Dwight, Massachusetts

Dwight is a village in North Belchertown, Massachusetts, United States.[1][2][3] It was a railroad destination and farming community in the 19th century with lumber mills, two schools, a chapel, cemeteries, two railways, aquatic gardens, restaurants, ballrooms, an inn, a carriage-maker, wheelwrights, blacksmith, a general store and post office.[4] Today the area is known for its natural beauty, scenic waterfalls, wildlife, forests, ponds, brooks, springs, hiking trails and bike paths.

The Dwight Chapel, its cornerstone laid October 6, 1886, pictured today

Geography

The center of Dwight is in the northwestern region of Belchertown, defined as the intersection of Federal and Goodell Streets. Village boundaries have historically spanned approximately eight square miles and border Pelham on the north, Amherst and the Lawrence Swamp on the west, Orchard Road on the south and Pelham and Route 202 on the east.[5] It’s about 3.3 linear miles east to west and 2.4 linear miles north to south.

The center of the village lies about 4.8 road miles northwest from Belchertown Common (by State Route 9); 4.2 miles southwest from West Pelham; 3.5 miles east from the South Amherst Common; and 4.2 miles southeast from East Amherst Common. The boundary of Granby is about 1.5 linear miles southwest of the center.

The village developed around the intersection of three named brooks: Montague Brook, Scarborough Brook, Hop Brook. It also encompasses Scarborough Pond, Knight’s Pond and Jabish Brook, many unnamed tributaries and hundreds of acres of conservation land including Holland Glen, Wentworth Property, Topping Farm, Lashway Property, Warren Wright Road, Holyoke Range, Arcadia Bog, Scarborough Brook, Upper Gulf, Mead's Corner, Reed Property and part of Jabish Brook.[6] The Kestrel Land Trust provides trail maps of Holland Glen, Scarborough Brook and Jabish Brook.

Dwight is immediately north of Holland Pond, Lake Arcadia and Lake Metacomet, known previously as the Bridgman Ponds, or the Pond Hill area, the site of early settlement (1732) along the Old Bay Road that ran from Boston to Albany, as well as the birthplace of Elijah Coleman Bridgeman and Ethan Smith. The Lake Vale Cemetery was established here in 1766, with the first interment as early as 1730.[7]

The center of Dwight is 2.8 linear miles southwest from Mount Lincoln, a 1,240 feet (380 m) high point on the Pelham Dome or Pelham Hills, an upland plateau overlooking the Connecticut River Valley in Pelham, Massachusetts (near Amherst, Massachusetts).  

Dwight is located on the far eastern end of the Holyoke Range, part of the Metacomet Ridge of Southern New England. It is 2.2 linear miles northeast of Long Mountain, and 3.5 linear miles northeast of the peak of Mount Norwottuck, the highest point in the Range. Part of the Mount Holyoke Range State Park is accessible in the southwest corner of Dwight.

Hiking and Biking

The Norwottuck Branch Rail Trail, part of the Mass Central Rail Trail, begins at Dwight village, about where the Montague Brook and Central New England Railroad (formerly the Central Vermont R.R.) cross Warren Wright Road, north of Wilson Road.

The Trail stretches through the Lawrence Swamp in a northerly direction before turning west for 11 miles (18 km) on the former rail bed of the Central Massachusetts Railroad (and later a branch of the Boston & Maine Railroad). It is a combination bicycle/pedestrian paved rail trail running from Northampton, Massachusetts, through Hadley and Amherst, to Belchertown, Massachusetts.

The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail, part of the 215-mile New England National Scenic Trail, crosses through the heart of Dwight on Federal Street and up Gulf Road.

The Robert Frost Trail transverses Dwight, following Warren Wright Road across Hop Brook.

Holland Glen

Holland Glen is a 290-acre conservation forest southeast of the center of Dwight that features hiking trails, waterfalls, small pools and “a deep, narrow chasm with steep sides covered thickly with a growth of pine and hemlock."[8] It was named for Josiah Gilbert Holland and is accessible from State Route 9.

