At least one “‘ Fanatical and Dissatisfied Clergyman’’ — the Bishop of Sodor and Mann— “‘ bellowed out his curse’”’? against them. For Ephraim Williams these militant books must have had special attractions or he would hardly have taken the trouble to transport them over the rough, primi-

1 A New and Easy Method to understand the Roman History... By way of dialogue; for the use of the Duke of Burgundy. Done out of French. ... By Mr. T. Brown: pp. 324. R. Baldwin: London, 1695. 12°. Eighth edition, 1731. There is a copy of this book in the Collection of Mr. R. H. W. Dwight.

2 Independent Whig, 1, xc.

tive highway from Stockbridge to Albany, up the Hudson River to Great Carrying Place and through fourteen miles of wilderness to Lake George. That a colonial colonel, who on going to the wars put eleven books into his army chest, became the founder of a college, should not occasion surprise.!

The memorable day in the forty years and six months of Ephraim Williams’ life was that black Tuesday at Albany — July 22, 1755 — when he ‘“‘made and published”’ his last will and testament, declaring it to be his ‘‘ Pleasure & Desire”’ that his residuary estate should be “‘Appropriated toward the Support and maintenance of a free School (in a township . . . Commonly Called the west township) for Ever,’”’ provided that it “fall within the Jurisdiction of Massachusetts bay,’’ and also that “the Governor & General Court give the Said township the name of Williamstown.” A project of this kind had been long in mind. Dr. West says that he “witnessed with humane and painful sensations, the dangers, difficulties and hardships”’ which the first settlers of the region encountered. ‘To encourage them, he intimated his intention of doing something liberal and handsome for them.”’ ? That “something,’’ which took definite shape in his will, gave distinction to a career otherwise incon- Spicuous.

1 Appendix II. 2 Mass. His. Society, Collections, vim, 48.

Chapter II

IN 1755 West Township, the site of the proposed Free School, was an insignificant hamlet on the southern border of “a great and terrible wilderness . . . which reached to Canada.”’ 1 Only sixteen years had elapsed since Ephraim Williams, Senior, and Thomas Wells made the first survey of the region. Their work, prosecuted under serious difficulties, appears to have been indifferently well done, and in 1749 the Legislature directed Oliver Partridge and two associates ‘“‘to repair to the Province Lands near Hoosuck ... with a skilful surveyor and chainman under oath... lay out Two Townships ...and return a correct Plat.’’?

April 6, 1750, a third legislative committee divided the ‘‘Westernmost”’ of them into ‘63 Houselots,”’ which the authorities sold two years later to fortysix purchasers, thirteen of whom were soldiers at Fort Massachusetts.

Ephraim Williams, Senior, thought that the new © town on the Hoosac was “very accommodable for settlements,’’ * but families in search of homes had their doubts about it. Reasons for hesitation were numerous — the remoteness of the “ plantation,’ the

1 Jones, History of Stockbridge, 78.

8 Mass. eebsves. CXV, 634. Perry, Origins in Williamstown, 382. * Mass. Archives, CCXLIN, 75.

evil reputation of the winter climate, and the still more dissuasive circumstance that this region, across which the Old Mohawk Trail ran, was notoriously “vulnerable to the guns and tomahawks of Canada.”’ Though the French and Indian Terror came to an end with the surrender of Montreal in 1760, the isolation continued, with slow and grudging abatement, for almost a century after that decisive event. West Township, renamed Williamstown in 1765, had no post-office until 1797. During this long period mail facilities were a matter of accident or personal favor. In the last decade of it Simon Hough, who rode up and down the county delivering to subscribers their copies of the ‘“‘Western Star’’ published at Stockbridge, acted on occasion as postman, but his weekly visits did little to break the solitude.?

There was, it is true, an early and ambitious attempt to establish tri-weekly communications with the outside world. Toward the close of the year 1796 “the proprietors ...inform the Public that they have started a Line of Stages from New York to Bennington in Vermont,’’ by way of the Berkshires.’ These stages continued in operation at least a year, since on the 6th of October, 1797, the postmaster at Stockbridge announced that they had begun to carry the mails.? But the enterprise was short-lived

1 From his rather frequent ‘‘ Notices to Patrons,” it would appear that Simon often found collections slow. “I suppose the quarters seem to be soon out to you, my friends,” he said in one of them, “ but as I have to run in debt 20 dollars for your papers, and then tug around thirteen weeks before I get my pay, it seems long enough to me.” (Western Star, June 30, 1795.)

2 Appendix 11.

8 Western Star, October 17, 1797.

and nobody attempted anything of the sort again until 1826 when another tri-weekly line of stages began to run from Bennington to Pittsfield. In 1859 the opening of the Troy and Boston Railroad put this line out of business, and then in a certain limited sense former things may be said to have passed away.