Longmeadow's Irish

Today's History Note takes a look back at the history of the Irish in Longmeadow in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

"Irish emigrants leaving home -- the priest's blessing" (1851)

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, that venerable feast day that celebrates the blessings of being born Irish, let’s look back at their earliest recorded years in Longmeadow. The best way to do that is by looking at the 1850 Federal Census and the 1855 Massachusetts State Census, both of which are the first to ask respondents to identify their place of birth. Through that, it is easy to see an increase in Longmeadow residents identifying Ireland as their place of birth.

In 1850, out of a town population of 1258, there were approximately 60 people who identified Ireland as their place of birth. Five years later in 1855, that number had doubled to 121 Irish-born residents. That is a huge jump for a small town. What brought them here to live in relative isolation away from their homeland and families? Those were among the most devastating years of the blight known as the Great Hunger or the Irish Potato Famine when scores of starving Irish boarded boats out of Ireland in hopes of a better chance at life abroad. Longmeadow’s Irish likely arrived in larger port cities of Boston and New York and for one reason or another made their way towards the Western part of Massachusetts.

1855 MA Census, "Michael O'Neil, 15, M, Laborer, Ireland"

What is clear to see from both the 1850 and 1855 censuses in Longmeadow, MA, is that the Irish here are young men and women of nearly equal proportion. In 1855, the average age of an Irish woman in Longmeadow was just 20 years old, and the Irish men were on average 24 years old. Mary O’Neil, who lived in the household of Daniel Burbank, was only 12 years old. James Holland, age 14, was a farm hand to Levi Eaton in the eastern part of town. Mostly the Irish lived in one’s and two’s in the households of their employers.

Anyone with Irish roots will find the names of those recent immigrants familiar. There are Ellens and Marys and Margarets and Catherines and Bridgets for the ladies; there were Johns and Thomas’ and Michaels and Patricks and Martins for the men. They came with the kind of last names that make genealogical research nearly impossible because they are so common: Quinn, Ryan, Burk, Connolly, O’Connell, and Carroll among them. Ever tried finding a John Ryan on Ancestry? You could get lost among them!

Unless they were working for the button factory in town or in the quarry in the eastern part of Longmeadow, they generally did not live with any other Irish-born soul. Instead, they were farm hands or house servants in the households bearing the names of Longmeadow’s oldest families like the Coltons, Fields, Cooleys, and Blisses.

1855 MA Census "Mary Connell, 18?, F, Ireland" "Martin Coleman, 16, M, Button Maker, Ireland"

A large number of the names disappear on the 1860 census, and while the number of Irish in town grows again, it is not a doubling as seen between 1850-55. In 1860, 136 people identified Ireland as the place they were born. A few do seem to remain and make a life for themselves in Longmeadow - Morris Manning and Patrick Davis, among them. In 1855, Manning was a 19-year-old laborer on the farm of Calvin Burt. Davis was 20, already married to another Irish immigrant, 20-year-old Bridget, and they lived and worked for farmer Alford Cooley. Civil War draft registration forms exist for both men, though it seems only Patrick Davis enlisted.

Per later censuses that included a literacy question, neither man could read or write. Perhaps they came from parts of Ireland where Irish was the first language, or perhaps they never received the kind of schooling in Ireland they needed to achieve literacy. Considering the number of phonetically spelled last names on the census (ex. Mary Neland in 1855 appears as Mary “Kneeland” in 1860, and the last name Donovan appears as both “Donevan” and “Donivan” for two separate people) perhaps many of the newly arrived Irish were also unable to read and write. By the time the 1900 census appeared, though, both Patrick Davis and his wife, Bridget, were able to answer “Yes” to “Can Read” though they still answered “No” for “Can Write.”

Patrick Davis House, 1909. Bliss Road Emerson Photo Collection

Davis lived in one house in Longmeadow for so long that it became known as “the Patrick Davis” house. Today the house still exists, having moved from Bliss Road to Fairfield Terrace, and it bears another name, “the Johnny Appleseed house.” Davis owned the home, along with sixteen acres of land around it, and he and his family lived there from 1875-1913.

St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church Williams Street location

By 1868, the “Roman Catholic Church of St. Mary” was formed by a committee of five Irish men in town: Michael Quinn, Martin Hartigan, John Waters, Patrick Connors, and Peter Ward, all of whom appear on the 1855 census in Longmeadow as young laborers. They must have found enough community and success to choose to stay. They raised money to purchase an old school building and move it to a site on Williams Street across from the cemetery. The parishioners of the newly formed St. Mary’s contributed their own labor in preparing the land and renovating the building to suit them. It was dedicated in October 1870 and served the Catholic community of Longmeadow until the current St. Mary’s church opened in 1931.