Above the Glen are springs that form the Hop Brook. It flows in a westerly direction and enters the Lawrence Swamp in South Amherst, and empties into the Fort River.

Scarborough Brook begins on the West Hill, north of Holland Glen and the Hop Brook. It runs west and the southerly and created the narrow ravine of Gulf Road. It’s mouth is at the Hop Brook, to the west of Federal Street near the Daigle Well.

Montague Brook begins in south Pelham, in a spring-field near the Mountain Goat Loop hiking trail, flowing in a southwesterly direction through Dwight, and enters the Hop Brook in the Lawrence Swamp.

A fourth unnamed brook begins in the unnamed wetland south of North Street and east of Federal Street and empties into the Hop Brook in the Topping Farm Conservation Area, 220 acres that nearly connects Lawrence Swamp and the Mount Holyoke Range.

Lawrence Swamp

To the immediate west of Dwight in South Amherst is the Lawrence Swamp, a thousand acres of forested wetland, scrub-shrub floodplain, and open meadow and habitat for rare species of birds and wildlife. It contains numerous hiking trails and several wells that produce drinking water for Amherst. Its watershed encompasses most of the Dwight area.

The Swamp is most accessible at the Norwottuck Branch Rail Trail entrance on Station Road in South Amherst, which becomes North Street in Dwight.

Geology

Dwight is located in a valley that was covered in water some 15,000 years ago and formed the far eastern shore of the ancient glacial Lake Hitchcock. Lawrence Swamp, to the immediate east of Dwight, is a vestige of this lake.

Glaciers deposited sediment-dammed lakes in the Jabish Brook and Broad Brook valleys and an ice-dammed glacial lake in the Knights Pond valley, and coarse- and fine-grained sand deposits along State Route 9, Warren Wright Road, the Lawrence Swamp, and near the Dwight Cemetery.[9]

A prominent fault, the Triassic Border Fault, passes through Dwight, forming the boundary between the Pelham Hills and the Holyoke Mountain Range.

The area's glacial history is also seen in numerous ponds and wetlands and, most notably, in the three kettle-hole lakes - Metacomet, Arcadia, and Holland - immediately south of Dwight. The largest and deepest of these is Lake Metacomet, at 65 acres and about 15 feet deep.[10]

Deglaciation of the region probably occurred in a span of about 100 years between 12,000 to 12,500 years ago.[11]

Water

The Daigle Well is located west of Federal Street near the Hop Brook and the mouth of the Scarborough Brook. The well provides public drinking water for Belchertown, with an approved yield of 1.3 million gallons per day. It utilizes water from a confined sand and gravel aquifer, a bedrock valley that was deepened by advancing glaciers and later filled with sand and gravel overlain by silt and clay from glacial Lake Hitchcock and Lake Lawrence.[12]

There is no Aquifer Protection District for the Daigle Well.[13] The Lashway Property is conservation area set aside for aquifer protection by Belchertown in the Lawrence Swamp.

Most all land in North Belchertown and Dwight is part of the Lawrence Swamp Watershed Protection Zone that supplies the Town of Amherst with drinking water.[14]

The Town of Amherst draws water from an aquifer on Belchertown land that is in Dwight, north of the Daigle Well, between Warren Wright Road and Federal Street, south of North Road, near the Montague Brook.

History

The village has been known historically by various names including Log Town, Logg-town, Logtown, Hopetown, Dwight’s, Dwight’s Station, Dwight Station, Pansy Park and Dwight. It was named for the Dwight family.

As part of Belchertown, the village is part of the crossroads of Native trails in the Connecticut River Valley in Western Massachusetts that indigenous people traveled, including the Nipmuc and Norwottuck, or Nonotuck and Nolwotogg, among others.[15] Artifacts found in the early 20th century just south of Dwight, near Lake Metacomet, suggest, "evidence of Native American occupations" that began some 7,000 years ago.[16]

The first non-indigenous landowner at the village was Capt. Nathaniel Dwight, Jr. (1712-1784), who was deeded one square mile in 1734.[4] [He was among the first to settle what would become Belchertown (1732) and owned most of the land today comprised in the Common. He led local men on the Crown Point Expedition during the Seven Years' War.]

