In 1729, before the new meeting-house was finished, the people were called to mourn the death of their loved and revered pastor, Rev. John Williams, so widely known as “The Redeemed Captive.” His successor was Rev. Jonathan Ashley, who was ordained in 1732 and died in 1780.
Rev. Stephen Williams, a son of Rev. John Williams, the first pastor, was born in Deerfield in 1693, taken captive to Canada in 1704, redeemed in 1705, graduated at Harvard in 1713, settled as minister at Longmeadow in 1716, dying there in 1782; he was Chaplain in the Louisburg expedition in 1745, and in the regiment of Col. Ephraim Williams in his fatal campaign in 1755, and again in the Canadian campaign of 1756. His portrait, reproduced on page 428, was painted about 1748; it is now in the Memorial Hall of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, within fourscore rods of the spot where the original was born, and whence he was carried into captivity.
On the closing of Father Rasle’s war the settlement expanded; trade and home manufactures flourished. Deerfield remained no longer the frontier town of the valley, and the brunt of the next border war (of 1743) was felt by the outlying settlements. The one sad blow upon this town fell at a little hamlet called The Bars. August 25, 1746, the families of Samuel Allen and John Amsden, while working in a hay-field on Stebbins Meadow, with a small guard, were surprised by a party of Indians from Canada, and five men were killed, one girl wounded and one boy captured. This followed close on the fall of Fort Massachusetts, and danger of French invasion was felt to be imminent. Active measures were taken for defense; the forts were repaired and the woods filled with scouts.
The closing war with France found Deerfield more strongly bulwarked, and still less exposed to attack. No blood was shed within her narrowed bounds. Her citizens held prominent positions, and did their part in the campaigns which resulted in the conquest of Canada and the consequent immunity from savage depredations. The nest destroyed, the sting of the hornets was no longer felt or feared. The last raid on Massachusetts soil is described in the following mutilated despatch to the military authorities in Deerfield:
“Colrain, March ye 21, 1759.
“Sir:—These are to inform you that yesterday as Jos McKoon [Kowen] & his wife were coming from Daniel Donitsons & had got so far as where Morrison’s house was burned this day year, they was fired upon by the enemy about sunset. I have been down this morning on the spot and find no Blood Shed, but see where they led off Both the above mentioned; they had their little child with them. I believe they are gone home. I think their number small, for there was about 10 or 12 came [torn off]”
The most important civil events of this period were the divisions of the township. In 1753 the Green River District, which included what is now Greenfield and Gill, was made a distinct municipality. The next year the construction of a bridge over the Pocumtuck River at Cheapside was a prominent issue; the discussion ended in establishing a ferry at the north end of Pine Hill in 1758. That year the people in the vicinity of Sugar Loaf petitioned the General Court—but without success—for liberty to form a ministerial and educational connection with the town of Sunderland, and to be exempted from paying certain town taxes in consequence. In 1767 the inhabitants of Deerfield-Southwest were set off into a town named Conway; and Deerfield-Northwest became the town of Shelburne in 1768. The same year Bloody Brook people caught the division fever, but it did not carry them off.
A permanent peace being settled and an unstable currency fixed on a firm cash basis, business projects multiplied, and Deerfield became the centre of exchange and supply for a large territory. The mechanics, or “tradesmen” as they were called, and their apprentices, rivalled in numbers the agricultural population. Here were found the gunsmith, blacksmith, nailer and silversmith, the maker of snowshoes and moccasins, the tanner, currier, shoemaker and saddler, the pillion, knapsack and wallet-maker, the carpenter and joiner, the clapboard and shingle-maker, the makers of wooden shovels, corn-fans, flax-brakes, hackels, looms and spinning-wheels, cart-ropes and bed-lines, and pewter buttons, the tailor, hatter, furrier, feltmaker, barber and wigmaker, the cartwright, millwright, cabinet-maker, watchmaker, the brickmaker and mason, the miller, the carder, clothier, fuller, spinner, weaver of duck and common fabrics, the potter, the gravestone-cutter, the cooper, the potash-maker, the skilled forger who turned out loom and plow irons, farm and kitchen utensils. There were doctors and lawyers, the judge and the sheriff; storekeepers were many, and tavern-keepers galore. To all these the old account-books in Memorial Hall bear testimony.
Many leading men held commissions from the King in both civil and military service. These were rather a distinctive class, holding their heads quite high, and when the Revolution broke out they were generally loyal to the King, making heavy odds against the Whigs. But new leaders came to the front, who, so far as they had character and force, held their own after the war, and the old Tory leaders were relegated to the rear.