Hayride tour of Historic Sunderland, Massachusetts

Start at the town offices, tour south to cemetery, north to North Main Street,

As we leave from our starting point, we turn our backs on the real reason for Sunderland’s location- the Connecticut River. It was the river that brought the Norwottucks, a tribe that was concentrated in Hadley, and the Pocumtucks, whose range was primarily north of here, to develop a system of trails, clear fields and woods in this area at least by the fifteen hundreds. The river provided a method of travel, plentiful fishing, and an easy landmark. The river was also the remaining body of water from glacial Lake Hitchcock, which created the beautiful Connecticut River Valley, depositing layers and layers of silt, providing some of the best farmland in the world. The native tribes were agricultural, raising crops on the floodplains, living in more or less permanent encampments along the river, making seasonal moves to the uplands for hunting several times a year.

The clearing work done by the native Americans made the area attractive to the English who used the system of trails to travel through this area, trading meats, furs, and agricultural produce. Travel by English settlers and traders through what is now Sunderland would have taken place from the 1650's on. Deerfield was established in the early 1670's as a small outpost for trading goods with Native Americans.

A first attempt to establish a town here was made in 1673. The General Court, the local governing body for the English Crown, granted a request to establish a new plantation north of Hadley. Maj. John Pynchon from Springfield, and Lieutenant William Clarke and Mr. William Holton from Northampton were named to layout the boundaries. The settlers were given seven years to attract a sufficient number of permanent residents to settle, build homes, and hire a minister. The plantation was to be named Swampfield. The English arranged to "buy" from the Norwattucks, for a token amount at best, the land that is now Sunderland, Montague and Leverett.

The first settlement failed. King Philips War, which began in Rhode Island, was a conflict between settlers and Native Americans, spread to the Massachusetts Bay Colony when the Native American leader, King Philip, and his followers took refuge here. Local tribes got involved, and hostilities escalated. Swampfield was abandoned, and settlers moved to Hatfield and Hadley, both of which were fortified with palisades.

Main Street, which we are currently traveling down, was laid out by settlers in the second and successful attempt to settle the town in 1714. Each of the original thirty-nine families was assigned a 3 ½ acre lot along the street on which to build their house. On the west side of the street, the lots extended to the Connecticut River, and on the east side, they extended to the wetlands or swamp, which ran north and south below the base of Mount Toby. That basic plan is what constitutes Sunderland center today. Each settler also received a share of outlying common land to till, mowing land, and wood lots. This type of town plan, which we call a "linear street village", was typical in the Connecticut River Valley. Springfield, Northfield, Deerfield, Hadley and Hatfield were all laid out with this type of plan. There were no zoning laws then, but the towns were orderly and organized. Happily, when the town was incorporated in 1718, the name "Sunderland" was chosen instead of "Swampfield."

No houses on South Main Street date from the 1714 settling of the town. The Dickinson’s house, 69 South Main Street, is the second house on that site, and the house you see was built around 1756. Aside from reading the date written on the sign near the door, clues to its early date are found in the overhang on the gable end, the narrow clapboards, and the placement of the second story windows close to the cornice under the roof on the second floor.

At about the time that the Dickinson’s house was built, the town residents had to hire a new minister. The minister was provided with a house, a church, and a salary. When the town hired the minister in 1747, there was little money used or available in the local economy. The minister’s salary was calculated in produce - he received wheat, rye, Indian corn, and pork, which also gives us an indication of what crops people were growing at that time. The church by that time was a small one-story building in the middle of town near where the Congregational Church is. The congregation sat on benches. It took the town thirty years to get windows and clapboards on the building.

The (Rock) Warner’s house, at 46 South Main Street, was built around 1800. We think the house was built by Nathan Catline, who worked as a wheelwright and innkeeper. This house has the most elaborate original doorway of its period in town. Note the beautiful fanlight over the door, and the narrow boards, called pilasters, that frame the doorway. Of course, the most notable feature of the doorway is the window on the second floor, a three-part arrangement popular in the late 1700's and early 1800's called a "Palladian window."