The first structure in North Belchertown, at what would become known as Dwight, was erected about 1765 by Nathaniel Goodell.[17] It was torn down about 1875. Today, the Dwight Station Mini Mart stands about where the first structure once stood.[18]

Capt. Justus Dwight, Esq. (1739-1824), Sarah Lamb (1737-1832) and their two children—Elihu and Clarissa—were among the first colonial settlers. Justus erected a log cabin in Fall 1769 at the center of Dwight.[19] Their son Jonathan was born the following January though Sarah may have returned to their home on the Belchertown Common to give birth. Their son Nathaniel, born in 1772, was said to be the first non-indigenous child born in the region.[4]

Justus was the third born son of Capt. Nathaniel Dwight, Jr., and Hannah Lyman, of Northampton, Mass. Their son Elijah--Justus' brother--was said to be the first non-indigenous male child born in all of Belchertown in 1735.[20] Justus became their first surviving son in 1760 after which his father, in 1765, deeded him land in North Belchertown for "love and affection."[21]

Colonial settlement

An early settler in the far southeastern corner of the district was “a man by the name of Jabez"—said to have come in 1732 to the brook today known as Jabish Brook, about 2.4 linear miles due east from the center of Dwight.[22]

Other early settlers included Elisha Munsell, who settled to the immediate south of Knight’s Pond upon the West Hill (known as the "west end of the Great Hill"). This area is to the immediate east-northeast of the village center. Mr. Munsell came with his spouse Dorothy Redington, from New London, Conn., by 1759, the year of their daughter’s birth.[23] The cemetery in that district was named for this family.

Throope Chapman came with his family from Ashford, Conn., and settled at Dwight near North Street and Gulf Road about 1770; Levi Arnold came from Cumberland, R.I, about the same time and built the first mill here near Federal and North Streets. Ephraim Clough, of Stafford, Conn., came before 1770 with his family to settle on West Hill.[24]

Ebenezer Bliss and his spouse Abigail Parsons, of Warren, Mass., arrived in Dwight in about 1772.[25] Caleb Dodge and his spouse Miriam sold land in Brookfield, Mass., in 1768 and “received a deed” of 100 acres near the Hop Brook in 1772.[26] Phineas Hannum and his spouse came about the same time from the Town common area and set up a home on the west side of Federal where it crosses the Hop Brook.[27] Elisha Goodell came to West Hill near Gulf Road with his spouse and five daughters about 1773.[28]

Samuel Willson of Stafford, Conn., purchased 100 acres in the “northwesterly part of Belchertown at the point where the towns of Belchertown, Pelham and Amherst meet” in 1774; he came with his family shortly after.[29] The following year, his brother Jacob Willson III purchased land and brought family, settling on the West Hill.[30]

Schools

A committee report, dated 1767, recommended three schoolhouses for the Town including, "...one [schoolhouse] to be sat on the plain at the top of pine hill this side of Hannum’s..." Pine hill is in the Dwight region. A committee to divide the Town into school districts met in 1773 but did not take action until after the Revolutionary War; the committee included Justus Dwight.

In 1784, the Town divided itself up into seven districts including one known as "Log Town and the hill" and "Great Hill as far as John Ward's."

In 1779, one thousand pounds were appropriated for schools, a figure usually between 60 and 100 pounds annually. [31]

Log Town was said to have its first schoolhouse in about 1780 located near Gulf Road, north of Federal Street. This later became the Union District.

Great Hill School, which was later called West Hill District, was erected 1.6 linear miles to the immediate northeast of Dwight center, east of Federal Street and south of Gulf Road.[32]

The Union School at Dwight was erected in 1903 and closed in 1953. It was the last of the Town’s 13 one-room schoolhouses to close.[33] The structure remains across Federal Street from the Dwight Chapel.

