Skating, Sleighing and Sliding

Barney & Berry Ice Skates

Longmeadow Historical Society Collection

Next week, local historian and friend of the Longmeadow Historical Society, Dennis Picard will join us at the Richard Salter Storrs Library to present “Winter Pleasures and Pastimes.” Without a doubt, the winter of 2023 has been mild. That doesn’t mean we can’t still sit back and reflect on the usual delights of the season.

In an essay titled "Winter" for the Center School literary journal, The Carrier Pigeon, one student reflected on her mixed feelings in the winter season of 1864. She wrote, “Some parts of winter are very pleasant. The first part of this winter, there was very good skating, and then there came sleighing and it lasted a long time, and there has not been much skating since. It has been warm weather for a time until a few days since. It commenced to snow on Monday morning about 11 o’clock and snowed all day, until about 5 o’clock cleared off very cold and I think that it was not very pleasant doing chores last night, nor this morning. I know that I did not think it was. I should like to have skating or good sleighing now instead of this weather, for it is very cold, and there is neither skating or sliding or sleighing.*” Who among us hasn’t marveled at the quiet beauty of snow-covered trees after a storm, only to complain about the shoveling and cold?

"Winter" by Center School student, 1864

Collection of Longmeadow Historical Society

No doubt she would have loved to take a turn on the ice in this c.1860’s wool, royal blue colored five-piece skating ensemble from our collection. The dress looks like it has come to life straight out of a Curriers & Ives print called The Skating Carnival from 1862.

Skating Outfit c. 1860's

Collection of Longmeadow Historical Society

Close-up detail of c. 1860's Skating Outfit

Collection of the Longmeadow Historical Society

As for the skates, if you look closely at the markings on the steel blade you will notice they were manufactured by Barney & Berry out of nearby Springfield, MA, founded by Everett Barney whose Carriage House is still a Forest Park treasure.

Springfield maker "Barney & Berry"

While there is still some snow on the ground, sit back and enjoy these items from our collection that reflect winters from the past. Then come join us on March 8th at 6:30 pm at the Storrs Library to learn more from Dennis Picard. Per the program description: “Often when early New England winters are brought to mind, we imagine families huddled around an insufficient fire in a dark and cold house while snow pelts the windows and the wolves howl at their door. Well, our ancestors made time for fun in the colder months. Sometimes it was something done as part of a chore but often it was something just for pleasure. Come hear why winter was welcomed by many and anxiously awaited by some.” Pre-registration encouraged. Register here http://bit.ly/3kGt571

This event is co-sponsored by the Longmeadow Historical Society, Richard Salter Storrs Library, and Peoples Bank.

-Contributed by Melissa M. Cybulski with credit to Betsy McKee for dress and skate photos

* Letter transcription edited for clarity

“…lot shall not be re-sold to a colored person, an Italian or a Polander”

1920 Map of Longmeadow showing the area of the Brookline development

“…lot shall not be re-sold to a colored person, an Italian or a Polander” – the Brookline Plan

The first two decades of the twentieth century saw rapid changes in technology and demographics and the greater Springfield area, including Longmeadow, was no exception. The development and growth of the street railway enabled many people the ability to live further away from where they worked in urban centers like Springfield. Additionally, immigrants from faraway places such as Eastern and Southern Europe were streaming into this area seeking greater economic opportunities and political freedom. Simultaneously, African Americans were migrating in large numbers to the Northeast for the exact same reasons. These forces shaped the creation of a new Longmeadow development known as Brookline.

"Sylvester Bliss place", Sept. 24, 1885. Drawing by Martha Goldthwait.

Longmeadow Historical Society collection

The land that would become the Brookline development, situated east of Longmeadow Street and north of Bliss Road, used to be the farm of Sylvester Bliss. In the early 1900s, land along Longmeadow Street which contained the trolley track to Springfield was highly prized by real estate developers. Hattie M. Bliss, daughter of Sylvester Bliss and the heir to his farmland, decided to sell the Bliss farm for development. In January of 1913, she sold the land to Edwin H. Robbins, a Springfield real estate developer. Hattie Bliss’s deed to Edwin H. Robbins included typical restrictions such as building setbacks from the property line; it also specified that one street would be named “Dayton” and another would be named “Rosemore”.

Edwin H. Robbins, who lived in Springfield, was a busy man who developed six different large tracts of land in Springfield into residential housing. Four of these developments were near his home on Wilbraham Road; the other two were in more distant sections of Springfield. Deeds for lots sold in the four nearby developments had a restriction that specified that “said lot shall not be resold to a colored person, a Polander or an Italian.” This restrictive covenant, which expired in either 1930 or 1935 depending on the development, was not on the deeds in the two developments far from his home.

