Historic Markers

It is believed that Rev. Cornelius Jones preached to the people in his home every Sabbath until 1770 when a small church meetinghouse was built on land he gave near the southwest corner of the cross roads at the Old Centre [now known as Ford Hill and Middletown Hill Roads]. In 1845 Deacon Thomas stated that the church was “about the size of the Orthodox house…was covered with a single coat of rough boards…” with a door in the center of the south side and “instead of glass windows to defend the inmates from the sweeping blast, it was surrounded by a dense forest of ever-green.”  Early records were destroyed in a fire at the parsonage home of Rev. Preserved Smith (located a mile north of the Old Centre). We find very few historical documents pertaining to early church work before 1785, but  we do know that the Church of Christ in Myrifield with nine signatures to the Covenant was organized much earlier, and that by 1776 the church roll included at least 20 adult parishioners.  Extensive repairs to the First Meeting House were made in the 1780’s.  In 1786 the town voted to choose a committee “to take cognizance of the old rate bill respecting building the meetinghouse which is now standing in this Town.” Three years later Asa Foster was granted £3-2 “in undesignated currency for making 168 squares of sash fixing windows and setting glass for the meetinghouse.” Apparently extensive repairs were made in the fall of 1787, as expenses for many small items appear in the old town records.

Plans for a New Meetinghouse

Plans for a new and larger meetinghouse began to be discussed and in April 1791 the town voted to build “a Meetinghouse fifty feet long and forty feet wide.” Nothing came of it because the voters could not agree on the location. The trouble was over the question of the center of the town. Some thought that the land west of the Deerfield River would never be settled, or if it were, there would be no communication with the main town. Through the rest of that year and a good part of the next the controversy increased. There were votes and countervotes. An article in the warrant called for a petition to the General Court in Boston to appoint a committee to determine the location, but there were enough citizens with a sense of moderation or of local pride to vote this proposal down. At this time the Monroe area west of the Deerfield River was part of Rowe and knowing the location of the center of town may affect the location chosen for the new meetinghouse.

In 1793 the voters finally decided to build the new meetinghouse on the existing lot with a new structure being erected that summer and fall.  According to Deacon Thomas the frame was prepared under the leadership of Asa Foster and was ready for raising around July 1. The men were fueled by the contents of a barrel of rum and everyone ate a bountiful meal prepared by the mothers, wives, and daughters. The top timbers were put in place the following day under the charge of Jesse Howard. Then a board floor was laid and a workbench placed up front for a pulpit. The seats were made of boards. If the town’s vote was carried out, the new building was to be painted a cream color with a red roof and green doors. In 1798 we find mention of east and south doors. It was not completed for several years, as we find a number of warrants containing articles “for further finishing the meetinghouse;” but finally at a meeting on 27 Dec  1801 the town took decisive action to finish the structure. A porch was added the following year. 

At a town meeting in 1833 that it was voted “that the treasurer pay over to the treasurer of the ‘Congregational Society’ the balance standing in favor of the society on the treasurer’s books being $18.90.”  The town did continue to use the meetinghouses for town meetings until 1895 and sometimes helped with repairs.

The first town center was located at and around the intersection of the “North Road to Readsborough” and the “East Road to Heath,” now named Middletown Hill Rd and Ford Hill Rd respectively. It was established by Cornelius Jones in 1770.

There were actually two centers—Old Center and the Village— from about 1845 with lots going on in both places. The first to leave, was likely the Ladies Hall in 1866 (Although we do not know for sure about the blacksmith shops or the tavern.)  And the last to leave was probably the Unitarian church in 1907 when the new stone church was built in the Village. Ford Hall was abandoned when the Town Hall was built in 1895. 

The rest of the Old Center establishments either migrated to the Village or were closed. Buildings, shops, etc., that were at the Old Centre are listed below.