Cemeteries

Dwight Cemetery, about three-tenths of a linear mile northwest of the center of Dwight, was established about 1785 on land owned by Justus Dwight. He is buried here.[34]

Munsell Cemetery, called Evergreen or West Hill, is about two linear miles east of Dwight center; its first burial was reported in 1793.

Inhabitants were interred to the immediate south as well, in the Lake Vale Cemetery, about 1.8 linear miles from Dwight center, established by the Town in 1766.

Notable people

Painter Ira Chaffee Goodell was born at Dwight in 1800.

Oliver Smith Chapman, who developed the Otis-Chapman Steam Shovel, was born in Dwight near Knight’s Pond in 1811. His great-grandfather was Throope Chapman, an early settler of Dwight who came from Connecticut. Throop’s son William and grandson Elihu spent their lives in Dwight. They were wheelwrights who supplied the lucrative carriage trade of Belchertown.

California pioneer and architect Nathaniel "Dudley" Goodell was born at Dwight in 1814. He designed the California Governor's Mansion.

American Mormon leader Welcome Chapman though not born in Dwight was the grandson of Throope Chapman.

Famed clergyman and abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher gave his first talk or sermon in Dwight in Spring 1831 when he was in his freshman year at Amherst College.[35]

Ellen Goodell Smith was born at Dwight in 1835. She was an American hydropathic physician, vegetarian and writer.

Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, sister-in-law of Emily Dickinson, regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry, came here from Amherst every Sunday for six years in the 1880s to hold Sunday School.

Susan was a poet, writer, traveler and editor, and provided for inhabitants of Dwight village, especially those with disadvantages. She was instrumental in helping establish the Dwight Chapel.

Her sister-in-law Emily wrote: “If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.”

George W. Hannum, for whom the street in Belchertown is named, was born near Dwight in 1892. He died during the First World War. His second great-grandfather Phineas was among the first settlers of the village.

Clergyman Ethan Smith and Elijah Coleman Bridgman, the first American missionary to China, were born immediately southwest of the center of the Dwight, in 1762 and 1801, respectively.

Josiah Gilbert Holland

One of the 19th century's most-read poets and essayists, Josiah Gilbert Holland, was born in Dwight, in 1819, though he only spent the first three years of his life here.

His birthplace was a low-slung, log farmhouse on the east side of Federal Street near the Hop Brook. Holland quipped later in life he'd like to “burn it to the ground." The homestead was destroyed by fire in 1876, five years before his death.

The threshold of the Holland birthplace rests outside the Stone House Museum on the Belchertown Common, which possesses a collection of first editions of his work.

Holland’s maternal grandparents, the Gilberts, owned a tavern and inn on Bay Road, which still stands today.

Holland's birthplace, near Hop Brook and Federal Street in Dwight, Massachusetts. Burned in 1876.

Although his literary products are rarely read today, during the late nineteenth century, they were enormously popular, and more than half a million volumes of Holland's writings were sold. There were literary clubs formed in his name across the country.

Holland and his wife were frequent correspondents and family friends of poet Emily Dickinson.[36]

Holland was associate editor of the Springfield Republican and was critically favorable to canonical novelist Herman Melville[37] As co-founder and editor of Scribner's Monthly, he turned down publishing the more widely read canonical poet Walt Whitman.[38][39] Considered a writer of "Victorian virtue," Holland found Whitman's poetry immoral.

Walt Whitman said of Holland: he was “a man of his time, not possessed of the slightest forereach; ... the style of man ... who can tell the difference between a dime and a fifty-cent piece—but is useless for occasions of more serious moment.”[40]

The end of the statement was ironic as Holland wrote the first biography of Abraham Lincoln, which was published within a year Lincoln's death to great success and which began several enduring myths about the President.[41]

Still, Springfield Republican publisher Samuel Bowles, at one point, called Holland a “prig.”