In February 1913, Mr. Robbins filed the Brookline Plan at the Hampden Registry of Deeds and he started selling off the lots. His promotional materials promised an up-scale neighborhood; in one of his advertisements, he promised “I have restricted it so highly that I GUARANTEE YOU DESIRABLE NEIGHBORS…”

Advertisement for Brookline.

Springfield Republican, May 4, 1913

Some of the Brookline lots were sold to individuals, but most of them were sold in batches to other developers such as Riley-Alderman Realty Trust, A.T. Spooner Company, and Rood-Davidson Realty Trust. On eighty-eight of the lots (highlighted on the plan), Edwin H. Robbins added the resale restriction that he had used in Springfield: “said lot shall not be resold to a colored person, an Italian or a Polander.” All restrictions on the Brookline deeds were set to expire on January 1, 1935.

Brookline Plan, Hampden County Registry of Deeds.

Deeds for the highlighted lots had resale restrictions.

Deed for sale of Lot 6 located at Book 894 Page 482.

From Hampden County Registry of Deeds

Why would Mr. Robbins exclude these particular groups of people from ownership? We have no documentation of his intentions, but we can speculate. In many 1913 minds, an exclusive community that would be “the highest class development in Longmeadow” would not likely include African Americans or certain groups of recent European immigrants. Racial motivations likely mixed with nativist ones in also excluding locally surging immigrant populations from Southern and Eastern Europe.

It is relatively simple to define "an Italian" for the purposes of these deeds. But, who was a “Polander”? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a Polander is “a native or inhabitant of Poland.” In 1913, Poland was not a political entity; the geography that currently constitutes modern Poland had for centuries been partitioned between the Russian, Austria-Hungary, and German Empires. Most, if not all, of the Russian-controlled portion of Poland was in “The Pale”, the only portion of the Russian Empire where Jews were allowed to live. Both Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Polish areas of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany were likely known as “Polanders”.

There were forty-five lots sold to Rood-Davidson Realty Trust (comprised of Dexter Rood and Arthur W. Davidson) that were not subject to this deed restriction and they are not highlighted on the plan. Again, we do not know exactly why Mr. Rood and Mr. Davidson's lots did not bear this provision. Perhaps they simply did not want to limit their pool of potential resale buyers. But there is also evidence that Davidson, at least, was open to religious diversity. Arthur Davidson was an immigrant from the Canadian province of Quebec which had a Catholic majority. Mrs. Davidson’s actions in 1916 when she hosted a meeting of the Longmeadow Maternal Association further support this position. The speaker at this meeting promoted the interdenominational connectivity of Christian denominations and Judaism on the basis of the Bible and the commandments. This message could be taken as an argument against those advocating for the idea of a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elitist community.

Although Edwin Robbins was seemingly opposed to living with and building homes for those of different ethnic and religious backgrounds, he was willing to do business with them to further his financial interests. Bernhard Radding, a Jewish immigrant from Russia (and perhaps a Polander), was a real estate developer and general contractor. Mr. Radding was involved in the development of thirty-six of the lots in Brookline, most of which had deed restrictions that would have prevented a Polander from homeownership. His brother Julius (also perhaps a Polander) was living at 36 Belleclaire Avenue in 1920. If the intent of these restrictions was to keep out Eastern European immigrants, it seems they failed to do so.

Belleclaire Avenue 1918. Emerson Collection of the Longmeadow Historical Society

Edwin Robbins was also willing to hire these recent immigrants to work at the Brookline development. In July 1913, during a heat wave in which the thermometers in the area reached 99 or 100 degrees, an Italian laborer grading streets in Brookline was one of many in western Massachusetts who succumbed to the heat. An earlier article in the Springfield Union reported that the man had died, but the authors have found no corroborating evidence that he did so.

Springfield Republican, July 4, 1913

Bliss Road, unpaved, 1913. Emerson Collection of the Longmeadow Historical Society

All of the Brookline deed restrictions expired on January 1, 1935. While today these restrictions would be illegal, at the time they were not. In 1946, Massachusetts passed the Massachusetts Fair Housing Law which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, national origin, ancestry, or religious creed. In 1968, Congress passed the Fair Housing Act (FHA) which enshrined equal housing opportunity at the federal level and provided federal enforcement mechanisms to combat housing discrimination.

Even so, housing discrimination still exists today. If you are living in Massachusetts and feel you have been a victim of discrimination, you can contact MCAD either by phone at (413) 739-2145 or by email at mcad@ma.gov and if you are living anywhere in the USA and you feel you have been the victim of housing discrimination, please contact the Department of Housing and Urban Development either by phone at (800) CALL-FHA (800-225-5342) or by email at answers@hud.gov.

