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.
They were discovered in an attic where they lay undisturbed for more than 145 years. All researchers have at least one such eureka moment: something is found, a question is answered, a mystery is solved; a door into the past is opened.
The discovery was a cache of letters; the discoverer was James F. Dwight and the year was 1894. Scribner’s Magazine printed the letters in February 1895. The correspondence described life in the westernmost part of Hampshire County between 1749 and 1754 – seven years before it became Berkshire County.
It was an unforgiving land. “A wilderness of forty miles on the east, a wood of twenty miles on the west, and a great and terrible wilderness on the north which reached Canada”
Separated by hills and water, the area was isolated. Communication was difficult. The letters found were from father to son. The father was Ephraim Williams in Stockbridge; the son was Elijah at college in New Jersey. Moving a letter was painstaking. Dwight calculated it took a month for a letter to reach Newark.
“Will the reader please go with this letter from our frontier home [Stockbridge] to the Hudson River through the forest — two days travel to Claverack [New York]. Then see Captain Fonda and ask him to take it along next time he sails and leave it at Buckee’s House of Call [tavern]. There it will be stuck up over the mantel piece until someone happens to be going over to the Jerseys. Prithee give it to the young Englishman Williams staying with the scholar Burr at the college at Newark.”
Ephraim moved to Stockbridge in 1737. He was 46 years old. He had seven children; six accompanied him. The sons with his first wife, Elizabeth, were Captain Ephraim Jr. and Dr. Thomas Williams (who stayed behind). The children of his second wife, Abigail, were Josiah, Elijah, Abigail, Elizabeth and Judith.
Ephraim was one of the first four white settlers granted a 1/60 share of Stockbridge – 384 acres – by the General Court in Boston. He was sent to “reside among the Indians to anglicize and civilize them” and teach them agriculture. Ephraim’s family did well in Berkshire. His progeny settled parts of the county, built forts and mills, founded a college, fought in the French and Indian and Revolutionary wars, and William Williams signed the Declaration of Independence.
Williams was a well-placed and well-connected family. In 1749, when Ephraim wrote the first letter, his daughter Abigail was the wife, and soon-to-be widow, of the Stockbridge missionary John Sergeant. She then married General Joseph Dwight and was, therefore, a progenitor of James F. Dwight.
The Williams family was also ambitious. In 1749, Ephraim’s youngest son, Elijah, was a student at the College of New Jersey (renamed Princeton in 1756). He was living with the President of the college: Aaron Burr Sr.
Ephraim wrote his son, “I am glad to hear of you having got so into favor with the President. Pray don’t do anything to forfeit it but use all possible endeavors to increase it.”
He entreated his son to remember all that Burr could do for him.
Burr had important connections in Stockbridge. The Williams family was one. The Reverend Jonathan Edwards, who took John Sergeant’s pulpit in July 1751, was Burr’s mentor. In 1752, Burr traveled to Stockbridge to woo and win his wife, Esther Edwards, Jonathan’s daughter.
Ephraim’s letters were not witty but, at times, they were funny. He entreated his son to learn to spell. The sentences look like this:
“I intreet you to mend your speling…and besure to pray daily for his Spirritt to sanctifie all meens for your everlasting good, comfort, and Joy…& remember such words as Require always begin with a Cappitol Letter: it will much Grace your wrighting.”
Isolation and treacherous country were not the only challenges. In actual fact, it was a deadly land. In 1754, the French and Indian War broke out. Death from combat, disease and infection were rife. They had little with which to fight affliction except prayer.
Ephraim wrote his son, “We are every moment liable to death in un-thought-of ways.”
It was a hard life. Only the adventurous and strong came to Berkshire. The letters are from a farmer advising his son. Though he was aging, sick, and finally dying, there were few complaints. The letters were filled with advice about getting on in life: instructions for tasks necessary for good crops, strong trees and sound finance. There were admonitions to fear God, respect the law, be just, right wrongs and never forget the duty to family.
You don’t read the letters for amusement, but because they sketch the character of the people who would very soon form our nation.