Holland lived in New York for a time and is buried in the Springfield Cemetery where there is a large monument that includes a bas-relief of his profile by the famous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

Structures

Several homes in the area date to the 18th century.

Just southwest of Dwight, on Old Bay Road, is the birthplace of American Congregationalist Clergyman and Second Great Awakening Author Ethan Smith. The home is dated to 1728. Elijah Coleman Bridgman, the first American missionary in China, was born nearby in a home dating to 1750.

A home built by Ethan Smith’s uncle nearby dates to 1762. It was an inn for travelers on the Bay Road operated by the Gilbert family in the early 19th century.

The home of Asa Willson, son of Jacob, remains standing at Dwight, on Wilson Road, erected about 1790.[42]

The Federal-style home of three generations of the Goodell family remains from about 1833 on the east side of Federal Street, north of North Street. It has been the location of numerous businesses including the Pansy Park Inn and the New Townhouse Restaurant.

The Italianate home that remains standing at the center of Dwight (the intersection of Federal and Goodell Streets) was built about 1871.

This structure replaced the home on the site said to have been originally erected by Justus Dwight and occupied after his death by his son and grandson. The home stood between about 1800 and 1870, when it was destroyed by fire. See the Former Dwight Homestead pictured.

The Queen Anne style Dwight Chapel, built after efforts led, in part, by poet Emily Dickinson's sister-in-law Susan Huntington Gilbert Dickinson, still stands at 885 Federal Street. Its construction began in 1886 and was completed in 1887.

Railroads

Harrison Dunbar Dwight (1806-1878), great-grandson of Capt. Nathaniel Dwight, was born here, the fourth generation of the family to be associated with the place. He became the first railroad agent on the Amherst & Belchertown Railroad, which began service in May 1853 and connected the region with the Atlantic Ocean seaport at New London, Connecticut, and markets in New York and further west.[43]

Former Dwight Homestead in North Belchertown (Dwight), Massachusetts, that stood on the knoll across from the R.R. station. It was likely erected by Capt. Justus Dwight, Esq. The wing to the right was added by his son Nathaniel Dwight for his grandson Harrison D. Dwight and wife Sophia Cook, who raised their children here.

Harrison Dwight donated land upon which he erected the train station and water tower for the locomotives, and owned the adjacent sawmill on the Scarborough Brook where he made carriages as well. The village afterward became known as “Dwight's Station” in his honor and of the noted family. Dwight Chapel is said to be named for him. The tradition of mills supplying timbers for shipbuilding continued.[44]

After the railroad went bankrupt and other companies owned it, the New London Northern Railroad acquired the line in 1864, and the Central Vermont Railroad leased the line in 1871.[45][46]

Dwight Station (right) & Water Tower (left) in North Belchertown (Dwight), Massachusetts. From an undated postcard. Erected by the railroad agent H. D. Dwight about 1857 on what became the Central Vermont Railroad, at Federal Street, immediately north of Goodell Street. A sawmill beyond the tower (on the Scarborough Brook) supplied wood for locomotives. W. M. Goodell was the agent from 1885 until 1933 when passenger service ceased. The structures were removed by the late 1940s. Dwight at MP 103.7; Belchertown at MP 108.4.

In 1887, the Central Massachusetts branch of the Boston & Maine R.R. opened at Dwight. The flag stop station was named "Pansy Park" to honor the renowned flower gardens and seed business to the immediate north and to differentiate the two rail lines running parallel, within forty feet of one another in places. Soon there were 22 trains running through the village daily.[47]

In 1889, Lafayette Washington Goodell (1851-1920), seedsman and proprietor of Pansy Park, obtained a petition of 250 signatures that he forwarded to the New London Northern Railroad (which leased lines from the Central Vermont) to rename its stop from Dwight to Pansy Park. It remained Dwight.

