. The history of Springfield in Massachusetts, for the young; being also in some part the history of other towns and cities in the county of Hampden. familiar sceneshereabouts inolden times andare now in someparts of thecountry. Onewho wishes torecall in imagi-nation the way ofliving in the olddays may visit the Day house in West Springfield and see theancient relics. But about the beginning of the nineteenth century severalevents happened, which in the end changed all this and madeSpringfield, first, a large town, and then a city. The chiefof these was the discovery of the useful power of ste
. The history of Springfield in Massachusetts, for the young; being also in some part the history of other towns and cities in the county of Hampden. familiar sceneshereabouts inolden times andare now in someparts of thecountry. Onewho wishes torecall in imagi-nation the way ofliving in the olddays may visit the Day house in West Springfield and see theancient relics. But about the beginning of the nineteenth century severalevents happened, which in the end changed all this and madeSpringfield, first, a large town, and then a city. The chiefof these was the discovery of the useful power of steam; thismeant steamboats and railroads. Others were the inventionof the power loom and the spinning jenny, moved at first bywater power; this meant the gathering of people into millsand the disappearance of cloth manufacture from the machinery, in which Thomas Blanchard, of this town,won much fame as an inventor, began to take the place ofhuman hands, the family life was all changed. There wasless to be doneand the biggerboys could goto school insummer, whenbefore theycotild only bespared in thewinter. With. 120 HISTORY OF SPRINGFIELD all these changes there was more demand for work and morepeople began to come from other countries. As the population increased the wild animals gave way beforeit. The panther retired to forests more remote; the beaverleft the streams and the deer went further north and were notseen after 1820. The last bear known at Bear Hole came outof that dark lair about 1790 when Seth Smith was hoeing turkeys lingered but the last survivors were those onMount Nonotuck about 1850. The beautiful salmon thatonce leaped and danced in the rapids of Schonunganunk en-tirely disappeared, soon to be followed by the sturgeon andthe shad. A century and a half had passed after the settlement andas yet all the crossing of the river had been by canoes, skiffsand scow ferry boats, when one day the minister of the oldchurch foretold a bridge in coming
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidhistoryofspr, bookyear1921
