About Connections: Love it or hate it, history is a map. Those who hate history think it irrelevant; many who love history think it escapism. In truth, history is the clearest road map to how we got here: America in the 21st century.
In 2020 and 2021, there was a “flight to safety” that caused more sales in Stockbridge, and perhaps in other Berkshire villages, than at any time in decades. It seemed unique. However, the notion that there is something particularly healthy, invigorating, and even restorative about The Berkshires is not new.
Two hundred and fifty-five years ago, on March 28, 1767, William Williams, a Pittsfield town selectman, governmental leader, and wealthy man wrote a letter to his brother-in-law, Nathaniel Dickinson, in Deerfield. Perhaps not all residents felt as Williams did, but if even a respectable percentage did, Pittsfield was perfect.
Dickinson was ill, and Williams began by expressing his “hearty sympathy on the state of your health.” However, this was not a mere sympathy note; Williams had a solution to Dickinson’s suffering: move to Pittsfield!
“Languor, sickness, and excruciating pain where my portion while I chose or rather was obliged [to live elsewhere]. Since my removal to this place, I challenge any man…to compare with me for health or freedom from pain…And never have I but two half days been absent from public worship in fourteen years.”
The two half days Williams was absent from worship were due not to illness but to the weather conditions. Passing over a description of a Berkshire winter, Williams explained that the promise of health was due to the “temperature and goodness of the air.”
And that was not all. According to Williams, Pittsfield promised longevity. Fewer people died in Pittsfield or, as Williams put it, “the records of the Probate office avail that in near about six years, [fees] have not amounted to ten pounds to the judge.” Williams was referring to the fees paid by the trustees or beneficiaries to the Probate Court judges who settled the estates.
Move to Pittsfield — and if sick, you will get better; when better, you will not die. But that’s not all folks!! At the other end of the life continuum, you will have more children.
“Another proof of the goodness of the country [air] is the prolific behavior of the female sex among us. Barren women beget and bring forth fourth sons. Women that have left off for 5, 6, 7, and 9 years, begin anew.”
Between life’s beginning and the postponement of the end, life in Pittsfield couldn’t be better. The women “feel frisky” and “give their men a hearty welcome when they return home from work.” Perhaps that accounted for the increase in births.
“The men are alert and “perceive the difference of the soil…it would yield more than they were acquainted with.” Better and better: “No man or woman of but common understanding that ever came and got settled among us wishes themselves back.”
If health, longevity, abundant children, good soil, and frisky wives didn’t sell Dickinson on the move to Pittsfield, perhaps wealth would. Williams wrote, “I fill this paper with instances of growth in estates in just a few years.”
He did: tales of men who arrived in Berkshire County with “but 5 pounds” and achieved wealth. Among them was Col. Ashley “who came to Sheffield with less money than your minister carried to Deerfield and is now worth more than any man in our county.” In Pittsfield, “Goodrich, Brattle, Bush, Hubbard, Crowfoot and Ensign strictly speaking were in debt when they came [and now are among the richest men in Pittsfield].”
Williams ends with the hope that Dickinson will move to Pittsfield for his own sake and to make his sister [Williams’ wife] happy.
All the business about being cured by the mountain air of Pittsfield may strike us as a naïve 18th century idea — a pre-scientific evaluation — or not. The idea took hold in the 18th century and survived the whole of the 19th century. The invasion of millionaires during the Gilded Age was in part because of their belief in the purity and healing quality of Berkshire Mountain air. Furthermore, in the post-scientific age, the oh-so-sophisticated 21st century, the flight to safety took many urban dwellers to the sparsely populated high country of Berkshire County.
Just hope not so many come that they spoil by their coming what brought them: clean air, small population, and open space.
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Originally Appeared Here