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that being there a tavern, or public house." They had a keen eye to
good land, and were in no way unwilling, after the usual Indian " pow
wow," to pay the redskins, for the plains beyond the Hoosic range, their
price, which was ,£460, three barrels of cider, and thirty quarts of rum.




66 Incidents in the Early History of Berkshire County, Mass. [April,

These settlers were also strong in their love of religion, and tenacious
of their rights. In less than ten years from the first settlement two
flourishing churches were established, and it was in Sheffield in 17 73, two
years before the Mecklenburg Declaration of Rights, that these fore-
fathers of the hamlet stood forth and condemned, by united resolve and
written protest, the wrongful aggression of Britain's king. It is claimed
that at Great Barrington was the first armed resistance to King George
III., when the yeomanry of that day defied the judge of the King's
Bench, and put him to ridicule by setting him on horseback with his
face to the rear ; methinks, however, the Mohawk Dutchmen have a
prior claim to this honor, for a century before the fight at Lexington
these hardy freemen refused to pay taxes without representation, and
imprisoned his Majesty's collector, without right of bail. It is true that
in later days in Barrington was the first triumph for liberty in the con-
test against human slavery, when at the Berkshire court a runaway slave
was freed by Theodore Sedgwick's claiming that she could not be held
under the Massachusetts Bill of Rights. The writer's great-great-grand-
father, David Pixley, served as a soldier in the attack on Cape Breton
in 1745, an d when blood flowed at Lexington, at the "Alarm Call " his
son David Pixley, the writer's great-grandfather, enlisted as a lieuten-
ant in Capt. Wm. Goodrich's Company of Col. John Paterson's Regi-
ment, which did right loyal service ; and twenty of the Stockbridge
Indians, like their chief, honest and brave men, were members of this
company.*

In Professor Egleston's admirable life of his great-grandfather, Gen-
eral Paterson, he states that " the battle of Lexington occurred on
Wednesday, April 19 ; the news, coming by relays of couriers, reached
Lenox Friday noon. On Saturday, April 22, at sunrise, Colonel Pater-
son marched for Cambridge with a regiment fully armed and equipped,
nearly every man in uniform. This beats the record of the early march
of Massachusetts men in 1861, and it was done without the aid of steam
or lightning."

David Pixley thereafter served as captain in Col. John Brown's
regiment, and was promoted to a colonelcy before the war closed.

My ancestor and his wife moved to Owego, February 6, 1 79 1 .

It is recorded in a lately published history of the Presbyterian
church of that place, that Mrs. Pixley was " the only person known to
the history of that period as an active Christian, and she proved to be
indeed a mother in Israel. At her home the visiting clergymen found
kind hospitality, and the poor and suffering of the community were her
constant care. With all the struggles incident to pioneer life, and the
arduous cares of housekeeping with the crude conveniences of that
early civilization, nothing daunted by these discouragements, she was
always present at the occasional services then bestowed upon the
primitive community, and thus she furnished an inspiration, as well an
example, to her neighbors, which may be emulated with profit by her
Christian sisters of to-day."

On a certain headstone in the old Presbyterian burying-ground in
his birthplace, Owego, N. Y., the writer remembers, as a boy, seeing
these time-worn inscriptions :

* See archives in Boston, and " History of Berkshire County, Mass.," Vol. I., p. 209.



I S96. J Incidents in the Early History of Berkshire County, Mass. 67

" In memory of Col. David Pixley, who departed this life Aug. 25,
1807, in the 67th year of his age. He was an officer of the Revolution
at the siege of Quebec under Gen'l Montgomery ; was the first settler
of Owego in 1790, and continued its father and friend until his death."

" In memory of Lydia, consort of Col. David Pixley, who departed
this life Feb. 2, 1808, in the 63d year of her age.

" A pattern she through every scene of life,
A pious Christian and a faithful wife.
A neighbor kind, a sweet and pleasant friend —
'Twas thus she lived, and peaceful was her end."

Such was the character of my great-grandmother as I heard it
described when in Stockbridge, and I there learned with pride of her
many deeds of unostentatious piety and generous hospitality, especially
to all who were laboring for the advancement of the Master's kingdom.

My ancestor's Colonel, afterwards General, John Paterson, was a
brave and distinguished man. He aided, July 6, 1774, at Stockbridge,
in enunciating that "Solemn League and Covenant" which was the
basis of principles on which the Revolution was begun, and it was his
regiment that was the first on the field of battle after the news of the
fight at Lexington reached the Berkshire hills.

General Paterson removed to Tioga County in 1791, and upon his
death he was buried but a few miles from the last resting place of his
former old-time friend and comrade.

A few years since, through the noble and generous devotion of the
old hero's great-grandson, Prof. Thomas Egleston of this city, these
precious remains were removed to Lenox. Mass., and over them there
now stands a beautiful and appropriately inscribed monument — a fitting
memento of a valiant patriot, and a true testimonial of the affection and
gratitude of a worthy descendant.

One beautiful day in August the writer visited the old town of Salis-
bury, Conn., and examined the book of records, a curious volume, over a
hundred years old, containing the notice of the births of my Pumpelly
ancestors. The manuscript, yellow with age, shone like gold in the rays
of the sweet August sunlight. And just outside the window, in the old
burying-ground near by, I could see quaint old tombstones whose in-
scriptions were almost obliterated by age. A century and a half of
storm and sunshine has passed over that sacred spot ; but the wars were
gone, the battles fought, the victories won, and now in the calm still-
ness of that perfect summer day the whole scene seems to be imbued
with a strange overshadowing of the spirit of peace.