-  Meetinghouse, 1st  – built 1770
-  Meetinghouse, 2nd – built 1793
-  Unitarian Church – built 1845 and used until the new church was built in the village.
-  Blacksmith Shop – Sumner Lincoln’s
-  Blacksmith Shop – Ebenezer Starr’s
-  Ford Hall – a store, tailor shop, community center, etc.
-  Inns (Ezra Tuttle 1806, Thomas Riddell 1818)
-  Schoolhouse
-  Second congregational meeting house which became Ladies Hall was moved to the village in 1866 and became Union Hall used by various denominations and for town affairs. It was sold and removed when the stone church was built in 1907 on the same spot.
- Two hearse houses

In New England it was common for towns to build pens in central areas to hold stray animals that got loose from one household or farm so that they couldn't damage the crops of other members of the community. These structures usually consisted of four low walls either of fieldstone or of rough-cut granite.  In Rowe there have been town pounds for stray animals at various places. In September 1785 a committee was chosen “to build a Pound at the Northwest corner of the meeting house Lot, 30 feet square with poles.”

This first town pound must have been a temporary affair because in 1794 it was “voted to build a pound thirty eight feet square, seven feet high from the top of the sills, to be framed with sills and plates and sawed rails 12 feet long framed into posts sufficient for said pound…and be well underpinned with stone six inches from the ground on the highest spot and the sills laid level.” The new pound was on the northwest corner of Ambrose Potter’s lot [which was on the southeast corner of the intersection of Ford Hill and Middletown Hill roads. At one time there was also a blacksmith shop at that site.] Potter was the lowest bidder and was paid £5–10 in neat cattle and became the pound-keeper. In 1822 the town voted to establish as the pound “the barn yard owned by Solomon Reed, near the Meeting-house.” The town has one remaining pound made of field stone with a wooden gate on Hazelton Road. It was built in 1835 and was restored in 1957—including a replica of the original wooden gate.

On the east side of Monroe Hill Road just north of the intersection with Hazelton Road is the site of the Massachusetts Talc Company mine. In May 1900 Henry J. Ruberg obtained the mineral rights to certain ledges on North Road (now Monroe Hill Rd and earlier known as Chalk Stone Road) from then-owner Abbott White. In October 1903  these rights were transferred to the Talcum Mineral Company. The actual operation probably started in 1903. By November 1905 the trustees transferred all to Frederick K. Daggett; he in turn transferred it to Massachusetts Talc Company, incorporated in Massachusetts. Boston newspaper articles imply that early on all milling took place at the mine building. Talc was a popular item in the nation at the time and a boom economy was predicted for Rowe.

The operation seemed to flourish, and in 1906 a large mill building was built on land acquired along the railroad tracks just west of the Zoar Station in Charlemont. At Rowe, another large building and several outbuildings were erected by the mine shaft — said to be 200 feet deep with drifts of 100–200 feet. In 1907 the company tried to issue stock. The Rowe Historical Museum has a prospectus that describes the equipment and operation in great detail. Then in 1908 Daggett took a mortgage on the company for $6,000. Nothing further is known until January 1911 when according to a document filed in the Franklin County Registry of Deeds, the trustees voted to find a buyer for the indebted company and subsequently disband the company.

On March 24, 1911, the mill building in Zoar was destroyed by fire thought to be caused by an overheated pipe. Another fire in August 1911 burned “the living quarters for the Italians working at the mine” in Rowe. According to news articles the mill was rebuilt but by December 1911 Massachusetts Talc Company deeded everything to the treasurer and general manager, Daggett, who continued the operation until a suspicious fire again destroyed the mill on June 18, 1912. The corporation was dissolved in March 1913. This last fire finally put an end to the business, but litigation lasted into the 1920s. The mill was reported to have modern equipment. The reason for its failure remains a mystery. The machinery was sold and the buildings fell to ruin. Cost of repairing the rutted roads from the heavy ore wagons probably offset any slight tax advantage enjoyed by the town.

