A Funeral, 1909

Longmeadow Historical Society's Emerson Photographic Collection is a treasure trove of photographs documenting Longmeadow in the early 20th century. Paesiello Emerson led a fascinating life and took up photography as a hobby in his older age. Most of his photos are of houses and streets in town, but occasionally something of a completely different nature captures your attention.

When recently exploring photographs in the collection I came across an image that sparked my curiosity. It is of what appears to be a casket draped in black fabric and covered with floral arrangements. A distinguished gentleman poses above it while standing at a lectern. It is from a funeral at the First Church that was documented by Paesiello Emerson on June 7, 1909. I wanted to learn more about the deceased and the church’s minister at that time. This was the funeral of Charles S. Allen, a prominent Longmeadow citizen. The minister was Reverend Henry L. Bailey.

The deceased, 61-year-old Charles Salisbury Allen, was born on October 22, 1847, in Windsor, CT. After living in Hartford his family moved to Longmeadow in the fall of 1864. Charles’ father, Brinton Allen, purchased the Henry Keep large stock and dairy farm on Green Street, an old name for what is now the southern end of Longmeadow Street.

Charles S. Allen, who later resided at 892 Longmeadow Street, became a very active member of the Longmeadow community. Mr. Allen ran a grocery store at 776 Longmeadow Street, today the location for the Spa on the Green. He was also engaged in farming, had a coal and wood yard, owned several rental properties, and for many years was the postmaster. He was married and had seven children. He died following surgery for a perforated peptic ulcer complicated by an intraabdominal abscess. This was in the pre-antibiotic era.

The minister in the photo, Reverend Henry Lincoln Bailey became the ninth pastor of the First Church in 1901.

Springfield Republican, November 14, 1901

Bailey was born in Brattleboro, Vermont May 8, 1865, and graduated from Middlebury College and the Hartford Theological Seminary. He was ordained in 1889 and served in India and Vermont before coming to Longmeadow in 1901. Reverend Bailey resigned from his pastorate after 15 years in the fall of 1916 coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the First Church. He resided at 169 Crescent Road until his death on January 21, 1943.

Reverend Bailey remained active as a guest pastor, served as editor of the Springfield Weekly Republican for eight years, and also as a Longmeadow town moderator. Both Charles S. Allen and Henry L. Bailey are buried in the Longmeadow Cemetery. -Contributed by Lenny Shaker, Longmeadow Historical Society Sources: Longmeadow Historical Society Springfield Republican Google Maps

Berkeley Taylor and the Barn Fire

On June 9, 1933, brothers Joseph C. and Eugene L. Marcure of Springfield confessed to burning a 300-foot barn in the Longmeadow meadows the previous Wednesday. Excerpts from the Springfield Republican outline the events of the day:

• “Joseph said that he and his brother had gone to the “flats” in Longmeadow early Wednesday morning to shoot bullfrogs…It was while they were at this sport that they said they formulated the idea of setting fire to the barn which overlooked the river just for the sake of seeing a big blaze.” The two agreed to go home, then meet later in the evening to burn the building.

• The two men became intoxicated. “Joseph said…that he and his brother set fire to the structure with matches between 11 and 11:30 Wednesday night and then, after extinguishing their automobile headlights, proceeded back to Emerson road from where they watched the fire for a while as they stood on a hilltop.”

• The brothers decided to return to the barn to mix with the other automobiles that had been attracted to the blaze. On the way, they encountered a “Longmeadow recluse,” Berkeley H. Taylor, who tried to take down the license number of their vehicle. Both parties were armed. Shots were exchanged and Berkley Taylor was seriously injured.

• “Following the shooting, Joseph said that he drove his car at full speed toward the railroad tracks and that two or three cars were waiting at the crossing for an approaching train to pass. The red light signals were against the automobile traffic but Joseph said that he stepped on the accelerator and shot over the tracks just missing the onrushing locomotive by scant yards.” The brothers then returned to their homes in Springfield.

The Marcure brothers admitted to shooting Berkeley Taylor, but they denied any intention to murder him. On September 20, 1933, Joseph and Eugene Marcure were sentenced to 4 to 7 years in prison for their actions.

