. 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. useful. Thoughborn in England, he was but a boy when, after the long oceanvoyage, he first saw the New World, and he grew up truly anAmerican. Perhaps he could not, like his father, read theBible in the original Hebrew; and he may have known nothingof Latin and Greek, all ofwhich William Pynchon ^i ? had learned at the Uni-versity of Oxford. Itmay be, too, that hisfather had taught himsomething of these is good reason forsupposing th
. 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. useful. Thoughborn in England, he was but a boy when, after the long oceanvoyage, he first saw the New World, and he grew up truly anAmerican. Perhaps he could not, like his father, read theBible in the original Hebrew; and he may have known nothingof Latin and Greek, all ofwhich William Pynchon ^i ? had learned at the Uni-versity of Oxford. Itmay be, too, that hisfather had taught himsomething of these is good reason forsupposing that he wasstudious as a boy andwhen he became a youngman he was so much of ascholar that he was some-times expected to preacha sermon of his own writ-ing, in the years whenthe people met for wor-ship, without any min-ister. On other occa-sions. Deacon Chapin, or another, would read a printed ser-mon of some clergyman. But John Pynchon had other training which was, perhaps,more useful to Springfield. He had grown up alongside theIndian boys who lived on Long Hill and the Agawam sideand well knew the Indian character. This, in the trying times. THE PYNCHON FAMILY 53 that afterwards arose with the Indians, was of much conse-quence. Sometimes he was called upon to settle differencesbetween the Indians and other settlements, even as far westas Albany. The Indians called him brother Pynchon. Nolikeness of him remains, as boy or man. In those days ofhard struggle for a livelihood, probably none was ever made,but the picture on the previous page shows how he might havelooked, in his earlier years, studious boy as he was. As the successor of his father, John Pynchon became thegreat merchant and trader of the valley. His vessels wentdown the river with merchandise to be landed at his ownwharf in Boston. As an incident of his extensive operationswith the Indians and others he furnished a good deal of workto the women and children of Springfield by giving themshells to string into wampum at
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidhistoryofspr, bookyear1921