Longmeadow Historical Society board member, Beth Hoff, has spent a lot of time compiling data on census records in Longmeadow, and between 1850-1910, Ireland was by far the most commonly cited country as a place of birth outside of America. A very distant second was Canada, with a few Swedes, Swiss, German, British, and Bohemians among the mix.

March 17th may be the designated day on the calendar to celebrate the Irish, but anyone with Irish in their bones will tell you any day is a fine day to be Irish.

Patrick Davis Obituary

Springfield Republican, March 11, 1915

Morris Manning Obituary Springfield Republican, Feb. 17, 1902

Contributed by Melissa McCrosson Cybulski (who descends from strong McCrosson/ Ryan/ Enright/ Fay (Fahy) ancestors) Special thanks to Beth Hoff for her work on the Longmeadow census data from 1790-1910

Originally published March 17, 2022

The Medlicott House

If you had driven down Longmeadow Street around the turn of the 20th Century, you would have definitely noticed the Medlicott house at 720 Longmeadow Street. This imposing home caught the eye of Longmeadow photographer Pasiello Emerson and he photographed it many times.

While we refer to the building as the “Medlicott house”, Mr. Medlicott was not its first owner. Captain Calvin Burt, a merchant in Longmeadow, built the house around 1786 near the north end of the Longmeadow green. A contemporary of the Richard Salter Storrs house (now the Storrs House Museum), the Calvin Burt house was situated just north of what is now the Brewer-Young Mansion.

Capt. Burt passed away in 1848 and William G. Medlicott, a woolen stockinette manufacturer, purchased the house from the Burt estate in 1851.

William G. Medlicott courtesy of Stephen Forbes

Mr. Medlicott, his wife, and his five children lived in the Burt house and, by 1864, he had substantially remodeled the house. Last summer, a descendant of the Medlicott-Allen-Kibbe family shared a collection of family photographs with the Longmeadow Historical Society; included in the collection is an image of the Calvin Burt house before it was remodeled.

In addition to altering the façade of the building, William G. Medlicott substantially enlarged it. It is likely that Mr. Medlicott needed the extra space to hold his 20,000 volume private library. On the 1910 map of Longmeadow, the home looks comparable in size to its neighbor to the south, the Brewer-Young Mansion. The map shows a barn behind the house, and there was also a garden. The view from the back of the house stretched westward to the Connecticut River.

1910 Map of Longmeadow

William G. Medlicott died in 1883 and probate records show that he left all of his properties to his daughter, Mary.

Eliza Medlicott continued to live in the house with her daughters Mary and Bertha until she died in 1907. Son William B. and his family moved back to the Medlicott house after his mother’s death and they lived there with Bertha and Mary until William B. and his family moved to Cambridge. In 1916, Bertha moved to Northampton and Mary moved to Springfield.

In 1917, Stanford L. Haynes, the neighbor who lived just north of the Medlicott house, purchased the house and, in 1918 and 1919, it became the headquarters of the Longmeadow chapter of the Red Cross.

Stanford L. Haynes died shortly afterwards and, according to a 1921 article from the archives of the Longmeadow Historical Society, his estate sold the Medlicott house, but not the property, to Charles N. Dunn, president of Bay State Storage and Warehouse Company. Mr. Dunn planned to use elements of the house in his “fine new residence” on Sunset Road, overlooking the river, at the south end of Longmeadow. Unfortunately, Mr. Dunn subsequently had financial difficulties and I can find no record that he ever built his new home.

1921 newspaper article

The Medlicott house was torn down and it disappeared from Longmeadow over 100 years ago, but we are fortunate that we have so many images which document the grandeur that it once represented.

Sources

• Special thanks to Stephen Forbes and James Moran

• Longmeadow Historical Society archives

• Hall, J. R. 1990. William G. Medlicott (1816-1883): An American book collector and his collection. Harvard Library Bulletin 1 (1), Spring 1990: 13-46. William G. Medlicott (1816-1883): An American book collector and his collection (harvard.edu)

• Springfield Republican, June 4, 1918

• "Use Materials in Old House," 1921 newspaper article

• “Miss Medlicott, Librarian, Dies at Age of 81,” Springfield Republican, March 3, 1927

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

• 1831 Map of Longmeadow

• 1910 Map of Longmeadow

Contributed by Elizabeth Hoff, Longmeadow Historical Society Board Member

Originally published March 10, 2022

Deerfield Sculpture

ETA: This 2022 article by an LHS Class of '22 graduate was the culminating project for an internship he completed as part of his coursework. We are grateful to Christopher Cummings for his contribution.

