Architecture

Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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Carpenters’ Hall, seen looking south from Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, in May 1859. Image courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Frederick De Bourg Richards Photograph Collection.

The scene in 2019:

One of the many important Revolutionary War-era landmarks in Philadelphia is Carpenters’ Hall, shown here in these two photos. Despite its rather unusual location at the end of a narrow alley in the midst of a city block, this building played an important role as the meeting place of the First Continental Congress, which convened here in September and October 1774. This gathering was attended by many of the future Founding Fathers, and it marked the first time that the various American colonies gathered together in response to grievances against the British government.

As is suggested by its name, Carpenters’ Hall was—and still is—owned by the Carpenters’ Company of the City and County of Philadelphia, a craft guild comprised of the city’s architects and builders. The building was designed by one of its members, the prominent architect Robert Smith, and the construction work began in 1770. It was not completed until 1775, but it was finished enough to allow its use as a meeting space as early as 1773. Then, in 1774, when the delegates arrived here in Philadelphia, they selected the building as their meeting space. John Adams described it in his diary on September 5, the first day that the First Continental Congress was in session:

At Ten, The Delegates all met at the City Tavern, and walked to the Carpenters Hall, where they took a View of the Room, and of the Chamber where is an excellent Library. There is also a long Entry, where Gentlemen may walk, and a convenient Chamber opposite to the Library. The General Cry was, that this was a good Room, and the Question was put, whether We were satisfyed with this Room, and it passed in the Affirmative. A very few were for the Negative and they were chiefly from Pensylvania and New York.

The convening of the First Continental Congress was largely motivated by the Intolerable Acts that the British had passed against Massachusetts, in response to the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Although the other colonies were not directly affected by these measures, which included closing the port of Boston and dissolving the colonial legislature, the Intolerable Acts raised fears in other colonies that their liberties could similarly be revoked by Parliament. A total of 12 colonies sent delegates to the Continental Congress, with only Georgia declining to participate.

The delegates who met here at Carpenters’ Hall included many leaders who would subsequently go on to play active roles in the American Revolution. The most notable of these were George Washington of Virginia and John Adams of Massachusetts, but other prominent delegates included Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, John Jay of New York, and Patrick Henry. However, despite the presence of radical figures like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry, the assembly also included many moderates who opposed separation from Britain, including Isaac Low of New York and Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, both of whom ultimately became loyalists during the American Revolution.

At this point, few delegates were prepared to embrace political independence from Great Britain, so the First Continental Congress ultimately took a moderate stance. The delegates approved the Declaration and Resolves, which outlined colonial grievances against Britain, and they also created the Continental Association, an agreement that involved boycotting British goods while also threatening to ban exports to Britain if the Intolerable Acts were not repealed by the following September. In addition, they agreed to reconvene on May 10, 1775, as what would become the Second Continental Congress.

The First Continental Congress adjourned on October 26, 1774. When the delegates to the Second Continental Congress arrived here in Philadelphia just over six months later, they met in the Pennsylvania State House, now known as Independence Hall, rather than the much smaller Carpenters’ Hall. Aside from a different physical location, the Second Continental Congress also faced very different circumstances, as the American Revolution had begun just three weeks earlier with the battles of Lexington and Concord. The outbreak of war made it more difficult for the moderate delegates to continue advocating reconciliation, as shown by the harsh British response to the Olive Branch petition, and it would eventually lead to Congress famously declaring independence in 1776.

In the meantime, Carpenters’ Hall continued to be used by the Carpenters’ Company, but it also served a number of other roles during and after the Revolution. The Continental Army used it as a hospital and as storage for military supplies, and the British similarly used it as a hospital during their occupation of the city. Then, in 1790, when Philadelphia temporarily became the national capital, Secretary of War Henry Knox had his offices here in this building. A year later, the Carpenters’ Company built a second building here on this site, known as New Hall. The group moved their headquarters to this building, and Knox likewise moved his offices there. However, the Carpenters’ Company continued to rent out their original building to various tenants.

From 1791 to 1793, Carpenters’ Hall was occupied by the Bank of North America, and it subsequently became the temporary home of the First Bank of the United States from 1794 until 1797, when its permanent facility was completed about 50 yards to the east of here. The building’s next tenant was the Bank of Pennsylvania, and in 1798 it became the site of a major bank heist when thieves stole over $160,000 from the vaults. However, one of the men died just a few days later from yellow fever, and the other one was later arrested after attempting to deposit some of his stolen loot here at the bank that he had robbed.

During the early 19th century, Carpenters’ Hall served as the Philadelphia Custom House, and then from 1816 to 1821 it was the home of the Second Bank of the United States, which was located here during the construction of its own building on Chestnut Street. Several other organizations used the building in the 1820s, including the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, the Musical Fund Society, and the Franklin Institute. Then, starting in 1828 it was rented by auctioneer C. J. Wolbert & Co., who used the building as his auction hall.

Carpenters’ Hall would remain in use as an auction house for nearly 30 years, but by the mid-19th century some began to lament the fact that such a historic building was being used for such base commercial purposes. In 1848, historian Benson J. Lossing visited the building, which at the time bore a banner on the façade advertising for Wolbert’s company. Lossing subsequently wrote about how the “very Temple of Freedom” was covered in the “placards of grovelling Mammon.” Continuing the biblical imagery, he challenged the people of Philadelphia, asking “[i]s there not patriotism strong enough in Philadelphia to enter the temple, and ‘cast out all them that buy and sell, and overthrow the tables of the money-changers?’”

The Carpenters’ Company ultimately chose to heed his words, and drove out the money-changers, in the metaphorical sense. In 1856, they voted to not renew Wolbert’s lease, and when he left the organization began restoring the building to its original appearance. It was rededicated on September 5, 1857, on the 83rd anniversary of the opening of the First Continental Congress. Reporting on the event the next day, the Sunday Dispatch praised the restoration of the building, writing about how the Carpenters’ Company,

determined that henceforth the old Hall should go into a respectable and dignified retirement, and that for the food it had already done, it should no more be the scene of traffic. The society have fitted the ancient Hall up in handsome style, and, while doing so, they have adhered as closely as practicable to the original plan of the building, and Carpenters’ Hall is now nearly in the same condition it was in when the historical events occurred which gave it importance. 

The first story, in which the first Continental Congress assembled, has been grained in imitation of oak, and such articles of new furniture as it was necessary to procure, have been made in a style to comport with the ancient relics preserved in the building, and which tradition says were used there by Congress in 1774. . . .

The Carpenters’ Society intend keeping the Hall sacred for the future, and citizens and strangers will be afforded an opportunity of visiting and inspecting this relic of the most interesting period of the city’s history.

The upper part of the building has been handsomely fitted up with a library and meeting room for the members of the society, and with rooms for the residence of the janitor and his family. In the library are several of the original fire buckets which belonged to the hall before the introduction of a hose.

Outside the Hall, in front of the building, a neat grass plot and flower beds have been laid out, and handsome lamps occupy the sides of the main entrance. The inside of the building has also been supplied with elegant and appropriate chandeliers, brackets, &c., which were designed purposely by their manufacturers.

The first photo was taken less than two years later by Frederick De Bourg Richards, as part of an effort to document Philadelphia’s historic buildings. It shows the north side of the building, looking down the narrow alley connecting it to Chestnut Street. The buildings in the foreground hide much of Carpenters’ Hall, and the one on the right also blocks the view of New Hall, which stood just to the northwest of Carpenters’ Hall. These modern buildings provide an interesting contrast to the old colonial-era landmark, in particular the advertisements for California-bound steamships, which indicate just how much the nation had changed since the First Continental Congress convened here less than a century earlier.

Today, more than 160 years after the first photo was taken, much of this scene has changed. At some point New Hall was demolished, as were the commercial buildings in the foreground. Some of these may have been demolished as part of the creation of the Independence National Historical Park, which involved the removal of most 19th century buildings across several city blocks. However, Carpenters’ Hall itself is still standing in the distant center of this scene. It is still owned by the Carpenters’ Company, and it is open to the public with free admission. In the present-day scene, it is joined here by a 1960s reconstruction of New Hall on the right, which now serves as the New Hall Military Museum, and on the left by the Pemberton House, a 1960s reconstruction of a colonial-era mansion.

