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Williston Northampton and Local History . . . Your History!

Nashawannuck

by Rick Teller '70, Williston Northampton Archivist
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(Wish you were here, part II)

Postcard, ca. 1910, of Nashawannuck Pond by moonlight. (Click all images to enlarge.)
Postcard, ca. 1910, of Nashawannuck Pond by moonlight. (Click all images to enlarge.)

Nashawannuck.  The name is apparently Algonquian for “Valley of the Little River.”  The “Little River” was probably the Manhan — another local Native American appellation.  Ironically, the Manhan doesn’t feed Nashawannuck Pond, that large body of water that dominates the Cottage Street district of Easthampton.  Scenic it may be, but its original purpose was industrial.  Over the course of several decades of the 19th century, Samuel Williston and his associates dammed a small stream to create a power source for the complex of textile mills that sprung up around Williston’s button and elastic factories.  In what was surely an unusual idea for its time, the sluice that drove the water wheels passed directly under the factory buildings and fed a collection pond behind them, on Pleasant and Ferry Streets.

In 1847 and 1848 Samuel Williston attempted to calculate the volume of water coming over the spillway.
In 1847 and 1848 Samuel Williston attempted to calculate the volume of water coming over the spillway.

The work was accomplished in stages.  This 1873 map shows a single body of water — the “Upper Mill Pond” had not yet been named “Nashawannuck” — divided only by a railroad causeway.  A few years later a small dam was built just above the railroad, creating Williston Pond.  Williston Avenue, incorporating another dam, was built, extending across the pond from the intersection of Village Street (now Payson Avenue), Union Street, and Cottage Street, thus isolating what became known as the Rubber Thread Pond, which remains behind the modern-day City Offices.  The result was a system comprising four ponds at descending levels.  (Click for a current map.)

1873 map nashawannuck detail

The entrance to to the spillway is clearly visible right of center, in the postcard image below.

Postcard, ca. 1910. The image originated from the same photograph as a night view further down the page, with different coloring applied in the printing process.
Postcard, ca. 1910. The image originated from the same photograph as a night view further down the page, with different coloring applied in the printing process.

While Samuel Williston’s intentions in creating the pond may have been practical, recreational and scenic implications soon came to the fore.  Samuel and Emily Williston donated a large tract of land known as “Brookside” to the town.  It was mostly wooded, and abutted Nonotuck Park.  Eventually it was developed as a cemetery, but remains a lovely spot.  Boaters, including a short-lived Williston Seminary rowing team, swimmers, and fishermen used the pond.  In a town dominated by textile mills, whose employees typically worked six 12-hour days or more, it became an essential part of community culture. Continue reading →

Posted in: Easthampton History, Founders, Local History, Wish You Were Here

A Brief History of Williston Northampton Basketball

By Douglas Stark '90
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This is adapted from an article that originally appeared in the January 1999 Williston Northampton Bulletin.  At that time Doug Stark was Librarian and Archivist at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. Today he is Museum Director at the International Tennis Hall of Fame in Newport, RI.  He is the author of The SPHAS: The Life and Times of Basketball’s Greatest Jewish Team (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011) and coauthor of Tennis and the Newport Casino (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2011).

From The Willistonian, January 2, 1898.
From The Willistonian, January 2, 1898.

On a cold, wintery northeast night in 1898, a group of five Williston Seminary students “lined up for the first time . . . in a regular game, and defeated their opponents, the Y.M.C.A. of Northampton, by a score of 12-10.”  The Jan. 29, 1898 Willistonian reported that Williston’s first basketball game “excited much interest in the school.  The fellows turned out to a man, also several members of the faculty were present, as well as a representation of townspeople” to witness first hand this “new and intriguing game.”

In 1898, basketball was still in its infancy, having been created just seven years earlier at the School for Christian Workers (now Springfield College) in Springfield, MA.  In the winter of 1891, Dr. James Naismith, a recent graduate of McGill University, enrolled as a student-instructor in a school that trained YMCA general secretaries and physical education instructors.  Asked to create a game to occupy a class of “incorrigibles” between the football and baseball seasons, Naismith invented basketball.  After hanging two peach baskets at both ends of the gymnasium balcony and dividing the 18-man class into two nine-man teams, Naismith put the first ball, a soccer ball, into play.  Legend has it that only one basket was scored in that game.

