Further down the Connecticut than Deerfield lies Hadley, which has been more fortunate than most towns in its historian. Sylvester Judd’s History of Hadley, including the early history of Hatfield, South Hadley, Amherst, and Granby, Mass., With family genealogies, by L. M. Boltwood, Northampton, 1863, follows down the successive wars with much detail.[456] A systematic treatment of the whole subject was made by Epaphras Hoyt in his Antiquarian Researches, comprising a history of the Indian Wars in the Country bordering on the Connecticut River, etc., to 1760, published at Greenfield in 1824. There had been published seventy-five years before, A short narrative of mischief done by the French and Indian enemy on the western frontiers of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Mar. 15, 1743-44, to Aug. 2, 1748, drawn up by the Rev. Mr. Doolittle of Northfield, and found among his manuscripts after his death. Boston, 1750.[457]
By the time of Shirley’s war (1744-48), the frontier line had been pushed westerly to the line of the Housatonic,[458] and at Poontoosuck we find the exposed garrison life repeated, and its gloom and perils narrated in J. E. A. Smith’s History of Pittsfield, 1734-1800 (Boston, 1869). William Williams, long a distinguished resident of this latter town, had been detailed from the Hampshire[459] militia in 1743 to connect the Connecticut and the Hudson with a line of posts, and he constructed forts at the present Heath, Rowe, and Williamstown, known respectively as forts Shirley,[460] Pelham, and Massachusetts. In August, 1746, the latter post, whose garrison was depleted to render assistance during the eastward war, was attacked by the French and Indians, and destroyed.[461]
Fort Massachusetts was rebuilt, and its charge, in June, 1747, committed to Major Ephraim Williams.[462] It became the headquarters of the forts and block-houses scattered throughout the region now the county of Berkshire, maintaining garrisons drawn from the neighboring settlers, and at times from the province forces in part. The plans of one of these fortified posts are preserved in the state archives, and from the drawings given in Smith’s Pittsfield (p. 106) the annexed cuts are made.[463]
In 1754 the charge of the western frontier was given to Col. Israel Williams.[464]
These Berkshire garrisons were in some measure assisted by recruits from Connecticut, as that colony could best protect in this way its own frontiers to the northward. Beside the general histories of Connecticut, this part of her history is treated in local monographs like Bronson’s Waterbury, H. R. Stiles’ Ancient Windsor, Cothren’s Ancient Woodbury, Larned’s Windham County, and Orcutt and Beardsley’s Derby.[465]
CHAPTER III.
THE MIDDLE COLONIES.