Jayne Building, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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Looking west on Chestnut Street between Bank and Third Streets in Philadelphia, around 1859. Image courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Frederick De Bourg Richards Photograph Collection.

The scene in 2019:

The first photo shows the view looking west along the south side of Chestnut Street, from near the corner of Bank Street. The scene features a variety of commercial buildings, but the most prominent of these is the Jayne Building in the center of the photo. Built between 1849 and 1851, this eight-story building was far ahead of its time, predating the advent of modern skyscrapers by nearly half a century. As such, it is generally considered to be the first skyscraper in the city, and arguably the first in the entire country as well.

The Jayne Building was designed by local architect William L. Johnston, and it featured a Gothic Revival exterior of Quincy granite. In contrast to most of the neighboring buildings, its façade featured strong vertical lines that emphasized its height, a technique that would later become common for 20th century skyscrapers. However, the building also featured a two-story crenelated tower atop the roof, giving it an unusual combination of modern and medieval-style architecture.

The building was owned by Dr. David Jayne, a physician who made his fortune selling patent medicines. Although based in Philadelphia, he sold his products across the country. He even published a free almanac that was replete with medical advice, most of which involved taking one or more of his products. Among these were the Expectorant, which was intended for lung diseases, and the Alterative, which Jayne claimed could treat a wide range of ailments, including cancer, gout, rheumatism, scrofula, scurvy, syphilis, ulcers, and various skin disorders.

Architect William L. Johnston provided much of the vision for Jayne’s building, but he did not live to see it completed. He died of tuberculosis during the early stages of the construction, and another Philadelphia architect, Thomas Ustick Walter, oversaw the rest of the work. Walter also designed two six-story wings, one on either side of the main building, which were completed in 1851 and are visible here in the first photo. Also in 1851, Walter was appointed as Architect of the Capitol, and in this capacity he designed both the House and Senate wings of the US Capitol, along with the current Capitol dome.

David Jayne died in 1866 at the age of 66, but his family carried on the business for many years. However, just six years later this building was gutted by a massive fire on the night of March 4, 1872. The fire started around 9:00 p.m. in the rear of the third floor, but it soon spread up to the top of the building. Firefighting efforts were hampered by the height of the building, and also by the sub-zero temperatures, which caused the water to freeze into icicles on the exterior. However, firefighters succeeded in preventing the flames from spreading to the six-story wings, and most of the exterior walls remained standing, despite extensive damage to the interior.

The building was subsequently reconstructed around the old walls, albeit without the ornate two-story tower atop the roof. It would remain here for the next 80 years, but by the mid-20th century it was threatened by an urban renewal project related to the Independence National Historical Park. Planners envisioned a park area that would feature the city’s prominent Revolutionary-era landmarks surrounded by open space, rather than being crowded by more recent development. This meant the demolition of many 19th century buildings that, despite their architectural and historic significance, were not a part of the park’s mission.

In the case of the Jayne Building, it stood on the periphery of the park, three blocks away from Independence Hall. The mid-19th century proto-skyscraper clearly had no connection to the American Revolution, but some preservationists made an effort to have the building spared. Among these was Charles E. Peterson, who in 1951 published a theory that the Jayne Building had likely helped to influence the design of more modern skyscrapers, since prominent architect Louis Sullivan had once worked out of an office across the street from here. However, this appeal failed to convince the park planners to save the building, and it was ultimately demolished in the fall of 1957.

Today, more than 160 years after the first photo was taken, there are no surviving landmarks from the first photo. Many of the older commercial buildings were likely replaced by newer buildings later in the 19th century, but anything that was still standing by the 1950s would have, like the Jayne Building, been demolished as part of the Independence National Historical Park. Here in the foreground, where the Jayne Building once stood, this site became a visitors center. This building was, in turn, demolished in 2014, and the site is currently occupied by the Museum of the American Revolution, which is shown here in the 2019 photo.

William Marshall House, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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The house at 322 Spruce Street, between Third and Fourth Streets in Philadelphia, in March 1859. Image courtesy of the Library Company of Philadelphia, Frederick De Bourg Richards Photograph Collection.

The scene in 2019:

The house in the first photo was built in 1786 as the home of the Reverend William Marshall, who served as pastor of the Scots Presbyterian Church and later the Associate Presbyterian Church. He lived here throughout the late 18th century, and during this time his wife ran a boarding house in order to supplement his pastoral salary. She hosted a variety of notable boarders here, including a few of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and, a few years later, several French noblemen who were living here in exile after the French Revolution. Among them was Louis-Marie, vicomte de Noailles, the brother-in-law of the Marquis de Lafayette, who stayed here for several years starting in 1792. However, by far the most prominent boarder here was Louis Philippe d’Orléans, who would eventually become King Louis Philippe of France.

Louis Philippe arrived in Philadelphia in 1796 when he was 23 years old. His father had been the Duke of Orléans, and both men had been supporters of the French Revolution, with Louis Philippe serving with distinction as an officer in the revolutionary army, but the family ultimately fell out of favor during the Reign of Terror. The Duke was executed by guillotine in 1793, and Louis Philippe fled the country, eventually ending up in Philadelphia after spending several years traveling throughout Europe.

He appears to have remained here with the Marshalls for several months, until the arrival of his two brothers in 1797. They subsequently moved into a house of their own in Philadelphia, but Louis Philippe would continue his travels here in America, living in New York and Boston before eventually returning to France with his brothers in 1800.

Following the restoration of the monarchy in 1815, he became a part of the royal court, although he tended to be more liberal-minded than the kings were. The final monarch from the House of Bourbon, Charles X, was ultimately forced to abdicate in the July Revolution of 1830, and this created an opportunity for Louis Philippe, who was then declared king. In contrast to the conservative Charles X, he tried to portray himself as a man of the people, and he was referred to as the “Citizen King.” He reigned as king for the next 18 years, but over time his popularity waned, and he too was forced to abdicate, in February 1848, making him the last king in the history of France.

In the meantime, the modest boarding house where the future king had once lived was still standing here on Spruce Street at the end of his reign. The first photo was taken in 1859, just 11 years after Louis Philippe’s abdication, by Frederick De Bourg Richards, as part of an effort to document historic landmarks in the city. By this point the building was the home of Miss Carr’s School for Young Ladies, although the exterior likely had not changed much from its original appearance, since it still resembled a typical late 18th century rowhouse.

The house was still standing here as late as 1885, when it was featured in an article in the Magazine of American History. However, the article noted that it was currently in use as an upholstery shop, and that it “has undergone considerable alteration since its palmy days.” The article lamented the poor state of preservation, while also observing that it had once been a curiosity among visitors but had since fallen into obscurity. This is perhaps due in part to the fact that, when the first photo was taken, the reign of Louis Philippe was still a recent memory for most people, while by the mid-1880 nearly 40 years had elapsed since his abdication.

Today, the streets of Philadelphia’s Society Hill neighborhood are still lined with historic rowhouses, but the former residence of Louis Philippe is not among them. It was demolished at some point, probably in the late 19th or early 20th centuries, and today the lot is part of St. Joseph’s Way, a pedestrian walkway that runs parallel to Third and Fourth Streets for several blocks. There are, however, a few surviving remnants from the first photo. Most obvious is the house on the right side, but both photos also feature the spire of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, which was built in 1758 and still stands in the distance at the corner of Third and Pine Streets.

House of Representatives Chamber, Congress Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

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The House of Representatives Chamber in Congress Hall, around 1925. Image from Byways and Boulevards: In and About Historic Philadelphia (1925).

