April 1775: Longmeadow Reports

Battle of Lexington 1775 by Amos Doolittle

This week Massachusetts celebrates Patriots’ Day, a holiday commemorating the Battles of Lexington and Concord which took place on April 19, 1775, and marked the first significant military engagements of the American Revolutionary War. But what impact did “the shot heard ‘round the world'' have on the more distant Western Massachusetts towns like Longmeadow? Though Paul Revere certainly didn’t ride as far as Springfield warning of the approaching British Regulars, surrounding towns were certainly aware of what was occurring to the east of us.

We have a lens on this important time via the diary of Longmeadow’s minister, Rev. Stephen Williams. Interestingly, April 19th, 1775 is only noteworthy in Williams’ diary as the day that a new house was raised on the town green. It was built for David White (1746-1823) and still stands in town today. Williams wrote: “this day David White’s house was raised - it was a windy day and therefore more difficult - but no remarkable disaster - Oliver Burt’s foot was bruised some and Billy Colton’s shin - broke -...” These were the last hours the community would be unaware of the history-altering events taking place on the other end of the state. Two days later it is believed that this same David White, whose house was being raised, and twenty-two other of Longmeadow’s own minutemen began a journey on foot towards the scene of the battle to see what kind of support they could lend.

By the next morning, April 20th, word of the conflict arrived in Longmeadow. Williams records, “This morning- as soon as it was light, the drum beat and three guns were fired as an alarm. The story is that some of the troops had marched from Boston to seize some military stores at Lexington, or Concord, and that some men had been killed, but the accounts are vague – and as yet uncertain - - we must wait. The Lord mercifully prepare us for the tidings we may have. … The minute men are gone to town and men are collecting from various parts, and we have reason to fear that much mischief is done - we are in distress…”

April 21 - this morning about 4 o’clock another message is come advising that there has been a smart engagement at Concord between the regulars and our people, and many killed, but we have but an uncertain account. ‘Tis said houses are burnt, and women and children killed - sad work, indeed - more men are collected and going forth. I prayed with a company. The Lord be pleased to go with them and preserve them; keep them in thy fear. This day we met together for prayer in the meeting house…

April 22 - this morning the post (Mr. Adams) came along and we got his account of matters; they are very indistinct, but we are told that there has been a battle between the King's troops and the people of the country, and that on both sides it was supported with great spirit; thus a war is begun. …In the evening our people (excepting the minute men) came home and bring an account that the King’s troops are got back to Boston; the account of the battle is yet very uncertain.

Six days later, Longmeadow resident, George Cooley, who had gone east with a wagon and provisions for the minutemen, returned to town and reported that Longmeadow’s men had made it as far as Waltham and were camped awaiting further direction. Over the next several years, men from Longmeadow served in various roles in the Continental Army. As you stroll up and down Longmeadow Street today, keep your eyes open to look for homes marked with signs depicting tri-corner hats. These are the homes where these men lived, David White’s house among them.

-Contributed by Melissa M. Cybulski, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member

Source: Stephen Williams Diary, Volume 8 (Transcribed)

Originally published April 21, 2022

Mary Reynolds Schauffler (1802-1895)

While reading through The Proceedings at the Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Longmeadow, October 17th, 1883 I came across an intriguing photograph of one of the invited speakers for the celebration. Mary Reynolds Schauffler was born in Longmeadow on April 3, 1802 to Lucy and Samuel Reynolds and considered to be of “Puritan stock”. Her great-grandfather was Stephen Williams, the original minister of the First Church, and her grandmother was Martha Williams Reynolds, the famous minister’s daughter. The Williams family had emigrated from England in 1638.

Mary spent her later childhood in Somers, CT and taught for a while in New Haven, before focusing upon missionary work overseas. Typical of women of her era, born more than a century before full suffrage was given to people regardless of gender, Mary Reynolds Schauffler’s sphere of influence was within the world of her family and her faith. The Second Great Awakening inspired an evangelical movement which led to the creation of foreign missions. According to Professor Daniel Bays, “One of the striking features of the American foreign missionary force in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was that women composed about sixty percent of it.” Mary became involved with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and was sent to Smyrna (Izmir,) a Greek-influenced city in the western Ottoman Empire (Turkey) in 1830. She was the first single, female foreign missionary and opened a school for girls with the goal of spreading the Christian faith among non-Christians.

The ABCFM was among the first American Christian missionary organizations, established in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th-century, it was the largest and most important of the American missionary organizations. Within the archives of the Longmeadow Historical Society, you can see that it was an organization supported by many 19th-century congregants of First Church. We have certificates showing donations and membership, and people were known to have left money to the group in their wills.

In 1834, Mary Reynolds married William Gottlieb Schauffler, a German-born, American-trained missionary whom she met during their mutual work in Constantinople.

They continued their missionary work in Constantinople for 40 years. The Schaufflers had four sons, two became ministers, one a physician, and another an educator. In 1874 the couple moved to Austria to reside with their oldest son Henry Albert, who was doing missionary work there. William Schauffler died in 1883, the same year Mary was invited back to Longmeadow to speak at the Centennial Celebration of Longmeadow’s incorporation. Not only did she represent a connection to the important first minister of the town, but also a successful pillar of the Christian faith that was at the core of the early community. In her address she said she wished “to congratulate Longmeadow that she has sent out so many missionaries, six of whom were born here and five of their children also having taken up the work. I trust Longmeadow will send out many more of her sons and daughters to the foreign field.”

Mary died in 1895 at age 92. She and her husband are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx with two of their sons. Her contribution to foreign missionary work and presence at the Longmeadow Centennial Celebration is a very interesting aspect of Longmeadow’s history.

