Through the remainder of this year, Southwoods will be running past articles retelling stories of Southwick’s past for the upcoming celebration of Southwick’s 250th Anniversary.

By Bernadette Gentry

The tops of the bare trees,

looking like the heads on lollipop

sticks reach their bare branches

to the sky.

There they give praise to their creator.

Like us they wait for the

Sun to warm them again

after Winter’s cold.

Before too long their buds

will open, and they will

be filled with color.

Later their leaves will

Appear and offer shad

and shelter to the birds.

And I think, we like they,

must wait patient

for beauty and hope to return

with early Spring dreams.

Early

Spring

Dreams

Image by Ulrike Leone pixabay.com

It seems hardly likely that a brutal murder scandal among the French nobility that rocked Europe and the United States in the 1840’s could have any thing to do with the little town of South-wick, but it does! It is also interesting to realize right now, when our country is in the throes of its own sensational murder trial, that, even in the days before television, radio and the Trans Atlantic tele-graph, such an event caused a media tizzy. Of course, the only re-course people had then was to grab up the newspapers hot off the presses to read the latest sordid details about the case.

The murder I speak of was that of the Duchesse de Praslin of Paris, and it occurred on the 18th of August, 1847. The Duc de Cho-iseul-Praslin of Paris, her husband, was arrested as the prime sus-pect. France was governed, at that time, by King Louis-Phillippe, but this case shed such a bad light on the behavior of the nobility that it contributed to the downfall of the monarchy in favor of a more republican system.

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. In order to un-derstand the thread that connects this story to the little New England town of Southwick, we must delve into the past in more detail on both sides of the Atlantic.

Let us begin in Paris in 1841. Here, a young governess by the name of Mademoiselle Henriette Desportes left her position in London to return to her native France where she became the governess for the children of the Duc and Duchesse de Praslin. Both the Praslins were of the nobility, but it was the Duchesse, the daughter of the Marechal Sebastiani, who brought the wealth to the marriage that shored up the Duc’s ancestral estates.

While there seems to have been love between the husband and wife in the beginning and 9 children came from their union, the Duchesse was highly emotional and possessive, and the Duc’s love for her began to wain under the circumstances. She grew even more jealous and unstable and was hardly capable of caring for her chil-dren’s needs.

Then the Duc, who doted on his children and oversaw their

upbringing with care, became dissatisfied with their present gov-erness, one whom his wife favored, however. He dismissed the governess in spite of his wife’s objections, and hired Mademoiselle Henriette Deluzy-Desportes in her place.

The new governess was neither extremely young nor beautiful, but she was an experienced, capable teacher for the Praslin children, and her character was impeccable. You can imagine, though, that an already awkward situation between the husband and wife grew worse as the children blossomed under Henriette’s care and the Duc’s gratitude.

In spite of Henriette’s efforts to sustain the children’s relation-ship with their mother, the Duchesse’s capricious, selfish behavior alienated her children. Her instability bordered on mental illness, and the Duc did not possess the strength of character to weather the emotional turmoil she caused in his family.

For 6 years Henriette stayed on as governess to the Praslins, and although she developed deep feelings for the children and the fa-ther, she never acted improperly in any way toward the Duc, nor did he toward her. Yet, because of his position, there were false accounts printed in the scandal sheets of the period that linked the attractive governess and the Duc in an illicit relationship and portrayed the wife as the helpless victim.

Finally, the Duchesse’s father, the Marechal, who still held the family purse strings, dismissed the blameless governess. The Duc had no choice but to go along with the decision in spite of its in-justice and the anguish it caused his young children. The Marechal promised that the Duchesse would write a letter of recommendation for Henriette so that she could obtain another governess position. However, months went by, and no longer came to Henriette. Several times the Duc brought his grieving children to see their old govern-ess at her temporary residence in a respectable but far from lavish Paris boarding house. During the last visit, Henriette’s landlady, who was also her friend, pressed the Duc for the letter of recom-mendation and he promised that Henriette would have it the next day if she called at his home at #55, Rue du Faibourg- Saint-Honore.