The scene in 2019:

As discussed in an earlier post, Congress Hall served as the national capitol building from 1790 to 1800, during the formative years of the American government. It was here that the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, and where both George Washington and John Adams were inaugurated, and where numerous debates occurred regarding the role of the federal government. The building is small, especially when compared to the neighboring Independence Hall, and nearly the entire first floor is occupied by the House chamber, as shown here. The smaller Senate chamber is upstairs on the southern side of the building, and the rest of the upper floor consists of committee rooms.

Philadelphia had served as the national capital throughout most of the American Revolution, aside from several interruptions during British occupations. The Continental Congress met in the Pennsylvania state house, which later came to be known as Independence Hall, and it was there that the delegates signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776. However, at the end of the war in 1783, Congress was threatened by a mob of American soldiers who gathered to demand payment for their wartime service. The state government declined to call out the militia to protect Congress, so the delegates left the city and met in several different cities over the next few years before ending up in New York in 1785.

New York would serve as the national capital for the next five years, but in 1790 Congress passed the Residence Act, designating present-day Washington D.C. as the new capital. This was done as a compromise with the southern states, in exchange for their support for federal assumption of state wartime debts. However, before the federal government could relocate to Washington, the city had to be built from scratch, so the law also provided that Philadelphia would serve as a temporary capital until 1800.

When the federal government returned to Philadelphia in 1790, it did not use Independence Hall. Instead, the government used two newly-constructed buildings that flanked the state capitol. On the east side of Independence Hall was the new Philadelphia City Hall, which was occupied by the U.S. Supreme Court. Here on the west side, this building was originally intended to be the Philadelphia County Courthouse, but it was repurposed to serve as the capitol building instead. It was originally slightly smaller, but in 1793 it was expanded with a 26-foot addition on the south side, in order to accommodate the increased size of Congress after the 1790 census.

Congress met here in this building for the first time on December 6, 1790, at the start of the third session of the First Congress. This was before the start of formal, organized political parties, but Congress was divided between the Pro-Administration and Anti-Administration factions. The Pro-Administration group, which would later become the Federalist Party, held majorities in both houses, with Pennsylvania native Frederick Muhlenberg presiding over the House sessions here as the nation’s first Speaker of the House.

Congress remained in session here until March 3, 1791, and during this time they passed several important bills. One of these chartered the First Bank of the United States, and another established the Tariff of 1791. Both were important steps in Alexander Hamilton’s financial plan for the country, but the latter would prove particularly controversial, eventually leading to the Whiskey Rebellion. During this session, Congress also admitted Vermont as the 14th state in the union. Formerly a de facto independent nation, Vermont became the first new state added to the country after the original 13 colonies.

Over the next few years, Congress enacted a number of other important pieces of legislation. Both the Post Office and the US Mint were established here in 1792, and in 1794 Congress authorized the first six ships of the US Navy, including the USS Constitution. Four years later, Congress created the Department of the Navy, along with the US Marine Corps. More controversially, in 1795 the Senate ratified the Jay Treaty in their chamber upstairs, and in 1798 both houses enacted the Alien and Sedition Acts.

This building was also the site of two presidential inaugurations. In 1793, George Washington was inaugurated to his second term in the Senate chamber, and then four years later John Adams was inaugurated here in the House chamber. This latter event was particularly remarkable because it featured a retiring head of state who was voluntarily transferring power to a successor. Although this would become commonplace in American politics, it was in sharp contrast to the European monarchies of the era. John Adams’s inauguration was also the first to occur after a contested presidential election, and the runner-up in the election, Thomas Jefferson, became vice president in accordance with the Electoral College system in place at the time.

The inauguration occurred here in this room on March 4, 1797. Writing about the event two days later, the Philadelphia Gazette and Universal Daily Advertiser published the following account:

At an early hour, a great number of citizens had assembled round Congress Hall, to witness the retirement of our late worthy President WASHINGTON from public life. The concourse increased to such a degree as to fill the streets and when the gallery doors were thrown open, the house was suddenly filled up, to overflowing.—The Ladies added to the dignity of the scene, number of them were seated in the chairs of the representatives, and others were accommodated with seats on the floor of the house. A few minutes after the Senate arrived preceded by their President, George Washington entered, but before he had advanced half way across the floor, a burst of applause broke forth from every quarter of the house—on the entrance of John Adams like marks of approbation were expressed.

Adams was inaugurated by Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth, and he gave his inaugural address here in the House chamber. In his speech, Adams praised the Constitution, warned of potential dangers to American liberty, and extolled the virtues of George Washington. His speech also set a yet-unbroken record for the longest individual sentence in any presidential address. At 727 words, it comprised nearly a third of his entire speech, and it was more than five times the length of Washington’s entire second inaugural address.

Along with the presidential inaugurations, Congress Hall was also the site of the annual State of the Union addresses, which were delivered before joint sessions of Congress. From 1790 to 1793, these occurred in the Senate chamber, but starting in 1794 the larger House chamber was used. George Washington and John Adams each gave three State of the Union addresses here in the House chamber, including Washington’s final address to Congress on December 7, 1796. This speech is often confused with his Farewell Address, which had been published several months earlier. However, these were two distinct works, and despite its name, the Farewell Address was not actually presented as a speech, nor was it his final public statement as president. For his December speech here at Congress Hall, Washington gave an overview of the preceding year and his recommendations for the future, and then closed his presidency with the following remarks:

The situation in which I now stand, for the last time, in the midst of the Representatives of the People of the United States, naturally recalls the period when the Administration of the present form of Government commenced; and I cannot omit the occasion, to congratulate you and my Country, on the success of the experiment; nor to repeat my fervent supplications to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and Sovereign Arbiter of Nations, that his Providential care may still be extended to the United States; that the virtue and happiness of the People, may be preserved; and that the Government, which they have instituted, for the protection of their liberties, maybe perpetual.

Other than the two presidents who were inaugurated and delivered State of the Union addresses here, many of the nation’s early leaders served as legislators in this building. James Madison was a representative from Virginia until 1797, and his time here in this room helped to establish himself as one of the founders of the Democratic-Republican Party. During the early 1790s, Madison’s fellow Virginian and eventual presidential successor James Monroe also served here in Congress, although he was a senator. Early in his political career, Andrew Jackson briefly served here from 1796 to 1797 as the first representative from Tennessee, before becoming a senator later in 1797. Another young politician who served here in this room was William Henry Harrison, who represented the Northwest Territories as a non-voting delegate from 1799 to 1800, more than 40 years before he was elected president.

Although Philadelphia had been designated as merely a temporary capital, many here held out hope that the nation’s second-largest city would ultimately prove more attractive to the federal government than the nearly uninhabited swampland along the Potomac. However, despite efforts by locals to make Philadelphia the permanent capital, Congress adjourned its final session here on May 14, 1800. When they reconvened in the fall, it was in Washington, DC, in the unfinished US Capitol.

With Congress gone, this building returned to its intended purpose as a courthouse, and by 1824 it was occupied by at least eight different courts in four courtrooms. Here on the first floor, the former House chamber had been divided into two courtrooms, with a hallway and stairs in between them. On the north side was the District Court for the City and County of Philadelphia, and on the south side was the Court of Common Pleas. This latter courtroom was also used by the Orphan’s Court, the Courts of Oyer and Terminer and General Gaol Delivery, and for the Quarter Sessions. On the upper floor, the north side of the building was occupied by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania for the Eastern District, and the former Senate chamber on the south side was occupied by both the federal district court and the federal circuit court. Also on the second floor was a law library and the office of the controllers of public schools, which were located along a hallway in between the two courtrooms.

Many of these courts would eventually move to different buildings, but the Court of Common Pleas remained here until 1895. With this court’s departure, the future of Congress Hall was uncertain. By this point it was widely recognized as a landmark worthy of restoration, but it was also in poor condition. One 1902 news article, which appeared in newspapers across the country, described how it was in a “frightful state of dilapidation,” and how “[t]he floor has fallen in and pillars, plaster and gallery railings are lying in the cellar.” The city agreed to spend $30,000 toward restoring the building, but evidently little work was done, because by 1909 it was in a “shocking state of decay,” as described by the Philadelphia Inquirer, which published the following description:

Stripped of all relics and the walls dropping their plaster, the interior presents a lamentable appearance. An architectural firm several years ago took up much of the flooring to study how the structure had been built, and nothing has ever been done to repair the floor, which adds to the general air of decay.

