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    Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts
    Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts
    Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts
    Ebook183 pages57 minutes

    Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts

    By Daniel Lombardo

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    About this ebook

    Images of America: Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts is an educational and entertaining volume that will delight residents, visitors, and lovers of history everywhere.


    Once part of Hadley, the town of Amherst is known the world over as the home of celebrated poet Emily Dickinson. This photographic portrait of Emily's surroundings reveals the beautiful landscape that inspired her art, and also includes less typical but nonetheless significant images of hard-working farmhands, Irish laborers, Italian peanut vendors, riotous college students, and feuding factory workers.

    These two towns at the heart of the Connecticut River Valley have been appreciated by poets and artists for many years, and their bucolic and pastoral character is celebrated in this marvelous new examination of the towns' history in photographs from 1860 through the early twentieth century. Famous residents of and visitors to the area are featured, including Dickinson, Robert Frost, Henry Ward Beecher and Noah Webster.

    Mr. Lombardo's book combines a serious look at these historical figures with a humorous perspective on some of the area's more colorful characters, such as Charles King, the Amherst barber who became famous for eating fifty eggs in fifteen minutes.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateMar 1, 1997
    ISBN9781439621578
    Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts
    Author

    Daniel Lombardo

    Daniel Lombardo, curator of special collections at the Jones Library in Amherst, has created a journey through the seasons in the towns of Amherst and Hadley that will fascinate and delight young and old alike. Lombardo has written a number of other books, including Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts in the Images of America series, and his work makes an important contribution to the recorded history of the area.

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      Book preview

      Amherst and Hadley, Massachusetts - Daniel Lombardo

      01027

      Introduction

      Amherst and Hadley are ghost towns. On the surface Hadley suffers from the pace of twentieth-century life, but just off the main road the Hadley Common looks much as it always has. A broad green with the Connecticut River curving at one end, its eighteenth and nineteenth-century homes conjure up the Porter and Hopkins families and the old Bull’s Head Tavern.

      Amherst, once a part of Hadley, went off on its own and now attracts international attention. The town seethes with the cultural excitement of its three institutions of higher learning—Amherst College, Hampshire College, and the University of Massachusetts. Walk down Main Street, however, and the air becomes hushed as you approach the brick Dickinson Homestead. Emily Dickinson still seems to inhabit her small second-floor room. There are flowers in the garden, and the path Emily used to walk can still be seen leading to her brother Austin’s house.

      Austin and Susan Dickinson’s place, known as the Evergreens, stands next door, looking much as it did the day Austin’s coffin was carried out in 1895. Both houses are surrounded by ancient trees, and one expects to see a carriage with a span of bay horses pull out carrying the Dickinsons—all but Emily—to the Congregational church before riding out to the Pelham Hills. The stone church the Dickinsons helped build stands as it did the night Emily saw it for the first time in the moonlight. And the Dickinson Homestead looks out, as Emily did, to the Pelham Hills.

      In 1659, Reverend John Russell led his dissenting Congregationalists from Wethersfield and Hartford, Connecticut, to the place they would call Hadley. By 1728 the settlers had begun to spread to the part of town then known as the Third Precinct. In 1759 Hadley granted the families in the East Precinct the right to govern themselves as a separate district. The name Amherst was given by Governor Pownell in honor of General Jeffery Amherst, the somewhat notorious commander and hero of the English armies in the colonies.

      Pugnacious Amherst has always thought for itself. The town was not initially enthusiastic about the Revolution when Sam Adams sent for support in 1772. Then, after having joined the Revolution and helping win independence, many in town rebelled against the new government by taking part in Shays Rebellion in 1786. Amherst was also against the War of 1812. At a town meeting co-chaired by Emily Dickinson’s grandfather, a veiled threat was made to secede from the union. Today the Amherst Common, one of the prettiest in New England, is often a site where people express their local views to the world. And the world, not always sure what to make of the town, often listens.

      The Amherst and Hadley area of the Connecticut River Valley has produced a most amazing variety of true geniuses—and true eccentrics. Washington Irving sensed something unusual there in 1832, when he wrote I have had a most delightful excursion along the enchanting Valley of the Connecticut—of which I dare not speak at present—for it is just now the topic which I am a little mad upon. It is a perfect stream for a poet.

      Irving had no way of knowing that Emily Dickinson was just then almost eighteen months old. She would make hardly a ripple in that poetic stream during her lifetime, but today is celebrated as one of the world’s finest poets in the English language.

      Like most New England towns, the Amherst area diversified in the nineteenth century. Particularly after the Civil War, the African-American and Irish populations increased. Many African-Americans worked in the homes of Amherst professors or did manual labor; some went into business and professional work. The Irish were hired to build the New London Northern Railroad, the Congregational church on Main Street, the Episcopal church on the Common, and the first buildings of the Agricultural College. On the surface there was harmony, even affection for some, like Henry Jackson and Charley Thompson, who were well-respected members of the black community. Underneath there was discrimination, however, and when a street fight broke out in 1885 between African-Americans and Irish, it was reported more as a sporting event than a symptom of social breakdown.

      Though known for education as early as 1814, Amherst in the nineteenth century was nearly as well known for its palm leaf hat factories. By the 1890s the Hills and Burnett factories were shipping hundreds of thousands of hats across the country. Factory bells competed with college and church bells. Rivalries and feuds between factories added a new layer of competition to a town that loved to pit student teams or business teams against each other on the ball field or in the pool hall.

      In 1897, for example, the Burnett Hat Factory

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