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

SPRINGFIELD, 1636-1886. 393
Morgan kept a grocery and dry-goods store, and Baker & Holbrook
owned the Hanipden furniture establishment in tlie Carew building.
The main armory building was burned in March, 1824, and during
the summer three flre-proof buildings were put up, — two workshops
and a store-house, each one hundred and twenty feet long. The two
hundred and sixty men employed turned out fort}^ muskets per day.
At Chicopee, Chapin & Bemis were the leading merchants. The
cotton factories on the Chicopee river belonging to the Boston &
Springfield Manufacturing Company w^ere begun about 1823. In
1826 there were two brick five-story factories, with seven thousand
spindles and two hundred and forty looms, and there were about
twent}' tenement houses for operatives with accommodations for fifty-
four families.
On March 4, 1825, the inauguration of John Quincy Adams was
observed by a political dinner at the Hampden coffee-house, the report
being of a " style which does credit to Colonel Russell." Colonel Lee
presided, and J. Dwight, Jr., was chosen vice-president. There was
some political rancor in the speeches, but patriotism prevailed. John
Mills and Justice WUlard were elected State senators in April, the latter
only after a contest before the Legislature with Jonathan Dwight, Jr.
The representatives in 1826 were George Bliss, Jonathan Dwight, Jr.,
William B. Calhoun, William H. Foster, and Jesse Pendleton.
In 1826, when Solomon Hatch was nominated for register of deeds,
an ardent republican closed a long appeal in support of Hatch by
remarking that Hatch is " not less honest nor less capable than the
present /a9Ji% incumbent, who has, as yet, little reason to know that
he does not hold the office as an heirloom from his ancestors, but as
the free gift of a free people." This was a signal for a spirited charge
upon Edward Pynchon, who had been register since the formation of
the county, in 1812. The discussion was narrowed from the principle
of rotation in office to the business habits of both estimable gentlemen,
and sundry irregularities in land transactions were charged and denied
in rapid succession. Pynchon was reelected by a large majority.