Finally, the full-scale restoration work began around 1911, and it was completed two years later. It was rededicated on October 25, 1913, in a ceremony that was attended by many dignitaries, including prominent Philadelphia businessman John Wanamaker, Mayor Rudolph Blankenburg, US Speaker of the House Champ Clark, and President Woodrow Wilson. The main event was held here in the former House chamber, with Wilson giving a speech that emphasized the role that this building played in the early history of the nation, along with the lessons that modern-day Americans could take from the founding generation.

The first photo was probably taken about a decade or so after the renovation was completed. It shows the view of the House chamber facing southwest, with the buildings on the other side of Sixth Street visible through the windows. At the time, the room was still unfurnished, but in 1934 it underwent further restoration with the installation of replica desks and a new speaker’s rostrum, in order to better reflect its 18th century appearance.

Today, about a century after the first photo was taken, Congress Hall remains an important historic landmark here in Philadelphia. Although overshadowed by the fame of the neighboring Independence Hall, this modest two-story brick building nonetheless played a vital role in the early history of the United States. It is now preserved as part of the Independence National Historical Park, and it is open to the public for free guided tours of both the House and Senate chambers.

Pelham Town Hall, Pelham, Mass

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Pelham Town Hall, at the corner of Amherst Road and Route 202 in Pelham, on December 20, 1932. Image taken by Stuart D. Pike, Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission.

The scene in 2015:

The old town hall here in Pelham was built around 1743, the same year that Pelham was incorporated as a town, and it is said to be the oldest continuously-used town hall in the country. Built long before the idea of separation of church and state, it was also used as the town church for nearly a century, making it one of the oldest surviving church buildings in the state.

Pelham was settled 1739 by Scotch-Irish colonists. Most had been part of a group of immigrants who arrived in Boston in 1718, but they faced discrimination in the largely English Puritan town, and many subsequently moved to Worcester. However, they received similar treatment there, and  by the 1730s they began looking west to what was, at the time, the frontier areas of Massachusetts.

In 1738, a group of 34 settlers purchased the land that would become Pelham from Colonel John Stoddard of Northampton. They then laid out house lots and roads, and within a few years they began construction of this meeting house here at the crest of a hill near the geographic center of town. The town hired brothers Thomas and John Dick to build it, and it may have been used for church services as early as 1741, although the entire structure was not completed until 1746.

Pelham was incorporated as a town in January 1743, and the first town meeting occurred here in this building a few months later on April 19. Among the items of business was the selection of town officials. These included five selectmen, a town clerk, and a treasurer, along with a variety of other offices, including two fence viewers, two hog reeves, and two “Officers to Prosecute ye Law Respecting Killing Deer,” which was apparently an 18th century equivalent of a game warden.

With the town government established, the next step was for the town to choose a pastor. During its first few years, the church did not have its own pastor. Instead, the weekly preaching was handled by “suppliers,” who were generally short-term itinerant pastors. One such supplier was Robert Abercrombie, a Presbyterian pastor who began preaching here as early as 1742. A native of Scotland, Abercrombie graduated from the University of Edinburgh and subsequently came to the American colonies, arriving in 1740.

In May 1743, the town selected three residents who would be responsible for consulting with other local clergymen and choosing an appropriate person to become the town’s full-time pastor. This committee subsequently recommended Abercrombie, and four other pastors submitted a letter endorsing him, including Jonathan Edwards, the prominent theologian and pastor of the church in Northampton. The letter read:

Whereas we ye Subscribers have had some considerable acquaintance with Rev. Mr. Abercrombie, Preacher of ye Gospel, and what we know of his qualification by Information and personal acquaintance, we advise ye people of God in Pelham to Invite ye sd Mr. Robert Abercrombie to settle in ye Work of ye Ministrie among them as their Pastor.

This letter was dated August 30, 1743, but the next day a group of 22 residents submitted a letter of their own, stating that they “Do protest against ye proceedings of Part of ye inhabitants of ye sd town in their calling of ye Rev. Robert Abercrombie to be their minister in sd town.” The specific reasons for their objections are unclear, but they succeeded in postponing a final decision until the following March. By that point, the opposition evidently relented, and the town extended a formal call to Abercrombie, which he accepted on March 5, 1744.

Abercrombie was ordained here on August 30, 1744, with Jonathan Edwards delivering the sermon for the occasion. Edwards is often remembered for his vivid metaphors describing sin and damnation that he employed in his famous 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but his message here in Pelham lacked the same level of intense imagery. He did, however, twice warn his audience here to “fly from the wrath to come,” a phrase that he had used in the closing part of his 1741 sermon.

Edwards’s sermon for Abercrombie’s ordination was titled “The True Excellency of a Minister of the Gospel,” based on John 5:35, “He was a burning and a shining Light.—” He used this verse to explain the role of pastors, and how they are to be a shining light to their congregation, just as John the Baptist was in this particular verse. The printed version of the sermon is nearly 9,000 words long, and likely would have taken around an hour to deliver. The first three-quarters of the sermon focused on the biblical responsibilities of pastors in general, including a grim warning about how pastors who are unfaithful in their positions will suffer torment in hell that is second only to the punishment of demons themselves.

Near the end of his sermon, Edwards turned his attention to Abercrombie. To the new pastor he declared:

You have now, dear Sir, heard something of the Nature and Design of that Office to which you are this Day, in the Name of Christ, to be solemnly set apart. You are therein called to be a Light to the Souls of Men, a Lamp in God’s Temple, and a Star in the spiritual World. And you have heard wherein, in Christ’s Esteem, consists the proper Excellency of one in that Office, and how in this a Minister of the Gospel becomes like his glorious Master, and glorifies him, and is likely to be the Instrument of the Salvation and Happiness of the Souls of Men, and to receive a glorious Reward from the Hands of God. . . .

God in his Providence has brought you far from your native Land, and from your Friends and Acquaintance there; but you will have Reason notwithstanding to acknowledge the good Hand of his Providence towards you, if he is pleased to make you a burning and shining Light in this Part of his Church, and by the Influence of your Light and Heat (or rather by his divine Influence, with your Ministry) to cause this Wilderness to bud and blossom as the Rose, and give it the Excellency of Carmel and Sharon, and to cause you to shine in the midst of this People with warm and lightsome, quickening and comforting Beams, causing their Souls to flourish, rejoice and bear Fruit, like a Garden of pleasant Fruits, under the Beams of the Sun.

Edwards then concluded by speaking directly to the people of Pelham, encouraging them to pray for and support Abercrombie:

If it be, as you have heard, the proper Excellency of a Minister of the Gospel to be a burning and a shining Light, then it is your Duty earnestly to pray for your Minister that he may be filled with Divine Light, and with the Power of the Holy Ghost, to make him so. For herein you will but pray for the greatest Benefit to your selves; for if your Minister burns and shines, it will be for your Light and Life. That which has been spoken of, as it is the chief Excellency of a Minister, for it renders a Minister the greatest Blessing of any Thing in the World that ever God bestows on a People.

Likely aware of the controversy that had divided the congregation a year earlier, Edwards then warned the residents of Pelham to not act in opposition to Abercrombie, and even implied that such people did so because the light of his teachings exposed their own personal sins:

[T]ake Heed that instead of this you don’t take a Course to obscure and extinguish the Light that would shine among you, & to smother and suppress the Flame, by casting Dirt upon it; by necessitating your Minister by your Penuriousness towards him, to be envolved in worldly Care; and by discouraging his Heart by Disrespect and Unkindness. And particularly when your Minister shews himself to be a burning Light by burning with a proper Zeal against any Wickedness that may be breaking out amongst his People & manifests it by bearing a proper Testimony against it in the Preaching of the Word or by a faithful Exercise of the Discipline of God’s House, instead of taking it thankfully, and yielding to him in it, as you ought, don’t raise another Fire of a contrary Nature, against it, viz. the Fire of your unhallowed Passions, reflecting upon and reproaching him for his Faithfulness.