After Harrison Dwight’s death, Lafayette Goodell’s brother Wesley M. Goodell (1846-1933) purchased the Dwight home and became the second station agent of the Central Vermont line in 1885 and of the Boston & Maine upon its opening.[48]

Goodell was also the postmaster of the Dwight post office and ran the grocery store here for a time. Wesley was "known throughout Massachusetts" and was the longest-serving employee of the Central Vermont Railway (48 years).[49]

The historical railroad stations (Dwight and Pansy Park) were about 2.2 linear miles to the southeast of the former Norwottuck Station, which existed between about 1890 and 1923, (Boston & Maine Railroad Company) at the railroad crossing on Station Road in South Amherst. The name comes from Mount Norwottuck, which is to the immediate south of the station.

About fifty feet away from the Norwottuck Station was the flag stop (three-sides with an open fourth) on the adjacent railroad line, the Central Vermont.

Dwight Station was 2.2 linear miles to the northwest of the Federal Street flag stop at the railroad crossing on Bay Road, which stood between about 1854 and 1873 (on the Central Vermont line).[50]

Dwight Station was 4.2 linear miles northwest of the Belchertown Station at State Street.

The Dwight and Pansy Park Stations both closed to passenger traffic in about 1933.[4]

The CV continued passenger service on the Brattleboro - New London route until September 27, 1947.[51] The tracks are today part of the Central New England Railroad and used for freight trains. Amtrak used the tracks for passenger service from 1989 until 2014.

The rail bed of the Boston & Maine R.R.’s Massachusetts Central branch through Dwight was acquired by the state in 1980 and developed into the Norwottuck Branch Rail Trail in 1993. Efforts have been underway to complete the trail all the way to Boston.[52]

Pansy Park

Lafayette Goodell began a flower seed business on his father's "rundown" farm at Dwight in 1868 with a $25 investment. Pansy Park "drew summertime travelers intent on witnessing the gorgeous floral displays" and featured a wide array of thousands of popular and exotic plants like pansies, petunias, pinks and asters.[53] These included Emperor William’s blue corn-flower, and in the aquatic gardens on the site, the world's second largest water lily, the Victoria Regia, from the Amazon.[54][55] The original Goodell home at Pansy Park, erected in 1833, remains at Dwight, north of the Dwight Station Mini Mart. It was sold out of the family in 1928.[56]

