The opening lines of Margaret French Cresson’s 1953 100th anniversary history of the Laurel Hill Association, with the heroine on a white horse, give the often-told and possibly apocryphal tale of the catalyze that created the oldest continuously operating village improvement society in America in 1853.
Berkshire County is particularly interesting as an architectural exhibit. Given New England practicality or parsimony or respect for our history, we didn’t always tear down and build new: We save our old houses.
Why are we honoring a massacre? On the other hand, how many monuments are there to Native American maltreatment? It’s a rare admission of how fiercely we wrestled New England from its indigenous people.
It is not without some irony that the town of Stockbridge, which harbors such an incredible history, has failed on so many occasions to preserve the symbols of that history.
Isolation and treacherous country were not the only challenges. In actual fact, it was a deadly land. Only the adventurous and strong came to Berkshire.