In the woods across Monroe Hill Road is another undeveloped soapstone deposit in the form of a raised knob 225 feet by 80 feet wide and 10–15 feet high. This ledge was never quarried extensively but is referred to as “Soapstone Ledge Excepted” in a long series of deeds to the property.

A liberty Pole was a symbol and a rallying point for colonists who, prompted by the Stamp Act, were becoming increasingly discontented with the rule of the British. By 1775, a Liberty Pole or Liberty Tree had been dedicated in nearly every village and town in the colonies. From a deed transferring portion of the Cornelius Jones property to Daniel and James Coon in 1790, we can determine that the Liberty Pole stood at the foot of the Bennington Road, now Potter Road.

We don’t know what was said or done beneath Rowe’s Liberty Pole and who gathered there, but the fact of its existence tells us something about the patriots of Myrifield. For the Town of Rowe Bicentennial in 1985, a new liberty pole was erected in the same location. The new pole flies the Taunton Flag- an early colonial era flag that used the British Red Ensign imprinted with the words liberty and union.

North School was on the road to Readsboro at the junction of the Deacon Thomas crossroad (on the east side just north of the intersection of Cross and Potter Roads. It burned about 1890 and was replaced then later sold in 1949.

According to old town meeting records, the town set up three school divisions in 1797 — North, Center and West—and voted to build three schoolhouses. Later the South division was added to take care of the families living east and south of Adams Mountain. In 1898 the sum of $205 was appropriated for “Building Schoolhouses.” In April 1817 the town granted $50 for a teacher “to instruct in singing sacred music.”  Additional districts were added over time for a total of eight school districts:  Centre, West, North, Southeast, East, Village aka Mill, Peck-Cressy aka Southwest, and Hoosac Tunnel aka River.

In 1917 the Greenfield Gazette and Courier published a story about Rowe memories written by Sara Browning Stone who was born in 1838 at the Browning house at 7 Middletown Hill. She describes her school, which must have been the original building on the site of the Village or Mill School—now the Kemp-McCarthy Memorial Museum. The probable date she is talking about is 1845.

I feel that I have but just left that little old unpainted schoolhouse. The schoolroom had a platform about four feet wide and a foot high on three sides, a continuous seat next to the wall for the older pupils, with three wide counters before them with passages only at the corners. The front of the platform made a seat for the ABC class. The teachers desk, boxed-in in one corner, sometimes a pupil would ask as a favor to sit under the desk quietly to study a lesson, then again some little one was told to sit there as a punishment. A block in the big fireplace on the forth side of the room often served as a seat for some unruly lad.

A class would be called out to read. When the teacher said ‘Toe the mark’ all the little toes were carefully placed on a crack in the floor, then with hands at their sides, and a finger in the book at the lesson page, the teacher calls ‘Attention’, and raising her book or reader. When she lowers it, the boys make a little bobbing bow and the girls a curtsey.

The old schoolhouse was soon torn down or removed and replaced by a modern and attractive one.

The first road in Myrifield was a cart path developed in 1743 over the mountain from Charlemont to Fort Pelham. The road, called King’s Highway, was used by Moses Rice in Charlemont to haul timbers for the construction of Fort Pelham during King George’s War (1744–1748 — the  third of the four French and Indian Wars). The section of road going over the mountain to Charlemont was abandoned in 1834, leaving the only remaining section from the Mill Pond Dam bridge to the Rowe Camp & Conference Center and a section up the mountain that Pelham Lake Park reestablished as a hiking trail called Old Kings Highway. We do not know the exact location of the trail crossing Pelham Brook, but it seems reasonable to think of the road as it now goes through the village and up Middletown Hill Rd, then across east and south to the fort.

It must have been the Ft. Pelham Trail that Cornelius Jones took when he brought his family to Rowe in 1763. And it has been said that the troops from Deerfield came this way to the battle at Bennington during  the Revolution. At one time the current Potter Rd. was referred to as Bennington Rd.