-Contributed by Tim Casey and Beth Hoff, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Members

Sources:

Hampden County Registry of Deeds

1920 Map of Longmeadow

Archives of the Longmeadow Historical Society

Springfield Republican, May 4, 1913; July 4, 1913, March 8, 1916

Statistics for Massachusetts

Special thanks to Chris Holmgren

Charles Backus Storrs: Abolitionist

Charles Backus Storrs stood before his audience and gave his inauguration address on February 9th, 1831 in Hudson, Ohio. At age thirty-six, he was elected the first permanent president of Western Reserve College (now Case Western Reserve). Aware of the controversy over antislavery sentiment, Storrs took a moral position during his address and described slavery “as a central concern of mankind." Most of us have not heard of this strong-willed abolitionist from Longmeadow, in part because his life was cut short by a disease that ruled his life from childhood. His life’s work as a minister and college president would take him from Western Massachusetts to South Carolina to Ohio. Along the way, he developed a clear idea of how he felt about the institution of slavery and used his platform to speak out against it.

The story of Charles Backus Storrs begins in Longmeadow, Massachusetts after slavery was effectively ended in the commonwealth in the 1780’s. He was born in 1794, the fifth child of the Reverend Richard Salter Storrs and his wife Sarah (Williston). His mother, weak with consumption (tuberculosis), died at age 32, a month and a half after delivering her seventh child. Not unexpectedly, widowed and with young children, his father remarried within the year. His father and stepmother (Sarah Williams) had three more children. While ownership of enslaved persons has not been found in the records of Richard Salter Storrs or his parents, his second wife was the granddaughter of Longmeadow's first minister, Stephen Williams, who is known to have owned at least twelve enslaved persons over his long tenure in Longmeadow.

As a child, Charles Backus Storrs was periodically sent to live with other families. It would appear that at least one reason for sending him away from home was concerns about his health. The consumption that took his mother's life, took the lives of more New Englanders than any other disease. It was not believed to be contagious at that time. Recommended prevention and treatment included fresh air, a wholesome diet, and healthy manual labor. Perhaps his parents hoped that sending him away would be good for his health. He lived with a farming family in nearby Somers, Connecticut, and also in Conway, Massachusetts -- probably at the home of his older sister Sally and her husband Charles Billings.

In 1810, Conway, like Longmeadow and Springfield, saw less than 1% of its population made up of people of color. However, the Billings house where Charles Backus Storrs was probably sent to live for a period during his youth did record one “free non-white” person on the 1810 census. It is intriguing to wonder if perhaps this was an early encounter Storrs may have had with someone who had previously been enslaved or descended from an enslaved person, in New England.

When Storrs was fourteen years old he went to Monson Academy for two years and then, at sixteen he entered the College of New Jersey (what became Princeton University). He did not graduate because he had almost certainly developed symptomatic tuberculosis. He would spend the next ten years fighting bouts of ill health and preparing for a life of ministry before heading to Charleston, South Carolina in 1821 to be ordained as an Evangelist in the Circular Church of Charleston. Here, Charles Backus Storrs would encounter the institution of slavery in a completely different way than ever before in his life.

A full 71% of Charleston’s population of 21,780 people were people of color. Nearly 14,000 of them were enslaved. In Georgia, where Storrs also worked as a missionary, 45% of the population was non-white. Of note, the Circular Church of Charleston, where Storrs was ordained, had a large congregation that included both black and white members including enslaved persons. The young Charles Backus Storrs must have been struck by the dramatic contrasts in the communities that he lived in South Carolina and Georgia in 1821 compared to his native Longmeadow. Perhaps this is where he first began to form his antislavery convictions.

Ultimately, he would remain in the south for only two years before packing up and moving on another mission of faith to the western state of Ohio. The Connecticut Courant reported that Storrs was spending about half of his time in Ravenna, Ohio as the community's minister and the remainder of his time doing missionary work “promoting the spiritual welfare of our new settlements in the west.” This meant visiting families, common schools, attending meetings for religious purposes and establishing Sabbath Schools. Storrs was stationed for six years in Ravenna, Ohio.

When a new college, Western Reserve College, opened nearby, Charles Backus Storrs was made professor of Theology. Within three years, he was appointed the first permanent college president.