In the newspaper articles, Berkeley Taylor was described as an eccentric and living in a “home-made shack near the scene of the fire.” Berkeley Taylor was charged with possession of an unregistered weapon. When he refused to provide surety of $1,000 due to his poverty, or to ask anyone else to provide it for him, he was committed to jail. On September 20, 1933, he received a sentence of probation due to extenuating circumstances.

The author first learned of these events and of Berkeley Taylor when a descendant of the Marcure family contacted the Historical Commission in 2016 searching for information about the burned barn, which was said to be located between Emerson Road and Birnie Road. I consulted with Historical Society board members and, unfortunately, we were not able to conclusively provide a location for the barn. The fire and all of those involved had disappeared from local memory. But the inquiry made me curious to know more about Berkeley Taylor. Who was this eccentric, impoverished man who was living in a home-made shack in the meadows? The archives of the Longmeadow Historical Society had no information on him, but a search on the online databases GenealogyBank and Ancestry revealed a busy and interesting life.

Berkeley Taylor was born June 12, 1895 to Palmer and Lena Taylor. The family moved from Springfield to 812 Longmeadow Street when Berkeley was young, and he was raised in Longmeadow. Newspaper articles reveal that Berkeley was active in youth activities at First Church and the Longmeadow Tennis Club.

Longmeadow did not have a high school in the early 1900s so Berkeley, like all Longmeadow teenage students, hopped a trolley car and traveled to Springfield for his education. Berkeley graduated from Springfield Technical High School in 1914.

Berkeley may have been Longmeadow’s first scoutmaster. According to an article in the June 22, 1916 Springfield Republican, “The boys’ club, which has been under the charge of Berkeley H. Taylor, has disbanded and the boys have decided to become Boy Scouts. They are called troop 7 of the Springfield district of the Boy Scouts of America. Berkeley Taylor, who was in charge of the club, will be scout master.”

On June 4, 1917, Berkeley Taylor registered for the draft. At some point, probably in 1918, Berkeley joined the U.S. Marine Corps as a 2nd Lieutenant.

In the fall of 1917, Berkeley learned to fly at the Curtiss Flying School in both Hammondsport, NY and Newport News, VA, and he received his pilot’s license by the end of October, 1917. He became an aviation instructor, working first at Mineola, NY, then at Wichita Falls, TX.

On March 25, 1918, Berkeley crashed his airplane during a training exercise. According to the Springfield Republican, “While giving a lesson March 25 looping the loop and other difficult maneuvers the machine went into a tail-spin and not being sufficiently high in the air to make the turn crashed to the earth.” Berkeley was injured, but he recuperated and was transferred to Miami, FL. After the war ended, Berkeley remained in the Marine Corps Reserves until 1927.

According to newspaper articles and Marine Corps records, after the war Berkeley shows up in many places: Fort Gamble, WA; Brookline, MA; Quantico, VA; Washington, D.C.; and Longmeadow, MA. He flew one of the earliest mail routes for the post office. He never lost his love of flying and in October, 1920 he was employed by the Aeromarine Plane and Motor Company in Keyport, NJ.

On July 12, 1930, Berkeley Taylor was testing an experimental airplane designed by the Springfield Aero-Marine Company when the plane crashed to the earth from a 40-foot altitude. The Springfield Republican reported that “Taylor, a mechanic at Dunn field, escaped with slight injury, but the plane was badly damaged when it came in contact with a tree.” Because the plane was unlicensed, Berkeley’s pilot’s license was suspended. When he tried to renew his license, he was turned down after a physical examination showed that he was unfit to fly. The medical report stated that Berkeley had a nervous disposition and had survived four serious airplane accidents.

Unable to fly, Berkeley was living in the meadows when he encountered Eugene and Joseph Marcure. Shortly after receiving his probation sentence on September 20, 1933, Berkeley Taylor was in McLean, VA where he married a widow, Narcissa R. Gorham on October 7. Due to the timing of the marriage, it is highly likely that the two had known each other during Berkeley's earlier travels.

