September is a wonderful month for travel in New England. We signed up for an Elderhostel program entitled “Deerfield Through the Centuries,” hoping to take advantage of sunny days and cool nights while at the same time indulging our love of history. It turned out to be an excellent decision – the weather was perfect, the Massachusetts setting gorgeous, the Elderhostel well-planned and the history fascinating.
There were 39 of us eager and enthusiastic elders (ranging in age from 57 to 93 years old) hailing from 13 states, including the usual participants from the East Coast, but also including folks from California, Washington, Kansas and Tennessee. We stayed at the delightful Deerfield Inn, which boasts of having served food, drink and lodging since 1884.
Historic Deerfield is the epitome of a colonial New England town – its main street is a mile long, and the white clapboard inn, the red brick First Church of Deerfield, the Hall Tavern, the museum shop and book store and the post office are clustered right in the middle. At the southern end is the Flynt Center of Early New England Life, where many of our lectures were held. The northern end is anchored by four of the Historic Deerfield houses open to the public. As you can imagine, we spent quite a bit of time hiking up and down the street so that we could keep to our schedule of lectures and house tours. But it was always a pleasure, as the shady street is lined with ancient oaks, sycamores and elms and it was fun to watch the students at Deerfield Academy rushing off to their classes, well-dressed in chinos and blue blazers, or charging off to the playing fields in shorts and T-shirts.
Deerfield does have an incredible history. It was first the homeland of the Pocumtuck Indians, members of the Eastern Algonquin Nation, who grew corn, squash and beans in the fertile flood plains of the Deerfield River, just to the west of the village, and fished in the river and hunted in the forests. The first English settlers arrived in 1669 and the town was incorporated in 1673. The northwestern-most English settlement in New England, it was isolated and vulnerable to attack from the French and their native allies, and from 1690 to 1730 the town was the focus of frequent assaults. The most famous of these was the raid that occurred during Queen Anne’s War, on Feb. 29, 1704, known as “The Deerfield Massacre.” Forty- seven French soldiers and more than 200 Indians climbed up the snow banks and over the stockade walls in the pre-dawn hours, killed 50 inhabitants of the town of about 270 and burned most of the houses.
They also captured 112 people, including women and children, and force-marched them the 300 miles to Canada. One of the captives was the the Rev. John Williams, who was later ransomed and returned to Deerfield and served as minister until 1729. His daughter, Eunice, was 7 years old when she was captured and adopted by an Indian family near Montreal. She refused to be redeemed, married an Indian, Arosen, and had a family. On at least four occasions, she and her family returned to Massachusetts to visit her English relatives. Williams wrote a book describing the attack and his trek to Canada, called “The Redeemed Captive Returned to Zion.” It was a bestseller for many years.
We managed to squeeze eight lectures into our five days in Deerfield, introducing such subjects as “Neo-Classical Design in the Connecticut Valley,” where we saw exquisite pieces of furniture brought in for our inspection, and “18th Century Textiles,” where we were guided through an extensive exhibit of clothing, bedspreads, samplers, etc. We learned about the Colonial revival of the 20th century and the women who saved the town from depression by developing a tourist industry, restoring houses and producing various items for sale, such as baskets, needlework, metal work and art photography. We viewed 500 years of New England maps and learned about “Furnishing the Frontier.” A splendid evening was spent listening to an Abenaki Indian telling the stories passed on by her ancestors.
House tours were most worthwhile, from the 1746 Wells-Thorn House, with each room depicting a different period of time, from 1725 to 1830, to the 1799 Stebbins House, the first brick house and the first Federal-style house on the street, with its beautiful curving staircase and its wild wallpaper depicting the adventures of Capt. Cook in the Pacific. Of particular interest to us was the 1734 Allen House, restored by Mr. and Mrs. Henry Flynt, noted benefactors of Historic Deerfield, and used by them as a residence whenever they visited the town. The couple developed an interest in Deerfield when they entered their son into the academy in the 1940s, and continued to donate many priceless artifacts until her death in 1985. Two wonderful John Singleton Copley portraits in their living room depict a colonial couple – her blue satin gown and pink shawl are stunning. Original Hogarth political prints also decorate the walls.
Elderhostel often enlivens your week with trips to surrounding points of interest. We spent an afternoon in Amherst at the Emily Dickinson Homestead, listening to her poetry and gaining an appreciation for the strange life she led – unmarried, devoted to her brother, who lived next door. She was a virtual recluse, spending many hours upstairs in her bedroom composing hundreds of poems. On another afternoon, we enjoyed a bus trip along the Mohawk Trail to the Shelburne Falls Trolley Museum, where we rode a trolley and then had the thrill of actually jumping on a pump car and zooming down the tracks under our own power.
When trolley service ceased, the women of the town took over the trolley bridge that arched across the river and hauled in tons of dirt so that they could transform the bridge into an enchanting garden. We walked across, admiring the roses and other profusely blooming annuals and perennials, the wisteria vines, even small trees and shrubs. Shelburne Falls also boasts a geological wonder – glacial potholes in the riverbed that may be viewed from the street. We then traveled on to Charlemont to see the “Hail to the Sunrise” statue of a Mohawk Indian, looking east across the Deerfield River, with uplifted arms in supplication to the Great Spirit, a fitting finale to an outstanding Elderhostel.
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