Bowles’ Farm Postcard

While exploring eBay for Longmeadow memorabilia I discovered this 1907 Bowles’ Farm postcard and purchased it for the Longmeadow Historical Society. I was unaware of Bowles’ Farm, as it does not exist today, but believed there must be an interesting history behind it and sought to uncover it.

The postcard was sent from 71-year-old Julia Bowles to 7-year-old Ruth Coolidge in Vermont. The nature of their relationship is unclear, but Julia was originally from Vermont, born in 1846. She had been widowed since 1871 and her three children (Henry Bowles, Caleb Bowles, and Angie Hammatt) lived in the Longmeadow area. The farm’s main house, as seen on the postcard, is located at 878 Longmeadow Street and is known as the Dr. Benjamin Stebbins House. It was built in 1795 for Lucy Colton Stebbins as a wedding gift from her late father's estate. Her father, Marchant Samuel Colton, was one of the wealthiest men in the Connecticut Valley.

Over the years, the house passed through several owners (see more here) and was eventually purchased in 1888 by John Stanton Carr of Springfield, owner of the J.S. Carr & Company, manufacturers of crackers and biscuits, as a country home and farm known as the Carr Place. At that time the property encompassed 75 acres and extended from Main Street (Longmeadow Street) to the Connecticut River.

The house was expanded after this and a 2nd floor was added. After J.S. Carr’s death in 1894, the property was sold to Reverend Rufus S. Underwood in 1896.

The farm became known as Sunset Farm and became recognized for its strawberries. In 1904 the home and approximately 60 acres of land were purchased by Henry Leland Bowles for his widowed mother Julia Bowles. Henry Bowles was a very successful restauranteur with a chain of restaurants located across the country and into Canada. He would go on to serve two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1925-1929) and was instrumental in developing the Agawam airport, opening in 1930, and became known as Bowles Field. There were two barns and a carriage house on the property.

The farm became well known for raising and showing chickens, but as seen on the postcard there were cows and pigs as well.

Apparently, in 1908 a fire destroyed the second floor of the home which was rebuilt and a third floor was added. Two cottages were built on the property in 1913 - one for the farm’s manager and the other for Mr. Bowles's chauffeur. These homes remain and, eventually, the road to access them became Farmlea Road. According to The Springfield Republican December 29, 1913, “to provide for 1000 or more poultry a new two-story house 16 by 172 feet for laying hens has been built. A second house is nearly completed 82 by 16 … with an incubator with a capacity for hatching 3000 chickens at one setting.”

Unfortunately, I have been unable to find any information on the commercial success of the Bowles Farm and how long it remained an active farm. Julia Bowles died at age 83 on May 8, 1923. Her daughter, Angie Bowles Hammatt, and her family remained in the home until 1946. Angie was married to Rev Albert Hammatt who preached in various nearby communities.

The last farm-related transaction I could find was in 1945.

The recipient of the postcard, Miss Ruth Coolidge, was born in Waterville Quebec on July 29, 1900, and grew up in Bellows Falls Vermont. She graduated from Middlebury College and earned a master's degree from Columbia University and taught high school in Bellows Falls, Walpole New Hampshire, and Jackson, Michigan. She died on August 30, 1969. Julia Bowles’ son-in-law Arthur Hammatt was a Universalist minister in Bellows Falls, Vermont at the time that the postcard was written and this may have been a basis for the correspondence.

The property today consists of only 0.73 acres as most of the land has been sold. Bay Path University owns the homes to the south and west. Longmeadow’s farming past is extensive and little remains of it today.eat fun to uncover the stories of these bygone days of our community.

-Contributed by Lenny Shaker, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member

Sources:

Springfield Republican Wikipedia Longmeadow Annual Town Report Massachusetts Cultural Resource System

Stop Thief! The Mystery of the Missing Gun!

The exciting news in 2023 is the return of a firearm missing from the Longmeadow Historical Society Collections since 1970!

The story begins with a letter from the U. S. Department of Justice, dated August 13, 2018. The letter explained "The United States is investigating thefts of antique firearms and other items from museums and historical societies that took place in the 1970's and 1980's, primarily on the East Coast. A list of the recovered items is attached. We do recognize that these thefts took place 30 to 48 years ago and that you may not have detailed records, but we would appreciate any assistance you can give in identifying where these objects belong." The attached list contained 123 items, briefly described. Wow!

This author shared the list with fellow historical institutions in the area and then got to work. There was a legend in our historical society about a theft many years before. An investigation into the old accession records in the Historical Society's archives began. The challenge was finding any descriptions with enough detail to confirm that any of the recovered items were ours. One list of items displayed in the "Militia Room" included; "long-barrelled British rifle, Indian trade"; "Revolutionary War rifle and bayonet", and "three single-barrelled shotguns." But as many of our readers will understand, old descriptions are often inadequate, inaccurate, or just plain wrong. It was nearly impossible to correlate those early descriptions with anything remaining in the collection or from the list of recovered items.