In 1935, Berkeley found work in the Veterans Work Program on a project to complete the Overseas Highway connecting Key West with the Florida mainland. He was assigned to Veterans Work Program Camp 1, which was located on Windley Key, FL. On Labor Day, 1935, a Category 5 hurricane wiped out the three veterans camps in the keys and Berkeley was one of at least 259 World War I veterans who lost their lives during the storm.

We are grateful to the inquiry by the descendant of the Marcure family which led us to this forgotten tale of crime, service, aviation, and tragedy.

-Contributed by Beth Hoff, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member

Sources: Springfield Technical High School Yearbook, 1914 Springfield Republican: Jun. 12, 1914; Jun. 22, 1916, Aug. 21, 1917; Sept. 13, 1917; Oct. 15, 1915; Dec. 7, 1917; Apr. 11, 1918; May 4, 1918; Oct. 4, 1920; Jul. 25, 1930; Nov. 14, 1930; Oct. 23, 1931; June 9, 1933; July 11, 1933; Sept. 14, 1933; Sept. 20, 1933 Find A Grave U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918 U.S., Marine Corps Muster Rolls, 1798-1958 Virginia, U.S., Marriage Registers, 1853-1935 Archives of the Longmeadow Historical Society

"Prepare- for follow me you must"

A simple gravestone in Longmeadow Cemetery from 1720, with a classic inscription, warns passersby to consider their own fates. It marks the final resting place for a twelve-year-old girl named Elizabeth Keep. In a time when precious few recorded details are available about individual lives, it is a gift to be able to build any sort of picture about one particular child’s life, especially a girl. But for Elizabeth Keep we can, thanks to a minister’s diary and the fact that her father served in governmental roles in town.

photo credit to Betsy McKee, Longmeadow Cemetery Association

She was born in 1709, when the houses on Longmeadow Street would have been just about a decade old, the town having decided to move “up the hill” from the meadows after a 1695 flood. Elizabeth Keep would have been approximately seven years old when her parents became Landlord and Landlady Keep to the brand-new, young minister, Rev. Stephen Williams, fresh out of Harvard and a brief stint teaching school in Hadley. This would surely have been an important honor for the Keep family to house the new minister as he was probably the most revered person in the community. That he was young and still trying to find his footing in his new role is clear in his early diary entries from the period. No doubt, young Elizabeth Keep would have shared meals and overheard conversations with the new minister.

One important life experience that surely must have been discussed in the Keep household was the attack and capture by native peoples experienced by both her father and Stephen Wiliams in their respective childhoods. Samuel Keep’s parents and infant brother were killed on their way traveling from Longmeadow to Springfield for church services in an infamous attack near Pecousic Brook in 1676 believed to have been a result of tensions between English settlers in the Springfield area and local native tribes during King Phillip’s War. More than two hundred years later, the event was recalled in the Longmeadow Centennial Book: “John Keep, the father, his wife and their child, Jabez, were slain by the Indians, March 26, 1676. As they, with other neighbors and a guard of men, were passing from Longmeadow to Springfield town, to meeting on the Lord's day, they were fired upon a little northward of the Pacousick Brook. The man was mortally wounded, but it is said he kept his horse until he arrived at the town of Springfield. The woman, his wife, it is said, sprang from the horse upon the firing of the Indians, and was carried away by them to Hadleigh and killed.” Elizabeth’s father, Samuel, was only six years old at the time and the only son of John and Sarah Keep. He was left an orphan by the attack. Elizabeth Keep would never know her grandparents as a result.

Likewise, Stephen Williams famously survived the attack on Deerfield in 1704 when he was just a child. He, too, lost his mother and several siblings and was separated from his father and other siblings during a forced march and captivity in Canada. These must have been terrifying stories for a child like Elizabeth to contemplate.

