Exerpt from speech given in Amherst in 1883 during a Dickinson Family Reunion:
Web address is at botom of this page. Author does not site his sources but worth looking at.
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But I know that you are anticipating the mention of another name which is sacred to every New England Dickinson wlio is acquainted with his family history,— a name which now as in the days when the man "without guile" sat under the fig tree, is a synonym for integrity. Many a time these ancient hills and vales have resounded to the name of Nathaniel Dickinson, but only, as we believe, to send back the echo that he was one of Nature's noble men. His early home was England, but who blessed his home for him we cannot tell. In his antecedents he is to us like Melchizedek, " without father, without mother, and without descent ;' ' but in his subsequent history lie is a veritable Abraham, for ' ' his seed is as the sand of the desert, which cannot be numbered for multitude." That he is a scion of the common tree we have no doubt. The recurrence of the names Charles, Daniel, John, Elijah, Nathaniel, Samuel and William in the English, New England and Southern branches, clearly indicate a common origin.
It is said that Jonathan Dickinson, (U) a President of Princeton College, located the English home of Nathaniel on the Isle of Ely in Cambridge ; but I am more inclined to trust the evidence which locates it in Hadleigh, Suffolkshire. There, I believe, under the influence of a Christian home, he laid the foundations of that sturdy character which was to make him a power in his day and generation, and which, transmitted from father to son, was to form no small part of the vertebral force of New England. A young man in the most delightful flower of his age, with nerves unshattered by dissipa- tion, and a character strong in the Lord, he in company witli many others embarked at Gravesend in the year 1629 or 1630, and turned his face to the land of promise. Whether he bore his hopes alone to the new world, or whether he shared them on his voyage with Anna Gull we cannot say. We only are sure that this youthful
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widow became his wife about this time, either in England or America, and that she was in all resects worthy of the name which he gave her.
Upon his arrival at Boston it is reported that he settled in Watertown, where were born to him John and Joseph and Thomas, the worthy first fruits of the New England stock. The East winds, however, probably did not agree with him ; for we find him moving Westward, and in 1637, erecting his family altar in Wethersfield, Conn., a town which, not slow to discover and appreciate his worth, honored him with her highest confidence, making him her Recording Clerk in 1645, and her Representative during the ten following years, at the end of which time a stiff Theological breeze springing up in the church at Hartford, struck the church at Wethersfield, and drove the Dickin- son family ship to the Northward.
The Dickinsons have always been noted for having a mind of their own, and never has their opinionativeness been more manifest than when it has concerned religious matters. Whether churchmen or anti-churchmen, our fathers have always beeii independent leading spirits. An old historian of Leeds, who was evidently not a non-conformist, in speak- ing of an uprising of that party in the West Riding of Yorkshire, says "A misguided and enthusiastic rabble met in Farley Wood for the purpose of overturning the exist- ing government, and declaring for a Christian magistracy and a gosi)eI ministry, and among their leaders was William Dickinson, * * '-^ John Dickinson was also a carrier on of the design, and a certain Luke Lunt testi- fied that he desired to be a Captain." It was evidently a non-conformist sj)irit which inspired Nathaniel and others of the Wethersfield church, who, as strict Congregationalists, could not conscientiously sub- mit to certain innovations which the majority attempted to imjpose upon them. Wearied at length with the contro-
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versy, and at tlie same time attracted by tlie beautiful and fertile fields which lay farther up the Connecticut, he eagerly joined in a movement which had for its object the purchase and settlement of a tract of land in the valley of Norwottuck. This was accomiplished in 1659, and he and fifty-nine other "engagers," taking possession of the region, gave to it the name of Hadley, after the name which was dear to many of them in Old England. Beautiful for situation was Norwottuck, with its broad plains still unreclaimed, flanked on the one side by its mountain fortress, and laved on the other by the waters of the Connecticut. There was life in its soil. There was health in its atmosphere; but then, there were Indians and wolves in its woods, and hardships under every square foot of its alluvial plains. He who would possess the land must have a brave heart and a strong right arm. It is a patriarchal family which folds ui3 its tents in Wetherslield to pitch them again in Nonvottuck : — a family which foes, physical and spiritual, have each, doubtless, good reason to fear.
