Northampton, Massachusetts

“ There is a small hamlet at the foot of Mount Holyoke, on the eastern side of the river, called by the Indian name Hoccanum, and another at the foot of Mount Tom, on the western side, called Pascommuc, both of which were burnt by the savages in the early settlement of the country, and the inhabitants killed or taken captive. The early history of all these towns on the Connecticut river is filled with events of Indian warfare. Northampton, by its rich alluvial land allured the first settlers of Massachusetts long before most of the country between it and the sea-coast possessed an inhabitant. ”

“ Massachusetts was too prosperous and too visibly destined for great
power in America to be suffered longer to go its independent way as
hitherto.
King Charles II.
[1661]
The province--as yet, of course, excluding Plymouth with its twelve
towns and five thousand inhabitants--contained at this time, 1660, about
twenty-five thousand souls, living in fifty-two towns. These were nearly
all on the coast; Dedham, Concord, Brookfield, Lancaster, Marlborough,
and the Connecticut Valley hamlets of Springfield, Hadley, and
Northampton being the most noteworthy exceptions. ”

“ STRONG, CALEB, governor of Massachusetts, was born at Northampton, in 1744, and graduated at Harvard college. He pursued the profession of the law, and established himself in his native town. Taking an early and active part in the revolutionary movements, he was appointed, in 1775, one of the committee of safety, and in the following year a member of the state legislature. He was a member of the convention which formed the constitution of the state, and of that which formed the constitution of the United States. ”

“ Boston, in 1830 had but the poor population of 61,392, nearly all born on her soil, few of them dirty or beggared. Once, fifty years ago, all through Massachusetts were clean, decent, white-housed towns, such as Worcester, and Springfield, and Northampton, and Concord, and Salem, and Newburyport, centres of small but most cultivated and earnest social life.
Then small farms were cultivated by families of New England birth, out of whom came able men and handsome women. Children lived with parents, and did not tyrannize them. ”

“ Then crossing a Bay but 12 Miles (but to round it, it is much more) is Northampton. This Towne is under Connecticott Goverment. And then Easthampton under no Goverment25.
I suppose these two Goverments of Connecticott, and Newhaven, are only by Combination, I never heard of any Patent they have, and they are also in Confederacie with the Massachusetts, and New Plymouth, each of these 4 Goverments annually choosen two Comissioners to meet and Consult as occasion may serve; their power lasting for one yeare. These meettings prove chargeable, and as it is conceived of many of no great use. ”

“ Caleb Strong, of Massachusetts, was the descendant of an old and honorable family of Northampton, the place of 144his birth. He was educated at Harvard and entered the practice of law. [360] He early began a public career for which he showed remarkable aptitudes, and was rewarded by election to the convention which drafted the constitution of his state, to the federal Convention, to the first United States Senate, and later to the office of governor of the commonwealth. ”

“ No less beautiful and strikingly similar in general character is that part of Western Massachusetts wherein stands our New England village—Northampton—village in size and rural aspect, though the capital of Hampshire county. But the New England valley has one advantage over the weald of Sussex in its broad and beautiful river, with Indian name, Connecticut—Quonnektacut, the long river—which winds through it. ”

“ In 1694-95, the frontier line of Massachusetts was established by law as including the towns of Amesbury, Haverhill, Dunstable, Chelmsford, Groton, Lancaster, Marlborough, and Deerfield. Five years later this list was increased by Brookfield, Mendon, and Woodstock, with a kind of inner line, running through Salisbury, Andover, Billerica, Hatfield, Hadley, Westfield, and Northampton. ”

“ It is the center of the boot and shoe industry of England, and has extensive breweries. The city was burned by the Danes in 1010, rebuilt by Simon de St. Liz in 1075, besieged by the barons against King John in 1215, and was the scene of the treaty recognizing the independence of Scotland in 1318. Population about 75,000.
Northampton, Mass., the county-seat of Hampshire County, is situated near the left bank of the Connecticut River, 103 miles from Boston. It manufactures paper, silk, cotton and woolen goods, sewing machines, baskets, cutlery, brushes and jet ornaments. ”

“ Here to the westward of the river is Northampton, a most lovely and attractive town, well described as "the frontispiece of the book of beauty which Nature opens wide in the valley of the Connecticut." The fairest fields surround it, with thrifty farmers cultivating their rich bottom-lands, and the people have a splendid outlook in front of their doors, in the glorious panorama of the noble mountains, with the river flowing away through the deep gorge. The place was named Northampton because most of the original settlers came from that English town. ”

“ They have all the graceful weeping elm; wide roads overshadowed with wood; mounds or levels of a rich verdure; white churches, and comfortable and picturesque frame dwellings. Northampton has these beauties and more. It lies in the rich meadows which border the Connecticut, beneath the protection of high wooded hills. The habitations of its gentry crown the green knolls and terraces on which the village stands, or half buried in gay gardens, or hidden under clumps of elm. The celebrated Mount Holyoke and Mount Tom are just at hand, and the Sugarloaf is in view ”

“ Our beautiful Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but owes its surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over it like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were its tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines, robing themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing penance in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts under their rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the soil at their feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and frowns. ”

“ Northampton—with its snow-white dwellings, its spires and turrets, its hill—the sides of which are occupied with delightful mansions—and its top surmounted with a lovely grove, forms a panorama, the beauty of which must be seen to be realized. ”

“ Each style seems quaint to those who favour the other.
The stranger would expect to find Northampton, as a factory town, a place of squalor and grime; but coming here, and emerging into the market-place from the not very pleasing entrance, his expectations are utterly shattered. There are few towns of the size of Northampton—whose186 population is now considerably over 89,000—that are so bright and clean, and prosperous-looking, as this; and the stranger, to whom its Radical politics are familiar, and to whom its choice for many years of such Parliamentary representatives as Mr. ”

