REV. GIDEON BOSTWICK. 205 In this church the Episcopalians worshiped for nearly seventy years; it was taken down in 1833, and such of the timber, flooring and other material as were suitable for the purpose were then used in the erection of the second church--the stone building, known as Church block-now standing on the corner of Main and Railroad streets. The little ship bell survived the demolition, and was removed to the second church, and continued in use about a dozen years, until, on one Sabbath morning, it was broken at the first stroke, and its place was soon after supplied with a larger and better one. Rev'd Gideon Bostwick. Reverend Gideon Bostwick, the first permanent minister of the Episcopal Church in Great Barrington, was a native of New Milford, Conn.-born in 1742and a graduate of Yale college in 1762. He became a resident of Great Barrington as early as 1764, and if we mistake not was employed here as a teacher of a school, of a higher grade than the common schools of that time. In June, 1765, as we learn from the letters of Reverend Thomas Davies, Mr. Bostwick was officiating as Lay Reader in the Church and was also preparing for the ministry. Late in the year of 1769, he went to England, where he was ordained a Deacon by the Bishop of London, received Priest's Orders, and returning to this country in the early part of 1770, became a missionary of the society for the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts, and was placed in charge of the church at Great Barrington. The records of the missionary labors of Mr. Bostwick begin with the 17th of June, 1770, when he held services at Nobletownnow Hillsdale, N. Y.-baptized a large number of children and presided at the choice of church wardens. His first record relative to the church in Great Barrington is dated July 5th, 1770, when David Ingersoll, Jun'r, Esq., and John Van Deusen were chosen church wardens, Ensign John Burghardt clerk, Moses Pixley and Nathan Scribner choristers. These records extend over the whole time of Mr. Bostwick's ministry-twenty-three years. In addition to the charge of the Church in this place, of which he was the first rector, Mr. Bostwick's mission extended to various other towns in this county, in the states of New York and Vermont, and occasionally to some towns in Litchfield county. His missionary labors were extremely arduous, necessitating long journeys. on horseback extending to Bennington, Arlington, Manchester and other towns of Vermont on the north, the Hudson river on the west, and including twenty towns in Berkshire county. His records indicate that the performance of his duties required constant application and great industry, with protracted absences from his family; and the amount of work which he performed in his long journeys through a rough and sparsely settled country seems almost incredible. In this town and the various places which he visited during his ministry, he is reputed to have baptized 81 adults, 2,274 children, to have joined in marriage 127 couples, and to have attended upon the burial of 84 persons. Mr. Bostwick preached here for the last time on Sunday the 2d of June, 1793, and on the 4th of that month attended "the annual convention of the Diocese at Middletown, Conn.," on which occasion he presented the Rev. Daniel Burhans to Bishop Seabury for Holy Orders. On his journey home he was taken sick, and died at New Milford on the 13th of June, at the age of fifty years. His remains are interred in the lower cemetery in this town. In the death of Mr. Bostwick, the church in this place suffered a severe and almost irreparable loss, for he was very popular with his people, and they were warmly attached to him. Few residents of the town have been more highly or more generally esteemed than was Mr. Bostwick. He is reputed to have been a genial, friendly and affable man, zealous and untiring in his labors, devoted to his calling and to his parishioners. During the twenty-three years of his ministry the church was prosperous, and as for a very large part of that time the Congregationalists were not provided with a settled minister, this was the only church in town in which religious services were uniformly and regularly maintained. The residence of Mr. Bostwick, for a time at least, was the brick house just south of the Pixley brook, on the road REV. GIDEON BOSTWICK. 207 The to Stockbridge, now occupied by Moses C. Burr. salary paid him by the parish in this town was always small; in 1771, we find it stated at £20; but he received further support from the parent society in London, of which he was a missionary. Previous to his visit to England in 1769—but at what date we are not informed-Mr. Bostwick married Gesie Burghardt, daughter of John Burghardt, one of the early settlers of this town, by whom he had nine children, most of whom survived him. His wife died May 16, 1787, aged thirty-nine years. The children of Gideon and Gesie Bostwick were: Betsa Maria, baptized September 29, 1771. Fitie -, baptized November 28, 1773; married Herman Canfield, of Canfield, Trumbull county, Ohio. Gesie, baptized November 19, 1775; died July, 1780. John, baptized April 23, 1780. Henry, baptized May 12, 1782; resided in Canada. Gesie 2d. baptized August 1, 1784. Elijah, baptized December 25, 1786. Adolphus. CHAPTER XVII. CHANGES AND IMPROVEMENTS-NEW INHABITANTS AND NEW LOCATIONS. 1761-1776. In At the time of the incorporation of the town1761-the straggling hamlet of Upper Sheffield-it can hardly be called a village-extended from Pixley street south to the Great Bridge and from thence to the Zina Parks' place, south of Merritt I. Wheeler's; but with the exception of the old David Ingersoll house, which has been repeatedly mentioned, there were no dwellings between the bridge and the present Congregational Church, and the few dwellings south. of that point were scattered at wide intervals. deed nearly all the buildings in Water street have been erected within the past fifty years. The central part, proper, of this hamlet was east of the bridge; and its not very extensive business was mostly in that vicinityThe meeting-house, standing in the west line of the upper burial ground, the mills on the river bank, erected by David Ingersoll more than twenty years before, and the very notable tavern of Captain Hewit Root at the east end of the bridge, formed a nucleus about which a few dwellings had congregated. Further east at the Bung Hill corner was another small collection of residences, a shop or two and the smithery of Jonathan Nash. In laying out the lands on the east side of the river, through Pixley street, the settling committee appear to have had in view the site of a prospective village on the level ground in that vicinity and gave to the main road in that part of the town, a width of ten rods. The establishment of the courts and the subsequent erection of County buildings gave a slight ROADS ESTABLISHED. 209 impulse and added somewhat to the importance of both the town and village. In 1763, a county road was laid out from the corner by the south burial ground, running west by way of North Egremont, towards Kinderhook; another was established, the next year, through the village, crossing the river at the Great Bridge; and in 1771, another was provided from the bridge, northerly, by John Williams' mills at Van Deusenville, and Major Elijah Williams' iron works at West Stockbridge, to Richmond. These roads followed somewhat nearly the old town highways previously in use; and that through the village had a width of six rods. Some roads were laid out in the western part of the town previous to 1770. Amongst these, the second highway located by the town authorities was that leading from the main street towards Seekonk and Alford. This road, laid in 1764, began at the corner on Castle street hill, near the residence of Henry C. Luka, while that part which lies between that corner and Main street, which had been established by the town of Sheffield in 1747—with a width of only two rods-dwindled to the insignificance of "the lane which leads from the town street up to Rev. Samuel Hopkins'," and so remained until 1793, when it was relaid and widened. The county road east of the bridge, as surveyed in 1764, infringed upon the burial ground-then much smaller than now-and in 1768 Jonathan Nash and others petitioned the Court of Sessions for an alteration at that point, alleging that within the limits of that highway, north of the meeting house, were the graves of many of the early inhabitants. The court, thereupon, authorized the selectmen to fence the highway in such manner as would least incommode the public and at the same time preserve the graves from desecration. It is probably owing to this circumstance, that this road which was apparently located on the north side of the meeting-house, remained unused, and travel continued, as before, on the old road south of that building for more than forty years. Simultaneously with the incorporation of the town, the business of the village, which had long been to the |