However, that night the Duchesse was brutally murdered, The Duc attributed the death to an unknown assailant who broke into the mansion but when his own valet led the police to the Duc’s

October 1995

blood-soaked clothing, ashes of burned letters in the grate, and the weapon, the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to the Duc as the true murderer. Soon the governess, Mademoiselle Henriette Deluzy-Desportes, was also taken into custody under suspicion of complic-ity in the crime.

She was incarcerated at the Conciergerie, the same stone prison where Marie Antoinette had languished on her last night alive. Al-though Henriette’s friends tried to obtain legal counsel for her, she refused, maintaining that her innocence would be her sole counsel.

The judges who examined her used every tactic to link her to the crime but to no avail--they could not sway her from her reasoned account of her life with the unhappily married Duc and Duchesse and her innocence of any wrongdoing. Though in a state of shock she defended herself eloquently and convincingly, and no evidence could be found against her.

The Duc obtained poi-son and died in prison of an apparent suicide only a week after his arrest. The pub-lic felt the Duc had gotten off too easily because he was a member of the House of Peers and a friend of the king. Sentiment already against the monarchy now grew into public unrest. Although Henriette was cleared, the rabble sought to vent its wrath on her.

Now another thread is woven into our story, this one from across the ocean. It seems that a young minister from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, one Henry Field, was traveling in Europe shortly af-ter the Praslin murder trial; he had read the accounts in the papers and was greatly inspired by Mademoiselle Henriette Desportes’ re-markable self-defense. He managed to get an invitation to a party at the home of a prominent Paris minister where Henriette had been given refuge after her release. Field met Henriette, and in spite of herself Henriette was favorably impressed by this young, energetic American who admired her so fervently.

Afterwards, Field went back to his travels, and presumably that was the end of the encounter. However, some time later, Henriette left France for America where she had obtained a teaching position at a fashionable girls’ school in New York City. It was only after she had arrived in New York that she learned that Henry Field recom-mended her to the headmistress of the school. Thus began a corre-spondence and a friendship between Henriette and Henry.

Henriette was an excellent teacher,.but her wealthy pupils were difficult. When a few found out by chance that she was the govern-ess in the infamous Praslin murder case, it seemed that her new life would be destroyed by her past. Yet, with the headmistress’ per-mission, Henriette told the entire story to her students, and again, her eloquence and her innocence saved the day. She had no more problems at the school.

Meanwhile, the friendship between Henriette Desportes and Henry Field grew serious but before they could marry, she had to persuade his many brothers and sisters, his mother, and his step-father who was also a minister, that she was worthy of Henry. This accomplished, they became husband and wife and moved to West Springfield where Henry had taken a pastorate at the Congrega-tional Church there. From West Springfield it was only a short train

ride to Henry’s beloved Stockbridge where his family lived, and it was even closer to the little farming community of Southwick, Mass. where Henry’s brother, Matthew Field and family resided. Thus the threads from France and America, now joined, become entangled with the larger story of the entire Field family and the birth of an amazing new technological breakthrough of the day. You see, Cyrus Field, another of Henry’s brothers, was the mastermind of the trans-atlantic telegraph cable from Europe to America. Cyrus Field spent a good portion of his life, energy, and wealth bringing that marvelous invention to fruition but not without enormous frustration, heart break and even the bankruptcy of his first company. Finally, after a number of failures, the two continents were linked by cable on July 29, 1860 and this was all chronicled in Henry Field’s book called His-tory of the Atlantic Telegraph.

Henry and Henriette eventually moved to New York City where he became the editor of The Evangelist, a religious newspaper of the day. Henriette tutored students from her former school to help make ends meet. The couple had a modest house in Gram-mercy Park which was, nevertheless, often filled with well-known writers, artists, and thinkers of the day. Although she and Henry never had children of their own, they raised Clara Field, one of Matthew’s daughters, from the time she was two years old.