The patriarch himself is in the prime and vigor of life, and following him are his worthy wife, nine strapping sons and two fair daughters ; the eldest of the sons, John, bringing with him as his wife the daughter of Nathaniel Foote, of Wetherslield, who is the proud mother of six small (;hildren. Among these twenty Dickinsons are seven men over eighteen years of age, who can swing an axe or handle a musket with ecpial facility. The town plot of Hadley was laid out in four quarters, two on each side of the street, divided l)y a highway ; and it was agreed tliat each home-lot should contain eight acres. In the allotment of these homesteads Nathaniel received the one in the extreme southeast of the town ; Thomas, who, I suppose, being still unmarried, lived with his father, received the lot adjoining this ; and John took a lot farther up the street, just below the lot of Richard
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Montague, whose descendants held their family meeting in Hadley last year, and to the earnest efforts of one of whom, in connection with those of our indefatigable sec- retary, the success of this meeting is largely due. This proximity of the Dickinsons and the Montagues, by the way, has been perpetuated by Irene and Luke, who in their children and children' s children have forever united the blood of Nathaniel and Richard. Here over the ground which, Avith its carpet of green, and its double vista of patriarchal elms, is to-day one of the most picturesque streets in the world, Nathaniel and the children who have come after him have passed and re-passed till every foot of the soil has become sacred to him who bears the family name. Here were formed those attachments, here were imbibed those principles which determined the very existence and character of many who are assembled here to-day.
Nathaniel was evidently a leading man in Had- ley, as he had been in Wethersheld, He held many pub- lic offices, and devoted himself to the public weal. The Hadley Church made him one of its first deacons, and found in him a staunch supporter. A meeting-house had to be erected, of course, and Goodman Dickinson was one of the seven who were chosen by the tjpwn to build it. When it was completed the town voted : "That there should be some sticks set up in the meeting-house in sev- eral places, with some fit persons placed by them, and to use them as occasion shall requii:e to keep the youths from disorder." Whether Deacon Dickinson was an advocate of this Solomonic method of correcting the manners of the young Hadlians we cannot tell, but we do know that his interest in the young went farther than that of a tithing man, and led him to devote himself with unflag- ging zeal to their intellectual welfare. He was one of the five "able and pious men" chosen by the town to take charge of the Hopkins bequest, which was given ' 'for the breeding up of hopeful youths in a way of learning, both
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at the oTammnr scliool and college." He had a hand in building- the school-house, and served for several years on the school committee. In the school which was thus established, and in the interest which Natananiel and his comemporaries took in the subject of education, we have the beginning of those influences which have resulted in making this surrounding region, and especially this class- ic lieight upon which we are now gathered, one of the great educational centres of our land. The church, the school, and the town-meeting, the three foundation stones of our American Independence, each found an early and sure establishment in Hadley, and, so far as we know, an earnest guardian in every Dickinson. Nathaniel did not reside continually in Hadley, but spent a part of his declining years in Noi'thampton and Hatfield ; but upon the death, perhaps, of his good wife, Anna, he returned again to his kinsjieople, and there, on the 10th of June, 1676, he died, being full of years and faith. Somewhere in the Norwottuck valley, over against yonder mountain, he lies buried, (12) "but no man know- eth of his sepulchre unto this day."
The time would fail me to tell of John, and .loseph, and Thomas, and Samuel, and Obadiah, and Nathaniel, and Nehemiah, and Hezekiah, and Azariah, and Anna, and Frances, the eleven children of the Patriarch, all of whom have called some place within the circle of these hills their home, and ten of whom have probably some living representatives in this county to-day. These ten members of the present generation took to themselves companions and became the parents of about seventj^ children, who have each done his part toward perpetuating the name and fame of the New England branch.
John, the oldest son, as we have already seen, wedded Frances Foote at the early age of sixteen or seventeen,
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and became the father of six children before he was twenty-seven. Joseph, the second son, married Pho?be Bracy at Hart- ford, by whom he had six children. The death of Joseph suggests a strange fatality which seemed to follow our family during its early New Eng- land history. While attempting, in company with Capt. Beers and thirty-six others, to rescue a garrison at North- field, he was set upon by a great number of Indians from a swamp and killed. He seems to be the iirst of a large company of Hadley Dickinsons who suffered and died under the ruthless hand of the savage. The names Be- noni and Captivity, which we find in our family records, are the sad reminders of these sufferings, and upon a hill- side in Northtield is a monument, which, though erected in memory of a single victim of the red man's cruelty, may well be regarded as commemorating a long succession of calamities of which his death was a type. On the mon- ument, which was erected by Mr. Elijah Dickinson, of Fitchburg, and a few others, we read :
Nathaniel Dickinson was killed and scalped by the Indians, at this place, April 15, 1747, aged 48.
