Ruling Spirit and Good Genius of First Settlers of Western Massachusetts--William Pynchon BY ERNEST NEWTON BAGG, SPRINGFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS

HE founder of Springfield, William Pynchon, like his father, John, a graduate of Oxford, was a man of much learning, as well as being one of the patentees of the Colony, while in England, under Charles I, one of Governor Winthrop's magistrates and "assistants," the trusted treasurer of the Colony, and high commissioner for the government of the Connecticut River settlements. Pynchon matriculated at Hart Hall, Oxford, (afterward Hertford College) when he was eleven years old, October 14, 1596. It was the custom to send boys to Oxford at a very early age. Here he acquired great familiarity with Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and accumulated the theological stores of knowledge of which there is so much evidence in his later books. The historian Henry M. Burt says that "William Pynchon was undoubtedly the ablest reasoner and the best scholar residing in the colony during the first century." The one man whom Josiah Gilbert Holland called "the ruling spirit and good genius" of the first decade and a half of the settlements of Western Massachusetts, so thoroughly laid the foundations upon which the later structure of town, county, and city life has been reared, that he well deserves. this separate and particular encomium. "The Father of the Valley" he was, indeed.

He was a man "well fitted" as Dr. Lockwood says, "for leadership in several spheres,-commercial, theological, political, and intellectual." He came primarily as an active man of business. It was the business of trade in fur, particularly beaver, which induced him to go up into the heart of what was then considered the New World's fur country, and to select and create the first outlines of the four counties,-Hampshire, Berkshire, Franklin and Hampden, named in the order of their establishment.

Mme. Pynchon and the Lady Arbella Johnson-When the "Jewel," one of the four ships of Governor Winthrop's daring

little fleet, sailed from Southampton, England, March 22, 1630, it carried William Pynchon the acute, self assertive, resolute, energetic man of large affairs; the "country gentleman" who was also the merchant, and pre-eminently the fur-trader. With him went his wife, Anna, daughter of William Andrews, of Twywell, Northamptonshire, and their three daughters. The oldest was Anna, later to become the wife of Springfield's first recorder, Henry Smith; Margaret, who married Captain William Davis, of Boston; and Mary, who was later Mrs. Elizur Holyoke, whom the ornate tombstone in the old Peabody cemetery at Springfield declares was "a very Glory of Womanhood." In the archives at Boston is a document showing that the son, John, at this time nine years old, but later the famous "Worshipfull Major Pynchon," remained behind, to come over by a later ship.

The sea was reported to be infested by pirates, a fact which caused no little dread and apprehension. Once on the toilsome voyage the sight of "eight strange sail" caused an immediate clearing of the decks for action, and the throwing overboard of some things which were considered too combustible. There were anxious hours when the elders knelt in fervent and continuous prayer for deliverance. The fears of the company were turned to joy when the unexpected wayfarers proved to be "friends, not enemies.”

An extraordinary storm, continuing ten days, caused much distress; and so tossed and bruised the cattle imprisoned below decks that "more than three-score died" or had to be butchered. When, on the 72d day outward bound, "land was sighted and there came a smell of the shore like the smell of gardens," their joy knew no bounds. Saturday, June 12, 1630, they "came to anchor in the harbor of Salem."

Many of the 180 who had come over on the "Jewel" or her sister ships had died on the way over. Some had strength and courage enough to reach land, though not lasting much longer. Since the little company had formed itself into this historic group, nearly two hundred had been eliminated by death. All its leaders were "men of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." The "Arbella, "the "Ambrose" and the "Talbot" were the sister ships of the "Jewel;" and the first of this trio was named for one of the "stockholders," the Lady Arbella Johnson, widow of the late Sir Isaac, and the first titled woman to reach New England. The same

terms used in Hubbard's eulogy of the Lady Arbella would apply to Mme. Anna Andrews Pynchon, for the excitements of the enterprise and the inevitable nostalgia caused the death of both these women, almost as soon as they had come on shore. "She came from a paradise of plenty and pleasure in the family of a noble Earl, and into a wilderness of wants. Although celebrated for her many virtues, yet was she not able to encounter the adversity with which she was surrounded. In about a month after her arrival she ended her days in Salem." It is related of Mme. Pynchon that she died in Salem before the return trip of the "Jewel" which had brought her

over.

The Merchant and Fur-Trader-Pynchon never lost sight of his main objective, that of merchandizing and trading in furs. Up and down the coast, trading with both the English and the Indians, sailed the little ships in which he was financially concerned exchanging the goods he had imported from England for native products, and particularly furs. It is recorded that one of his ships "coming from Sagadahock in October 1631, was wrecked at Cape Ann, but the men and chief of the goods were saved." No one thing did more to effect the colonization of America than the pursuit of fur-bearing animals, and particularly the beaver. Competition and search for new sources of supply lured the hunter into remote regions, only to be followed by the settler. The beaver furnished food and clothing, and its skin was one of the chiefest articles of commerce with the mother-country. On the frontiers it became a unit of currency.

