The Duke of Stockbridge | Page 2

King George may get his red
coat back again, after all. The Tories in the village say that the landlord
keeps a pot of red paint behind the door, so that the Hessian dragoons
may not take him by surprise when they come galloping down the
valley, some afternoon. On the other side [of] the green is the
meeting-house, built some thirty years ago, by a grant from government

at Boston, and now considered rather old-fashioned and inconvenient.
Hard by the meeting-house is the graveyard, with the sandy knoll in its
south-west corner, set apart for the use of the Indians. The
whipping-post, stocks, and cage, for the summary correction of such
offences as come within the jurisdiction of Justice Jahleel Woodbridge,
Esquire, adorn the middle of the village green, and on Saturday
afternoon are generally the center of a crowd assembled to be edified
by the execution of sentences.
On the other side [of] the green from the meeting-house stands the store,
built five years before, by Timothy Edwards, Esquire, a structure of a
story and a half, with the unusual architectural adornment of a porch or
piazza in front, the only thing of the kind in the village. The people of
Stockbridge are scarcely prouder of the divinity of their late shepherd,
the famous Dr. Jonathan Edwards, than they are of his son Timothy's
store. Indeed, what with Dr. Edwards, so lately in their midst, Dr.
Hopkins, down at Great Barrington, and Dr. Bellamy, just over the
State line in Bethlehem, Connecticut, the people of Berkshire are
decidedly more familiar with theologians than with storekeepers, for
when Mr. Edwards built his store in 1772, it was the only one in the
county.
At such a time it may be readily inferred that a commercial occupation
serves rather as a distinction than otherwise. Squire Edwards is
moreover chairman of the selectmen, and furthermore most of the
farmers are in his debt for supplies, while to these varied elements of
influence, his theological ancestry adds a certain odor of sanctity. It is
true that Squire Jahleel Woodbridge is even more brilliantly descended,
counting two colonial governors and numerous divines among his
ancestry, not to speak of a rumored kinship with the English noble
family of Northumberland. But instead of tending to a profitless rivalry
the respective claims of the Edwardses and the Woodbridges to
distinction have happily been merged by the marriage of Jahleel
Woodbridge and Lucy Edwards, the sister of Squire Timothy, so that in
all social and political matters, the two families are closely allied.
The back room of the store is, in a sense, the Council-chamber, where

the affairs of the village are debated and settled by these magnates,
whose decisions the common people never dream of anticipating or
questioning. It is also a convivial center, a sort of clubroom. There, of
an afternoon, may generally be seen Squires Woodbridge, Williams,
Elisha Brown, Deacon Nash, Squire Edwards, and perhaps a few others,
relaxing their gravity over generous bumpers of some choice old
Jamaica, which Edwards had luckily laid in, just before the war stopped
all imports.
In the west half of the store building, Squire Edwards lives with his
family, including, besides his wife and children, the remnants of his
father's family and that of his sister, the widowed Mrs. President Burr.
Young Aaron Burr was there, for a while after his graduation at
Princeton, and during the intervals of his arduous theological studies
with Dr. Bellamy at Bethlehem. Perchance there are heart-sore maidens
in the village, who, to their sorrow, could give more particular
information of the exploits of the seductive Aaron at this period, than I
am able to.
Such are the mountains and rivers, the streets and the houses of
Stockbridge as the sun of this August morning in the year 1777,
discloses them to view. But where are the people? It is seven, yes,
nearly eight o'clock, and no human being is to be seen walking in the
streets, or travelling in the roads, or working in the fields. Such lazy
habits are certainly not what we have been wont to ascribe to our sturdy
forefathers. Has the village, peradventure, been deserted by the
population, through fear of the Hessian marauders, the threat of whose
coming has long hung like a portentous cloud, over the Berkshire
valley? Not at all. It is not the fear of man, but the fear of God, that has
laid a spell upon the place. It is the Sabbath, or what we moderns call
Sunday, and law and conscience have set their double seal on every
door, that neither man, woman nor child, may go forth till sunset, save
at the summons of the meeting-house bell. We may wander all the way
from the parsonage on the hill, to Captain