Almost immediately, the game took off and spread quickly through the YMCAs.  Within a few years, the game was being played in 15 different countries and in colleges from the East to West Coasts.  Due to the rough play associated with the early game and the growing need for more court time, the YMCA banned basketball from its gyms in 1898.  Later that year, basketball was introduced at Williston Seminary, one of the first high schools in the country to embrace the game. Continue reading →

Posted in: Archivist's Bookshelf, Guest Bloggers, Northampton School for Girls, Sports History, Williston Academy, Williston Northampton School, Williston Seminary

Joseph Lynch and Williston Basketball

by Richard Teller '70, Archivist
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Joseph Lynch '10 (1910 Log)
Joseph Lynch ’10 (1910 Log)

This is presented as an addendum to Doug Stark’s article on the History of Williston Basketball.  Without question, our first “great” player was Joe Lynch, class of 1910, who was inducted into the Williston Northampton Athletic Hall of Fame on June 7, 2014.  These remarks were delivered at that event.

I’m here to present Joseph Lynch, Williston Seminary class of 1910, for the Athletic Hall of Fame.  Joe was an Irish kid from Holyoke, who attended Holyoke High School before enrolling in the Middle Class — what we would now call the 10th grade — at Williston.  Other than that, we don’t know much about him.  I’d like to say that he presented the prep school ideal of the scholar-athlete, but I’m afraid that his grades don’t bear that out.  The archives actually have a paper that he wrote, about the financier Edward Harriman, that is reasonably literate and shows some insight.  Other than that, there’s not much.  His 1910 classmates elected him “Best Athlete,” as well as “Merriest,” “Biggest Rough-Houser,” and “Biggest Bluffer.”  His yearbook notes that he was “a lover of nature,” and a member of the F. C. Fraternity, about which we know little, and something called the Vigilance Committee, about which our ignorance is probably a blessing.

Joseph Lynch excelled in sports.  He played right guard on an intramural football team, but he was in his element in baseball and basketball.  Joe was the first baseman on the Williston Nine for three reasonably successful years — although interestingly, Holy Cross turned him into a pitcher.  And there is a suggestion that he struck out more often than his friends and teammates might have liked.

But in basketball, Joe Lynch was unstoppable.  Standing six-foot-one, towering over his teammates in an era when kids were simply shorter than today, he was an ideal center.  His long arms and quick feet made him a defensive monster.  And he was a scoring machine.  Over his career, he scored 394 points in 28 games.  Before you exclaim, “but that’s nothing!”, remember that the game of basketball, invented only 17 years before Lynch arrived at Williston, was very different.  Dribbling, for example, was rare; players moved the ball primarily by passing.  Players thus tended to spread out more, playing what we would now call zones.  Most shots came from a distance, so scores were lower — and of course, the three-point shot hadn’t even been dreamt of.  Foul shots were rare, and the free-throw line was 20 feet from the basket.  Even the metal hoop and net, which replaced a bottomless peach basket, had been introduced only as recently as 1906. Continue reading →

Posted in: Alumni & Alumnae, Sports History, Williston Seminary

So Help Me, Alan Quatermain

by Richard Teller '70, Archivist
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A formal meeting of Sigma 'Eta Delta. The reverse of the photograph is dated 1890. (Click images to enlarge.)
A formal meeting of Sigma ‘Eta Delta. The reverse of the photograph is dated 1890. (Click images to enlarge.)

The 1870s and ’80s saw the rise of several secret societies or fraternities at Williston Seminary.  Initially there were four: Iota Zeta, L.L.D., Pi Beta Pi, and F.C.  A fifth, Phi Rho Alpha, appeared somewhat later, although its existence was sometimes not acknowledged by the four “legitimate” societies.  History knows relatively little about them; as secret organizations, they kept their petty confidences, and worse, to themselves.  So we have no idea what the initials stood for, not even for the two societies that didn’t affect Greek names.  We do know that their membership was selective; that at least some of their alumni remained loyal to the clubs, often at the expense of loyalty to the school, and that they posed as “service” organizations: in 1916, for example, their leaders formed the first Student Council.

None of the preceding can be said of a sixth fraternity, Sigma Eta Delta.

In fact, the Greek letters ΣΗΔ were a rendering of the society’s real name, the South Hall Devils.  (Since classical Greek doesn’t accommodate the “H” sound, it was the preference of the membership to spell “Eta” with an apostrophe: Sigma ‘Eta Delta.)  The group was formed in the winter of 1889, mostly to poke fun at the elite, thus much-resented, fraternities.  Membership was open to any resident of South Hall, the dormitory with the least desirable and least expensive rooms — thus a dorm shunned by any self-respecting (and they were nothing if not that) frat boy.

South Hall, ca. 1890.
South Hall, ca. 1890.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Alumni & Alumnae, Campus and Building History, Student Life, Williston Seminary

Williston Northampton and Local History . . . Your History!