As we drove homeward through the beautiful valley, and in full view
of the sun-kissed hills of Taghannic, my mind was busy with the story
of my ancestors as Huguenot refugees, as soldiers and pioneers in these
Western wilds, and I longed to know more of that Jean Pompilie who
left Avignon, France, so many years ago, and whose father not even
the attractions of a licentious papal court could prevent from uniting
himself with the God-fearing Huguenots when the first great movement
for religious liberty was inaugurated. " God, Duty and Country " was the
motto of this heroic people, and their descendants who came to Amer-
ica were distinguished for their devotion to the cause of independence
and civil as well as religious liberty. We all know how great were



68 Incidents in the Early History of Berkshire County, A/ass. [April,

the services of the Huguenots Faneuil, Reeve, Bowdoin, Laurens, Jay,
Boudinot, and Marion ; and while not so distinguished, yet deserving of
remembrance was the patriotic devotion of the two Pumpellys, John
and Bennett. John ran away from home when but eleven years of age,
and enlisted in the king's service as a drummer.

In the French war he fought well, and stood near Wolfe when
he fell at Quebec, and in the Continental service he was a comrade of
Daniel Webster's father as one of " Roger's Rangers," and was pro-
moted for distinguished bravery in giving aid to the besieged Fort Wil-
liam Henry ; while Bennett proved a tried soldier through the whole
campaign under Washington, and was honored by the personal friend-
ship of Lafayette, who, upon his visit to Boston in 1824, sent a special
message for my ancestor to come on and meet him. It is a tradition,
too, in the family, that he was at one time the means of saving the life
of the heroic General Putnam. John Pumpelly's son Charles married
one of the Averys of Groton, Conn., and many of that family were in
the massacre of Fort Griswold, in 1 781 .

Frances Avery Pumpelly, my grandmother, was the daughter of
Samuel Avery, who was the son of
Humphrey Avery, whose father
was Samuel Avery (p. 558, No. 9,
Swift's "Averys of Groton"), whose
wife was Susannah Palmes (p. 557),
the daughter of William Palmes,
Gent., of Ardfinnan, Province of
Munster, Ireland, I can in no
way better describe the ancestral
line of this lady, my ancestress,
than by the following extract from
the book mentioned above.

" The ancestral line here pre-
sented, embracing thirty-four gen-
erations, or from King Egbert to the
present century, is a record of his-
toric facts verified by proof ; for
so much thereof as comprises the
interval of time between the reign
of Egbert and the arrival of Lady
Susan and her husband, Gen. John
Humphrey, in Massachusetts Bay,
is the well authenticated record given by Burke in his ' Peerage of
Great Britain,' a work repeatedly approved and accepted by the courts
of record in England, as furnishing the best evidence ; while the remain-
ing or American part of the same is as fully and satisfactorily established
by the original official records and other documentary proofs in the
State Archives of Massachusetts and Connecticut and elsewhere, much
of which is here incorporated in the form of foot-notes.

" No more than a casual glance along the line ot the ten centuries
here given is necessary to discover a notable array of sovereigns, sol-
diers, and statesmen famous in British or European history. Without
attempting to show an exhaustive list of these historic personages, a few
of the more renowned among them may here be pointed out.




1896.] Incidents in Ihe Early History of Berkshire County, A/ass. 6g

" And first are noticed sixteen of the early rulers of England, which
trace back to VVodin, master of a considerable part of the north of
Europe in the 3d century, then to Cerdic, the first king of the West
Saxons. From Cerdic to Egbert, the eleventh in descent (see Speed's
' History of England,' pp. 196-200), namely : Egbert, Ethehvulf, Alfred,
Edward the Elder, Edmund I., Edgar the Peaceable, Ethelred the
Unready, Edmund Ironsides, William the Conqueror, the first two
Henrys, John, Henry III., and the first three Edwards. But Edward
III.* was the son of Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair, King of
France, who descended from Hugh Capet, and so ba'ck through ' Hugh
the Great,' Robert King of France, to Robert Count of Anjou ; also nine
intervening French kings, among whom were Robert II., Philip Augus-
tus, Louis VIII., and St. Louis, f The last is not the only saint who
figures in this pedigree. The mother of Edward II. was Eleanor,
daughter of Ferdinand III., King of Castile and Leon, who was canon-
ized by Clement X. Again, through Richard of Connigsburg, Earl of
Cambridge, whose mother was Isabel, daughter of Peter the Cruel, the
line of descent is direct from Sancho the Great and Alphonso the Wise.
Other crowned ancestors were the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and
several kings of Scotland, notably Malcom III., and 'the gracious
Duncan,' his father.

" Finally, the Shakespearean gallery is, in truth, crowded with the
portraits of those found in this line of ascendants ; e.g., besides those
already mentioned, Lord Hastings (of the reigns of Edward IV. and
Richard III.) ; George Duke of Clarence; Richard Plantagenet, 'the
Yeoman;' Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March; Edmund of Langley,
Duke of York ; and Lionel of Antwerp, Duke of Clarence." (