The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5

by Various

Although Hazen named the last mountain on his line where he supposed the eastern line of New York, would ultimately run "Mount Belcher," in honor of the Governor who had commissioned him to lay it, the just unpopularity of the line itself and Belcher's connection with it immediately caused his recall from his government, and the appointment of William Shirley in his stead. Belcher was Massachusetts born; while Shirley, though British born, became one of the ablest and most successful of all the colonial governors of Massachusetts. The building of Fort Shirley in 1744 and the naming it after the new Governor, as well as the building a little later of the two forts to the westward,—Fort Pelham in Rowe and Fort Massachusetts in what is now North Adams,—all within a couple of miles of the new boundary line, showed a concern of the colony for its now greatly curtailed northern limits, as well as a much greater concern for the defence of the scattered settlements west of the Connecticut river from the French and Indians, who had several well-trod war-paths to the English settlements on the Connecticut and the Deerfield.

But, after all, the route by the Hoosac River had been and continued the main path from Canada to New England for the French and their savage Indian allies. Whether they came down the Hudson to the mouth of the Hoosac at Schaghticoke, or struck that river on the flank at Eagle Bridge, there was a well-beaten trail—the old Mohawk trail—along the north bank of that river all the way from Schaghticoke to what is now North Adams; and, in continuation of that river trail, the "old Indian path" over the Hoosac Mountain, directly over the line of the present Hoosac Tunnel, led down to the upper reaches of the Deerfield river and so down to the Connecticut at old Deerfield. It became, therefore, of great moment to Massachusetts to defend the line of the Deerfield in the French and Indian war of 1744-48. A few private houses were fortified in what is now Bernardston, and two or three more further west in Coleraine, particularly Fort Lucas and Fort Morrison, the owners being assisted by grants of men and supplies from the General Court; and during this war and more especially the next and last French war, the Indians often lurked with hostile intent in the vicinity of these extemporized forts, and not infrequently surprised and killed and scalped men from the little garrisons, and carried women and children into captivity to Canada.

But the first regular fort built to protect the valley of the Deerfield and incidentally also the line of the Connecticut, was placed by Massachusetts in the present town of Heath. It was built wholly at the public expense, and garrisoned by regularly enlisted or impressed soldiers, and named Fort Shirley from the enterprising Governor of the Province. John Stoddard of Northampton was then Colonel of the militia of Hampshire, a designation at that time including all of Massachusetts west of the Connecticut River; he was Shirley's right-hand man for this end of the Province, and it was under his general direction that Forts Shirley and Pelham and Massachusetts were erected.

The letter is still extant in Stoddard's own hand, dated July 20, 1744, in which Capt. William Williams is ordered by him "to erect as soon as may be" a block-house sixty feet square "about five miles and a half from Hugh Morrison's house in Colrain in or near the line run last week under the direction of Col. Timo. Dwight by our order." In the same letter, Williams is directed to employ soldiers in the construction of the fort, carpenters to be allowed "nine shillings, others six shillings a day old Tenor." Several other directions are given, and the main outlines of the fort are prescribed; some bills are still extant giving items of money paid out for many different parts of the work; six of the original hewn timbers of the building are in good preservation today in the barn of Orsamus Maxwell in Heath, each stick telling some tale of the original mode of construction; so that, from all these sources of information, a pretty accurate idea of the old fort can be made out to-day, 141 years after it was built.

For the outside, white pine logs were scored down, and then hewn to six inches thick and fourteen inches high; and the scores worked 48 days on these, receiving £14, 8s. for their work, and the hewers 24 days, receiving £10, 16s. The walls of the fort were twelve feet high, thus requiring nine courses of these timbers laid edgewise one above another, each being doweled to the one below by red oak dowel-pins, two of which were pulled out of their quiet resting places of 141 years' duration, in a good state of preservation, by Mr. Maxwell and the writer, Sept. 5, 1885. Those ends of these timbers that came to the four corners of the fort were dove-tailed into each other in the well known manner, so that there were straight lines and strong locking at the corners; and it so happens, that three of the six timbers preserved are corner timbers, and show at one end the exact mode of locking.

