Pre-Revolutionary Lenox Dale As Jan Chague points out in her excellent new book, History of Lenox Furnace and Lenox Dale, the official history of Lenox Dale begins with a 500 acre…
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Proprietors were akin to a modern corporation in that they owned a % of the land and acted as a board of directors for the town. The money they put…
What were to become the towns of Lenox and Richmond began as one tract with the catchy name of Lot #8. Lot #8 was auctioned in 1762 as part of…
Yale Emeritus Professor of History John Demos explored gender relations in colonial America at a Bidwell House lecture June 20, 2015. He discussed how male-female difference was understood at the…
Housing in Colonial Lenox Given the primitive transportation available, housing for the earliest settlers would have been limited to raw materials readily at hand: logs, stone, and clay. Initial houses…
Lot 8 Put Up for Sale in 1762 Although the French and Indian Wars would not officially end until 1763, things had turned sufficiently favorable for the English that, by June…
Lenox Land Grants The land that would comprise Lenox and Richmond was auctioned as Lot 8 by the Royal Colony General Court in 1762. But, the land that was being…
Berkshire County was established in 1761 — almost a hundred years after Hamshire (later Hamden, Hampshire and Franklin) County to the East. Why establish a new Massachusetts county at all?…
Life for Early Lenox Settlers We have not yet found first person accounts of what greeted the early settlers (say 1750’s) but we can make some educated guesses based on…
Frequently known as the French and Indian War, this was actually the fourth in a series of conflicts, stretching over 85 years*. Unlike the three earlier conflicts between the English and…
Settlement of the Berkshires – Poontoosuck Of the five Berkshire towns whose settlement have are briefly covered in these blogs(Sheffield, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, Poontoosuck* and Lenox), Poontoosuck (Pittsfield) suffered the…
Settlement Expands to Upper Housatonic Township – Great Barrington Voted the “Best Small Town in America,”* by Smithsonian Magazine in 2012, Great Barrington has clearly overcome early bumps in the…
In King George’s War, New France (Canada) Continued to Use Indian Allies to Terrorize New England and Upstate New York In Europe this was known as The War of the…
The Stockbridge Indian lands included part of what would become Lenox. Why the Stockbridge Indians were here and why they sold their land is an important part of the story…
Settlement of Berkshire County Begins with Sheffield As early as 1662, John Pynchon, son of the founder of Springfield, attempted to establish a trading post on the Housatonic between what…
Queen Anne’s War (1702-1713) In Europe, this conflict was known as the “War of the Spanish Succession,” and was, as the name suggests a balance of power struggle between England…
First of Four Wars Impacting Western New England King William’s War was the first of four wars in which the French colonials (in Canada and elsewhere) and the British colonials…
Four Almost Continuous Wars in the 18th Century All four of the French and Indian Wars were fought before the settlement of Lenox. However they are part of the Lenox story since…
Theocracy By the time Lenox was founded, Massachusetts had become a secular British colony. But it is worth reviewing the evolution from theocracy to colony since many elements of the…
Metacom or King Phillip – Charismatic Leader Metacom, called “King Phillip,” by the English became sachem of the Plymouth area tribe in 1662. Metacom, or King Phillip as he was…
Following the “Great Migration” population grew and demand for land pushed settlers west and south., the settlers and their offspring spread out – first to the Connecticut Coast (see Native…
Between about 1630 and 1640, as many as 20,000 men, women and children left England for New England. Most if not all of the settlers of Lenox can trace their…
Native American Population Before European settlement, the native population between the Appalachians and the Atlantic was estimated at over 1 million*. By the time the Mahicans settled in Stockbridge in…
Why did the Age of Exploration that eventually led to the European settlement of the Berkshires begin in the 1400’s? Fear, greed and new technology.
Vikings Probably Earliest Europeans The first Europeans to get remotely close to Massachusetts were probably Vikings from Iceland. There is archaeological evidence of a 1,000 year old Viking settlement at L’Anse Aux…
There’s no evidence that anyone from Henry Hudson’s expedition was any closer to the Berkshires than the Hudson River. But it is very likely, tales of the wondrous craft, “a…
From their earliest explorations of North America, Europeans influenced (and generally not for the better) North American native life. So, by the time early Berkshire settlers encountered Native Americans, Indian…
How long have there been people in the Berkshires? Hard to know but based on a recent lecture sponsored by Bidwell House there is evidence we had tourists as long…
The most widely accepted theory is that the earliest visitors to North America (and eventually our area) followed their hunting quarry over a land bridge from Asia to Alaska….
Throughout the millennia, the earth has gone through long periods of warming and cooling. The entire Pleistocene Epoch – beginning about 2MM years ago was marked by invasions of massive…
Jonathan Hinsdale was the first known European inhabitant of Lenox. He was born March 17, 1724 in Hartford, CT. Many early Berkshire residents came from Connecticut. It may have been…
The development of New England towns explains much about their current form. Massachusetts towns, including Lenox, have unique compactness not seen in other areas. Although the design included religious elements,…
So much of Lenox history is driven by the characteristics – good and bad – of our landscape that the origins of our hills seems the place to start a…