But, and you knew there would be a but, there was one exception. One of the recovered guns was marked with a name, which was familiar from previous research in Longmeadow--"Wm Goldthwait." Several previous History Notes have been written about the very talented Goldthwait family, including Martha Chapin Goldthwait (1862-1934), William Goldthwait (1844-1922), and William Colton Goldthwait (1816-1882). We found that Martha Goldthwait, William Colton Goldthwait's daughter, donated the gun and other family items in 1923 with the note "gun, made by Wm Goldthwait." We swiftly contacted the Assistant United States Attorney in charge of the case.

Further research into board meeting minutes finds a mention of the theft in the September 28, 1970 meeting: "Mr. Lincoln discussed the break which occurred the previous week. Taken in part were two Revolutionary War Muskets, other guns, a militia hat, etc." How we wish they had been more specific! The following May the minutes included "There followed a discussion of insurance payments for the stolen guns, cartridge box, and hat, and the repair to the damaged clock." Further digging produced a letter written by then-president Alan Lincoln to the insurance company listing the missing items. This list had slightly more detail--the hat is now described as a "military hat, silver band and plume, 1812, from the estate of Fidelia West," and the cartridge box now had the added detail of "red heart cartridge case." A description of an exhibit included the detail that one of the missing guns was an 1809 Lemuel Pomeroy musket.

Follow-up phone calls with three previous board members who were involved with the historical society at the time of the theft did not produce any specific recollections about the theft. One of them suggested that the former town Chief of Police might be able to help. He offered to check but believed that the records from that time would have been purged. A later call from a current officer confirmed that the older records had been purged and that the current records only went back to 1974. So close! Inquiries to the Insurance Company had the same result--records from that far back were gone.

In the past few months, we have been given some slide photographs done in the 1960's, 1970's and 1980's. While scanning these, I did find a photograph of the Military room that shows a hat, likely the missing hat from the theft.

Here is some background of two possible owners of the gun. William Colton Goldthwait (1816-1882) was the son of Erastus and Hannah Colton Goldthwait. William C. was an educator and farmer in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. William C.'s nephew, also named William (1844-1922), spent time as an apprentice at the United States Armory in Springfield, MA. The 1865 State census lists his occupation as "armorer." Some research into the Armory records by a museum colleague found that William showed up in the payroll records from April 1861 to May 1866, working in the Machine Shop as a toolmaker. The gun does not appear to be similar to the guns being made at the Armory at the time. While it is possible that he made the gun as some kind of apprenticeship project, the Armory records do not include that information. Perhaps he made it at a small, private gunsmith's shop.

After his time at the Armory, William worked at the Hampden Watch Company. Later, because of ill health, he went west to recuperate in Colorado. It seems to have been successful, as he returned to Longmeadow and spent many years enjoying outdoor pursuits. Could he have been the maker and owner of the gun, not his uncle? It is possible, as Martha Chapin Goldthwait, his cousin, donated the gun in 1923, the year after his death.

Consulting a gun expert, we learned, "It is a New England Target Buggy Rifle made in the 1850s. The iron frame and grips make it almost unique, as does the engraving on them. There is one other known example in an old collection in southern Missouri, which is unsigned but must certainly have been made by the same man. The stock with the wood entirely encased in metal also make it unusual. The name inscribed on the gun is almost certainly the maker." So could the original owner (and maker?) have been William C. Goldthwait, the educator, or William Goldthwait the armorer, even though he would have been very young at the time of its manufacture? We're still working on sorting this mystery out.

Recently, two of Longmeadow Historical Society's board members made a trip to the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia to join in a repatriation ceremony with others who had stolen objects recovered. The ceremony included 16 organizations as well as FBI investigators and prosecutors involved in the case.

From the press release provided by the Museum of the American Revolution: "In 2009, Upper Merion Township detectives and the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office re-opened a cold case investigation of thefts of valuable antique firearms and other items that occurred between 1968 and 1979 from the Valley Forge Historical Society Museum in Valley Forge, PA, and other museums. During that investigation, a confidential source turned over several antique firearms believed to have been stolen from museums in Pennsylvania.

The FBI Art Crime team and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania joined the investigation in 2016. In May 2017, based on information from a variety of sources, including the Museum of the American Revolution, confidential sources and Delaware County court documents, the FBI, with the assistance of Upper Merion Township detectives, executed a search warrant at a residence in Newark, DE and recovered a number of antique firearms and other items believed to have been stolen from museums. For the next several years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, with the assistance of the FBI Art Crime Team, the Upper Merion Township Police Department, the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office and the Museum of the American Revolution, worked to determine the source of those items by contacting museums throughout the country and researching numerous documents.