He then ended the sermon on a more positive note, encouraging his hearers to:

[T]hus walk as the Children of the Light, and follow your Minister wherein he is a Follower of Christ, i. e. wherein he is as a burning and shining Light. If you continue so to do, your Path will be the Path of the Just, which shines more and more to the perfect Day, and the End of your Course shall be in those blissful Regions of everlasting Light above, where you shall shine forth with your Minister, and both with Christ, as the Sun, in the Kingdom of the Heavenly Father.

As it turned out, both Edwards and Abercrombie would go on to have turbulent relationships with their respective congregations. Edwards was dismissed from the Northampton church in 1751, and Abercrombie faced similar challenges here in Pelham. For Abercrombie, the issue appears to have centered around his refusal to baptize the infant children of parents who were living in unrepentant sin. The Presbytery in Boston ultimately suspended him in 1754 and dismissed him a year later, but he and his supporters here in Pelham did not go down without a fight. Contesting the authority of the Presbytery to dismiss him, Abercrombie refused to yield his position, and he had to be physically barred from entering the meeting house to preach.

Abercrombie would remain in Pelham for the rest of his life, farming his land while occasionally supplying the pulpit for churches in other towns. He also sued the town for pay that he believed he was entitled to, and the case dragged on for four years until the courts ruled in his favor in 1759. In the meantime, the divisions within the church prevented the town from selecting his successor for nearly a decade, so the church went through a series of “suppliers” until 1763, when a Hampshire County grand jury indicted the down for its negligence in failing to obtain a pastor.

Soon after the grand jury issued this indictment, the town selected Richard Crouch Graham, a 24-year-old Yale graduate who had evidently been one of the suppliers in the early 1760s. He was ordained as the second pastor of the church, with a salary of 60 pounds. This would later be raised to 80 pounds per year, but Graham nonetheless fell deep into debt. According to a 19th century Yale biographical sketch, “his mind gave way,” presumably under the pressure from his financial situation, and he died in 1771, a few weeks before he would have turned 32, leaving a widow and four young children.

As a result, the town was again without a pastor. However, this time it only took four years before Nathaniel Merrill was ordained as the town’s third pastor in 1775, a few months after the start of the American Revolution. While church-related issues had long been divisive here in Pelham, the question of American independence prompted little controversy, with 19th century historian Josiah Gilbert Holland later describing how, “[t]he people of Pelham were on the right side in the Revolution.” Most significantly, this included a vote at a town meeting here on June 20, 1776, when the town’s residents declared “by Unanimous Vote that we are willing to Come Under Independency from under the yoke of the King of Great Brittain.” Exactly two weeks later, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia likewise unanimously approved independence from Britain.

No battles were ever fought anywhere near Pelham during the Revolution, but the war nonetheless came at an economic cost to the town’s residents. Among other problems, the war led to ruinous inflation, causing Merrill’s salary to increase from 80 pounds in 1775 to 2,500 pounds in 1780. However, despite the town steadily raising his salary, Merrill was apparently unwilling to continue to be paid in rapidly-depreciating currency, and he left his position in 1781. That same year, Daniel Shays made his first appearance on the lists of town officers, as one of four men on the town’s Committee of Safety. He would serve in that capacity and in several other town positions over the next few years, before his name came to epitomize the economic plight of rural Massachusetts farmers.

In the meantime, Merrill’s departure meant that the town’s pulpit was once again vacant, so the town again resorted to short-term suppliers. This would, in turn, lead to the most bizarre incident in the long history of this building, involving one of early America’s most notorious con artists. It all began on a spring day in 1784, when a 19-year-old, who went by the name of Reverend Davis, arrived in town with a letter from Moses Baldwin, pastor of the church in Palmer. The letter recommended Davis as a suitable supply pastor, so the town invited him to preach for the next four weeks, at a rate of five dollars per week, plus board and horsekeeping.

As the people of Pelham would later discover, though, Davis was not his real name, nor was he an ordained minister. Rather, he was Stephen Burroughs, a Dartmouth dropout whose father, Eden Burroughs, was a pastor in Hanover, New Hampshire. Prior to arriving in Pelham, he had spent time as a “doctor” on a privateering vessel out of Newburyport. He had then returned to New Hampshire, where he found work as a schoolteacher. However, he ended up in trouble for stealing a beehive, and for his relationship with a “widow” whose husband turned out to be alive and well. Burroughs subsequently left New Hampshire, but not before making off with ten of his father’s written sermons. The doctor-turned-teacher had thus reinvented himself as a pastor, and he preached several sermons here in western Massachusetts before receiving the letter of recommendation from the credulous Reverend Baldwin.

Here in Pelham, the young “Davis” proved himself to be a capable preacher, but some of the parishioners began to become suspicious of him, especially after someone noticed that he was preaching from notes that were written on old, yellowed paper. Believing that he was merely recycling someone else’s sermons, one of the leaders in the church asked him on the following Sunday to preach from a portion of a specific verse, Joshua 9:5, which reads “And old shoes and clouted upon their feet.” However, despite the obscurity of this verse, and his minimal time to prepare, Burroughs delivered a strong sermon. He spoke of shoes as a metaphor of one’s spiritual journey through the world, and how old shoes represented old sins. In particular, he railed against the sin of jealousy, evidently targeting those who had doubted him.

His sermon was convincing, and the church responded by offering to let him continue preaching here for four more months. Burroughs remained here until September 1784, and he may have been able to continue the charade much longer if not for the arrival of Joseph Huntingdon, Burroughs’s friend from Dartmouth. He stayed in Pelham for a few days, and accidentally called Burroughs by his real name several times. Then, while Burroughs was accompanying him for part of his journey home to Coventry, they saw Justus Forward, pastor of the church in the neighboring town of Belchertown. Forward had, as his guest, another clergyman who recognized Burroughs and addressed him by his real name, despite Burroughs’s insistence that his name was Davis.

Realizing at this point that his identity had been exposed, Burroughs returned to Pelham, packed his belongings, and left town in the middle of the night, taking with him a five dollar advance that he had received for the upcoming week’s sermon. The town awoke the next morning to discover their pastor gone, and word soon arrived from Belchertown that he had been an impostor.

Pursued by angry townsmen, Burroughs made his way to Rutland, Massachusetts, where he had an acquaintance. However, the Pelham men soon tracked him down, leading to a confrontation in Rutland that left one of his pursuers with a broken arm and another with a head injury. Burroughs then armed himself with a scythe snath, entered a barn, and climbed to the top of the hayloft. In the meantime, a crowd of Rutland residents gathered along with the Pelham men, and the two groups began arguing over Burroughs. Despite the outrage of the Pelhamites, the Rutlanders seemed less concerned about the accusations, arguing that Burroughs had upheld his agreement to preach for the town, even if it was under an assumed name. Regarding the five dollars that he had received for the upcoming Sunday, they proposed that Burroughs use it to treat everyone to drinks at a nearby tavern.

This compromise proved acceptable to all parties, and Burroughs’s parishioners-turned-pursuers became his drinking companions for the evening, at least until the arrival of the man who had suffered the head injury. He rekindled the hostility toward Burroughs, and the Pelhamites decided to take him prisoner. However, with the aid of sympathetic Rutlanders, he was able to escape from the tavern.

As it turned out, Burroughs’s five months in Pelham was only the beginning of what would become a long and varied career as a con artist. He was subsequently able to talk his way into another four-week preaching stint, this time in Attleboro, Massachusetts, but he soon gave up preaching and turned his attention to the more potentially-lucrative world of counterfeiting.