One imagines that the Henry Fields made frequent visits back to Southwick so that Clara could see her par-ents, brothers, and sisters. At times they must have encountered Cyrus Field there because Matthew helped Cyrus do much of the planning for the cable in the summers at the Field house on College Highway in Southwick.

The Matthew Field home had been built by Enos Foote in 1803, and Matthew’s wife, Clarissa Laflin Field, had inherited it from her father. Unfortunately, the landmark two-story Colonial is no longer in existence. It burned down on May 25, 1928, at the time in the own-ership of Charles M. Arnold. The site was on the east side of College Highway between what is now the Congregational Church parson-age at 490 College Highway and the present day home and office of Dr. James Martinell at 498 College Highway.

Though the house is gone, those of you who were inspired by this account of Mademoiselle Henriette Deluzy-Desportes and Hen-ry Field and their affinity to Southwick, can read the story in more detail in the book, All This, and Heaven Too written by Henriette’s grand niece, Rachel Layman Field. The book was first published by Macmillan Company of New York in 1938 and is still in print as of the writing of this article. Warner Brothers even made it into a mov-ie starring Bette Davis. The Southwick Public Library will soon be adding this book to its permanent collection.

Copyright Elethea Goodkin 1995. Sources not mentioned in this text: Histori-cal Facts and Stories about Southwick, Maud Etta Gillett Davis, Southwick, 1951.

As an adult my interest began with a book The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, which led me to countless other books. The war movies I saw put a picture to the words.

Over the years that interest continued because I was privi-leged to meet people connected to the War such as Brig. Gen. Paul W. Tibbets, the pilot who flew the B-29 named Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima. He was on a personal tour that included a visit to the New England Air Mu-seum in Windsor Locks, CT. Tibbets was accompanied by his bombardier Maj. Thomas W. Ferebee. At another event held at The Big E, I met Tibbets’ navigator Captain Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk. On a return visit to the Air Museum, I met U. S. Navy veteran Michael Kuryla, a survivor of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. The Indy delivered the atomic bomb to Tinian Island. And on its return to base, the Indy was torpedoed and sunk.

As the years went by I took every opportunity to see any-thing WW II and that included historical sights like the WWII Memorial in D.C. and the Enola Gay on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center next door to Dulles Airport in Chantilly, VA. In London, I toured Churchill’s underground War Rooms.

Now my decades-long interest has brought me to Eastern Europe and Auschwitz with group of 28 touring Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland with an emphasis on World War II history.

After a 90-minute bus ride from our hotel and a long walk in the rain through a town cemetery, I saw the brick-walled Auschwitz and the metal archway that marked the entrance with the “Work Sets You Free” sign. Auschwitz had several di-visions but we visited only two – Auschwitz I which housed about 20,000 prisoners and Auschwitz II or Birkenau with 90,000 inmates.

We went up into one of the watch towers where the German guards had a bird’s eye view of the Camp. We did too as we looked out over the massive grounds and row after row of bar-racks, some with only foundations remaining. A Camp guide took us into the barracks. The wooden bunk beds were stacked to the ceiling and prisoners were crammed in side by side. The straw mattresses were flea and lice infected and there were few blankets in the poorly heated buildings. The hospital building isolated contagious prisoners but few ever reached it. Another building was for medical experiments and nearby we saw the restored gas chambers and crematoriums. We learned of the

No Time Machine Needed

A World War II History Tour - Part One

unmarked mass graves and how the crematoriums’ chim-neys scattered the ashes of the prisoners over the grounds. In plain sight of the horrors of the Camp was the commandant’s palatial home with an outside swimming pool for his wife and children.