References
  1. "Dwight". Geographic Names Information System. United States Geological Survey, United States Department of the Interior. Retrieved 2023-02-26.
  2. "Archaic Community, District, Neighborhood Section and Village, Names in Massachusetts".
  3. "GeoHack - Dwight, Massachusetts". geohack.toolforge.org. Retrieved 2023-02-21.
  4. Atkins, William H. (1973). Leave the light burning ; South Amherst, Massachusetts. UMass Amherst Libraries. McFarland, Wis. : Printed by Community Publications.
  5. Jenks, Gladys M. (1958) Dwight Station History, Belchertown Historical Association, Stone House Museum, Belchertown, Massachusetts. Box 33, Folder 1.
  6. Belchertown Open Space Map
  7. "Welcome to Belchertown, MA". www.belchertown.org. Retrieved 2023-02-21.
  8. https://www.kestreltrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/KLT-Trails-17-Holland-Glen-v1.pdf
  9. Caggiano, J.A., Jr., 1978, Surficial and applied surficial geology of the Belchertown quadrangle, Massachusetts: Amherst, Mass., University of Massachusetts, Ph.D. dissertation, 238 p.
  10. Town of Belchertown. Open Space and Recreation Plan. October 1, 2013.
  11. Caggiano, Joseph A. Surficial and applied surficial geology of the Belchertown Quadrangle, Massachusetts. Open-File Report 77-633.
  12. Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Source Water Assessment and Protection (SWAP) Report for Belchertown DPW Water Division.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Cregan, Liam. Lawrence Swamp: Municipal Water, Conservation and Land Use (2020).
  15. Brooks, Lisa. Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip’s War. Yale University Press, 2018.
  16. T. Binzen, UMass Archaeological Services. "Native American Sites in Belchertown," cited in "A Conference on New England Archaeology," Newsletter, Vol. 22, April 2003.
  17. Photograph in collection, held by the Belchertown Historical Association, Stone House Museum, Belchertown MA
  18. Maps of Belchertown for the years 1854, 1856, 1860 and 1873. Letters of Ira Goodell, Jones Library Collection, Amherst, Mass.
  19. Autobiography of Justus Dwight. Belchertown Historical Association, Stone House Museum, Belchertown MA
  20. L.H. Everts & Co (1879). History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. UMass Amherst Libraries. Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts.
  21. Hampshire County Deeds [in Hampden County], 6:11, image 20, online at FamilySearch.org. The “Equivalent Lands” comprised Pelham, Belchertown, and parts of Enfield and Ware, called “equivalent” in relation to the four towns which Massachusetts lost in 1713 to Connecticut. Also: Hampshire County Deeds [in Hampden County], 6:13, image 21.
  22. L.H. Everts & Co (1879). History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers. UMass Amherst Libraries. Philadelphia : Louis H. Everts.
  23. Massachusetts, U.S., Town and Vital Records,1620-1988. Belchertown Town Records, Family sheet.
  24. Family Genealogies and maps.
  25. Based upon the date of birth of their son Titus from Belchertown family records. Also Belchertown Election results, 1811. The State of Massachusetts published all inhabitants of distinct regions of Town. Also: maps showing location of descendants’ homes. Several family members are buried at Dwight cemetery.
  26. Dodge, Joseph T. Genealogy of the Dodge Family of Essex, Mass., Part 2. 1898.
  27. Based upon the Belchertown assessment record of the year the property here is dated and upon maps that show his descendants here.
  28. letters of Ira C Goodell
  29. Stevens, Ken. Descendants of Jacob Wilson of Braintree, Massachusetts. United States, K. Stevens, 1988.
  30. Stevens, Ken. Descendants of Jacob Wilson of Braintree, Massachusetts. United States, K. Stevens, 1988.
  31. Shaw, William. The History of Belchertown in the Eighteenth Century. 1968, p. 35. 1779 was during the "inflationary Revolutionary period."
  32. Ibid. See also: Stone House Museum, Belchertown Historical Association. See also: Letters of Ira C. Goodell, held at the Jones Library, Amherst, Mass.
  33. “Belchertown bicentennial celebration to recall days of one-room school: atmosphere of other years to be re-created as closely as possible; history of education in town traced.” The Springfield Sunday Republican, 1961 Sept 3, p 13a.
  34. Known as "Dwight Cemetery" today, it was once called "Union Cemetery." The first person buried here is said to be Ann Dutton Knowlton, in June 1785, though no headstone has been located. Her husband Rosel's headstone remains, from 1805. See https://tangledwood.com/getperson.php?personID=I2336&tree=tree1 "Ann Dutton. Wood - Ritts Ancestors". tangledwood.com. Retrieved 2023-03-14. Sarah Dwight is believed to be the second person interred here. She was the seventh child of Justus & Sarah and died in 1790 when she was eleven years old. See: Sarah Dwight. Burial Register, Dwight (Union) Cemetery, Belchertown Historical Association, Stone House Museum, Belchertown MA.