With the help of one of his few remaining allies in Pelham, he made the acquaintance of Glazier Wheeler, a notorious counterfeiter. Wheeler sold his counterfeit dollars at a rate of three for a dollar, and Burroughs acquired 20 of them, which be brought to Springfield and used to purchase supplies at an apothecary, including sulfuric acid and arsenic, which were evidently needed for producing more counterfeits. However, the fraud was quickly detected, and he was arrested shortly after leaving the shop. Following his conviction, he was sentenced to stand in the pillory for an hour, and then serve three years of hard labor in jail. Within a few months, Burroughs attempted to escape by setting fire to the jail, and he was subsequently transferred to the state prison on Castle Island in Boston. He managed to escape the island with several other inmates, but they were subsequently recaptured.

Burroughs was later released, but his time in prison did little to reform his ways. He became a teacher in Charlton, Massachusetts, but soon found himself back in jail after attempting to seduce several of his students. After this incident, he left Massachusetts and eventually made his way to Georgia, where he was involved in land speculation schemes. He ended up losing money in this venture, and he later headed back north, living in northern Vermont and then in Canada. In 1798 Burroughs published a memoir detailing his life up to that point, and by the early 19th century he had resumed his counterfeiting career, this time forging American banknotes from the relative safety of Canada. However, at some point he settled down, married, raised a family, converted to Catholicism, and evidently renounced his former way of living. He remained in Canada for the rest of his life, and died in Trois-Rivières, Quebec in 1840.

Meanwhile, back here in Pelham the elderly Robert Abercrombie was still living in town during Burroughs’s five months in the pulpit. He was likely well aware of the subsequent controversy, and it is easy to imagine that he may have found some satisfaction in knowing that the town that had spurned him decades earlier had been duped by a teenaged con artist. Abercrombie would remain here in Pelham for the rest of his life, until his death in 1786, when he was in his mid-70s.

In a way, Abercrombie’s death marked the end of an era for the town, and it occurred right at the beginning of what would become the greatest crisis that the town would face in the 18th century. By the mid-1780s, America had won its independence from Britain, but the states were saddled with wartime debt. With Congress lacking the authority to levy taxes, the national government had resorted to issuing paper money to fund the war. The states issued their own paper money as well, and by the early 1780s these notes circulated far below par. Among those who had received payments in paper money were the soldiers in the Continental Army, who now returned home after the war with little to show for it except for paper money that the government might never redeem for face value.

Here in Massachusetts, the state was deeply in debt. In response, the state government, which was largely controlled by wealthy eastern merchants, raised taxes that had to be repaid in hard money, not in paper currency. This included a poll tax, which was levied on all males aged 16 and older, regardless of income. The other main tax was on property, which placed a greater burden on rural landowning farmers than on the merchants, whose wealth generally consisted of stock investments rather than land. In total, these taxes amounted to about a third of a typical Massachusetts farmer’s income, payable in scarce hard money.

Making matters worse for these farmers, they also faced new demands from their creditors. In an economy with little gold or silver in circulation, they had often paid merchants with goods from their farms. However, like the state government, the merchants were also now demanding payment in hard money. For those who were in debt to these merchants, it was nearly impossible for them to repay their debts while also meeting their heavy tax burden, resulting in many farmers losing their land to foreclosure.

Here in Pelham, life was difficult for the town’s farmers even during good times. Few of the farmers here were impoverished, but few were particularly wealthy either. Farms were generally small, and the town’s hilly, rocky terrain was hardly ideal for agriculture. This, combined with the town’s history of skepticism toward authority figures—whether it was a local pastor or a British monarch—helped contribute to the small town becoming an epicenter in a rebellion that would soon reverberate throughout the country and influence the design of the national government.

Daniel Shays, for whom this rebellion would subsequently be named, was one of these struggling Pelham farmers, although he lived in a few different places before coming to the town. Born in Hopkinton in 1747, he subsequently moved west to Brookfield, then to Shutesbury, and then to Pelham. He served throughout the American Revolution, eventually becoming a captain in the Continental Army. He even received a ceremonial sword from the Marquis de Lafayette, although he later had to sell it because of his postwar financial struggles.

Although he was a newcomer in a small town of close-knit families, Shays had no trouble finding like-minded residents with whom he could share his frustrations. About a half mile from his farm was the tavern of William Conkey Sr., and this became a gathering place for him and his rebels, where they could hold drills outside the building and discuss strategy over drinks inside. Conkey was one of the supporters of the rebellion, as was the rest of his family. Other allies of Shays included several of Robert Abercrombie’s sons, and even Ebenezer Gray, the town treasurer and church deacon who had fallen for Stephen Burroughs’s fraudulent claims several years earlier.

At the start of Shays’ Rebellion, the primary objective was to prevent courts from meeting, which would in turn prevent the courts from foreclosing on any property. To that end, the first major action in Shays’ Rebellion occurred in Northampton on August 29, 1786, when a group of about 1,500 rebels marched on the county courthouse. They succeeded in closing the courthouse, and this was followed by similar efforts in other towns, including Worcester, Concord, Springfield, and Great Barrington.

During this time, there was no national army, in part because of lack of funding and also because of fears regarding standing armies in peacetime. This meant that the Continental Congress was largely powerless against insurrections such as this, leaving it up to state militias to suppress the uprisings. However, given that many members of the militia, especially in here in western Massachusetts, were either participating in the rebellion or at least sympathetic to it, the militia was not necessarily the most reliable solution. Nonetheless, General William Shepard of Westfield managed to raise a sizable militia force here in western Massachusetts, and General Benjamin Lincoln raised a privately-funded militia in the eastern part of the state.

The climatic event of Shays’ Rebellion occurred in early 1787, when Shays and the other leaders set their sights on the federal arsenal in Springfield. With no federal soldiers to protect it, Shepard took control of the facility and guarded it with more than a thousand militiamen. On January 25, Shays approached the arsenal with a similarly-sized force, and advanced despite warning shots from Shepard. He then used cannons to fire grape shot into the insurgent lines, killing four and wounding many others. Armed with little more than swords, clubs, and old muskets, Shays and his men were badly outgunned by the well-equipped militiamen, and the rebels began to retreat.

Following the attempted assault on the arsenal, Benjamin Lincoln and his 3,000-man militia marched west from Worcester in pursuit of the rebels. Shays and much of his force ended up back in Pelham, where hundreds of his men encamped here in the area around the meeting house from January 28 to February 3. From here, Shays then moved on to Petersham, where Lincoln’s militia surprised them at their encampment, took some of them prisoner, and forced the rest to scatter.

Over the next few weeks there were several minor skirmishes, mainly in the Berkshires, but by this point the rebellion was effectively over. Nearly all of the rebels were ultimately pardoned, with about four thousand men signing confessions and taking an oath of allegiance in exchange for amnesty. Only a few of the leaders were excluded from the amnesty offer, and most fled the state, including Shays, who moved to Vermont. However, even he was subsequently pardoned in 1788 by Governor John Hancock, who took a conciliatory approach to the rebels. Shays eventually moved to upstate New York, where he lived in poverty until his death in 1825.

From a military perspective, Shays’ Rebellion was a failure. However, this attempted insurrection would prove to have significant political consequences, both at the state and national level. In 1787, the state legislature responded to some of the farmers’ grievances by lowering taxes and passing debt relief measures. During that same summer, the rebellion also had an effect on the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. The fact that loosely-organized, poorly-equipped farmers had nearly taken a federal arsenal, and the fact that the arsenal required a state militia to protect it, convinced many skeptics of the need for a more powerful central government. As a result, the rebellion helped influence not only the writing of the new Constitution, but also the subsequent debate over its ratification.

Throughout all of these events, the old meeting house here in the center of Pelham remained in use as both the town hall and the church. Architecturally, the building was typical of mid-18th century meeting houses, and very different from the types of churches that would come to dominate the rural New England landscape of the 19th century. On the exterior, the building was essentially devoid of any ornamentation, and it had no steeple, which gave it an appearance more like a large colonial-era house than a church.

Another difference between this building and later churches was the interior layout. Rather than having the main entrance at one of the ends, it was located here on the south side, in the middle of one of the long walls. The high pulpit, with its sounding board above it, was located directly opposite the entrance on the north side of the building, and the pews were arranged to face it. During the mid-1700s the church had 27 pews, most of which were divided between two families. As was the case in most New England churches of the period, families purchased their pews, with prices that varied depending on the location in the church.

