. 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. otherparts of the was warm weatherand at first there wereprobably rude camps,made of the boughsof trees. The firsthouse was presumablyof logs, the cracksfilled with clay or mor- Thatching the Shed. tar tO kcCp OUt the cold. For a roof there would be a thatch of straw or the long snowy winter began, so unlike the short openwinters in England, where flowers sometimes bloom in Febru-ary, they perhaps felt very comfortably settl
. 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. otherparts of the was warm weatherand at first there wereprobably rude camps,made of the boughsof trees. The firsthouse was presumablyof logs, the cracksfilled with clay or mor- Thatching the Shed. tar tO kcCp OUt the cold. For a roof there would be a thatch of straw or the long snowy winter began, so unlike the short openwinters in England, where flowers sometimes bloom in Febru-ary, they perhaps felt very comfortably settled. It may bethat some of the first houses were not of logs. The falls inMill river were set to work as soon as the machinery of a sawmill could be got from Boston; and the result was boardsand shingles and clapboards, for those who could afford the first crop of grain had been raised and threshedout with the flail, the same little stream was set to the grind-ing. No wonder that they called it Mill river, regardless ofthe Indian name. Its mills were all in all to them, for now,thanks to it, they had good housing and wholesome THE SETTLEMENT 27 In some respects, indeed, they lived better than in the oldcountry. They had to get used to much colder winters; andmany conveniences which they had enjoyed before, they couldnot have here. But the land easily gave them enough to eatin greater plenty than England could have done; partlybecause of their cultivated fields, partly because of the wildgame, such as quail, partridge, ducks and pigeons. In falland spring the pigeons passed over, sometimes in such num-bers as almost to darken the sky. These they caught in birds were shot with a fowling piece for scattering theshot among a number of birds at once, like that on the shoulderof Miles Morgan in the Court Square statue. If woodchucksor moles became troublesome to the crops, there was a simpleway of catching them by bending down a slender staddle
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, bookidhistoryofspr, bookyear1921
