Hatfield On The Eve of Civil War

This is a blog inspired by the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, and the experience of my great-great-grandparents, Edwin and Ursula Graves, and their family and neighbors in Hatfield, Massachusetts. 

Some time in the late 1920s or early 1930s my great-grandmother, Fanny Louisa Graves Hubbard, sat down at her kitchen table to write a short memoir. Grammy Hubbard, as she was known to her grandchildren, had been inspired by "Grandmother Brown's 100 Year History," the memoir of an Ohio woman of Yankee descent who became a pioneer settler in Iowa. "After reading Grandmother Brown's hundred years story, I thought my grandchildren would like to have a little of my history," wrote Fanny.

Fanny's memoir looked back over 80 years but her most vivid memories were of the years when she was a young girl, the years leading up to and including the Civil War. Fanny was only 9 years old in the spring of 1861, but her memories remained strong decades later, more than likely because much of what happened in those years would be told and retold by family members in years to come.

Fanny's memory of home, on the eve of Fort Sumter:

" The Connecticut River at its yearly over flow, waters the adjacent meadows and does damage if it comes too high. Its waters have washed away many acres of good land on the Hatfield side and let not a few on the Hadley side. Of late years some of the bank has been 'rip rapped' and a dyke built for the protection of Hatfield street.

" When I was a girl nothing could stop it's rise. A heavy rain with melting snow was apt to start the water rising.

"The high water mark each spring was an excitement to us children, but it must have been in 1861 that the big flood came. We watched the water come up the meadow road, running in often to tell how far or how near it is now. The cow and pig had been taken to Uncle Rufus because their barn stood a little higher. The cellar had to be cleared, as water was pouring in from the soaked ground. When it was time to milk, father came with a boat and we children stepped off the stone step at the front door into the boat. I held baby George[Fanny's younger brother] in my lap and so we went for the milk, but the water came no higher.

" That flood did lots of damage, the current was swift and as the water subsided, it sheared two great holes in the street near our house. Those were the days of dirt roads, it couldn't do so now with the macadam."