There were two mounts on two corners of the fort 12 feet square and 7 feet high; and the houses and barracks within the fort were 11 feet wide with shingled roofs; and the mount-timber, the insides of the houses, and the floors, were all hewn, presumably of the same width and thickness as the wall-timbers. Undoubtedly the whole parade in the middle of the fort was also floored in the same way, as the site of the fort was and is low and wet.

The fort was built in this manner during the months of August, September, and October, 1744; and on the 30th of the last mentioned month, Capt. Williams commenced to billet himself and the soldiers under his command at the fort. He remained there all the winter and spring; about the 1st of March he enlisted 14 of his men for the Louisburg Expedition, at Col. Stoddard's request, whom he took to Boston; but was not himself allowed to embark, and returned to his fort; while later in the season, under a strong call for reinforcements for Louisburg by Gov. Shirley, Williams took 74 able bodied men to Boston, recruited by himself in less than six days mostly in the Connecticut valley, and was given a Lieutenant colonel's commission in the regiment destined for Louisburg commanded by Col. John Choate. They sailed in June, 1745, but the fortress had been taken before they arrived, and the regiment with Williams as acting Colonel was detained there to do garrison duty.

Fort Pelham in Rowe was built by Williams before he left for Louisburg, that is, in the spring of 1745; and in the autumn of that year we find Capt. Ephraim Williams, a kinsman of the other, afterwards founder of Williams College, in command of Fort Shirley and of the line of forts. It is fair to presume that he was appointed to the command on the withdrawal of the other in June; but which of the two built Fort Massachusetts along the same line, or whether either of them, can not now be stated with absolute certainty. It is probable that Ephraim Williams saw to its construction under the Committee of the General Court, of which Stoddard was Chairman; and at any rate he was in command of the whole "line of Forts, viz. Northfield, Falltown, Colrain, Fort Shirley, Fort Pelham, Fort Massachusetts, and the soldiers posted at the Collars, Shattucks Fort, Bridgman's, Deerfield, Rhode Town, and New Hampton," as early as Dec. 10, 1745. Just a year from that time he sends in his account for the entire year,—"In which time he has had three hundred and fifty men under his particular charge and government."

Because it was the first fort built by the Colony in that region, and especially because Fort Massachusetts was captured and burnt by the French and Indians in August, 1746, Shirley became very prominent in that war, and was the headquarters of the successive commanders of the line of forts. Massachusetts was rebuilt early in 1747, and thereafter became the chief work; for both before and after the Peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748, it was perceived that the sites of Shirley and Pelham had been ill-chosen, and that the route by the Hoosac was the one to be kept open for hostile demonstration towards Crown Point, and the one to be defended against hostile demonstration from all that quarter. Forts Shirley and Pelham, accordingly, which were very differently constructed, ceased to be of much military significance after the Peace, though both were slightly garrisoned for several years after. In 1749 and a part certainly of the next year, there were five men only in Fort Shirley, namely, Lieutenant William Lyman, Gershom Hawks, John Powell, Samuel Stebbins, and Peter Bove. From June, 1725 till the end of May, 1754, one man in each constituted the garrison of Shirley and Pelham. Archibald Powell held watch and ward on the heights of Heath and George Hall on the lofty meadow in Rowe. Each drew his pay from the treasury of the colony; and each had a magnificent lookout from his solitary sentry-box. Monadnock is in plain sight to the east, and Haystack to the north from the site of Fort Shirley and the Hoosacs to the west and Greylock overtopping them greeted the roving gaze of George Hall from the picketed enclosure of Fort Pelham.

There was but one chaplain to the line of forts, Rev. John Norton, appointed from Falltown in 1745, who passed from one to the other as his sense of duty to each garrison might prompt; and Mrs. Norton with one or two children lived in Fort Shirley for more than a year while her husband was in captivity in Canada. Scouting parties of the soldiers were kept constantly passing from fort to fort when not employed in garrison or other duty; their allowance on the march was for each soldier per day one pound of bread, one pound of pork, and one gill of rum; while in garrison each man was allowed per day one pound of bread, and one-half pint of peas or beans, two pounds of pork for three days, and one gallon of molasses for 42 days. It is certain, that one or more cows were kept by the garrison of Fort Shirley, perhaps on account of Mrs. Norton and her children, for there was a cleared field around the fort, and an old cow-bell half eaten up by rust was found not long ago near its site, which site, it must be remembered, was several miles from any habitation of men at any time in the last century.