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    Northampton
    Northampton
    Northampton
    Ebook165 pages38 minutes

    Northampton

    By James M. Parsons

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    About this ebook

    The beauty of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts has always left visitors groping for superlatives, and the town of Northampton—once dubbed “The Athens of the Connecticut Valley”—has lately experienced a renaissance. Interest in the city has only risen through the years, and an assessment of its prominence throughout history easily explains its consistent attraction. From its settling in 1654 to the present, Northampton has been a hotbed of activity, idealism, growth, and change. Walking the streets of Northampton at different times were revolutionaries like Daniel Shays, patriots like Joseph Hawley, religious visionaries like Jonathan Edwards, idealists like the members of the utopian community in Florence, and governors like Caleb Strong and future president Calvin Coolidge. Notables like Sojourner Truth, Alexander Graham Bell, and President Franklin Pierce came and left, but their influences have remained.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 1, 2004
    ISBN9781439633953
    Northampton
    Author

    James M. Parsons

    With Northampton, historian James M. Parsons presents a comprehensive look at the history of his hometown from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries through a remarkable series of vintage images. Photographs from the collections of Forbes Library, Historic Northampton, and the Florence Civic and Business Museum have been combined with generous donations from private individuals to comprise this marvelous new photographic history, which will surely be treasured by generations to come.

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      Book preview

      Northampton - James M. Parsons

      camera.

      Introduction

      In 2004 Northampton, Massachusetts, will celebrate the 350th anniversary of her settling by a hardy band of pioneers from Connecticut. By the time photography joined with the written word to record the passage of time, Northampton was already two hundred years old with a proud history intimately interwoven with the nation’s larger story.

      Before there were any devices that preserved images of reality for future generations, this frontier town living under the threat of hostile attack had grown into a place hailed as the Athens of the Connecticut Valley. To the Swedish Nightingale Jenny Lind, the town was the Paradise of America. Dr. Josiah Gilbert Holland, author of Kathrina, crowned Northampton Queen village of the meads.

      Henry Ward Beecher, in his novel Norwood, affirmed that No finer village glistens in the sunlight, or nestles under arching elms than that which looks over the transcendent valley of the Connecticut . . . how a man could live there and ever get his eyes to the ground, I cannot imagine.

      In August of 1847, Charles Sumner said as he stood on Mount Holyoke and looked over the Connecticut River valley below: I have been all over England, have traveled through the Highlands of Scotland; I have passed up and down the Rhine, have ascended Mount Blanc and stood on the Compagna at Rome; but have never seen anything so surpassingly lovely as this.

      The charms of the Meadow City—which have also prompted similar tributes in our century—continue to inspire newcomers, visitors, and residents to this day. The seemingly inexhaustible fertility of the meadows remains a marvel to agronomists from around the world. The renaissance of the city’s downtown is the model that other New England towns openly envy and hope to emulate. In the Northampton Book of 1954 that celebrated the city’s tercentenary, Northampton was characterized as A Supremely Likable Town. Natives of our town have always known this as fact. The only difference between then and now is that the secret is out.

      This book is not a book about the history of Northampton since the advent of photography. It is a glimpse of a world that is either gone or greatly changed, sometimes beyond recognition, with an occasional more recent picture to remind us of life’s continuum. It is a personal glance at the past because the selection of photographs by someone other than the author, from the thousands available, would undoubtedly result in a different view.

      Northampton’s history is a story of physical blessings, events, and personages beyond comparison with all but a few American communities. In recent years, a three-day event has been held each summer that attracts 60,000 to 80,000 visitors to the community. Called The Taste of Northampton, it features samples from the varied menus of the dozens of first-rate restaurants that help make today’s Northampton such a popular destination. Using a historical rather than a culinary theme, the following is also a Taste of Northampton—a sampling of Northampton’s remarkable past that may reveal to the reader at least some of the Meadow City’s vast appeal.

      Much of this history was dictated by physical features of the land. The Connecticut River, the rich meadows it created, and the mountains that overlook it define the region. There is also the Mill River, unlovely in name but generous in the power it provided to the dozens of factories it spawned along its route.

      Settlers from Connecticut borrowed the name of an English city in naming Northampton, but to the Native Americans the area was always known as Nonotuck. When peaceful relations with local tribes gave way to more global confrontations, lives were lost throughout the region and citizen soldiers took up arms as they have done ever since when their liberties were threatened and the nation called.

      Here witches were accused; Daniel Shays started his rebellion; and the Protestant divine Jonathan Edwards led the Great Awakening. The first million dollar bank robbery took

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