The Keep house that Elizabeth was growing up in from 1709-1720 appears to have been a busy one. Not only would Rev. Williams have been receiving visitors, both from the congregation and from the ministerial world, but her father was an important figure in town planning. Samuel Keep served on several committees that made decisions about the building of the first meetinghouse, the hiring of Stephen Williams and matters of his salary and accommodations, layout of the town’s buryingyard, and procuring funding from Springfield to establish a schoolhouse in Longmeadow. From the daily diary Williams kept while living with the Keeps as his own house was being built, it is clear that the Keep family had at least one enslaved person. Williams wrote on November 13, 1717 that, “this day I had occasion to correct my Landlord’s negro Boy for his false-hood and wickedness.*”

The fabric of Elizabeth Keep’s brief life was a fascinating microcosm of early New England life in a Western Massachusetts community along the Connecticut River.

In July of 1720, twelve-year-old Elizabeth Keep became ill. The nature of her illness is never named, though no other mentions are made of contagious illnesses like smallpox in the area. Perhaps her illness was a singular one. On July 24-28th, Williams writes of praying with the sick child at least once a day: “this day I have been to see the child twice & prayed with it twice - tis a very sick child - & the case looks very dangerous - the Lord God almighty is the best physician - I pray he would appear for its relief.”

Elizabeth’s mother, Sarah Keep, had nine other children at the time of Elizabeth’s dangerous illness, half of them ranging from just four months old to nine years old. It must have been a desperate and terrifying time for her, as illness easily carried from one child to another and it was not uncommon for a family to lose multiple children from one outbreak of sickness. The weather added extra drama to the affair. Stephen Williams mentions “a storm of thunder and lightning” on July 25th and “rain that was extraordinary indeed - with which the wind has broke down the corn considerably” on July 27th. It does not take much to imagine the situation in the Keep house on those days hot, stormy July days. Did they interpret the storms to be harbingers of God’s will towards their sick daughter?

Within five days it was over. On July 29, 1720 twelve-year-old Elizabeth Keep died. Williams wrote, “this morning I hear the child is dead - the will of the Lord is done. The Lord give patience & resignation to his will unto the parents & friends. At night the funeral was attended - the Lord grant that those of us that attended at it may find that tis good for us to go to the house of mourning - far better than to go to the house of feasting.”

Elizabeth Keep’s is one of the oldest gravestones in Longmeadow Cemetery, and is perhaps carved by Samuel Bartlett II (1677-1746). The burying ground, as it was called, had only been established a few short years before her death. For many, many years she had no neighbors, but for 84-year-old Nathaniel Burt who died in September 1720. It is likely that others would have been buried without permanent markers as strong as hers. The image of her final resting place sitting so lonely in a grassy field just off the town green is a somber one.

This inscription on her gravestone is typical in many ways of early New England epitaphs and features a warning for passersby to not forget that they, too, will meet the same fate. The stonecutter was more concerned with making use of available space rather than being a stickler for spelling or form. It is important to note that even though it says “Mrs. Elizabeth Keep” we must read the “Mrs.” as “Mistress” as she was not married at twelve years old. It reads:

Here Lyes

The Body of

Mrs. Elizabeth keep

Who died the 29

Day of July anno

1720 in the 12 year

Of her age [H?] ear you

young so Am i Ther

Fore al prepare to die

The finest flesh is but dust-

Prepare,-for follow me you must.

In his book, Reading the Gravestones of Old New England, author and scholar, John G.S. Hanson writes, “Obviously this verse was not created by poor twelve-year-old Elizabeth. These words were put in her mouth by someone else as a lesson to the living. It might have been the minister, to judge by their tone - these are words of someone accustomed to deference on matters of religion. Indeed, the first line commands the attention of young readers in particular” (49).

Three hundred years later the small monument to her life remains.

*Spellings and punctuation from Stephen Williams' Diary have been modernized for clarity.

*Spelling and punctuation from Elizabeth Keep's gravestone appear as they are

-Contributed by Melissa M. Cybulski, Longmeadow Historical Society

Sources:

Hanson, John G.S.. Reading the Headstones of Old New England. North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2021. 49.

Storrs, R. S. The Longmeadow Centennial. Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Co, 1884.

Williams, Stephen. “Stephen Williams Diary Online.” Storrs Library, September 23, 2019. Vol. 1. https://www.longmeadowlibrary.org/stephen-williams-diary-online/.