Glimpses of Early Blandford

As long as we’re out in Blandford with Henry Knox, we might as well enjoy the town’s eighteenth-century history.

Most of the first British settlers in the area were Scotch-Irish, moving west in a bunch from Hopkinton in 1736. They named their new community “Glasgow” or “New Glasgow.” The town’s first meetinghouse was Presbyterian rather than New England Congregationalist.

However, when the Massachusetts government formally incorporated the town in 1741, the new governor, William Shirley, insisted on naming it after the ship that he had just arrived on—the Blandford. Reportedly he had leverage because the town proprietors had claimed more land than they were entitled to, so they needed the governor’s approval more than the inhabitants’.

The name “Glasgow” survived in a few geographic names such as the “Glasgow or Westfield Mountain” that Knox referred to in his diary. The town reportedly lost a church bell that the city of Glasgow, Scotland, had promised if it kept its original name.

Blandford was on the Massachusetts frontier, thus at risk from the French and their Native allies. During 1749, almost every household fled to other towns for safety. In 1755, as war loomed again, the town petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for a swivel gun, a type of small cannon. It was stored at the house of the Rev. James Morton.

The town straddled one of the few roads through the Berkshire Mountains, so it saw a lot of traffic. In 1762 a tavern keeper named Joseph Clark petitioned the legislature to be forgiven for selling alcohol without paying the excise tax. His excuse:

That in the Year 1760 He purchased a licensed House and purchased a barrel of Rum, but being sick in August when he should have applied for a license, and his House lying in the Road used by Soldiers sold the same, out to them: and he boght the said Rum of a Retailer who had paid the Duties of excise thereon—

The Massachusetts House bought that argument. The Council disagreed.

Blandford grew quickly after the Revolutionary War. Growth brought change, as preserved in this family anecdote from local historian William H. Gibbs. He said that around 1791 Isaac Gibbs (1744-1823)

brought into town the first single wagon used here. The neighbors regarded it as a curiosity, and their horses as he drove to church the first Sabbath, being affrighted, fled with as much precipitation as they do in our own day at the sight of the steam engine. It was a matter so strange to the people, that they actually proposed to call a town meeting to prohibit the use of wagons.

But the problems of growth didn’t last long. In the 1800 U.S. Census, Blandford had a population of 1,778—the largest the town ever was.

Henry Knox “after about three hours perseverance”

Here’s a link to the podcast recording of my conversation with Bradley Jay of WBZ last month about Col. Henry Knox and his mission to Lake Champlain to obtain more cannon for the Continental siege lines.

And here’s a timely question about Knox: Was 12 Jan 1776 the last day that he kept his diary of his mission to bring back cannon from the Lake Champlain forts?

The diary pages are visible on the Massachusetts Historical Society’s website. The last entries (pages 24-26) show Knox dealing with the Berkshire Mountains:

10th [January] reach’d [No 1,?] after have Climb’d mountains from which we might almost have seen all the Kingdoms of the Earth —

11th [January] went 12 miles thro’ the Green Woods to Blanford

It appear’d to me almost a miracle that people with heavy loads should be able to get up & down such Hills as Are here with any thing of heavy loads —

11th at Blanford we overtook the first division who had tarried here untill we came up—and refus’d going any further On accott that there were no snow beyond five or six miles further in which space there was the tremendous Glasgow or Westfield mountain to go down—but after about three hours perseverance & hiring two teams of oxen—they agreed to go

On the next page are a couple of receipts, the second apparently about those “two teams of oxen” that Knox hired:

Blanford Jany. 13. 1776—
Recd of Henry Knox eighteen shillings Lawful money for Carrying a Cannon weighing 24.3 p from this Town to Westfield being 11 Miles —

Solomon Brown

It looks to me like Knox arrived in Blandford on the 11th, catching up with men and horses he’d sent ahead. That evening or the 12th, he learned that those teamsters didn’t want to proceed because the lack of snow on the ground meant the road would be rough. In addition, they faced the steep slopes now in the town of Russell.

Knox overcame that problem with “three hours” of arguing plus two ox teams from Solomon Brown (1737-1786), a war veteran and a committee member for Blandford. Brown’s gravestone appears here at Find a Grave. I’m guessing that took place on 12 January, Knox remained in Blandford awaiting another set of men, and Brown returned to sign the receipt on 13 January.

And there are no more dated entries in that notebook.

TOMORROW: Blandford in the eighteenth century.

Knox’s Oxen

Still on the broad topic of Henry Knox, Derek W. Beck has shared news of his article “No Ox for Knox?” in the July/August issue of American Revolution magazine. He writes:

My “No Ox for Knox?” article questions the famous story of Col. Henry Knox leading a team of ox-drawn sleds laden with artillery through the snowy mountains of western Massachusetts. This story is a staple of both history books and the American subconscious, and has been immortalized in at least two artworks. . . . But could it be wrong? Read the article to see my argument that Knox had no oxen after all.

I haven’t seen the magazine yet, but I assume that Derek focuses on the particular leg of Knox’s trek from Lake Champlain to Cambridge in the winter of 1775-76.

The colonel definitely used oxen to move the heavy guns south from Fort Ticonderoga, as shown by a receipt that the New England Historic and Genealogical Register published in 1876:

Recd. of Henry Knox twenty six dollars which Capt. John Johnson paid to different Carters for the use of their Cattle, in dragging Cannon from The Fort of Ticonderoga to the North Landing of Lake George

The heavy guns were then floated down the lake. Knox planned to use more oxen for the overland journey, as he wrote in his journal in mid-December (published at the same time):

I sent an Express to Squire [George] Palmer of Stillwater to prepare a number of Sleds & oxen to drag the Cannon presuming that we should get there, & on Wednesday the 13th he came up & agreed to provide the necessary number of sleds & oxen & they to be ready by the first snow.

17 December Knox wrote to Gen. George Washington about having “provided 80 yoke of oxen to drag them as far as Springfield where I shall get fresh cattle to carry them to camp.”

But then on 28 December, Knox recorded that Palmer and Gen. Philip Schuyler were still at odds on the price for those ox teams. Instead, the next day Schuyler “Sent out his Waggon Master & other people to all parts of the Country to immediately send up their slays with horses suitable.” Thereafter Knox’s journal mentions horses. John P. Becker’s memoir, The Sexagenary, briefly describes the ensuing trek from the perspective of an eleven-year-old driver, son of the man who supplied most of those horses.

But then Knox’s train came to Blandford, Massachusetts, on the eastern edge of the Berkshire Mountains. On 11 Jan 1776 he wrote:

At Blanford we overtook the first division who had tarried here untill we came up, and refus’d going any further, on accot. that there was no snow beyond five or six miles further in which space there was the tremendous Glasgow or Westfield mountain to go down. But after about three hours persuasion, I hiring two teams of oxen, they agreed to go.

Those teams are probably connected to the second receipt published with the journal:

Blanford Jany 13. 1776 Recd of Henry Knox eighteen shillings lawful money for Carrying a Cannon weighing 24C. 3 from this Town to Westfield being 11 Miles

That was signed by Solomon Brown (1737-1786). Above is his gravestone, courtesy of Find-a-Grave.

So Knox, contrary to his initial plans, didn’t need any oxen to get the cannon up the Massachusetts mountains, but he hired four to get them down. By then, the colonel was convinced of the value of horses. The Gilder-Lehrman Institute displays a 13 January letter in which Knox tells a colleague what to offer teamsters: “offer them 14/ York currency today for each Span of horses that is after they leave Springfield—After they get down the next Hill they will be able to travel much farther than Oxen.”

TOMORROW: Knox’s weather reports.