Williams College - Gulielmensian Yearbook (Williamstown, MA)

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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

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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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Bemis ima When was set on foot in 1755 the famous, but futile, expedition to Crown Point, a frowning French fortress on Lake Champlain, Massa- chusetts required a new regiment of infantry to be raised to make up her quotag a commission as Colonel was made out to Major Williams, in part because he was thought to be the most popular military man in the Pro- vince, and the most likely to make effective the pecuniary aid and other inducements for enlisting men , and so once more the stalwart voice of their old leader appealed, in the name of the Protestant religion and of English loyalty, to the soldiers who had been under him during the ten years past, to the then garrison in Fort Massachusetts, and to all others willing to strike a blow for king and homestead and country. Four hun- dred and six men responded to this call, nearly all of them from his old stamping grounds on the Connecticut and the I-Iousatonic and the Hoosac, and a number of the soldiers in the new town left their houselots on the broad street then full of trees and rocks from end to end, and marched with their honored Colonel to Albany. Being delayed here for some time, and conscious of the extraordinary hazards of the campaign, Williams employed a scrivener to write out his last will and testamentg being delayed longer at Fort Edward on the upper Hudson, he wrote back from both places a number of letters to friends at the eastward, all of which are preserved 5 and thence he marched to the head of Lake George, where in the bloody morning scout of the Sth of September, I755,'he met an instantaneous death in an ambush of French and Indians. Fifty of his own regiment were killed, and twenty wounded in the same general action. ' The essential clause of this will of Colonel Williams, which in its broad outcome has made that name forever memorable, is as follows: Item. If is my will and pleasare and desire ihai' ihe remaining par! of lands noi ye! disposed of shall be sold al ihe direclion of my execulors, wzlhin jive years afier an eslablished peace, and lhe inleresf of lhe money, and also lhe inieresl of my money, arising by my bonds and noles, shall be appfepfp aled lowards lhe snppori and maznfenance of a free school Qin a lownshzp toes! of For! Illassachasells, commonly called lhe Wes! Yozonshzpj forever provided lhe said township fall zvzlhzn lhe jarzsdicizon of lhe Masisachusefle Bay, and provided also, fha! ihe Governor and General Courl give ihe said iownshzp ihe name W' Wzllzamsfozonf' ' The will nominated and appointed my trusty and well-beloved friends, Israel Williams of Hatheld and john Worthington of Springfield to be the executors 5 and in sending a copy of the will to the former tha day on which it was drawn, the Colonel showed in a letter accompanying it on which of its clauses his own heart lay : You will perceive I have given somelhing for lhe benejfl of lhose unborn, and for ihe sake oflhosebpow, 14 '