Williams College - Gulielmensian Yearbook (Williamstown, MA)

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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

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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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which was attacked and captured in his absence by the French and Indians in August in 1746, and burned to the ground after the lilied banner of the old Bourbons had flaunted for a few hours from the top of its watch- box. The fort was rebuilt the next spring, and Williams resumed the com- mand there. The hollow Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle did not bring full c011- fidence to Massachusetts. Doubtful whether it would prove to be peace or war, she kept up her line of forts in vigor, while on the other hand lay- ing out in 1749 the township of West Hoosac within its present limits, and opening up for sale and settlement in 1750 011 each side of a broad main street sixty house lots of ten or twelve acres each. Williams himself bought two of these lots, and encouraged his soldiers also to purchase. He was highly respected and even beloved by those who served under him, on account of his courteous and sportive as well as authoritative mode of intercourse with them. Fifteen of the men then in Fort Massachusetts bought of these lots at one time, and a beginning of rude homesteads was soon made along the street, especially towards its western end, and the first child born in the precinct was Rachel Simonds, April 8, 1753, on lot No. zz, now a part of judge Danforth's farm. Her father was Benjamin Simonds, one of the soldiers carried captive to Canada from Fort Massa- chusetts in 1746. The war had languished about tive years, and Ephraim Williams had spent the interval partly in Stockbridge where he bought out his father's large landed possessions, and partly on the Connecticut where he served for a while as Deputy Sheriff under Col. Oliver Partridge of Hatfield, having a sort of home with his brother Thomas in Deerheldg when the only half- smothered embers of the old war blazed forth again in 1754, and Williams, now promoted to be Major, was recalled to Fort Massachusetts, where he had been occasionally in the intervals and whither many of his old soldiers followed him to reinlist in the public service. Nothing of much importance happened then and there, and the Major had leisure to watch the state of things in the little hamlet three or four miles west of the fort, and to become still better acquainted with the small householders there, several of whom had re-entered the garrison of the fort. Two of the small houses already then built in the hamlet were within a stone's throw of the Major's own houselots, both of them built and owned by his own comrades on opposite sides of the main street and on opposite banks of the Hemlock Brook, both of them still standing as houses in this year of Grace I8Q2 though not in the original locations, and in one of them was holden the first legal meeting of the proprietors of the incipient township, Dec.,5, 1753 5 Ephraim Williams was no stranger to the men and their hardships, struggling to lay the foundations in war-time of the first town on the Hoosac : he was well acquainted with them. I3