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

SFRIXGFIELD, 16S6-1SS6. All
ous bands of fugitive slaves were continually passing up the Connect-
icut valley on their way to Canada. Dr. Osgood's kind oflices in
furthering this scheme have been referred to. The negroes usually
travelled at night, and were sheltered by true and tried friends during
the day. The houses of Dr. Osgood, Joseph C. Buell, John How-
land, Mr. Church, and others were used as stations of the under-
ground railroad. In 1847 Osgood, Calhoun, Rufus Palmer, and a
local negro preacher secured a house situated in the woods at Bright-
wood, for the shelter of fugitives. Parties liad unloaded b}' night in
the Worthington grove, and taken to the Buell house (the Widow
Frost place, corner of Spring and State streets) or other houses ; but
this was considered a dangerous practice, and they were finally sent
to the woods of the North End. The negroes never knew the names
of the men at whose houses they slept. ^Ir. Buell was the preacher
at the jail for many years.
The population of Springfield in 1843 was 10,985. Among the
business events of that ^^ear was the opening of the Massasoit Hotel,
in July, Mr. Chapin receiving many congratulatory visits, and a good
house-warming followed. The Springfield House (corner of Bridge
and AVater streets), owned b}- Charles Stearns and leased by Bugbee &
Clark, was opened the followuig 3'ear. The Dwight Manufacturing
Company had been incorporated in 1841, with a capital of half a mil-
lion. Some years later it was consolidated witli the Cabot Manu-
facturing Company and the Perkins IMills, making it the largest
cotton-mill company m the Connecticut valley.
The public schools were not in the best condition, one would say,
when, in 1843, the average attendance was only seventeen hundred
out of three thousand children who ought to have been at school.
While the town was spending $10,000 annually upon their schools,
they were so bad that no less than one hundred scholars were sent to
private schools, at an extra expense of over $2,000.
On October 13, 1844, Springfield was visited by another destructive
fire, which broke out in the shop of E. T. Amadou, in the Frost building