About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
There is more to Cheshire than the Great Cheshire Cheese. Then again, that cheese was pretty spectacular. It was 1801, Thomas Jefferson was the newly elected president, and to honor him, the town of Cheshire, Massachusetts created and sent a 1,235-pound block of cheese to the White House.
The big block of cheese was long forgotten, except for “West Wing” fans. However, in its day it was famous. In six months, the President, visitors to the White House, and members of the cabinet and the three branches of the federal government, could not eat it all. A wedge was sent back to Cheshire in a presidential gesture of thanks. And the rest? Its remains were consigned to the ash heap of history (literally), but its smell lingered.
Impressive as the cheese was, there was more to Cheshire. Four years earlier, in 1797, Hoosac Valley House was the gathering place for local workers. The stagecoach inn and tavern at the foot of Mount Greylock was frequented by glass blowers, lime burners, iron mongers and miners, woodsmen, and farmers. The wide variety of workmen reflected the economy of the town – mining, farming, manufacturing, and, of course, cheese making. Cheshire was bustling. Even as it grew and prospered, the town was considered “clean and prim” while next door industrial Adams was characterized as “smoky and sprawling.”
Although it was incorporated in 1793, folks arrived in Cheshire 30 years earlier. In 1766, two Rhode Island men, Nicholas Cook and Joseph Bennett, purchased the tract. They found Cheshire replete with running water, rich farmland, and excellent sand beds. The sand was so fine that Cheshire became the first Berkshire town to manufacture glass. There was Cheshire blown glass, plate glass, and window glass.
The shape of the tract Cook and Bennett purchased was so strange, it was declared the most irregular in Berkshire County and described as a bolt of lightning. They named it Cheshire after the county in England. Unlike its neighbors, Cheshire was Baptist not Congregational, with most of the population coming from Rhode Island not Eastern Massachusetts and Connecticut.
While the manufacturing of everything from cheese to glass was known and advertised, Cheshire had a secret side. The Underground Railroad ran through it and beyond, to freedom. In addition to helping those fleeing slavery, they say, the town hustled the fiery abolitionist John Brown, “God’s Angry Man,” through its Underground Railway to the next stop — reputedly in Adams — and safely on his way.
It was mountain lore that, long before John Brown, Cheshire hid and harbored the pirate Captain Kidd. In gratitude, they say, he dug and buried a chest of gold beneath the doorstep of Widow Reade’s house. Many tried to convince the widow to excavate it. The answer was always the same, “Dig up my doorstep? I think not.”
No one succeeded in convincing her until finally the location of the doorstep was as dim as the memory of the widow’s face. The only clear memory were the words, “Dig up my doorstep? I think not.”
The Berkshire Gold Rush began, but not because of the Widow Reade. It was a hermit who lived on the mountainside, an old man who paid for his purchases at the store and tavern in gold nuggets. The rush was on. Prospectors flooded the area, digging and searching along the “magic line” between Adams and Cheshire, and praying for good fortune. As they dug, they muttered how could it be that once there was a widow who refused to dig up her doorstep for gold. They dug and mused how to get the old man to tell where he found the gold nuggets. Winter closed in and the prospectors waited to dig again, forming their plans for approaching the hermit. In early spring they climbed the mountain, found the shack, and prepared to question the old man. They found him frozen to death.
Finally, one man succeeded. He found nuggets, though he would not say where or how. He took the “find” to an assayer. The lot was declared pyrite — “fool’s gold” — a worthless metal that resembles gold. The assayer said he was sorry … it was not gold. The man groaned; the assayer did not know the half of it — he had married the widow who owned the land.
So, in some way, in Cheshire, mountain lore came full circle. One widow refused to dig, the other dug, and neither found gold. The rush dwindled but Cheshire grew and prospered.
