Catholics from western Ukraine who had settled in the area of South Deerfield formed Descent of the Holy Ghost parish in 1920. Land was soon purchased on Sugarloaf Street from Charles Mosher. An 1850s carriage shed on the property was moved to a new foundation and adapted to become what is now called Descent of the Holy Spirit Ukrainian Catholic Church. Across the street is Holy Family Roman Catholic Church.
Sojourner Truth, whose name at birth was Isabella, was born an enslaved woman in upstate New York in approximately 1797. Slavery was finally abolished in the state in 1827. Taking the name Sojourner Truth, she would become a leading anti-slavery and woman’s rights lecturer. Starting in 1843, Truth was a member of the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Located in the part of Northampton which would later come to be called Florence, the NAEI was a utopian community dedicated to abolitionism and equality. She continued to live in Northampton after the NAEI disbanded in 1846. Truth, who could not read or write, dictated her memoirs to her friend, Olive Gilbert. Sales of the Narrative of Sojourner Truth (first published in 1850), paid for her house, at 35 Park Street in Florence, where she lived from 1849/1850 to 1857. Her friend, Samuel L. Hill, who was the spiritual leader of the Northampton Association, held the mortgage on the house, which Sojourner Truth paid in 1854. In 1857, she moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, where she lived the remainder of her life.
The David Saxton House, on Old Main Street in Deerfield, was operated for a time as a tavern and was a meeting place for Whigs (Patriots) during the American Revolution. As recorded in George Sheldon’s A History of Deerfield, Massachusetts, Vol. 2 (1896):
The big dish of tea made in Boston harbor, December 16th, 1773, stimulated the blood of two continents. David Field was in Boston that day, and when he brought the news there was a jollification meeting at David Saxton’s tavern. When the meeting broke up the mellow Whigs woke the echoes of the night by proclaiming about the town the exploits of those men.
Recent dendrochronology testing has identified the construction date of the house as 1763. I believe this house is the one described by George Sheldon in his book entitled The Little Brown House on the Albany Road (1915).
By 1700 a ferry ran across the Connecticut River between Hadley and Hatfield. According to the National Register of Historic Places Nomination for the Boundary Increase of the Hadley Center Historic District, Solomon Cook operated the ferry crossing and a tavern on the Hadley side of the river. In 1795, Andrew Cook purchased a home lot adjacent to the river in Hadley and erected his house (1 West Street) there around 1800. He operated it as a later version of Cook’s Tavern, also called the Ferryman’s Hotel. Other sources refer to the the building as the Solomon Cook Tavern, named for Solomon Cook (Andrew’s brother?), whose wife was Tryphena Newton Cook. The second floor of the tavern had a ballroom with seats built into the wall. In 2006-2007, the old tavern was restored and put on the market. It was sold, but was for sale again a year later.
In 1860-1861, Northampton manufacturer W.T. Clement built a brick house at what is now 289 Elm Street. In 1879, he sold the house to A.S. Wood, who hired architect William Fenno Pratt to make improvements to building in the form of mansard roofs and a tower.
The house on colonial Deerfield’s Lot 18 was built around 1713-1714 by Eleazer Hawks. It was later owned by the Russell family and, in 1815, was sold to Epaphras Hoyt, who remodeled it, replacing its original center chimney with two smaller ones. When Deerfield’s brick church was going to be built in the 1820s on the site of Hoyt‘s office, he had his building moved to the same lot as his house (it was later moved elsewhere in town). Hoyt used the office in his capacity as postmaster and register of deeds. He was also a historian, who wrote such works as Antiquarian Researches (1824). Hoyt died in 1850 and in 1857 his son, Arthur Wellesley Hoyt, constructed his own grand Italianate house near the center of town. The oldest house standing in Deerfield, the Eleazer Hawks House has been much altered in the Colonial Revival style.
At 163 Sargeant Street in Holyoke is a former National Guard Armory, originally called the M.V.M. Armory for the Massachusetts Volunteer militia. It was designed by local architect William J. Howe and built in 1907. Its facade was said to be a replica of New Hawarden Castle, once the residence of former British Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone. In 1990, the building was seized by the Hampden County Sherriff to house excess prisoners. The Armory building is currently vacant.
Update 3-13-16: The rear of the building has been collapsing.