The Revolutionary War - Sunderland, unlike other towns such as Hatfield, Springfield and Hadley, did not have a lot of wealthy and powerful Tories, known as River Gods, among its residents. Only one town resident, a member of the wealthy Billings family, was driven out of town for being a Tory. Sunderland's support of the Revolutionary War prompt and unequivocal. The town geared up for the war by buying gunpowder and agreeing to pay Minutemen and to teach them how to shoot a firelock. Would-be Minutemen began with three days' training, but it was apparently not enough time to master the shooting technique. The town voted to pay for an additional four days' training, but admonished the fledgling Minutemen to "appl[y] themselves to the business." Just in case there was any confusion about expectations, the town voted that if a Minuteman subsequently refused to serve in the war, he would get no wages at all.

In addition to sending a number of local men as soldiers to the war, the town sent provisions for its soldiers, and provided money for its share of beef for the entire army. The town was responsible for paying wages to the soldiers it sent. Cash was short and its value was unreliable, so Sunderland soldiers were offered beef, Indian corn, sheep's wool and leather for shoe soles to serve in the army for six months. Townspeople were allowed to pay their assessments in grain, but even so, it was expensive and only through great sacrifice that people in town paid for their share of the war.

Sunderland really grew a lot over the next sixty years. By 1830, there were almost 700 residents in town, and we're driving by some houses that were built in that period.

The Graves' house, 22 South Main Street, was built in 1834 by Warren S. Graves. It has been in continuous occupancy by members of the Graves family. It is a nice example of a style of house that was built in the 1820's through the 1840's here - called the Greek Revival style. We have many examples left. The style is different from the earlier colonial style of house, and the style was popular in part because it paid homage to great democracy like our own still-new one - ancient Greece. Note that in an attempt to make the house look something like a Greek temple, the gable end had been turned toward the street, whereas in the earlier houses the long front faced the street. Notice also the wide pilasters at the corners of the house, and the generally blocky proportions.

The Laurences's house, next door at 18 S. Main St., was built about ten years after the Dickinson's up the street, in the 1760's. It was moved to this site from up the street in 1826. How did they move houses in the 1800's? They got the house on rollers and pulled it with oxen, continuing up the street by moving the rollers up to the front after the house rolled over them. It is a Georgian colonial style house, but its doorway was updated to the Greek Revival style, probably when it was moved.

In the 1820's and 1830's, an important new crop began to be grown, and helped begin Sunderland's change to a market economy. The crop was broom corn, or corn that was grown not for the corn but for the stalk, that was grown in the summer and then made into brooms in the winter. The broom corn and brooms could be sold for cash, and cash was needed to give residents the ability to buy rather than to trade. Sunderland farmers also raised cattle and stall-fed them, selling them to slaughterhouses for cash in Brighton, Mass. As we will see when we get to North Main Street, the change to a market economy brought the need for a bank, and the Sunderland Bank was built in response.

Our first town history, written in 1899, contains a chapter written by a former resident, who wrote about the town as he remembered in 1825- 1838. His name was Henry Taft, and he was born in 1818, so the memories are those from when he was between the ages of seven and twenty. He observed:

"At the period named, 1838 or thereabouts, the village had an unkempt and slovenly appearance. . . .[there was] a stagnant pond at the south end on the street. There were other places where the water stood until it evaporated, notably along the east side of the street, about the center of the village, and north of it, and on the west side of the street. {What's left?} Smartweed, dock, nettles and other weeds grew luxuriously in many places. I do not know whether the town by vote permitted cattle to go at large without a keeper. . .but cows wandered about or fed undisturbed. Many families kept small flocks of geese, and they did not add to the cleanliness of the street. . . . It was also a very common practice when any building was in progress, to place the logs in the street, and saw and hew them there (there was no sawed timber then) and when the work was done the timber was removed, and the chips and rubbish were removed afterwards. It was not an uncommon practice for a householder to deposit his winter stock of wood in the street and cut it up there.. . .There were [also] accumulations and obstructions, more or less, about the mechanics shops. . . Not more than half the [houses] had ever been painted, and many of these in the remote past. These had a shabby appearance.. . .The lines of the street were irregular, and the front fences, mostly of plain boards, were in many places neglected or out of repair.

"About 1830, [there was a movement to] improve the condition of the street. The lines of the street were straightened by legal proceedings, and within two or three years, the street was lined with shade trees, mostly maples, and new picket fences gradually took the place of the old ones. Since then a return to the old careless habit has been exception and not general."

The old maple trees you see are those that were planted in the 1830's, and I think we would all agree that we have not gone back to our slovenly days.