The second road in town was probably the trail between Fort Pelham and Fort Shirley in the settlement of Heath. Today, that road would comprise the section of Ford Hill Road east from the North Cemetery Road where the trail to Fort Pelham turned down, then south on Leshure Road, then east between the old and new Cyrus Stage roads, south on Dell Road and finally turning east into Heath somewhere before the town line. It stands to reason that Cornelius Jones would have built his house on this path near the old fort. As early as 1770 the road was extended to the Old Centre where the first meetinghouse was built on land given by Jones.

Browning Bench Tool Factory was established by Anson Browning, a wheelwright from Colrain, and his brother Horace Browning in 1832. Together, they built a house [still standing at 7 Middletown Hill Road] and a carriage factory several hundred feet below the house on the present Pond Road (see historic marker). In 1834 Anson Browning returned to Colrain leaving Horace Browning as the sole owner. In 1847 Horace began making bench tools—a hand plane that is used to flatten, smooth and shape rough pieces of lumber. In 1856 the factory passed to William D. Swain who continued to make bench tools until 1859.  We have a number of these planes in our collection, and you can still find hand planes made by these gentlemen in antique shops today. Look for hand planes marked with H Browning, Rowe Mass.

The Factory building originally had two rooms downstairs that held the factory machinery. There was a flume on the west side of the shop which brought brook water inside to provide power. An undershot water wheel was added in 1836. Take a look on the west side of the building at Pond Road for a rounded hole where the water wheel was attached. Upstairs there was an apartment with four rooms, including one that was lived in by the town ladder maker, Timothy Foster King.

This historic building was given to the town by Jack and Nan Williams in 1976.  As part of the town’s celebration of our Nation’s Bicentennial that same year the building was moved across the street to its current location on town park land. Since its relocation the building has often been used during Old Home Day for exhibits of quilts, artwork and crafts, and for several years it was turned into great haunted houses for Halloween. Today the building is leased by the Rowe Historical Society to house and display 19th century agricultural, farming and homemaking implements, bench tools, artifacts, sleighs, period photos, and more. 

The building was saved by the foresight of successive owners who kept a good roof on it. While today it houses many artifacts as stated above, none of the original machinery remains. It was sold to scrap drives during WWII. Look inside to see where the initials ‘HB’ are inscribed on several of the beams. 

The town was given  a Bicentennial Grant from the state “for the establishment of a Children’s Theater,” money  which was used for moving the building up the road and repair. The theater never happened.

Several blacksmiths served Rowe beginning in the late 18th century and continuing through the early years of the 20th century. George Bennet is named as a blacksmith in 1781, followed by Louis Whitney (1842) and Sumner Lincoln (1858). Lincoln and Whitney maintained a blacksmith shop near the southeast corner of the crossroads at the Old Centre. They were followed by Ebenezer Star who was the last smithy at that location. Star soon followed the migration of establishments that moved downhill to Factory Village in what we now think of as the center of Rowe.

Silbley-Richards Blacksmith Shop Two hundred years ago, Rowe was largely self-supporting and economically independent. Within town borders, citizens produced practically all the necessary food, wool for clothing, leather for shoes, and lumber for building. Sugar was extracted from sugar maples. Salt and iron implements were purchased with the surplus produce. There was little cash and trade was often a system of barter.

Peter and Philo Sibley and the latter’s son Joseph later conducted such a thriving blacksmith business that three forges were necessary. On a typical day they would shoe sixteen horses and up to twelve yokes of oxen besides turning the shoes and nails. Farmers drove from Florida, Monroe, Readsboro, Whitingham and Heath to visit their shop.

John Richards was the last regular blacksmith. His shop was on King’s Highway at the Mill Pond Dam. He left town in 1910. In 1922 Charles Newell reopened the shop for part-time work and later built an adjoining store. Bradley Newell also ran a busy blacksmith shop at 242 Ford Hill Road around 1911.