In 2021, Michael Corbett was indicted by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania for possession of firearms and other items stolen from museums in the 1970’s. Corbett entered a guilty plea to that charge and, as part of the plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Corbett agreed to turn over to the government other stolen firearms to which he had access."

Three local museums received objects from this case, including Longmeadow's William Goldthwait buggy target rifle, a powder horn from the Belchertown Historical Association, and a pistol taken from the Springfield Armory.

This gun returns to the Storrs House Museum 100 years after its original arrival. The Longmeadow Historical Society plans to have the gun on display in the Storrs House Museum. And of course, as diligent stewards of the collections, the Historical Society now has a modern security system in place.

“… poor & unprovided for…” – The Indentured Simonds Children

In the early days of the Commonwealth, children of parents who, for one reason or another, were unable to care for them became public charges. Archives of the Longmeadow Historical Society include indentures for twenty-five children who were wards of Longmeadow and under the care of the Selectmen and Overseers of the Poor. One such family was the Simonds. The indenture contracts in some ways tells just the beginning of the story for these children. What becomes of them after the terms of their service ends is a much harder story to uncover. Curious about what became of them after they were indentured, we traced some of their stories.

Ebenezer and Caroline Simonds settled in Longmeadow and started raising a family. The 1790 U.S. Census shows that the household included one son (John, who died shortly after the census was taken) and three daughters: Clarissa; Cleora; and Asenath. Four more children followed: Luke; Loammi, born in 1794; Sophia, born in 1796; and Anne, born in 1798.

Ebenezer, a blacksmith, struggled to support his growing family and family finances fell further into distress when Ebenezer died on November 4, 1799. The widowed Caroline found it impossible to financially support seven children and she turned to the town for assistance. Town records do not show payments to support Caroline or her oldest four children, so perhaps she was able to care for them using other resources and they were not considered town paupers. But we know that the three youngest Simonds (or Simons or Symonds or Symons) children became town paupers and that at least two of them were indentured outto citizens of Longmeadow so that they would be fed, housed, and raised to be productive citizens of the community. Here is what we know about these children.

Loammi Simonds

On December 21, 1801, Longmeadow Selectmen indentured eight-year old Loammi to Moses Field until he turned 21 years of age in 1815. Loammi was to learn husbandry (or farming) from this established farmer.

Standard indenture clauses required Loammi to: serve his master “well and faithfull”; keep his “lawful commands everywhere at all times readily”; “do no damage to his said master”; “not wast[e] the goods of his said master nor lend them to any unlawfully at card dice or any other unlawfull game he shall not play”;“nor no matrimony contract during said term”; and “taverns ale houses & plases of gaming he shall not haunt or frequent”. While these terms may seem harsh to our ears, New England children in a family unit were generally expected to follow such rules. Loammi was not a party to the contract (as a town pauper, Longmeadow Selectmen signed as his surrogate parents), but he was required to abide by these terms until the age of twenty-one.

For his part, Moses Field promised to teach him to read, write, and cipher, feed and clothe him, and “at the expiration thereof shall give unto him the said apprentice sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven cents lawfull money of said Commonwealth...”

Loammi and Sarah had three children: Clarinda; Simeon; and John. Loammi was a successful farmer, having apparently paid attention to his lessons from Moses Field. He was also a respected member of the community and was appointed to leadership positions at First Church. In early 1868, Loammi died of pneumonia and he was buried in Longmeadow. For Loammi Simons, his indenture period worked exactly as it was designed – he was given a stable upbringing and was taught a useful trade that he was able to practice productively throughout the rest of his life.

Sophia Symons

Selectman's records show that town residents took care of Sophia during 1802 and 1803 and, since she was a town pauper, they were compensated for doing so. We know that she spent periods of time in the homes of Zadock Stebbins, Israel Colton, and Deacon William Colton and that Gaius Bliss made her a pair of shoes.

When she was seven years old, on December 2, 1803, “Sophia Symonds Daughter of Ebenezer Simonds …whose child is left without support” was indentured to Er Taylor of Longmeadow “to learn the art trade and mystery housewifery after the manner of an apprentice”. The indenture period was to last until Sophia turned age 18. Er Taylor was paid $10.50 to assume this responsibility.

The terms of her indenture were similar to that of her brother, Loammi, but, like most girls, Sophia was not required to learn cyphering (i.e., arithmetic). Also typical for female children, Sophia was not to receive money at the end of her indenture period. These gender-based differences in indenture clauses correlated to the different tasks that were expected of men and women. Cyphering was needed to run a business, which was not an field which women were encouraged to enter. And, women were expected to marry; their husbands would provide for them and they would not need an independent source of funds.