As early as November, 1630, the regulations controlling the price of beaverskins were cancelled, and it "was left free for every man to make the best profit and improvement of it he could.” June, 1631, "upon the reading of certain articles concerning a general trade of beaver agreed upon by Captain Endicott and divers others, it was ordered that the persons interested therein should decide such differences as were betwixt them, and for such as they could not end, to bring them to the next Court to be there determined. "June 5, 1632, a tax of twelve pence was levied on every pound of beaver passing through the trader's hands. As this entailed rather onerous details of accounting, Pynchon proposed that he pay a flat rate of twenty-five pounds a year. In the October

Court this proposition prevailed and continued until the spring of 1635, when the possibilities of securing furs had become so meager that he felt that the yearly payment should be reduced to twenty pounds. This also was adopted.

Naturally, Pynchon was much interested in the visit of the sachem Wahginnacut who came out of the unknown "Quonehtacut" country in April, 1631, in an effort to get Englishmen to plant and trade in his territory. He wanted two men to go up and see the "country which was very fruitful," and offered to find them not only plenty of corn but eighty skins of beaver annually.

The Traders Propose, But Small-Pox Disposes-Pynchon had heard, even before he left England, of rich and productive virgin forest lands and great lakes to westward of the Bay Colony. When the governor refused to entertain the Connecticut sagamore's proposition, Pynchon resolved at the earliest opportunity to settle for himself the beaver-trade problem. He looked with growing alarm on the trading schemes and the encroachments of the Dutch in the territory "leading to great northern lakes" of which he heard and read much; and heard with anxiety that the Dutch had built their fort without interference, as far up the river as Hartford. In 1633, John Oldham and his party returned from their explorations, reporting that he had been received kindly by the Indians, and had lodged peacefully at Indian towns all the way. Pynchon examined with keen interest the beaver-skins which had been given them and the specimens of hemp and black lead they had secured. In the fall of that year the Plymouth Colonists sent Winthrop's bark up the Connecticut River, and past the Dutch forts, despite the protests of the latter, and built a trading post at Windsor. The commander of this expedition reported that the "Connecticut River runs so far northward that it is within a day's journey of a part of the Merrimac, and so runs thence northwest so near the "Great Lake' as allows the Indians to pass their canoes into it overland. From this Lake and the hideous swamps around it comes most of the beaver."

Every scrap of information which Pynchon could obtain more fixed his intention to develop the resources of the unexplored upper Connecticut. The fear of interference by hostile natives was much lessened by the report brought back, 1634, by one Hall, who, after untold hardships, had fought his way back from the Connecticut, to

bring word of terrible ravages of the small-pox the previous winter among most of the Indian tribes to the north and west.

Governor Bradford's journal relates the futile attempt of the Dutch, established in their fort at Hartford, to dissuade the Indians at Springfield from sending their furs to or dealing with the English in any way. A few of the Dutch, it seems, had gone up in the winter of 1633-34 to the Springfield Indian fort to stay awhile and induce them to dispose of all their furs in Hartford. "The enterprise failed," says Bradford "For it pleased God to visit these Indians with a great sickness, and such was the mortality that over nine hundred fifty of the thousand (in one fort) died; and the Dutch almost starved before they could get away." Gradually they worked their way back to Windsor, and, by about March 1, 1634, to Hartford. For more than two hundred and fifty years this statement remained almost unverified, save by the report brought back to Pynchon by Hall and his comrades, before alluded to. When the ancient fort on Long Hill, Springfield, was recently unearthed in excavations for new streets, there were found scores of clay tobacco-pipes, with tiny bowls, each bearing initials which have been identified with those of known Dutch pipemakers of the period. The Dutch emissaries brought these along as part of their equipment of gifts with which to purchase the exclusive trade of the upriver Indians. Most of the latter who made promises to the Dutch on this basis, died of the "providential scourge" before those promises could be fulfilled.

The Impatient Fur-Trader's Explorations-Early in the spring of 1635, Pynchon made elaborate plans for re-arranging his affairs at the Bay, and establishing fur-trading headquarters farther up the river than any of the other settlers. To that end he decided to personally select when the weather would open, the best possible site for a post. For the subsistence of the traders and their families, farmers would be required; and these, in turn would necessitate the coming of carpenters and blacksmiths, as a matter of course. His preliminary survey-party was therefore made up of carefully selected members; those particularly suited to the task as well as being helpful with good judgment and practical experience. Hence it was natural that he should take his carpenter-neighbor, Jehu Burr; his own fur-trading helper, Richard Everett, his trusted son-in-law,