After the War, additions to the Camp were added that include a commemorative mu-seum, a Jewish Center, a Syna-gogue and resource room. A separate room showed a film of the liberation of the Camp by the Russians. I could see the horror and disbelief in the prisoners faces.

In spite of the crowd of tourists, most of the time there was a stunned silence. Each room had a large glass-walled dis-play area of what was taken from the victims – countless shoes, glasses, pieces of luggage, all kinds and sizes of prostheses and wheelchairs, hair, yes hair and other personal items. We saw it all up close, sometimes too close. As we walked from room to room there were quiet reactions to what we saw. I heard sobbing as I tried and failed to control my own tears. One young woman I saw was physically ill. The enormity of what we looked at took a toll on all of us.

Before leaving Krakow, we stopped at the site where Oskar Schindler’s factory once stood. He was a German factory own-er who saved many Jews as depicted in the movie Schindler’s List, which tells the whole story. A museum stands there today but was closed the day we visited. A brass plaque honoring Schindler hangs outside the building.

Next stop, Warsaw, a city that was 85% destroyed by the Russians. It was painstakingly rebuilt and is a truly beautiful city. The Palace of Culture and Science is the tallest building and gives a fantastic view of the City. We visited Old Town, the Jewish Ghetto and Memorial and later spent some time at the Lazienki Park where Chopin is memorialized. In the nearby town square, Chopin’s music wafts through the air. It raised our spirits.

Thankfully, there were a number of lighter moments in

the tour, like the visit to the Wieliczka Salt Mine. Check the web site for the incredible photos. This salt mine, 1,073 feet deep and 178 miles long, produced table salt until 2007. Now a museum, it houses doz-ens of statues, chapels, a cathe-dral and underground lake all carved out of rock salt by the miners who considered it a great privilege to work there. To enter the mine, we walked down a spiral staircase with 378 wooden steps.

“Not to worry”, our guide said, “To return to the surface we have an elevator.”

During the war, the Ger-mans used the mine for vari-ous industries.

Wonderful food and very friendly people made it difficult to leave Poland but Berlin was calling so we headed there by train. The six and a half hour ride was in comfortable seats in closed compartments like in the movies, so now I’m looking for Hercule Poirot. Free coffee and water was available and there was a dining car that offered a buffet, not free.

......to be continued

Above, A pile of glasses taken from Auschwitz victims. (By DIMS-FIKAS / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)

Facing Page, Entrance to Auschwitz (By Bibi595 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org)

Part Two

By Ross Haseltine

The Road King is packed and ready to go. Today we’re riding up to explore the abandoned Hudson-Chester Granite Quarry. 

This place is cool! It’s almost as if work stopped one day and the workers never came back. 

Littered about the landscape are a couple old trucks (pos-sibly a 1940s compressor truck and a haul truck), tanks, the ru-

ins of an electrical generator shed (probably purchased from Sears, Roebuck and Co.), old winches and hoists, rusty cables, old engines, and of course, the water filled quarry. 

Some sources date the quarry back to the 1850s, but it is be-lieved to have started in 1880-81. However, it wasn’t until 1891 that the Hudson-Chester Granite Company was organized and although the quarry is in Becket, the granite, which was primarily used in monuments, became known as Chester gran-ite. Rough cut stone was shipped right from the quarry while the remaining product was shipped from cutting and polish-ing sheds located in nearby Chester, MA, and Hudson, NY.

 The quality of granite coming out of the quarry was said to be “superior.” The same year the company was founded, they were looking to hire an additional 45 men, on top of the rough-ly 80 they already had. They needed the extra men to help fulfill a government contract to provide 50,000-cubic feet of dressed building stone for the arsenal at West Point. They also started construction on a large home to help house 100 workers. 

 By 1892, the company was looking to bring their work-force to 200 - just in quarrymen alone. That’s not counting the 20-horse teams who were hauling stone two or three miles from the quarry to the mill which was running day and night during this time. 