The sculpture was donated to the Longmeadow Historical Society by the siblings of Lane Ziff, a long-time Storrs Library employee who passed away in March 2021. It had been in their family's collection since their parents acquired it many years ago.

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Hello, everyone. I’m Christopher Cummings and I’m a senior at Longmeadow High School. I’ve been interning at the Longmeadow Historical Society for about 3 months now. The task I have been given is to learn about, reflect on and tell the story behind a recently acquired gift to the museum. The gift is a statue called Deerfield by sculptor Jud Hartmann. I’ve become absolutely fascinated by the story of the 1704 Raid at Deerfield that is depicted in the statue. It depicts three native men attacking Englishman John Sheldon's door. This was an actual event that happened during the 1704 raid. Since I'm personally a huge fan of colonial history and native interactions I naturally felt interested in this piece. This story is important to Longmeadow’s history because our first minister, Rev. Stephen Williams was captured and marched to Canada during the raid. He was only a young boy at the time.

The statue tells the story of the French and Native raid on the northernmost English settlement of Deerfield in 1704. As a part of the Spanish Succession War, the French sought to defend their colony, New France, against the larger and more populated New England. Although not much fighting occurred in the colonial territory, the French figured it would be best to strike first, before the English continued to expand their colonial territories.

To take the initiative against the English, the French went on the offensive, using their native allies to their advantage. The raiding party was diverse, being made up of not only French soldiers, but members of several different native tribes. France attempted to bring many different native groups together and maintain alliances by launching a joint raid on Deerfield.

These natives were the Abenaki, Huron, Iroquois, Mohawks and Pennacooks, each with their own reasons for participating in the raid. The Abenaki and Pennacook supported the French, as they had already been struggling in a series of wars with England that hadn’t been going their way. The Hurons and Iroqouithen-ten-year-olds, in a tradition known as “mourning wars,” fought to bring captives to make up for the loss of dead family members. The Mohawks fought for this same reason as well, except allegedly with the notable extra motivation of reclaiming a lost bell they had bought from the French that was stolen by the English. From the website of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Museum in Deerfield I learned, “Kanienkehaka oral tradition tells that in Deerfield the Kahnawake raiders hoped to find a church bell that had been purchased by the people of Kahnawake and transported on a French ship from Europe. According to this tradition, the bell was stolen en route by English privateers and later bought by John Williams.” With all these parties combined, the raid was one of the most diverse attack parties ever assembled on the continent up to that point. See reference for additional information.

In 1703, a few months before the raid, the English actually had good reason to believe there would be an impending attack. English forces spotted the raiding party outside Fort Chambly on the Richelieu River. The English sent forces to reinforce Deerfield before the raid. However, as months passed and nothing happened the English militia departed. Aside from repairing the palisade and building a few minor fortifications, the English were caught vastly underprepared when the raid occurred in February 1704.

John and Stephen Williams

Two of the most famous individuals from this raid were Deerfield residents, John and Stephen Williams. John Williams (1664-1729) was a Deerfield minister. In 1706 his release was negotiated and he was returned to New England. However, he wasn’t happy to hear that his then ten-year-old daughter, Eunice, refused to come home with him. She instead stayed with the Mohawk family who had adopted her, and joined their tribe by marrying François-Xavier Arosen, or Amrusus, a Kanawake. When John Williams returned home he wrote and published a memoir of his experience, The Redeemed Captive, in 1707. It became one of the most popular captive retellings of its time.

Stephen Williams (1694-1782), the son of John Williams was only 10 years old when he was captured in 1704. He, too, recounted his experience in a handwritten account of his experience.

After the events depicted in the statue, the captured residents of Deerfield, including Stephen and John Williams, were forced to march this route in cold and brutal winter conditions.

The Sculpture

In the sculpture we see three natives attempting to break down the Sheldon house door. The actual door still exists and is on display at the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association Museum in Deerfield. It still displays the hatchet marks and has been referred to as “The Old Indian Door” for generations now. John Sheldon and his family lived in Deerfield at the time of the raid. Although they ended up being captured, their reinforced door came to symbolize English strength during the raid. The attackers were ultimately able to get in by sneaking through the back, after failing to break down the door.

Per Jud Hartmann, the sculptor of the statue, each native figure represents a different tribe. The native man closest to the door with a raised hatchet is an unnamed Abenaki raider.