Turn down to the Cemetery:

Riverside Cemetery was laid out in 1714 as part of the original town plan, and today remains a town owned property, not associated with the church.

It contains several gravestones from our early period, say from between 1722 and 1750, including the graves of five of the original proprietors. The early stones are rectangular, upright slabs of sandstone and slate with three-arched triangular tops. If you have a chance, come down and walk the cemetery, as there are some beautiful gravestones here, not to mention lovely glimpses of the Connecticut River. [We'll have a special guest speaker leading a tour of Riverside Cemetery on the 1:45 hayride tour leaving from the town offices]

There are styles of gravestones just as there are styles of houses. We have been able to identify the hand of one carver, beginning with the 1743 Eunice Scott stone, a triple-arched sandstone marker with a soul effigy as its central motif. In the Eunice Scott stone, the soul is distinguished by a pattern of wings or hair spiraling out from the oval face from top to bottom of the head, in ever-widening spring-like curls. Eyes are geometric ovals, the nose is a U-shaped loop and there is a slight mouth depicted. In the Connecticut River Valley the soul effigy motif was seen in the early to mid seventeen hundreds. In Sunderland the style persisted through the end of that century. .

The cemetery used to have a fence surrounding it. It was taken down in the 1950's. Here's a little bit of trivia: the pickets from the Riverside cemetery fence are now in front of the Dwight house at Historic Deerfield.

Come out of Cemetery, turn back up South Main Street, but pause at corner before turning up.

Old Amherst Road was originally called Lower Lane, and was a field road laid out in the original plan to separate common land. It also, in case you never paused to think about it, used to be the main road to Amherst before Route 116 was constructed in the 1960's.

Before we turn back up South Main Street, I want to point out the (Olive) Hubbard house at the corner of Old Amherst Road and South Main. This is one of our earlier houses, and was built in 1753. Notice what is called the "saltbox" shape of the roofline, its massive central chimney, the windows placed close to the cornice (which, by the way, has nice detailed molding) and the small window panes - twelve panes on top and twelve panes on the bottom, known as "12 over 12." When reproduction colonials are built today, it is often this style house that is reproduced. When the Hubbard family bought the house in the early 1920's, it was in very poor repair – the floor had given way on one side and chickens were kept on the other. A lot of restoration has gone into that house!

Also of note, as we move through time, is the Nusbaum house , 4 South Main Street, which is one of our relatively few Gothic Revival houses in town. It was built in 1851 by and for Benjamin Darling, an active carpenter in Sunderland. Contrast Gothic Revival to the earlier Greek Revival. It was a popular style nationally, and was a rather ornate and picturesque style. While not evident with this house, Gothic Revival homes were usually designed to blend in with the landscape rather than to be showcases on the landscape, which had been the objective with the Greek Revival style.

The house at 4 South Main Street has a steep roof pitch, "gingerbread" or bargeboards along the eaves, and, for the first time, intersecting or transverse gables (so from above it is cross-shaped rather than T-shaped), which may help provide more head room in second story rooms.

Head up S. Main Street...

As we move up S. Main Street, I want to jump ahead in time to mention that in 1902, an electric streetcar railway was built through town and went through this part of Main Street. The streetcar went to Amherst and allowed passengers unprecedented access to neighboring towns and to connections through the state. Farmers used it to transport goods to the Massachusetts Central Railroad in Amherst. High school students took the trolley to high school down in Amherst. The advent of cars buses and trucks brought about a loss of revenue to the company, and trolley service was discontinued in 1926.

Speaking of education, I want to point out the house at 17 S. Main Street, now the Pellerins', which was built at about the time the trolley was built, as having been built for the Dills, most notably, Mrs. Lillian Dill, who was a schoolteacher at the Sunderland Grammar school for over fifty years.

Anyway, we have been trying to make this tour a progressive walk through the history of the town, and left off in the 1830's with the broom corn and the beginnings of a market economy. Tobacco replaced broom corn as Sunderland's big crop in the 1850's. Tobacco barns, with side slats that open for ventilation and drying of the tobacco, were developed in the 1850's, and Sunderland had many. Unfortunately, many of our tobacco barns were destroyed in the flood and hurricane of 1936 and 1938. Many of the structural members of the old tobacco barns were used to construct new barns. Tobacco barns are renting at premium prices today as tobacco has returned as a productive crop, and those specially designed barns still offer the best method of drying the crop.