 When granite workers in New York went on strike a tele-gram was sent. It read: “send fifty (granite) cutters; no strike here; good stock and good work” - signed by E. C. Howley, sec-retary of the Hudson-Chester Granite Co. (1892).

 The company experienced lots of growth and success, but it had its fair share of setbacks too. 

 1893 was especially hard. First, the company’s polishing and sawmill and their engine house burned to the ground on February 25th. Then in May, concerns over wages prompted workers in the Granite Cutters’ Union to strike.

 The company was spending a lot of money transporting stone by horse. In September of 1895, Becket taxpayers declined

to fund a railroad spur to the quarry by voting down a pro-posal put forth by the company. But the company didn’t give up and the rail line opened in 1898. 

On January 11, 1899 water pipes froze forcing a temporary closure until the burst pipes were repaired.  

 In September of that same year, people from all over trav-eled to the quarry to see what was described as a “monster block of granite.” The blasted rock con-tained no blem-ishes. Weighing 4,284,000-pounds, it measured 48-feet long, 42-feet wide and 12.5-ft thick.

 Another dis-pute about wages plus the adher-ence to an eight-hour workday caused the company to shutter the quarry in 1904, thus putting all men out-of-work for a brief time. 

 The 14-year old, 300-ft. southern pine tres-tle, spanning Blandford Road along the rail line which lead to the quarry caught fire on July 6, 1912. It burned for about two-hours before crash-ing down onto the road below. Officials believe a spark from a locomotive caused the fire.

 The company’s polishing and cutting plant was leased to the newly formed Chester Granite & Polishing Works in 1910 with the company signing a 10-year lease which started on April 1st. 

 Both companies were sued when a boy was blinded after a dynamite cap in a trashcan exploded on February 26, 1916. The court found in favor of the company.   

 Some sources say the quarry operated into the 1960s but it is believed that the company abruptly abandoned it in 1945-46. 

DANGEROUS WORK

 A 23-year old worker died in a freak accident at the quarry on July 16, 1901. He was attempting to lift a stone with an iron bar when the stone gave way. Another worker caught him as he was falling but the bar pierced his chest slightly above his heart and he died moments later. 

 A worker suffered a large gash from his right ear to his eye and an-other to his mouth while attempting to pry a large block of granite on June 10, 1909. He required 12-stitches.

 On October 13, 1914, a 32-year-old worker, on the job about a week, fell. Hitting the bottom of the quarry he died instantly.

By Jim Putnam

Note: This is written as a story of how I imagine it might have been, based on the few facts that are known. It is not intended as a work of “pure history.” JNP

Imagine being one of the pioneering residents of what was then known as the “Southerdly Part” of Westfield in the 1760s…

You have established a farm somewhere near what are now Bugbee, Klaus Anderson and College Highway. It’s 6 miles to the meeting house in downtown Westfield to attend church and town meeting. There’s a dirt path north to Westfield by which you can travel by foot, horse or a horse and wagon. In ideal conditions, you might travel 3 to 4 miles an hour with a team of horses, and likely slower with oxen. When that path is muddy from recent rains or spring thaw, you stay home. You can’t risk the safety of your draft animals upon which you rely for your farming livelihood. In the win-ter, snow, ice and the cold make a round trip to Westfield even more difficult.

The more established you and your neighbors become in the “Southerdly Part”, the less you feel like full-fledged Westfield citizens. You sometimes miss Town Meeting because of travel

challenges and it is impractical for you to be a Westfield town official. Town decisions get made, but you don’t feel like an equal participant. You pay the same tax rate, but don’t feel like you get your fair share of benefits. Perhaps when you do at-tend Town Meeting, some of the Westfield folks tease you and your Southerdly neighbors…

When you gather with your Southerdly neighbors (perhaps over some hard cider or beer!), the conversation increasingly turns to this frustration. As the energy builds, someone boldly proposes “Let’s petition Boston for our own district”. Probably a chorus of voic-es erupts, some in favor and others not yet sure. Every time this idea is subsequently discussed, however, the voices of those in favor gain strength.

