Williston Northampton and Local History . . . Your History!

The Depot

In 1854 Samuel Williston established the Hampshire and Hampden Railroad Company.  He and his longtime business partner, Joel Hayden of Williamsburg, Mass., initially hoped to extend the line as far as Troy, New York, but their realistic concern was to connect Easthampton and Williamsburg, both former villages that were now evolving into factory towns, with what they correctly saw as a rapidly developing national rail grid.

The H. & H.R.R. purchased the route of the defunct Northampton-New Haven Canal, an ill-conceived enterprise that had already lost Samuel a considerable sum.  The project took five years; competing railroads did their best to create obstacles.  Samuel ultimately spent $35,000 of his own money—about $820,000 in current dollars—to see the 24-mile rail spur’s completion.

His biographer, Frank Conant, points out that it was more “a matter of public service rather than for profit.”  But “the day would come when he could board the cars at Easthampton’s nearby depot and arrive in New York City a few hours later.”1

The Easthampton Rail Station in the mid-1950s, shortly before passenger service ceased.

Whether there was an elaborate rail station in the early years, or just a simple shed, has not been determined.  The present building apparently dates from 1871.  In its original state it contained a large waiting room, baggage room, and office for the station master.

The depot appears frequently in Williston Seminary lore: teams and spectators would board “the cars” for travel to away games as far away as Worcester.  The train provided quick access to the entertainment delights of Springfield.  Individual anecdotes describe torchlight processions of departing student “heroes”  down Union Street from the campus.2  Even freight service found its way into legend: witness the tale of William Peck’s double bass, retold in “Williston’s First Orchestra.”

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Williston’s First Orchestra

Edward Payson Guild

Edward Payson Guild (b. 1857) graduated Williston Seminary in 1877.  He went on to a long career as an editor for Houghton Mifflin and contributed many articles, often on music, to a variety of magazines.  Guild wrote the following memoir for the 1914 senior class yearbook, The Log.

The Williston Musical Association had its birth in the Fall of 1876.  It was a natural crystalizing of musical interest which had been growing in the Seminary for some time.  In the previous winter there were several students more or less proficient in playing various instruments but their efforts at harmony had been confined to two or three fellows getting together occasionally and delighting themselves, if not their neighbors, with various instruments, playing college songs, hymns, or anything at hand.  The effect sometimes must have been lugubrious, as for instance one Sunday afternoon when I remember some combination of instruments wailing forth over the campus the strains of “Fading, still fading, the last beam is fading.”  No doubt more than one listener was anxious that the fading should be more expeditious.

One day came, however, when the boys said they would have a real orchestra, and in one of the early weeks of ’76 the first rehearsal took place.  The players were as follows: C. H. Lewis, E. H. Sleight, violins; H. S. Ballou, W. H. Harper, flutes; E. P. Guild, L. C. Parkhurst, clarinets; C. H. Norton, cornet; J. F. Woodhull, ‘cello; E. L. Ernhaut, pianist.

The original orchestra of 1876. Guild is in the back row, left. (Click images to enlarge.)

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The Center of All Days

Williston Northampton’s Upper School hears an annual lecture on some aspect of school history.  The event is popularly known as the “button speech,” even though most years no mention is made of Samuel and Emily Williston’s button-derived philanthropy at all.  On January 30, 2013, Archivist Rick Teller ’70 spoke about diversity issues.

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Good morning.  I’m here to talk about Diversity in Williston Northampton’s past.  How did we get to where we are?  Perhaps I should warn you: what you’re about to hear will not always be pretty.  History, including our own, shouldn’t come with perfume or blinders.

It is hard to pin down when Williston first enrolled students of color.  Student records simply no longer exist prior to the 1860’s.  But it appears that African American students first began to attend Williston sometime in the 1870s.  I can’t tell you who our earliest African American student was.  The first I can name is Robert Bradford Williams, who arrived in the fall of 1877 and graduated in 1881.  Williams was from Augusta, Georgia.  He was a protégé of Miss Lucy Laney, who ran an Augusta school for black children, and who worked tirelessly to find places in Northern schools for students of promise.  Miss Laney managed to get funding for Williams from the Reverend Joseph Twichell, a prominent Hartford clergyman and close friend of Mark Twain.

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Williston Northampton and Local History . . . Your History!