The Clark house, at 37 South Main Street, was built in 1850 by Deacon Albert Hobart. Prosperity from tobacco is evident in this elegant house, which is a good example of the Italianate style. It looks something like an Italian villa, with its nearly flat roof and widely overhanging eaves. Note the paired, scroll cut brackets at the eaves and the little attic windows between them. These are all characteristic features of this style house, all well preserved here.

During the 1800's, the original house lots on Main Street were subdivided, and most of the original lots now consist of two or three houses. The houses on Main Street were typically built to hug the north lot line, leaving room for the kitchen garden to the south side of the house. They were also built fairly close to the front line of the lot. Notice how the Warner house (the green ranch) at 56 S. Main Street, which was built to conform to modern zoning regulations, is set back from the road and in the center of the lot. One thing some communities are doing in village areas like this one is to allow special zoning regulations that help new buildings conform better to the historic building patterns. For example, the zoning regulations might allow houses to be built at the same distance from the street as the other houses on the street, even if it is closer than typically allowed elsewhere in town.

Beginning in the 1880's, immigrants from central and eastern Europe began to arrive in New York and to make their way to the Connecticut River Valley. They were often recruited at the docks by farmers from Massachusetts seeking to find farm labor. The majority of immigrants came from Russia, Lithuania, and Poland, others from Latvia, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. They came with relatives, or followed the paths of friends and families, often meeting up with former neighbors and relatives in surrounding towns of South Deerfield, Amherst, and Greenfield. Women who did not arrive with husbands and families were hired as domestic help.

The census of 1900 shows that farms had on average one or two hired men who lived with the farm family, and this practice was a part of Sunderland Center's farms as well. As the men married or moved their families here and struck out on their own, there was great demand for new housing, which was built more on the outskirts of town than here in the center.

We've been passing some great 19^th century houses, but we're going to point to a couple of houses built at the turn of the 20^th century, which show some of the prosperity that came to Sunderland at that time. On the right, at 76 South Main Street, the house currently owned by the Smiths, is a house built in 1910 for Arthur Hubbard. This Tudor Revival house was designed by prominent Northampton architect Karl Putnam (who also designed the 1922 elementary school, now used as the town offices). The Hubbard family were prominent onion and tobacco farmers for a century or more with farms not only in Sunderland but Deerfield and Whately.

Another house to note is the house at 83 S. Main Street.(very large white colonial on the left) It is a Colonial Revival style house, built in 1914 by Fred C. Kidder. The Colonial Revival style sought to "revive" the early Colonial styles we have seen, which was a way of honoring and acknowledging our colonial history. Notice how the roof ridge is parallel to the street like in the earlier colonial houses we looked at, and how the Palladian window we saw at the early Warner house is replicated on the side of this house. But, notice how the proportions of everything are larger than in the early houses – larger rooms, larger windows, and the large front porch. Fred Kidder made his money growing onions, which was one of the crops that replaced tobacco as a key crop for Sunderland farmers. Sunderland farmers also replaced tobacco with potatoes and cucumbers.

Two important landmarks at the end of the street before we go to North Main. First, the Congregational Church and Chapel. The church is the third Congregational meeting house in town. This building was built in 1836 in the Greek Revival style. It was renovated in the 1870's and again in the 1950's. The Chapel, next door, was built in 1849, and has been used continually for village functions. The first residents of the town had to support the Congregationalist minister, whether they wanted to or not. It wasn't until 1793 that Sunderland residents who worshipped in Leverett as anitpedo Baptists were provided at town meeting with relief from the obligation to pay taxes to support the Congregational Church. It wasn't until a Constitutional amendment was passed in 1834 that church and state functions were officially separated.

The other interesting landmark is Ken Kahn's law office building, at the southeast corner of South Main Street and Rt. 116. The house was built during the Greek Revival period, in 1835. It's pretty likely that the inspiration for the wonderful doorway came from a carpenter's handbook. Carpenter's handbooks were used by builders of the period to provide inspiration and guidance in the design of details for buildings. The handbooks contained detailed measured drawings of doors and windows and molding details.