  35. Sweetser, Moses Foster. Here and There in New England and Canada: Illustrated. United States, Passenger department Boston & Maine railroad, 1889, p. 94.
  36. Dickinson, Emily, et al. Letters to Dr. and Mrs. Josiah Gilbert Holland. United States, Harvard University Press, 1951.
  37. "Another Friendly Critic for Melville" in the New England Quarterly, Vol. 27 (June 1954): 243-249.
  38. Scholnick, Robert J.. “J. G. Holland and the ‘Religion of Civilization’ in Mid-Nineteenth Century America.” American Studies, vol. 27, no. 1, 1986, pp. 55–79. JSTOR, JSTOR 40642095. Accessed 2 May 2023.
  39. Carolan, Michael (2019-07-31). "Josiah Gilbert Holland: Recalling famed newspaper columnist on 200th anniversary of his birth". masslive. Retrieved 2023-05-02.
  40. "Triflers on the Platform" chapter in Cherches, Peter. Star Course: Nineteenth-century Lecture Tours and the Consolidation of Modern Celebrity. Netherlands, Sense Publishers, 2017.
  41. Holland, Josiah Gilbert; Guelzo, Allen C. (1998-02-01). Holland's Life of Abraham Lincoln. Bison Books. ISBN 978-0-8032-7303-0.
  42. "Patriot Properties Belchertown WebPro". belchertown.patriotproperties.com. Retrieved 2023-03-17.
  43. Rand, Frank Prentice. The village of Amherst, a landmark of light (1958) The Amherst Historical Society. “Those early trains were miraculous but primitive. They used to stop at Dwight to “wood up,” as the saying went. A passenger who missed the train, back in the 1850’s, overtook it by running across the Dickinson pasture. “The cars were wholly of wood, heated by stoves, and poorly lighted with kerosene lamps. The brakeman would go through the train with drinking water . . . in what looked like a large teakettle with two small glasses in sockets in front.””
  44. Atkins, William H. (1973). Leave the light burning ; South Amherst, Massachusetts. UMass Amherst Libraries. McFarland, Wis.: Printed by Community Publications. "We have authentic information, that, after the Amherst-Belchertown Railroad was built in 1853, oak timbers for ship building were loaded on the cars and transported to the New London shipyards. We would assume that these timbers were sawed at this log sawing mill at Dwight just noted, which was situated close by the R.R. Here large piles of wood were sawed and furnished to the R.R. trains with which to stoke their wood burning furnaces for the steam power engine. Here, water was taken from a large tank which was supplied from the brook for refilling of the boiler of the engine. With all of this data at hand, it’s easy to understand why this district was called “Log Town”."
  45. Carolan, Michael (May 19, 2023). "A railroad connected region to the world". Daily Hampshire Gazette. Retrieved July 4, 2023.
  46. Carolan, Michael Charles (2023-08-29). "Railroad Connected Pioneer Valley to World, Established Forgotten Town and Inspired Emily Dickinson". Medium. Retrieved 2023-10-04.
  47. Ibid. "An advertisement in those days listed 22 freight and passenger trains that passed through Dwight each day. These roads are parallel to one another as they pass through South Amherst and Dwight. It is of interest to note that the C.V.R.R. had the station name of Dwight, while across the road was Pansy Park of the Central Mass. R.R. It must have been somewhat confusing to find when buying a ticket for either station you would land at the same village. In the year 1900, there were three through trains on the B. & M. to Boston and return each day, and two on the Central Vermont to New London and return."
  48. Dickinson, 1998.
  49. "Wesley Goodell Dead; Veteran Railroad Man. Dwight Station Resident Was With Central Vermont Nearly Half Century". The Springfield Republican. October 19, 1933.
  50. Maps of Belchertown, 1854, 1856, 1860, 1873.
  51. Ronald Dale Karr, 'The Rail Lines of Southern New England,' Pepperell Massachusetts, 2005, pp. 104.
  52. Daily Hampshire Gazette
  53. Dickinson, Doris M., and McCarthy, Cliff. Belchertown. United States, Arcadia Pub (SC), 1998.
  54. Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Massachusetts Horticultural Society, W.D. Ticknor, 1892.
  55. "Pansy Park put Dwight on the map in the late 1800s". New England Public Media. 2023-05-23. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  56. Famous Pansy Park at Amherst Sold: L.W. Goodell Of There Cultivated Flowers for Seeds—Raised Many Strange Plants. The Springfield Sunday Union and Republican Sunday, October 7, 1928.

42°19′40″N 72°26′58″W

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