A complex of economic activity could be found on the east side of Browning Hill—the section of Zoar Road beginning at the crest of the hill near the Rowe Town Library heading downhill to approximately 294 Zoar Road. 

Thomas Scott built a shop where they made boots and shoes and operated a courier business. The Historical Museum has a ledger from the shop’s early years. Charles Scott eventually bought the business which thrived for forty years. The building was used continuously until about 1900, after which it fell to ruin.

The large stone foundations remaining on the brook at the bottom of Browning Hill are from the G.A. Eddy Casket and Cabinet Shop, built in 1884. There are ledgers from the shop at the Kemp-McCarthy Museum Historical Museum. For example: $3.50 billed to the town for the coffin for the “Irish girl” buried in the West Cemetery. Other items were built such as bureaus, bedsteads, tables, chairs, butter molds, neck yokes, and sap tubs. The ledger also records items taken in trade for work done.

The Rowe Historical Society owns interesting ledgers from the shop which name people and lists of items purchased—a history in itself concerning the deaths of townspeople.

Having found talc on his property, A.A. Shippee proceeded to buy about 600 acres of land or mineral rights and in 1905 incorporated the Foliated Talc company. The firm operated a talc mine on the old Bullard farm, a half mile north of the Old Centre. A large grinding mill with a capacity of 40 tons per day was built opposite the village school (now the Kemp-McCarthy Museum) and the quarried rock was carted there. The finished product was hauled by wagon to  the train at Zoar. Waterpower for the mill was supplied by a 170-foot-long metal flume from the Mill Pond connected with the village sawmill, which in turn was supplied by Pelham Brook. To supply a constant head of water, a dam was completed in 1906 on the reservoir formerly supplying the old satinet factory and thus Pelham Lake was born again.

 At the mine, a shaft was sunk to a depth of 240 feet on the incline and drifts were turned off at 100 and 200 feet. The lower 40 feet was used as a sump. According to A.R. Ladoo, in a U.S. Bureau of Mines bulletin in 1923, “talc in cars, trammed by hand along the levels, is dumped into skips at the shaft and hoisted to the surface. The mine equipment consists of a steam pump at the second level and an air compressor, hoist and boiler at the surface.” Judging from the single known old photograph of the mine buildings, they were nowhere near the size of the ones at the Massachusetts Talc Company mine.

In February 1910, A.A. Shippee received a patent on his talc separator that he designed for his mill to separate the talc into the various degrees of fineness that special customers required.

A news article in 1918 says that talc teams with heavy loads — some weighing five tones — were hauled to Zoar by Edgar Pike, Leon Woffenden and Warren Liese with double teams and A.A. Shippee with three double teams. Business must have been good for a few years. But in 1919 the Foliated Talc Company was sold to the Mineral Products Company of Boston with big plans for increased production and an aerial tramway to Zoar, but nothing developed.

By late 1919 the mine was essentially closed, and for the next few years the original investors desperately attempted to find new owners to recoup their losses. As with other large mine operations in town, it is not clear what finally brought them down — poor management, poor quality minerals, or loss of markets.

By 1920 the Foliated Talc Company foreclosed on the Mineral Products Company and by 1922 it again planned to carry out the big plans. In 1925 the dam on Pelham Lake was condemned and the gates opened, much to the concern of townspeople. A town meeting voted to try and save it, but voters could not raise the funds. In 1927 author Percy Brown acquired the Foliated Talc property and began improvements. By the next year he had the old mill in the village torn down, the Mill Pond and Pelham Lake dams rebuilt and Pelham Lake restored — all to the great good fortune of the Town of Rowe.

See photos and read more about the mill

Fayette Snow had a wheelwright shop for making iron-rimmed wooden wheels on the lot across from the old Village School (now home of the Rowe Historical Society) from 1873 to 1900.