As we cross Rt 116, remember that this road was built in the 1960's, and that the current bridge, the tenth bridge to cross the river at this approximate site, was constructed in 1938. Our intersection is about to be reconfigured by the state. The Historical Commission has helped convince the town to subsidize the project so that we can get better looking traffic poles, and we think that the new traffic lights will not detract from what has been a not unattractive intersection. The flower beds will be moved, but will still be here, and we got a grant to do some curbing and tree planting along Rt 116. The insurance building was built by Bill Gass around 1930, and replaces the Mt. Toby House, an inn. The yellow house next to the Post Office on Garage Road, owned by the Schulzes, was moved to that site when Rt. 116 was built.

Cross Rt. 116 onto North Main Street….

Since Rt. 116 is a relatively recent road, it is not surprising that the "real" historic village center is a little bit to the north of this intersection, at the crossroad with School Street. School Street was laid out in 1720 as a way to the ferry, which operated on the Connecticut River from 1719. Since this area was the commercial center from the beginning, it makes sense that the library, town hall, and Sunderland Bank building were all located here. In addition, there have been schools, stores, and inns near this area.

Some of our best buildings are clustered here. The oldest is the wonderful brick "Sunderland Bank" building on our right. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a bank in town again? You can imagine how disappointed Sunderland residents were when the convenience of local banking was taken away in 1831 when the bank closed and moved to Amherst after being in town for only five years. The "Town House", located next door to the old bank building, was originally built in 1820 as a meeting hall for both town and church functions. This building really does look like a little Greek temple. As we mentioned before, the Greek Revival style was popular in part because citizens were proud of the new democracy they fought so hard to establish, and chose to express their pride by building buildings that referred to the great Greek democracy that our system of government partially emulates. Next on the right is the "Old Town Hall", which we currently rent to the school district, but which was built in 1867, right after the Civil War, to house the town offices, the library and a school. Most of the funds to build it were donated by a prominent local resident, Alvin J. Johnson, whose summer house we will pass shortly. It cost $20,000 to build.

Before we leave this area, the Graves Memorial Library is on your left. Before housing the library building, the site was home to one of our first one room school houses, and later a store run by Nathaniel Smith and then Erastus Graves. As a side note, the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association's museum across the river in Old Deerfield still has the famous "Whipping Post" that was used in connection with the school, where we apparently believed in corporal punishment. According to our first town history, in addition to having this Whipping Post, the school had "dents in the wall known to have been made when a ruler, which had been vigorously hurled at some pupil's head, had missed its intended aim."

Anyway, the library was built by the town in 1900. Members of the Graves family donated the funds to build it. It is built in a Tudor Revival style, and is a lovely example of the style. The library needs more space and can't expand on this site, and plans to build a new building in the near future. The library trustees want to be sure that this beautiful and much loved building is preserved and put to another good use.

The Skibiski house, at 121 N. Main Street, was built around 1830. The porch dates from the late 1800's, but you can still see the Greek Revival details of the original house on the front. This house was the site of a maternity home in the late 1800's. Neither of our town histories makes reference to this, but many of our long time residents have told us about this birthing home for women.

Just before the Buttonball tree, on the left, at 133 N. Main Street is the early 19^th century home of Rev. James Taylor. Rev. Taylor, in addition to being the pastor at the Congregational Church, was a founder of Amherst College and acted as a trustee there in its early years. He was a strong advocate, in the 1830's of temperance, and he founded a temperance society where members would pledge to "abstain from ardent spirits" (which did not include wine or cider, by the way). In response, Sunderland farmers stopped furnishing "spirits" to their farm help during haying in the 1830's, unlike all the other farmers in the county. In 1843, Avery D. Hubbard circulated a total abstinence pledge through the whole town, and over 500 people signed. Only five men and two women refused to sign the pledge.

Coming up on our left is the famous Buttonball tree – a sycamore tree– it is said to be one of the largest trees of its type in the northeast. Estimates of its age range from 200 to 400 years. The plaque in front of it commemorates the fact that the tree was standing at the time the U.S. Constitution was signed in 1789. The diameter is approximately 24'.

Speaking of trees, one of the things that makes this street so pleasant is its canopy of mature trees. Unfortunately, many of the sugar maples that were planted in the 1830's are dying, having already outlived the normal life of a sugar maple. The town has commissioned studies to develop a plan that will help us preserve the trees for as long as possible. With the help of Bill and Eleanor Hubbard, the town has established a fund to replace trees when necessary. You'll note that the new trees are not all maples. Sylvaculturalists (tree experts) recommend planting a variety of trees, so if a disease strikes, we'll be less likely to lose all the trees on the street.

