These people were Irish Presbyterians who came from Ireland about the year 1718. Francis Brimley, A. M. Collins, Samuel Knox and Patrick Boies came up from Hartford, Conn., and purchased land of Christopher Lawton and Francis Wells, to whom the legislature had conveyed undivided parts of the township.
The first clergyman was Rev. Mr. McClenathan, an Irishman, who received £135 a year for his services. He did not give satisfaction and remained only two years, when he became a chaplain in the army. Rev. James Morton, also an Irishman, was installed as pastor in August, 1748, and preached to the people for twenty years. He retired June 2, 1767, and lived in Blandford, Mass., until his death, which occurred in October, 1793, at the age of 80 years.
Many of the representatives of the town to the legislature for nearly a hundred years after its settlement were native born Irishmen or the sons of Irishmen, among whom were Reuben Boies, William Knox, Timothy Blair, John Ferguson, Daniel Boies, Patrick Boies, Samuel Knox, Daniel Collins, and David Boies. The following are the names among the early families: McClinton, Reed, Brown, Taggart, Blair, Wells, Montgomery, Stewart, Campbell, Ferguson, Boies, Sennett, Wilson, Gibbs, Knox, Young, Carr, Black, Anderson and Hamilton.
Hon. Patrick Boies, a descendant of the Boies family who settled in Blandford, Mass., was the first lawyer admitted to the Hampden county bar, in 1812, and one of the first sheriffs of Hampden county. A daughter of Patrick Boies was the organist in St. Mary’s church, Westfield, Mass., for several years. The first clergyman of the Congregational church of Blandford, was, as stated, an Irishman named McClenathan, one of the petitioners to Governor Shute.
Chester is another of the towns of Hampden county, Mass., settled a few years after Blandford, almost entirely by Irish. The present town formed one of the ten original townships sold at auction by order of the general court, Jan. 2, 1762. About that time the first settlers of the place began to arrive who in all probability were like large numbers of Irish coming to this country at that time, Presbyterians, although the names of some of them would indicate that they were Catholics, such as John and David Gilmore, Thomas Kennedy, Daniel Fleming, William Moore, Thomas McIntire, William Kennedy, John McIntire, James Clark, Andrew Fleming. Other prominent settlers were the Gordons, Hollands, Knoxs, Henrys, Hamiltons, Quiglays, Elders and Bells. This town was incorporated Oct. 31, 1765, when it was called Murrayfield. Among the clergymen who officiated at Chester we find the name of Rev. Andrew McCune.
The first settlers of Granville, Mass., which was first called Bedford, were almost all from Ireland. Following the first settler, Samuel Bancroft, came Daniel Cooley, Thomas Spellman, John Root, Peter Gibbons and Samuel Church. Dr. Holland in his “History of Western Massachusetts” refers to the longevity of the early settlers of this town as quite remarkable. The ancestor of the Cooleys from Ireland died at the age of 90 years; of the Spellmans, who died in 1767, at 93; of the Gibbonses at 92; of the Churches at 95, and of the Roots at 103. Hamilton, Goff, Cortiss, Gibbons, Clark, Moore, Phelan were also early settlers at Granville.
The one hundredth anniversary of the settlement of Rev. Timothy M. Cooley, in 1795, took place in Granville in August, 1895, at which a large number of the descendants of those early Irish settlers were present, when they most fittingly honored the memory of their ancestors. J. G. Holland says that the facts were communicated to him by Rev. Mr. Cooley in 1854, when he was 83 years of age. He was born in Granville and like many of the Cooleys of Hampden county was descended from old Daniel Cooley from Ireland.
Among the early inhabitants of Rowe, Mass., which was settled in 1744, we find the names of Michael Wilson, Henry Gleason, William Taylor, Mathew Barr, and Joseph Thomas. They were a portion of the Irish colony to Worcester county, which after a short time scattered to form new settlements. The first permanent settlement of Shelborne was about 1760 by several Irish families who had lived for a time in Londonderry, N. H. Among them are the names of Joseph Thompson, Patrick Lawson, Robert Wilson, John Taylor, James Ryder, Daniel Nims and Samuel Hunter.
Quite a number of these men were soldiers in the Revolution and also took an important part in Shay’s insurrection. The first settler of the town of Ashfield, Mass., was Richard Ellis, a native of Dublin, Ireland. He was soon followed by Thomas Phillips, whose sister he married. Phillips built a log house for himself and family almost a half mile north of Mr. Ellis. A family named Smith, which had settled in South Hadley, soon joined them and they were followed by other families from time to time so that in ten years they numbered about twenty families and over one hundred people. They labored as none but the pioneers of the forest know how to toil to obtain a comfortable support for their families. The town increased years later in population and prosperity and was incorporated in June, 1765, and ten years later they like thousands of their countrymen took an active part in the Revolution, when they drew up a preamble and resolutions signed by Ellis, Phillips, and sixty-five others, denouncing England.
The settlers of Pelham, Mass., were Irish Presbyterians and in the agreement of the original committee with Col. John Stoddard, of whom the territory was purchased, occurs this passage: “It is agreed that families of good conversation be settled on the premises, who shall be such as the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Ireland or their descendants and none to be admitted but such as bring good and undeniable credentials or certificates of their being persons of good conversation and of the Presbyterian persuasion and confirm to the discipline thereof.”