Williams College - Gulielmensian Yearbook (Williamstown, MA)

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to Stockbridge, with the laying out and settlement of which town as a mission station for the I-Iousatonic Indians, and with the new townships adjoining, he had had much to do for two or three years. A committee of the General Court of Massachusetts with johnfStoddard for chairman, had been appointed for this general purpose in 1735, and had been instructed to reserve 1-6o of the new townfor the missionary, john Sergeant, and an- other 1-6o for the schoolmaster, Timothy Woodbridge, both of them already at work for the Indians there, and also a sufhcient portion of the land for four other English families, whose permanent residence and intercourse were designed to encourage the missionary and schoolmaster, and to ex- emplify tothe Indian families at once both civilization and Christianity. The Williams family were the first of these four to arrive, and settled in june on Stockbridge Hill. Neither of the two older sons accompanied the family to Stockbridge, for Thomas, who had received the better early education, who had already studied medicine after the fashion of those times with Dr. Wheat of Bos- ton, and who took the honorary degree of Master of Arts from Yale in 1741, was just then settling down in old Deerfield as a physician, where he became and continued distinguished as such till his death in 13775, and the whereabouts and attitude of Ephraim in 1739 is not now known. just at this point of time, the many-branched Williams family, all de- scended from Robert, who emigrated from the English Norwich, and was admitted a Roxbury freeman in the year 1638, members of which early became potent on the Charles River, and others equally so along the Con- necticut later, and now in 1739 established upon the I-lousatonic in strong public influence, touched the same year the Hoosac valley also with a potency never for one instant intermitted since. In addition to the terri- tory bought by him ofthe Stockbridge Indians and organized into the four I-Iousatonic Townships so-called, the elder Williams brought to Stock- bridge authority from the General -Court to survey and lay out two townships along the Hoosac River, and during this autumn he with others proceeded to execute the somewhat pressing mandate, as New Hampshire claimed a strip of territory along the whole northern border of Massachusetts, as well as New York along the entire western border. So far as written records go for even traditionj Williams and his surveying party were the first white men to traverse what is now Williamstown and North Adams and their report accompanied by a careful map of the locality which alone preserves the Indian name Ashuwzllficook and Mayunsook of the south and north branches the of Hoosac, respectively, is still held in the archives at Boston, although for certain reasons another and final survey ten years later located in part these two townships differently, and so be- came the guide to their legal organization. , A II

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t! l '----'il' i and the firmest principles of Fair and Right throughout, but not a single one ot' them is well spelled, few, if any, of them come completely under the rules of common English Grammar, and there is additional proof in them of a fragmentary home and school training, many arithmetical mistalres creep into the successive muster-rolls, and few of the many-itemed bills are found to be strictly accurate. That he put, nevertheless, a high estimate upon that ofwhich he himself had been deprived, is clearly shown by a good many expressions in his last will and testament, and particularly by the essential clause of it establishing the Williamstown Free School, and condi- tionally also Haschoolin the EastTownship, where the fort now stands, and the same fact is st-rongly indicated by several concurrent lines of tradition, which was best gathered up 'by Mr. Fitch, the first preceptor of the Free School, forty-five years after the Colonel's death. ,He had a taste for books, and often lamented his want of a liberal education 5 he witnessed, with humane and painful sensations, the dangers and difficulties and hard- ships which the first settlers were obliged to encounter, and to encourage them he intimated his intention of doing something liberal and handsome for them. - It is nearly as plain, from a full survey of all the circumstances, in the second place that Ephraim Williams found his double and doubtful home re- lations disagreeable, if not intolerable. The best evidence of this is that he left home and went to sea when quite a youth, and no traces of the time when, or reason why, or manner how, have ever been discovered, although these were diligently soughtforfifty years ago by Dr. Stephen West Williams, agrandson of his younger brother, Thomas. It is certain, however, that his father was troubled by this sea-faring life of his motherless boy, that he earnestly tried to dissuade him from pursuing it, and that he ultimately succeeded in inducing him to abandon it. It is certain also that the boy or young man made many voyages to Europe, in some of which he visited Spain and Holland and England, but whether he went before the mast or as a supercargo, or as apetty officer, will never be known, though perhaps it may be fairly inferred that he personally profited by these opportunities as towards that agreeable companionship and social success and political influence of his later life, and it is certain further, that while ships of a con- siderable burden then sailed up the Charles River as far as Newton, none of his own immediate family on either side were then, or had been, sea-go- ing people, and too that there is a strange reticence both of record and of after-reference to this portion 'of the Colonel's life. The same year, 1739, in which his Grandfather Jackson made his last will and testament, his father, Williams, then forty-eight years Old, broke up his establishment in Newton, where he had been prominent both in church and civil affairs, sold the ancestral acres there, and moved his family IO .

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1 4' 95E '!F 5P'l F Ef'!Y-'1 T - , ,While there are no present data to determine the exact year, it IS certain, nevertheless, that Ephraim Williams, having previously abandoned the sea at the father's solicitations, took up, under the same impulse, a domicile with him not long after the hearth-tires were lighted on Stockbridge Hill. The Berkshire registries of deeds show that he purchased considerable tracts of land in that town early, particularly one lot on the northerly side of what was then called Great Pond, nowa Stockbridge Bowl. Gn account of its Indian Missions, which were for some years very promising, if not very flourishing, a remarkable interest in the new town was felt by influential parties in Boston-by Governor Belcher and most members of the General Court, and specially by the Commissioners of the Hollis and other English funds given for the moral uplifting of the Indians. A new road had just been opened through the Housatonic towns and Westfield from Albany to Boston, and Ephraim Williams, being less entangled than his father in land speculations and other local' functions, became a fre- quent messenger between Stockbridge and Boston in respect to their reciprocal and important interests, and even legally represented for one session at least the new western towns in. the General Court. As in per- son he was large and imposing, in natural spirits genial and facetious, with manners polished and conversational powers quickened by extensive foreign travels, he came to be a general favorite with the leading characters of Boston. There is evidence a plenty, that his politeness and address, his evident integrity and weight of character, procured him unusual and a lasting influence over the General Court, he was very popular there, whether as member or otherwise g and when the old French War broke out in 1744, his own military advancement and that of a number of his rela- tives, though certainly due in part to the combined influence and pressure of the several heads of the Williams family, which they always exerted in the behalf of their own, was also due in part to his personal capacity and taking ways with men. The war between England and France, which meant in New England a war with Canadian French and Indians, led Massachusetts to plan a line of defences all along its northern border between Connecticut river and the Hoosac, of which Fort Shirley in the present town of Heath was built the first in 1744, and Fort Massachusetts in the modern town of North Adams in the course of the next year, Fort Pelham between these, and small forts or fortified houses to the eastward as far as Northfield on the Connecticut, were soon in line all fronted towards the hostile north, and we discover Ephraim Williams, with the rank of Captain, in command of this line of forts with his headquarters at Fort Shirley during the winter of 1745-46, having about 350 men in his scattered garrisons. Not long after he moved his quarters to Fort Massachusetts, as the more exposed and larger fort, I2 '11 ,I