North Main Street has a few more early houses left than South Main. On your left we're passing the Kudukey's house at 143 N. Main, which was built sometime around the mid 18^th century. Remember how we talked about the clues to the oldest houses in town? This house also has the central chimney, second story windows close to the cornice and the gable end overhang. Note the beautiful double doors at the entry. We'll pass another really early house in a minute.

153 North Main St. dates from the time of the Revolutionary War, and has the colonial massing we have been talking about. This house made the front page of the Greenfield Recorder in 1898. The reason – it was the first house on Main Street to be sold to a Polish immigrant, and that made the transaction quite controversial. Intolerance was largely of product of the relative homogeneity of the town and the region at the time. By the end of Depression, Irish and Polish families were major landowners in town, and Roman A. Skibiski, who bought this house and caused all the stir, was one of the largest farm equipment dealers in the state. The automobile (and the great mobility it provides) and the great expansion of the University of Massachusetts have been largely responsible for the increase in diversity in Sunderland.

On the right, at 140 N. Main Street, is the house built in 1865 as a summer home for Alvin Johnson. Johnson was a publisher from New York City, who published atlases, farmers' almanacs and other basic reference books. The house, built of brick in the "French Second Empire" style, is the only house of this style in town. It is much more commonly seen in New York State's Hudson River Valley, where Johnson came from.

At 168 N. Main Street, the brown house on the right, is the Isaac Graves House, which has been carefully restored by the Fleming family. The Flemings are fairly confident that portions of the house were built as early as 1715, making this the oldest house in town. Note its saltbox shape and gable end overhangs. This house was occupied by seven successive generations of the Graves family.

157 North Main Street and 167 North Main Street, on the left, are both 18^th century houses. We appreciate the fact that the new house put in at 161 N. Main Street, where a house burned down a few years ago, is designed to blend in with the older houses nearby. It is of similar size and proportions to the 18^th century houses

184 N Main St. – on the right. This building was built for the purpose of storing onions! 184 North Main Street is not architecturally significant, but it does remind us of the importance of onions in Sunderland. Onion production was at its peak in 1928, when Sunderland farmers harvested 850 acres of onions. The crop began to be grown in the 1850's and remained important until disease problems caused its decline in the late 1930's and the potato took over as our most important crop. The custom of storing onions grew popular almost from the start and according to our second town history, at one time around four hundred carloads could be housed in town. Onion storage buildings such as this one were insulated buildings used to store onions through the winter. Storing enabled farmers to sell onions in the winter months when prices were usually higher. This building was used for truck storage before it was converted to apartments in the 1960's.

Many of you may remember the old brick schoolhouse that used to be located on the site next door to 184 N. Main (new cape there now). It was one of five schoolhouses built in the early 1800's, which were built all around town as a part of a plan of school decentralization. Each school district in town was responsible for funding and maintaining its own school. The inequities among districts that this system produced grew so great that the state mandated a return to town support for all school in 1862. Thus, the two room school that was located here was no longer needed in 1867 when the Old Town Hall was built. The school in the Old Town Hall, in turn, was closed when the grammar school on School Street was built in 1922. The grammar school was closed for school use in 1988 when our present elementary school was built. Looks like things run in about a sixty-year cycle, so expect a new elementary school in about 2048!

At 207 North Main Street we find the Samuel Billings/Noah Graves House, which according to tradition in this town, was originally built in 1718. Reportedly, a center chimney house was built in 1718, and that portion of the house was retained when the house was expanded in 1780. Taken from this house was an excellent mid 18^th century wall painting of flowers and birds, which now is in the collection of the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities.

Go into Willams Farm, turn around, head south down N. Main Street – read this during the ride back to the fair:

We're turning around at the Williams farm, which has been continuously operating as a farm in Sunderland for over two hundred years. We are lucky to have a highly valuable document of the town's farming practices during mid 19^th and early 20^th centuries that is the product of two generations of William's farmers. As we drive back to the fair I'll tell you some of what we've learned from these diaries. (quoting from the National Register for Historic Places nomination form) "The Franklin H. Williams diary covers the years between 1852 and 1891 and gives us a detailed account of life on a hard working, progressive Sunderland farm.

"In one of his first entries in 1853 Williams tells of the importance to town life of the lyceum and of his having heard a lecture from Wendell Phillips on slavery. He attended these versions of "continuing education" classes almost once a week.

