Springfield 1636-1886, History of Town and City, by Mason A. Green ...

352 SPRINGFIELD, 16.3G-1SS6.
discouragement. lu 1793 the power to assess the stock resulted in
a complication, which ended in the sending of an agent to Holland
and the securing of a Dutch loan. The company was divided in
1794, the Montague falls being largely under the control of North-
ampton men, though Jonathan Dwight retained an interest in it.
The original company having thus the lower falls in hand soon built
a canal in the rocks, and started a dam to raise the river level at the
upper end of the canal. The consequent overflowing of the North-
ampton meadows gave rise to a prosecution of the company, and a
portion of the dam was torn down, — all but the oblique section.
The Dutch capitalists retreated from the enterprise thoroughly
frightened, but the faith of the local projectors enabled them to turn
a comfortable penny. In 1802 they were authorized to raise more
money by means of a lottery, and soon began to deepen the canal
several feet, which was completed in 1805. Thus did the lands about
the falls, granted in the latter part of the seventeenth century to
John P3aichon, attain an importance in the first part of the nineteenth
century beyond the emoluments of the fishing business.
The demoralization attending the wars was plain enough. Burglary
and horse-stealing, from 1787, or for ten years, was very connnon
here, and, of course, deserters and bounty-jumpers had their way.
In 1782 two young men of the town — Gresham Brown, Jr., and
Elias Swan — were induced to enlist at Worcester under false names,
in order to secure the $60 bounty. They were detected, but were let
off with a published card full of humble contrition, and the payment
of $20 " smart money," to be used for advertising for deserters.
Capt. Seth Banister, of the 4th Massachusetts (Colonel Shepard),
was recruiting-officer stationed at Springfield. He Avas charged at
one time with withholding the pay of recruits in order to keep them
from deserting. The ground for this was the ordering of only a part
of the pay of recruits in certain cases, the money being deposited
with the soldier's immediate officer. Troops on furlough Avere ordered
to assemble in Springfield, June 10, 1783, probably to be paid off and