-Contributed by Lenny Shaker, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member

References:

Bays, Daniel H. “The Foreign Missionary Movement in the 19th and early 20th Centuries” from https://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/nineteen/nkeyinfo/fmmovement.htm

Springfield Republican 1895

Storrs, Richard Salter, ed. Proceedings at the Centennial Celebration of the Incorporation of the Town of Longmeadow, October 17th, 1883.

Wikipedia

The Longmeadow Border Jog

If you have ever looked at a map of Massachusetts and Connecticut, for the most part, the border between the two is a straight line. That being said, there are exceptions and one of them exists in Longmeadow.

(Credit Google Maps)

The above map clearly shows a dramatic dip in the border as it crosses the Connecticut River followed by a straight line, a quick slant and then a more gradual angle until it seems to level out again around the East Longmeadow line. Why is the border between these two states not a straight line here? It turns out we have the founder of Springfield, two lazy surveyors, and the founders of Enfield to thank for this anomaly.

Our story starts with William Pynchon who founded Agawam Plantation (now modern day Hampden County and Enfield, Somers, and Suffield, CT) on land purchased from the Agawam people. in 1636. Pynchon decided on the spot for a settlement because it was situated on a high bluff overlooking the confluence of three rivers, the Connecticut, the Chicopee, and the Westfield Rivers, making it an ideal spot for a trading post. And while Pynchon had been treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the settlement he founded was administered as part of the Connecticut Colony along with the much more geographically closer Wethersfield, Windsor, and Hartford.

(William Pynchon Credit Wikipedia)

For the first four years of its existence, Agawam Plantation was administered as part of Connecticut. That began to change in 1640 when grain supplies began to run low due to a poor harvest the previous fall and cattle began to die of starvation as a result. In an effort to improve the situation, Windsor and Hartford authorized Pynchon to negotiate the purchase of corn for all three communities from the Pocumtuc people near Agawam Plantation. When Pynchon failed to secure the corn, according to early 20th century historian Charles Henry Barrows, the other three communities in the colony sent Pequot War veteran Captain John Mason with “money in one hand and a sword in the other” to secure the much needed feed. While Mason was able to obtain the corn, he upset the settlers of Agawam Plantation with his heavy handed tactics with their Pocumtuc trading partners and his public insult of Pynchon’s previous efforts. As a result, the settlers voted to separate themselves from the Connecticut colony and joined the Massachusetts Bay Colony as the Town of Springfield, named for Pynchon’s hometown in England, later that year.

In part because of the secession of Springfield, the Massachusetts Bay Colony authorized an expedition to survey its southern border with Rhode Island and Connecticut to verify its territorial claims in 1642. The survey group, led by Nathaniel Woodward and Solomon Saffery, failed to do a rigorous survey. Instead of traveling over land for their survey, Saffery and Woodward marked the established southern border point of three miles south of the southernmost branch of the Charles River and then sailed around Cape Cod and up the Connecticut River to where they believed was parallel with the established border point. The problem was that they were off by a little over seven miles which placed Enfield in Massachusetts.

(Map showing Connecticut’s various border disputes with its neighbors: Credit William F. Keegan via Wikipedia)

While Connecticut protested the results of the survey, they didn’t get around to doing their own survey to dispute it until 1695. In the meantime, the town of Freshwater Plantation, MA (now Enfield, CT) was incorporated in 1683. At that time, the border between the newly formed town and Longmeadow (then part of Springfield) was established as the banks of the Longmeadow River (now known as Longmeadow Brook which has changed course considerably to the north). This boundary was made without any consideration of any colonial charter dictates because both towns firmly believed that they were within Massachusetts’ legal boundaries.

After Connecticut’s 1695 survey cast some serious doubts on the accuracy of the 1642 survey, Massachusetts and Connecticut agreed to a joint survey in 1702 that reaffirmed the accuracy of the 1695 one. In an effort to avert intervention from the English Crown in the dispute, Connecticut agreed to sell Massachusetts the disputed territory in 1713. Unfortunately, those living in this fought-over land were not consulted and disliked the decision because Massachusetts had higher taxes and fewer civil liberties when compared to its southern neighbor. Eventually, Connecticut reversed itself on the sale and in 1749 the towns of Enfield, Somers, Suffield, and Woodstock were accepted as part of Connecticut. In accepting these towns, the General Assembly reasoned that they were granted to Connecticut as part of the colony’s original charter and the 1713 sale was illegitimate because it was in violation of the powers granted in each colony’s charter.

(Copy of Map L from the Massachusetts State Archives as found in The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut by Clarence Winthrop Bowen)

As part of this reversal, Connecticut in theory claimed what is now the southern part of Longmeadow as part of Enfield. In turn, Massachusetts did not recognize that the towns had seceded and continued to include them as part of Massachusetts on official maps, tried to collect taxes, and sent formal notices of feast days and elections. Resolving the disputed area of the border of Longmeadow and Enfield was not resolved until 1797 when commissioners from both states met to settle the issue. At that meeting, Connecticut formally dropped its claim to the area and both states agreed to the present border following the old route of the Longmeadow Brook.

(1794 Map of Longmeadow with text explaining border disputes and historical changes: Credit Longmeadow Historical Society Archives)

Want to learn more about Longmeadow’s borders? Please check out our previous History Note on Longmeadow’s shrinking borders.

Sources:

Baron, Robert. “Surveying Connecticut’s Borders.” Connecticut Explored 10, no. 2, 2012.

Barrows, Charles Henry The history of Springfield in Massachusetts for the young: being also in some part the history of other towns and cities in the county of Hampden. The Connecticut Valley Historical Society, Springfield, 1911

Bowen, Clarence Winthrop The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut. James R. Osgood and Company, Boston, 1882.