1775: It was raining, and the women complained because they could not walk across the street. The mud and slurry ruined their shoes and the hems of their skirts. Roads were measured in rods; a rod was equal to 16.5 feet. At the center of the village, Stockbridge Plain Street (Main Street today) and the cross street (Pine Street today) were two rods wide. The turnpike (Route 7 South today) to hardscrabble Great Barrington and the older, more sophisticated Sheffield was three rods wide. All too dirty for the ladies to venture forth.
At the outbreak of the Revolution, the population of Stockbridge was 1,000 white settlers and 200 members of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans. According to another report, it was 900 white settlers and 300 Stockbridge-Munsee Indians out of a total population of 1,700 in Massachusetts. Stockbridge was larger than Pittsfield, older than Great Barrington, and while still a place of farms, had a developed business center.
In 1775, Anna and Silas Bingham left Great Barrington. They purchased two acres of land in Stockbridge at the intersection of what we now call Main and South Streets from the widow of the tailor, Abraham Brimsmaid. On the property were a house, a barn, and Brimsmaid’s tailor shop. At first, Anna and Silas opened a store.
Isaac Brown, Joseph Woodbridge, and Timothy Edwards became licensed retailers in 1757, 1762, and 1772 respectively. In 1773, William Goodrich petitioned and received a license “for keeping a house of publick entertainment.” Therefore, in addition to the Bingham store, there may have been as many as three other retailers, an inn, and Isaac Marsh’s Tavern on Plain Street.
It was at Marsh’s Tavern that John Dean, Revolutionary War soldier and Stockbridge farmer, had his last drink before he died. Like most farmers, he went to war—to fight the revolution—for just weeks at a time and returned home for sowing, tending, and reaping. With his coat-allowance, Dean went for the last time in December 1775 and returned sick or wounded to die in his bed. To that place, the Widow Dean, still a pleasant woman in good standing, walked to pay her dead husband’s tab. It was before she met John Fisk, before all the trouble, but that’s a story for another day. None of the people bustling along Plain Street once the rain stopped could see the future. They could, however, see the needs here and now.
Stockbridge Plain Street was a North-South connector road, there were stagecoaches as well as Revolutionary War troops moving through the village. Ethan Allen stopped and bought a knife at Bingham’s store—perhaps on his way to Ticonderoga. Indeed, in the 18th century, Stockbridge was considered—you guessed it—a destination. Maybe not quite the way we think of a tourist destination today, but Stockbridge was a good stopping place for food and a bed on journeys from Connecticut to Albany or Hudson to Boston. In a stagecoach, those journeys took more than 13 hours. The Binghams saw the need and added an inn and tavern.
Rounding off the mercantile center of the village was the fine big house with the wide porch where Jonathan Edward’s son, Timothy, had his house and country store. Edwards swapped 3 acres of meadow land with Jacob Tusnnuck, who, in turn, purchased it from Hendrick Mmuthawams, who was granted the land in 1750.
Edwards would sell the house—where Aaron Burr visited—to Barnabas Bidwell, attorney and assistant to Thomas Jefferson. Bidwell lived opposite representative to the Continental Congress Theodore Sedgwick—friend of George Washington. Bidwell’s house was just across a small park from the house Stephen Field would leave to go off to the Supreme Court. Edwards would build a second house south of the first where Norman Rockwell would someday live. The village sent its residents forth into the new world—a small but never insignificant place.
In 1737, John Sergeant, missionary, along with Timothy Woodbridge, established the first school in Stockbridge. Called the Old Indian School, it served from 1737 to 1740 when the Government School was established by a grant secured from Boston. In 1764 the Plain School was built. It was said to be the first industrial school in America offering courses in carpentry, weaving, and agriculture. In 1799, The Old Academy was built on Elm Street. The Old Academy was intended as a college prep school. It educated the young students on the main floor and the older students upstairs. It was a feeder school for Williams College. In the first graduating class at Williams College, three out of four students were from Stockbridge. At a time when other villages refused to vote for the money to build one school, Stockbridge had three.
There were five post offices in Berkshire County. They were established in this order: Stockbridge in 1792; Pittsfield in 1794; Sheffield in 1795; and Great Barrington and Williamstown 1797. There were no stamps: Mail was “cancelled” at the post office. The cancellation indicated the amount necessary to post the letter and the point of origin. The cancellations could be a simple as a straight line and the word “Stockbridge” in black. (If you have one in your attic, it is worth a fortune).
As fine and flourishing as Stockbridge was in 1775, war was all around them. Ten years before he posted his “no hitching” sign, Asa Bement wrote a very different but urgent message. On April 6, 1776, Bement and others bore witness, “On Timothy Edwards’ return [to Stockbridge from Landsborough], at about 4 o’clock p.m., five men attempted to stop him by violence—one laying ahold of his coat, another [grabbed] his horse’s bridle. He disengaged himself by striking a blow with his whip and by the speed of his horse.” As he sped away, the men armed with clubs and hoes struck at him “hitting his horse’s withers and shouting Tory. Of enormities of this kind, we feel it our duty to give you the earliest notice. It was addressed to the Town Constable, and signed Samuel Brown, Erasmus Sergeant, and Asa Bement.”
Edwards was not a Tory (King’s man), but any well-dressed man with a good horse was assumed to be. In the first year of the war, a Tory was the enemy.