However, the other two native raiders are some of the most impactful characters of the Deerfield story.

I learned through an email correspondence with Mr. Hartmann, the native man in the middle who appears to be in full motion is named, “Amrusus, a Caughnawaga Mohawk, wearing an Iroquois deerskin jacket with a distinctive double fringe down the back. He later married Eunice Williams.” Eunice Williams, John Williams' daughter, would ultimately choose to live with the native society that she had been adopted into rather than return home to New England.

Hartmann also said the second Native American is one by the name of “Thaovenhosen, the Huron chief who was a key & important ally of the French who lived close to Quebec in the Huron village of Lorette. Signifying his importance & close ties to the French, he is wearing a French army officer’s great coat which he would have received as a gift.” The French supplied arms and other equipment to their allies, and through Thaovenhosen’s appearance we can see that.

Is it fair to say this piece is controversial? Yes, of course, it is. As with many things in history, it's difficult to really define what a piece means to some people. To one person looking at this statue, you might see a “Barbarians at the gate” scenario, in which a door stands alone to keep out “savagery.” However, to another person, they could see an accurate representation of native cultures in action, albeit not a very friendly action - but nonetheless a correct retelling of what happened. Others can see it as a complete fabrication, but that's not for me to decide. Anyone is open to interpreting a piece any way they like as after all, no one OWNS history. Part of the point of art like this is to retell history and illustrate the way some see it. So it's not wrong for someone to interpret this piece as controversial. When people in the future look back on the past art is one of the most widely interpretable things.

Personally, I feel like I’ve learned a lot about not only European conflict and colonial history, but a lot more about native cultures at the time. It’s something that isn’t generally taught unless you take a specific class relating to it. I can say as a high school senior that even though I took AP US History alongside all the other highest-level history classes, I never spent an extended period of time learning about native cultures. The extent that we learned about natives in AP was effectively “All right, Jackson went and removed them all on the Trail of Tears, some of them resisted but they all eventually gave in.” The only tribes I recall from that class are the Cherokee and the Chickasaw, and that's because of the Trail of Tears. Native culture isn’t appreciated for what it is in any way shape or form, and doing a project that's centered entirely around it has been a great learning experience for me.

Questions for Further Thinking

• How would an early 1700s French Canadian describe this piece? How would an Abenaki, or a Deerfield resident of the time respond if they saw it?

• How would you describe this piece? What feelings does this statue provoke in you, why?

• If this statue was sculpted from the perspective of each of the parties represented what changes would be made? Would anything look different?

• Do you believe this depiction is fair? Why or why not?

• Does anything in the sculpture stand out as particularly symbolic?

• Do any particular parts of the natives' attire and outfits stand out to you, such as hair, face paint, or body paint?

For information on the artist, Jud Hartmann, visit his website at https://judhartmanngallery.com.

Works Cited

• Alchin, Linda. "The Story of Huron." WarPaths to PeacePipes, Siteseen Limited, 20 Nov. 2012, www.warpaths2peacepipes.com/indian-tribes/huron-tribe.htm

• "The Five Cultures." The Many Stories of 1704, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association (PVMA) /Memorial Hall Museum, 8 July 2001, www.1704.deerfield.history.museum/scenes/groups.do.

• Geiss, Benjamin. The Street of Old Deerfield 1704. 1980. American Centuries,1980,

• Hartmann, Jud. "Deerfield." Jud Hartmann Gallery, www.judhartmanngallery.com/deerfield/

• The Many Stories of 1704. Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association(PVMA)/Memorial Hall Museum, 8 July 2001, www.1704.deerfield.history.museum/maps/march.html

• 1704 Deerfield, Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, 2020, www.1704.deerfield.history.museum/scenes/groups.do.

• What Befell Stephen Williams in his Captivity, American Centuries, 23 May 1889, www.americancenturies.mass.edu/collection/itempage.jsp?itemid=5734&level=advanced&transcription=1&img=4

Note: In the Fall of 2021 the Longmeadow Historical Society was asked to host a student intern from Longmeadow High School. Christopher Cummings '22 spent some time with us with the task of helping us learn more about a recent donation to the Longmeadow Historical Society: a sculpture by Jud Hartmann depicting one incident in the event known as the 1704 Raid on Deerfield. The event has ties to Longmeadow in that our town’s first minister, Stephen Williams, was captured and held for ransom as a result of the attack. We plan to make use of the sculpture to generate discussion about different perspectives over time and across cultures. We are proud of Christopher for the work he has put together here to get us started.

-Contributed by Christopher Cummings, Longmeadow High School '22

Originally published March 3, 2022