Slavery was abolished in Ohio in 1802 by the state's original constitution, and by the time Storrs assumed his position at Western Reserve in the 1820’s, a large number of fugitives from slavery passed through Ohio. The region of Ohio around Western Reserve College was strong in anti-slavery sentiment in the early 1830s. Faculty, students, and trustees at the young Western Reserve College were colonizationists and abolitionists. Colonizationists advocated the gradual emancipation of enslaved people and sending them to Africa. Abolitionists advocated the immediate emancipation of enslaved people. According to past Case Western Reserve University Historian Frederick C. Waite, Storrs had originally been a colonizationist but was deeply impacted by William Lloyd Garrison's anti-slavery newspaper, The Liberator. Garrison was a staunch abolitionist.

By 1831, Storrs supported abolition and Waite contends that he was the first college president to publicly advocate for abolition. President Storrs made frequent multi-hour presentations on the evils of slavery. Storrs' presentations were memorable. A story printed in the Ohio newspaper, The Plain Dealer, in 1866 describes the recollections of an observer: "Mr. Storrs was a man of unprepossessing appearance, but of real talent...He commenced his sermons with a low tone of voice, and in an ambling style, but gradually warmed up with the glow of striking thought and the fire of true eloquence. He had a habit of frequent coughing, as he began his discourse;...But as he progressed , the coughs became less frequent, until they entirely ceased..." It would seem that Storrs would always have a hard time shaking the echoes of all of those years battling symptoms of consumption.

Along with President Storrs, two faculty members, and many students became abolitionists. The students formed the Western Reserve College Anti-Slavery Society in December 1832. Students were encouraged by abolitionist faculty to speak in the surrounding communities for the abolition cause. Some were harassed by abolition opponents.

On May 8, 1833, President Storrs gave a three-hour sermon on abolition, after which he became extremely ill. He took a leave of absence and traveled to his brother's home in Braintree, Massachusetts, where he died at age 39 from tuberculosis on September 15, 1833.

After his death, The Liberator printed a memoriam. In part this read, "For a considerable time previous to his death, his sympathies were warmly enlisted in behalf of his oppressed colored brethren; and it is to be feared that his death was hastened by his assiduous devotion to the Anti-Slavery cause. He had been addressing public audiences, for two hours at a time, with overflowing feeling,..." Charles Backus Storrs left behind a wife and six children, at least one of whom would continue the work his father had started when his own congregation fundraised so much of the money to support the building of a school for freed black children that the school bore his name. But he also left an inspiring legacy on a college community that would continue to do the work that had become so important to its first president.

-Contributed by Al McKee, Longmeadow Historical Society

Sources and Works Cited:

Boston Commercial Gazette Jan. 22, 1821

Census for 1820, 1821, United States Census Bureau

Connecticut Courant March 9, 1824

Connecticut Mirror February 3, 1823

French, David. Charles Backus Storrs, "Inaugural Address, Western Reserve College," February 9, 1831, Charles Backus Storrs Papers, CWRU cited in Elizur Wright, Jr., and the Emergence of Anti-Colonization Sentiments on the Connecticut Western Reserve, pg 55. Ohio History Journal, https://resources.ohiohistory.org/ohj/search/display.php?page=4&ipp=20&searchterm=Array&vol=85&pages=49-66

Hallowed Ground: Circular Congregational Church, Charleston in Discover South Carolina, 2023. https://discoversouthcarolina.com/articles/hallowed-ground-circular-congregational-church-charleston

Historic American Buildings Survey, Creator, William A Bohnard, F J Coghlan, H T Jeffrey, and Louis P Fisher, Waite, Carl, and Jack E Boucher, photographer. Western Reserve Academy, President's House, Hudson & College Streets, Hudson, Summit County, OH. Summit County Ohio Hudson, 1933. Documentation Compiled After. Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/oh0308/.

The Liberator, September 21, 1833.

Massachusetts Constitution and the Abolition of Slavery, Mass.gov website

Ohio History Connection. Fugitives From Slavery. https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Fugitives_from_Slavery

The Plain Dealer October 13, 1866

Return of the Whole Number of Persons within the Several Districts of the United States according to "An act providing for the second Census or Enumeration of the Inhabitants of the United States." 1801, United States Census Bureau

Sprague, William. Annals of the American Pulpit or Commemorative Notices of Distinguished Clergymen of Various Denominations 1860 pg 487-488 which cites as sources Rev. R.S. Storrs D.D., Rev. H.M. Storrs, and Rev. George Howe, D.D.

Student Activism At CWRU Abolitionism https://case.edu/socialjustice/about/history

Swedlund, Alan C. Dutiful Daughters, Pallid Young Women in Shadows in the Valley: A Cultural History of Illness, Death, and Loss in New England, 1840-1916 pgs 84-103. 2010.

Woodward, Walter W., From the State Historian: Connecticut’s Slow Steps Toward Emancipation https://connecticuthistory.org/from-the-state-historian-connecticuts-slow-steps-toward-emancipation/