The interiors of colonial New England meeting houses were generally spartan, with little in the way of decoration or even religious symbolism. They also frequently lacked heat, with some Puritan-minded New Englanders even taking a certain measure of pride in their ability to sit through long sermons in frigid weather. Here in Pelham, the only heat source came from the hot coals that some parishioners would bring in foot stoves, which provided a small measure of relief from the cold. Not until 1831 would this meeting house finally get a stove, some 90 years after it had first been used for religious services.

In a sense, the installation of a stove was a sign of changing times, as Massachusetts continued to shift further away from colonial-era Puritan tradition. One major step in this process occurred two years later in 1833, when the state passed the eleventh amendment to its constitution, ending government involvement in religion. When it was first written, the First Amendment provisions in the U.S. Constitution applied only to Congress, so the individual states were not prohibited from establishing religion. Most states eventually codified religious freedom in their own laws or constitutions, but Massachusetts was the last to do so. State residents continued to be taxed to support local churches until 1833, when the new amendment declared that all religious groups “shall be equally under the protection of the law.”

Here in Pelham, this new doctrine of separation of church and state was soon followed by a physical separation between the two entities. After about a century of sharing the meeting house with the town government, the church moved into a new building of its own. It was completed in 1841, and it still stands just to the west of here. In the meantime, the old meeting house retained its role as town hall, but it was moved back in 1839, onto a portion of the burying ground behind the building. Then, in 1845 it was moved again, this time about 30 feet further north. Also in 1845, the large interior space was divided into two floors, with the upper floor being used for town meetings.

Throughout the second half of the 19th century, Pelham steadily declined in population. This trend was seen throughout rural western Massachusetts towns, as residents moved to growing industrial cities or west to seek better farmland. The town’s population had reached as high as 1,278 in the 1820 census, but two years later the eastern portion of the town was split off to create the town of Prescott. By 1900, Pelham’s population had dropped to 462, having lost nearly two-thirds of its 1820 figure.

The town’s dwindling population had also shifted west during this time. With the loss of land to Prescott, the meeting house was no longer close to the geographic center of town. In addition, by the early 20th century the majority of residents lived in the western part of town, near the border of Amherst. In 1921, residents considered a proposal to begin holding town meetings in the western village, rather than here. However, tradition won out over convenience, and the proposal was defeated by a vote of 52 to 11.

Aside from its use as a venue for town meetings, this building served several other purposes. By the turn of the 20th century the first floor housed offices for the selectmen and assessors, along with the town library and a vault for storing records. Elsewhere on the first floor was the town hearse, and the rest of the floor was used as storage space. The large space in the upper floor was, in addition to the town meetings, used for a variety of plays and other public events.

Although the town had voted to continue using the old meeting house in 1921, it soon faced a far more substantial threat in the subsequent decade. The Swift River valley, which included a portion of eastern Pelham, was being eyed as a potential water source for Boston. The project, which led to the construction of Quabbin Reservoir, would require the disincorporation of four entire towns, including neighboring Prescott, along with substantial land takings from other towns. Pelham itself would be able to remain a town, but its historic center here would be affected, since it was located directly on the watershed divide.

The first photo was taken as part of a project to document all of the buildings in the affected areas. The board in the lower right corner indicates the building’s location, along with its parcel number and other identifying information. Nearly all of the buildings that were photographed were eventually purchased by the state or taken by eminent domain, and were subsequently demolished in order to make way for the reservoir. However, both the town hall and the neighboring church were spared, although nearly all of the buildings to the east of here on the other side of US Route 202 were taken by the state.

Many of the places related to Shays’ Rebellion, including the site of Conkey’s Tavern and the farm that belonged Daniel Shays, were in the section of Pelham that later became Prescott. These sites were, in turn, taken as part of the formation of the reservoir. Neither the house site nor the presumed tavern site are underwater, but they are off-limits to the public on what is now known as the Prescott Peninsula. There is a certain amount of irony here, given that Shays and his fellow townsmen had taken up arms against the state to prevent the loss of their farms, only to have the state take that entire section of their town some 150 years later.

Today, the Pelham Town Hall is one of few remaining buildings with a direct connection to Shays’ Rebellion. It is also one of the oldest surviving church buildings in western Massachusetts. The old meeting house in South Hadley is a few years older, but it has been altered almost beyond recognition, so this one in Pelham is probably the oldest one that has retained much of its original appearance. Because of its historic significance, both the town hall and the adjacent church were designated as contributing properties in the Pelham Town Hall Historic District, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

More than 80 years after the first photo was taken, very little has changed here in this scene. The building is not used as frequently as it had been in the past, though. The town offices are now located about a quarter mile to the west of here, and since 1968 most of the town meetings are held at the elementary school in the west village. However, the town continues to hold at least one meeting here in the building each year, maintaining its distinction as  the purported oldest continuously-used town hall in the country. This unbroken streak, dating back more than 275 years, has withstood church feuds, the American Revolution, an impostor preacher, and a large-scale rebellion, and the town even managed to maintain the tradition during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a brief pro forma meeting here in October 2020.

 

William Cullen Bryant Homestead, Cummington, Mass

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The William Cullen Bryant Homestead on Bryant Road in Cummington, around 1890. Image from Picturesque Hampshire (1890).

The scene in 2020:

These two photos show the childhood home—and later the summer home—of William Cullen Bryant, a prominent 19th century poet and newspaper publisher. The house was built in 1783 by his grandfather, Ebenezer Snell, who had moved to Cummington from North Bridgewater a decade earlier. At the time, Cummington was a small, remote settlement in the Berkshire Mountains, located along upper reaches of the north branch of the Westfield River. The first colonial settlers did not arrive here until 1762, and it was not formally incorporated as a town until 1779.

Ebenezer Snell and his wife Sarah were both in their mid-30s when they moved to Cummington. They brought four young children with them, including William Cullen Bryant’s mother Sarah, and they subsequently had a fifth child while living in Cummington. By the time they moved into this house in 1783, the younger Sarah was about 15 years old. She continued living here as an adult, and in 1792 the family took in a boarder, Dr. Peter Bryant. Like the Snell family, he was from North Bridgewater, and he he was a year older than Sarah.

According to tradition, Peter Bryant had fallen in love with Sarah while the Snells were still in North Bridgewater, and he subsequently followed them here to Cummington. This seems rather improbable or exaggerated, since he and Sarah were about five or six years old when the Snells left North Bridgewater. Either way, though, Peter and Sarah soon fell in love here in Cummington, and they were married in October 1792. They subsequently moved into their own house in town, where their first child, Austin, was born six months after their marriage.

Peter and Sarah’s second child was William Cullen Bryant, who was born at their home on November 3, 1794. Soon after, the family suffered financial trouble after Peter lost money in a risky investment. They lived in the nearby town of Plainfield for several years, and they ultimately moved in with Sarah’s parents here at their home in Cummington in the spring of 1799, when William Cullen Bryant was four years old.

The move here to the family homestead proved to be a transformative experience for the future poet. The house is located about two miles west of the town center, on a northeast-facing slope that overlooks the Westfield River Valley. The land around the house was mostly open fields and pastureland, but the outlying portions of the property were largely forested. Most famously, this included the Rivulet, a stream that flows past the house and through an old growth forest on the northeastern edge of the lot. This stream was a favorite childhood haunt of Bryant, who wrote some of his earliest lines of poetry along its banks, and he later memorialized it in his poem “The Rivulet.”

Writing many years later in 1872 in a letter to a friend, Bryant provided the following description of the landscape surrounding his childhood home:

The site of the house is uncommonly beautiful. Before it, to the east, the ground descends, first gradually, and then rapidly, to the Westfield River flowing in a dep and narrow valley, from which is heard, after a copious rain, in the roar of its swollen current, itself unseen. In the spring-time, when the frost-bound waters are loosened by a warm rain, the roar and crash are remarkably loud as the icy crust of the stream is broken, and the masses of ice are swept along by the flood over the stones with which the bed of the river is paved. Beyond the narrow valley of the Westfield the surface of the country rises again gradually, carrying the eye over a region of vast extent, interspersed with farm-houses, pasture-grounds, and wooded heights, where on a showery day you sometimes see two or three different showers, each watering its own separate district; and in winter-time two or three different snow-storms dimly moving from place to place.