Sophia grew up in the Taylor household in the eastern half of Longmeadow. In 1823, Sophia Simons married Lyman Silcock (or Silcox or Silcocks) of Longmeadow, a stone cutter and farmer. They had two daughters and one son. The 1831 map shows the Silcox family living near the current Longmeadow-East Longmeadow border. By 1855, the family had moved across the street from Ethan Taylor, just north of the East Longmeadow rotary. Ethan was the son of Er Taylor; just six years older than Sophia, they had grown up in the same household and were likely close. As neighbors, it was easy to maintain their friendship.

Unfortunately, the Silcox family was struck with a series of losses. Consumption took daughter Maria Sophia in 1858, and then husband Lyman in 1861. Son Edwin F. Silcox, a surgeon who had served in the 18th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, returned home to practice medicine in Springfield. But, he died shortly afterwards, on Aug. 28, 1864, of typhoid fever. Sophia and her remaining child, Harriet, lived together until Sophia’s death in 1878.

Aware of the challenges that Sophia and Harriet were facing, Ethan assisted his friend. In his will, Ethan Taylor left “One Hundred Dollars to Sophia Silcox, widow of Lyman Silcox late of said Longmeadow...”

While the Taylor family's relationship with Sophia was harmonious, this doesn't appear to be the case for another indentured child of Er Taylor who lived in the household contemporaneously with Sophia and Ethan – William Brumphrey. On April 27, 1815, Er Taylor posted this advertisement in the Hampden Federalist, “Ran away from the subscriber, on the 26th inst. William Brumphrey, an indentured boy, about 15 years of age. All person are forbid harbouring or trusting said boy on my account, as I am determined not to pay any debts of his contracting after this date.”

Anne Simons

The youngest Simons child, Anne, was born in December 1798, less than a year before her father died. Around 1804, she was taken in by Lt. Hezekiah Hale of Longmeadow and, on December 18, 1804 Lt. Hale received $15 “to pay him for keeping Anne Simon one of the towns poor since she has been with him also for taking her in future…”. Most likely, Anne came under his care through an article of indenture, like her siblings, but we do not have a copy of this indenture. So, it is possible that Anne was merely "vondued", or auctioned, on a long-term basis to Lt. Hale and that she was never indentured. A vondue placement would not have obligated Lt. Hale to teach Anne to read, write, or learn how to be a housewife, skills that she would need to make her way in the world as an adult.

Why would Hezekiah Hale take on the responsibility of a young child? Possibly both for companionship and because he needed another pair of hands around the house. Lt. Hale had married Miriam Bliss only a few years earlier (in 1799) when Hezekiah was 59 and Miriam was 31. This older couple had no children and it makes sense that Miriam would have wanted a girl to help her with the many chores needed to run a household. In the 1810 U.S. Census, a white girl between the ages of 11 and 16 lived in Lt. Hale’s household, and this girl is probably Anne.

Lt. Hezekiah Hale died in 1813 when Anne was 15 years old. If Anne was indentured to Lt. Hale, his widow, Miriam Bliss Hale, would have inherited his contractual responsibility for Anne and Anne would have remained in Miriam’s household after Hezekiah’s death. Miriam Bliss Hale did not remain a widow for long. She re-married on April 3, 1816 – to Gad Colton of Longmeadow – and an indentured Anne would have moved to Gad's household.

When she was 16, Anne became pregnant. The last definitive documentation that we have for Anne leaves more questions than answers. An entry in the Longmeadow death records states: “April 15, 1816, Symonds (A Child) dead, mother Anna Symonds.” No further information, such as the name of the father, was given. It is easy to imagine the gossip in the close-knit Longmeadow community when an unwed, under-age young woman gave birth only twelve days after the widow (who was likely responsible for her) married.

Anne would have needed both physical and emotional support after suffering this pregnancy loss, but we do not know where she was living or who was available to help her. She was not yet 18 years old (the standard year for girls to end their indentures), so, if she was indentured, she would have been living with newlyweds Gad and Miriam Colton. She does not appear in the selectman’s records as a pauper, so it is unlikely that she was boarded at another home at the town’s expense.

She may have been living with another member of the Simons family. Her mother, Caroline, and brother, Luke, were also living in Longmeadow and we know that the family stayed in touch and supported each other over the years. Census data reveals that Loammi and Sarah Simons took in his widowed sisters; Clarissa (widow of Daniel Hawley) was in their household in 1855 and Sophia and Harriet Silcox were in their household in 1865.

It is unlikely that we will ever know what became of Anne.

-Contributed by Beth Hoff, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member.

Sources:

Longmeadow Historical Society Archives

Special thanks to Dennis Picard

Massachusetts, U.S. Wills and Probate Records 1635-1991

Marriage-ChurchRecords-1716-1844

Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records, 1620-1988

Massachusetts, U.S., Death Records, 1841-1915

U.S., Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1864-1865

Hampden Federalist, May 4, 1815

Massachusetts Census, 1855 and 1865

U.S. Census