“ Northampton's work was at once undone, the fishmongers regained their privileges, and the greater companies triumphed.
He did not submit quietly to his defeat; the party that he led was numerous and excited, there was talk of making him mayor in spite of his enemies, and the supporters of Brembre believed that the new lord mayor's life was threatened. Northampton was joined by a large number of men when he walked the streets, and seems to have allied himself to the anti-court party among the nobles; for the dispute in the city had a strong bearing on the affairs of the kingdom. ”

“ Despite his lack of principle, Northampton displayed a many-sided culture, and was reputed the most learned nobleman of his time. His taste in architecture is proved by his enlargement of Greenwich Castle, by the magnificence of his London residence, afterwards Northumberland House, which was built at his cost from the designs of Moses Glover [q.v.] , and by his supervision of Thorpe's designs for Audley End, the residence of his nephew Suffolk. ”

“ In 1642, Elizabeth, daughter of Theophilus, second Earl of Suffolk, married Algernon Percy, tenth Earl of Northumberland, and the new master gave his name to the old mansion. The above-named Lord Northampton was the man who has been described as foolish when young, infamous when old, an encourager, at threescore years and ten, of his niece, the infamous Countess of Essex ”

“ Amidst all this quiet and beauty one forgets the dark problems that threaten England and thinks only of her ineffable charm. Little Brington is not less attractive than its neighbor—the thatched structure above the well in the village green and the two hoary firs overshadowing it forming a picture as quaint as pleasing. We leave the lovely villages regretfully, and winding out of the maze of byroads, take the highway that leads toward the ancient city of Northampton, whose chief distinction should be that a Washington was once its Lord Mayor. ”

“ Look at Northampton, with a franchise more democratic than even the scot and lot franchise. Northampton formerly returned Mr Perceval, and now returns gentlemen of high respectability, gentlemen who have a great stake in the prosperity and tranquillity of the country. Look at the metropolitan districts. This is an a fortiori case. Nay it is—the expression, I fear, is awkward—an a fortiori case at two removes. The ten pound householders of the metropolis are persons in a lower station of life than the ten pound householders of other towns. ”

“ Thus the Nen has its sources quite on the western side of the county—thence each feeder flows through a pleasant rolling region, where pastures alternate with cornfields, and both with copses, broadening its valley, as it proceeds, until they join and reach the chief town of the county, by which time the water meadows bordering its banks are of considerable extent. Northampton is a town which has increased rapidly in size, and in consequence diminished rapidly in attractiveness. ”

“ After the passing of the Household Suffrage Act of 1868, however, the constituency became every year more democratic. The Freehold Land Society, some of whose founders and leading members were among his most devoted and capable followers, created year after year scores of freeholds, the property of workers, in a fashion that has finally made Northampton almost unique among our manufacturing towns. ”

“ Yet the faith in poor common men, once kindled in Washington, if not so mixed with piety as Cromwell’s, outlasted that through parliamentary trials as severe as ever it was put to by poor uncommon men.
Non-conformity, civil as well as religious, which the Washingtons were no part of, was the note of Northampton from the first, and to the last it has been represented in Parliament by such bold dissentients as Bradlaugh and Mr. Labouchere. It is the great shoe-town of England, and apparently there is nothing like leather to inspire a manly resistance to the pretensions of authority. ”

“ But the Washingtons of Northampton were never any part of the revolt against kingly assumptions. The Lawrence Washington who was twice Mayor of Northampton profited by Henry VIII.’s suppression of the monasteries to possess himself of Sulgrave Manor, where his descendants dwelt for a hundred years and more, until 1658, when their discomforts under the Commonwealth, and their failing fortunes, made them glad of the protection of their noble kindred the Spencers at Brington. ”

“ Having made this deprecation on behalf of my own criminality in using such a word as 'genteel,' I go on to say that whilst Northampton was (and is, I believe) of all towns the most genteel, Nottingham for more than two centuries has been the most insurrectionary and in a scarlet excess democratic. Nottingham, in fact, has always resembled the Alexandria of ancient days; whilst Northampton could not be other than aristocratic as the centre of a county more thickly gemmed by the ancestral seats of our nobility than any beside in the island. ”

“ Bos; “they are all shoemakers, and of course quarrelsome and contradictory, for where was there ever a shoemaker who was not conceited and easily riled? No, I have little to p. 204say in favour of Northampton, as far as the men are concerned. It’s not the men but the women that make me speak in praise of Northampton. The men are all ill-tempered, but the women quite the contrary. I never saw such a place for merched anladd as Northampton. ”

“ By all historic precedents Northampton should have been the scene of a contest in the long struggle between King Charles and his Parliament; but, fortunately for the burgesses, who were commercial folk and not greatly interested, the castle was too far gone in decay to be useful to either side, and the great Northamptonshire battle of Naseby was fought twelve miles away. ”

“ NEW ENGLAND.
The place from which the following letter is indited, can be forgotten by no one that has ever seen it. A fine view of Northampton may be had from the top of the Mansion House, where the visiter commonly abides; but whoever ascends Mount Holyoke, is rewarded for his pains, with a prospect of surpassing beauty. In Virginia, we may have from our summits, a view of mountains on the one hand, and on the other a country comparatively level, with occasional spots of cultivation; but there is seldom any greater variety. Nothing else is afforded by the Peaks of Otter. ”

“ It cannot be said these virtues perished with the first possessors of the earldom of Northampton, since a higher amount of architectural knowledge, a clearer insight into its principles, and a better appreciation of its beauties, attended by more disinterested benevolence, by a self-devotion to the cause of humanity and the progress of social refinement, seem to have descended as the indefeasible attributes of the title. ”