The history which lies back of that inscription is full of tears and heart-pangs. Martha, the loving wife, sur- rounded by her children, was waiting in the old fort-home for the return of her husband ; but there were no tidings till the faithful old family horse, led by kind and sorrow- ing neighbors, ascended the hill and halted with his life- less burden before the door.
On the following December the stricken widow gave birth to a son, and she called his
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name Benoni— the son of my sorrow. He grew to man- liood, but he could never handle a musket or listen to a tale of Indian warfare.
But we have wandered. The third son of Nathaniel was Tliomas, who took for his wife Elizabeth Crow, of Hadley. His home-lot was next to his father's ; but in 1679 he disposed of it and moved to Wethersfield, where he died in 1716, leaving eight children. I find that Thom- as was one of the noted wolf hunters of his town, which in those days was no small honor, for wolves were very common and destructive, and they tried the patience of the settlers to the utmost. A writer in 1634 considered them "the greatest inconveniency in the county," and liberal rewards were offered for their capture. One of these ferocious animals became quite a Nemesis upon one occasion, and thus played an important part in the moral discipline of a young scion of our family. It came about in this way : Perez, a son of Nathan, of Am- herst, was a good boy, but like all other boys of that day, he was a little restive under some of the religious restric- tions of his Puritan home. On one Thanksgiving Day, having been kept in decorous quiet within doors, accord- ing to the usual custom, until his young limbs fairly ached for a wrestle or a game at fisticuffs, he took occasion at evening prayers to steal away from the family, and start- ed off to see neighbor Hastings' s boys, who lived a mile away. Just as he was entering a dark piece of woods he saw in the distance an object which thrilled him with ter- ror. It was an ugly-looking wolf in quest of a Thanks- giving supper. Poor Perez ! His guilty heart stood still. He thought of his naughtiness, and of the bears in the Bible, who made a supper of the other naughty boys. He ran, nnd the wolf ran ; and the faster he ran, the more certain was he that he was jpursued by the justice of Hea- ven. Fortunately, the home door cut off the threatened retribution, however, and its latch fell just as the feet of
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the hungry avenger came scratching against it. The les- son was never forgotten, and one wolf at least did good service in a good cause.
But returning again to the family of Nathaniel, we notice that (18) Samuel, his fourth son, married Martha Bridgman, of Springfield, and settled in Hartford, where he died at the age of 73. He had nine children, three of whom, Samuel, Nathaniel and Ebenezer, took an active part in that fearful battle of Beerfield Meadows, in 1704. Obadiah, another son, married for his first wife Sarah Beardsley, and for his second wife Mehitable Johnson. He also settled in Hatfield, but was soon unsettled by the Indians, who burned his house, wounded his wife, and carried himself and child to Canada. He was ransomed the following year, and finally removed to Wethersfield, where he died in IGdS. Four sons and two daughters kept his memory green. Another son of the pioneer was named after his father. He was married three times, and was the father of six children, several of whom had a sorry time of it with the j)estiferous red-skins. One son, Nathaniel, had his horse shot from under him, and had one boy killed while hoe- ing corn, and another carried away captive, while the wife of another son, John, was tomahawked and left for dead amid the ruins of her home.
If you go into the southeast corner of the old Hadley burying-ground, you will see there a brown head-stone. It is over-grown with lichens, but a careful scrutiny will reveal the name of Lieutenant Nehemiah Dickinson, an- other son of Nathaniel, and- a twin brother of Nathaniel, Jr., who, as it appears, in his younger days was somewhat given to the vanities of life. There was a law at that time in Massachusetts ordering "that persons whose estates did not exceed 200 pounds should not wear gold or silver lace, gold or silver buttons,
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bone lace above two shillings a yard, or silk hoods or scarfs, upon penalty of ten shillings for every offence." At the March court in 1676 the jury presented thirty- eight maids and wives, and thirty young men. "Some for wearing silk in a flaunting manner, and others for long hair and other exti-avagances, " and our Lieutenant Nehemiah was among them. He had probably shocked the sensibilities of the good people of Hadley, and incur- red the stern displeasure of the law by indulging in the traditional weakness of his sex — a red necktie. Poor Lieutenant Nehemiah ! It is unfortunate that that one bit of extravagance should be the only thing by which he is destined to be known to posterity. Aside from this ...
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