"His diary also lets us know that in the mid 1800's, the interdependent farming economy, which traded labor and services largely on a barter basis, was still active. When Williams began sugaring in March 1852 he noted that he traded maple sugar for a coat and several pairs of pants. Williams' diary also illustrates the variety of farm crops required to farm successfully. A broom corn farmer, Williams in 1854 was also growing carrots and onions, potatoes, corn , turnips, apples, wheat and rye.

"Williams seems to hint at the outset of his diary-keeping that he was not fully committed to life as a farmer and wanted to try a business career. In 1855 he twice went to South Carolina selling maps. But his diary entries of the time remark on the southern crops as much as the map business and on his way home the second time, he bought sweet potato seeds in Washington, D.C. to plant home in Sunderland. With the help of his Irish farm laborer Mick, Franklin Williams grew the seeds and entered them in the Greenfield fair that fall. Just how diverse farm production was at the time is shown in the entries Williams made in the fair. Besides his sweet potatoes, he entered competitions for the best millet pindars, grass seed, rag carpet, wheat and rye bread, basket turnips and carrots, peck potatoes, his corn planter, and seed sower.

"Franklin Williams work was as diverse as his crops. Diary entries show he might cut wood on Mt. Toby, collect sap, sell butter, gather flood wood, draw loads of stone to Whitmore's Mills (up on Falls Road) to grind for plaster, collect compost and manure, or run a mail order business selling Egyptian millet. Each winter he invariably cut ice on what is now Chard Pond for the ice house, and "drew muck."

"Williams was a knowledgeable farmer. He collected compost, wood ashes and manure for his field, rotated his crops, and researched the best seeds available. He changed crops when he sensed the winds of change – he added white beans to his crops in 1858, and in 1859 replaced his carrots with tobacco.

"Tobacco raising brought about a wholly new set of tasks. Williams grew filters and wrappers, which required starting seedlings, planting, harvesting, hanging, then tying, sorting, crating, and shipping. In February he would finish boxing and weighing his tobacco, a short time before starting the process over again. From six acres in 1859 he produced 2,833 fillers and 6,678 binders. It is important for a more complete picture of the work of Sunderland's farmers during this period to keep in mind that Williams was at the same time raising pigs and cows, cultivating onions, and in 1871 he was still raising broom corn, which by most accounts had virtually ended in the 1850's.

"Franklin Williams diary indirectly points out the importance of on-going education for farmers. Agricultural events like the Greenfield fair were one avenue and the Sunderland Farm Club was another. Founded in 1866, the club counted nearly every farmer in town among its members. They studied new techniques, collected and exchanged scientific and technical information to improve their produce and dairy products. The Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst (now U Mass) was an important source of education and outreach for the town's farmers as well. Whereas Franklin Williams was self-educated through travel, agricultural exhibits, study and the Sunderland Farm Club, his son, Franklin O. Williams, was formally educated at the Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst as were many of his generation.

"Franklin Williams' diary continues to provide a first hand account of agricultural life in Sunderland until his death in 1891. In 1877, for instance, Franklin Williams was growing a wide variety of vegetables, both for his own family's consumption and for sale. His vegetables were onions, potatoes, peas, beets, cabbage, corn, beans, turnips and apples, which he took to the Gunn farm on Montague Road for cider pressing. Always looking ahead and making changes, Williams, like his contemporaries, introduced strawberries to the market garden line-up in 1887.

"The farm passed to Franklin Oliver Williams, who kept up the diary and described his farming practices. In 1909 Franklin Oliver Williams' narrative recorded a good year for farmers, citing high production for hay, onions, and tobacco. That year they had raised on the farm ten acres of onions, three acres of tobacco, twelve acres of corn, and had harvested one hundred and twenty-five bushels of potatoes. The first thing these figures show is an acreage shift from tobacco to vegetable crops of onions and potatoes, and Williams seems to be maintaining a balanced income with dairy production, which is reflected in his greater corn acreage.

The Williams farm continues to thrive today, with a focus on dairy farming. Jim Williams and his son Bob, like their ancestors, are noted for their progressive farming techniques. They are only one of many successful and hardworking farming families in town.

The Williams story is only one farming story, and the stories we have told are only a few of the stories of the many families in town. We have left out far more than we have included, keeping in mind that we have covered four hundred years of history in a half an hour.