Petitioning required much greater commitment back then. To-day we might sign a petition for some good cause and think no more about it. Back then it meant “putting your money where your mouth is.” Those who petitioned would be pledging to jointly pay for “the settling of a learned orthodox minister” and “building and compleating a Meeting House for the worship of God.” For these relatively new residents with large families working hard to get farms and homes established, it’s a big fi-nancial commitment.

On March 15, 1765, the residents petition the General Court (Massachusetts Colonial Legislature) in Boston to be set off from the town of Westfield. (facing page.) And then, nothing happens.

The agitation likely continued. On May 22, 1769 another similar petition was sent to Boston. This time it was approved, the boundary with Westfield was established, the name “South-wick” was designated and a Charter effective November 7, 1770 was forthcoming.

A wonderful, vibrant American community was officially born: Southwick, Massachusetts.

Source: Historical Facts and Stories about Southwick, Maude Gillett Davis. Copies available for purchase through the Southwick Histori-cal Society.

The Founding OF Southwick

The Webb House. This dwelling was built about 1740, probably by John Root, one of the original settlers of the town. From “Images of America Around Southwick” by the Southwick Historical Society, Inc. Arcadia Publishing, 1997.

ORIGINAL PETITION FOR SEPARATION

The original petition, dated March 15, 1765, came into my possession on June 17, 1950, having been stowed away with some old family records. It is written in black ink, was very legible and is as follows:

“We the subscribers living in the Southerdly part of Westfield in the county of Hampshire - Being desirous to be set off a District from the town of Westfield and for the encouragement and promotion of the same and in consideration of our advantage do jointly and sever-aly promise to advance our equal part and proportion of money according to our respective interests for car-rying on a Prayer to the General Court for the purpose aforesaid and all charges accuring therefrom and also we further for the considerations aforesaid jointly and severally promise to fulfill our equal part and propor-tion advancing money according to our respective inter-ests for the settling a learned orthodox minister and for the building and compleating a Meeting House for the worship of God in said Southerly part and pay the same money unto the committee there chosen for the purpose of aforesaid for the use and benefit of the premises -viz - to Samuel Fowler, Benjamin Loomis, Joseph Moore, Daniel Olds, Noah Loomis, Matthew Laflin and Moses Noble - for witnesses thereof we there - unto severally subscribe our names -15th of March, 1765.”

Samuel Fowler

Aaron Granger

Joseph Moore

Abner Graves

Benjamin A. Loomis

David Wilcocks

Daniel Olds

Isaac Gillet

Matthew Laflin

Shadrick Moore

Noah Loomis

Amon Holcomb

Levi Root

Elijah Holcomb

William Moore

Micah Miller

Levi Tremble

Dames Moore

Jonah Stiles

Samuel Hare

Moses Nobel

Samuel Olds

James Smith

Ebenezer White

Samuel Johnson

Gideon Root

Gad Strong

James Stevenson

Abner Fowler

Silas Fowler

Nathan Warner

George Granger

James Campbell

Joseph Hide

Sampson French

Samuel Haines

Reuben Noble

Nehemiah Loomis

James Nelson

Rufus Stevens

Ephraim Griffin

Isaac Moor

David Kellog

Moses Wright

Moses Root

Giles Moor

Aphel Graves

Solomon Stevens

Isaac Nelson

Adanujak Burr

Ephraim Noble

Roger Root

By Sue Dutch

In early March, the north winds bring

Frost that makes us long for Spring.

The Arctic air so cold it leaves

Icy spikes on houses’ eaves.

All through March the days grow longer

While the sun grows ever stronger.

When southern winds at last arrive

Earth’s latent life starts to revive.

First crocuses begin to grow.

They force their buds right through the snow.

When they bloom and song birds sing

We’ll know that Winter’s turned to Spring.