quota of men and supplies through the war. Occasionally, in the later years of the struggle, the Tories temporarily obstructed the necessary town legislation. Some of these soon found themselves behind the bars, and others in enforced silence under penalty of like restraint. The minister, Mr. Ashley, who had been firm in his loyalty, died in 1780, and the Tories lost one of their strongest supports. Not until 1787 could the town unite upon his successor, when Rev. John Taylor was ordained. The uprising called Shays’ Rebellion did much to harmonize the warring factions, as all united to put it down. Three companies, under Captains Joseph Stebbins, Samuel Childs and Thomas W. Dickinson, were sent to the field of action.
From this time, harmony prevailed, and the career of the town was that of an industrious, hard-working, prosperous, intellectual people. Libraries and literary societies were established, which are still flourishing. Deerfield Academy was founded in 1797, and endowed largely through the liberality of the citizens. Its influence was felt for generations, as its pupils from far and wide were scions of leading families. Among its faculty and graduates may be named men of national reputation, in the scientific, the historical, the ecclesiastical, the military, the artistic and the industrial world.
Failing health obliged Mr. Taylor to resign;
and in 1807 the Rev. Samuel Willard succeeded him in the ministry, when, in the separation of the Congregational churches, Deerfield led the van on the liberal side.
The political storms of the first two decades of the century raged here with strength and vigor. In the War of 1812 a “Professor of the Art of War” was added to the faculty of the Deerfield Academy, and a Peace Party circulated their protesting publications.
Deerfield was early at the front in the antislavery agitation, and in the war lost some of her best blood. The names of her dead in that righteous war are carved on a fitting monument pointing aloft from the midst of her ancient training-field.
One great attraction in the old town is the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, chartered in 1870. It owns and occupies the old academy building, which it secured when the new Free Dickinson Academy was established in 1878. Its museum occupies the entire structure, and contains an exhaustive, characteristic collection of the implements, utensils and general household belongings of the colonial days; and also of the original lords of the valley, the Pocumtuck Indians.