Peter Bryant practiced medicine in an office here in this house, and during the early 19th century he achieved some success as a politician. In 1806 he was elected to a one-year term in the state house of representatives, and he subsequently served in that same capacity in 1808, 1809, and 1813, before serving in the state senate in 1818 and 1819.

Throughout this time, Peter Bryant was a staunch Federalist, and he instilled these political beliefs in young William. Although he would become famous for his nature poetry, some of William Cullen Bryant’s earliest poems were political. Among these was “The Embargo,” a satire that criticized Thomas Jefferson and the financial crisis caused by his infamous Embargo Act of 1807. Published in 1808 when Bryant was just thirteen, the poem is more than 500 lines in length. In one particularly scathing stanza, Bryant declared Jefferson to be “scorn of every patriot name, / Thy country s ruin and thy council s shame!” Bryant even alluded to the rumors about his affair with Sally Hemings, telling Jefferson to “sink supinely in her sable arms; / But quit to abler hands the helm of state.”

This poem and other similar politically-charged works would later become a source of some embarrassment for Bryant once he matured, but these poems earned him some notability as promising young poet. Although its reviewer disagreed with Bryant’s critical stance on Jefferson, the Monthly Anthology nonetheless admired his talents, declaring that “[w]e have never met with a boy of that age who had attained to such a command of language and to so much poetic phraseology.”

However, despite this early talent as a poet, Bryant’s career goal was to become a lawyer. To that end, he enrolled in Williams College in 1810 at the age of 16, but left at the end of the school year. He intended to continue his studies at Yale, but his father’s still-precarious financial situation forced him to change his plans. Instead, he read law—essentially a legal apprenticeship—with two different lawyers, and he was ultimately admitted to the bar in 1815.

Bryant began his legal career in Plainfield, but he continued to live here at the family homestead for a year, walking seven miles a day in each direction to get to his office. Then, around 1816 he moved to the much larger town of Great Barrington in the southwest corner of the state, where he practiced law for the next nine years. However, he was still publishing poetry during this time, including his most famous poem, “Thanatopsis.” Bryant had actually written the poem around 1811 when he was just 17, but it was published in 1817 and eventually became Bryant’s most significant contribution to the American canon of literature. The poem approaches death from a naturalistic perspective, describing how death is not something to be feared since the body becomes part of the natural world. The poem includes many vivid descriptions of nature, which were likely influenced by Bryant’s time here at the homestead in Cummington.

“Thanatopsis” would prove to be the high point of Bryant’s career as a poet, but he subsequently went on to achieve prominence as a newspaper editor. Having grown tired of Great Barrington, Bryant moved to New York City, where he worked as a magazine editor before becoming editor-in-chief of the New York Daily Post in 1829. He would go on to hold this position for the next half century, until his death in 1878. Throughout this time, the Post was one of the nation’s leading newspapers, and he used the paper to advocate for liberal causes such as abolitionism, organized labor, and immigrant rights. In 1860, he played an important role in Abraham Lincoln’s nomination, using his influence to generate support in the eastern states for the relatively obscure former congressman from Illinois.

In the meantime, the rest of the Bryant family also began to look beyond the old family homestead here in Cummington. Just as Ebenezer Snell had moved his family west from North Bridgewater in the 1770s, the later generations of his family also saw greater opportunities further to the west. Farming was difficult in the rocky, mountainous hill towns of western Massachusetts, and many families were drawn to the newly-formed territories and states, lured by promises of better farmland and greater opportunities. Many of these towns experienced population loss in the mid-19th century, including Cummington, which peaked in population in 1830 with 1,261 residents, before entering a 90-year decline. By 1920, the town had barely a third of its 1830 population, and experienced only moderate growth in the second half of the 20th century. Even today, the population of Cummington and many other hill towns is substantially lower than it was in the mid-19th century.

Among those who joined the exodus from Cummington were William Cullen Bryant’s younger brothers Arthur, John, and Cyrus, who moved away in the early 1830s and eventually made their way to Illinois. This left only the eldest brother Austin here at the homestead with their widowed mother Sarah, who continued to struggle financially and fell into debt. William helped with the interest payments on the loans, but Sarah and Austin ultimately decided to sell the property in 1835, much to William’s disappointment.

The new owner of the house was Welcome Tillson, a farmer who was in his mid-30s at the time. He lived here for the next 30 years, and at some point during this time he removed the wing that had once housed Bryant’s father’s office. This small piece of the building was, according to Bryant, subsequently moved down the hill to the banks of the Westfield River. During the 1860 census Welcome and his wife Sarah were in their late 40s, and were living here with their 28-year-old son Cyrus and his wife Elizabeth. He owned about 500 acres of improved land and 35 acres of unimproved land, and his agricultural output in 1860 consisted primarily of butter, cheese, wheat, corn, oats, potatoes, and maple syrup.

In 1865 Bryant, who was now 70, purchased the property from Tillson for use as a summer home. It was also intended to serve as a place of quiet rest for his wife Frances, who was in poor health. He soon set about making renovations, including adding a third story by raising the original section of the house and then constructing a new first floor underneath it. Bryant also added a replica of his father’s office to the southwest corner of the house. This one-story wing served as Bryant’s study, and it is visible on the left side of both photos here. However, Frances Bryant did not live long enough to see these renovations completed; she died in July 1866, just a year after her husband purchased the house.

Aside from these changes to the house, Bryant also made improvements to the grounds, including planting some 1,300 apple trees and a variety of other fruit trees. Immediately to the west of the house, in the distance of the first photo, Bryant planted a row of pine trees to act as a wind break, and further down the hill from here he built a small pond to serve as a source of ice that could be harvested and stored for the summer. In addition, he made two different additions to the barn on the other side of the street, first in 1866 and then in 1875. This barn had been built by Welcome Tillson after he purchased the property, replacing an earlier one that Peter Bryant had constructed on the same site in 1801.

Bryant continued to spend his summers here in Cummington for the rest of his life, generally arriving in late July and staying until early September. He died in New York City on June 12, 1878 at the age of 83, but this property remained in his family for several more generations. His younger daughter Julia inherited the house, and she owned it when the first photo was taken around 1890, although she spent most of her later years in Paris, where she lived with her cousin and presumed romantic partner, Anna Fairchild.

Julia died in 1907 and left this house to Anna Fairchild, who owned it until 1917, when she sold it to Julia’s niece Minna Godwin Goddard, who was the daughter of Bryant’s older daughter Frances. Minna then owned it until her own death in 1927, and in her will she left the property to the Trustees of Reservations, with the stipulation that her son Conrad would have life tenancy rights. The family also donated furniture and other items to the Trustees, and in 1931 Conrad built a caretaker’s house to the north of the main house, just out of view on the far right side of this scene.

Today, nearly a century after the Minna Goddard left this property to the Trustees and more than 230 years after her great-great grandfather Ebenezer Snell built the house, this house is still standing as an important historic landmark. As shown in these two photos, very little has changed here in this scene since the first photo was taken around 1890. Even some of the trees are still standing from the first photo. The three large maples in the foreground are the same ones from the first photo, and they were originally planted here in the early 19th century by the Bryant family.

The Bryant Homestead is still owned by the Trustees, which owns a number of other historic sites and conservation areas throughout Massachusetts. Here in Cummington, this property features not only the historic house but also nearly 200 acres of surrounding land. Several hiking trails wind through this landscape, including one that runs alongside the Rivulet, through the same old growth forest that first inspired Bryant more than two centuries ago. Overall, the homestead looks much the same as it did when Bryant acquired it in 1865, and it is one of the many important literary landmarks here in New England.