Dear R eaders:
My book is now in print, but my quest for more
information about Edward Hitchcock continues.
On this page I will periodically pass along new
facts, insights, and anecdotes from my
research that I hope will be of interest.
Sincerely,
April 19, 2022
THE BATTLE OF THE
TITANS
or
"The Agassiz and the
Ecstasy"
The lives of Edward
Hitchcock (1793-1864) and Louis Agassiz
(1807-1873) intertwined again and again from
1840 to 1864. Between these two titans of
American science there was mutual respect and
admiration, to be sure, but there were stark
differences as well, differences in interests,
philosophies, and public personas. The pair
seemed to circle each other in those years, like
two boxers in a ring, ready at any moment to
receive or deliver a blow.
Edward Hitchcock lived
his entire life in western Massachusetts–his
formal education was limited to six years at
Deerfield Academy. He taught for more than
thirty years at Amherst College where he was
appointed President in 1845. He is best known
for his pioneering research in ichnology, the
study of fossilized tracks, a discipline he
named and single-handedly elevated to
respectability in paleontology.
Jean Louis Rodolphe
Agassiz was a Swiss native who studied natural
science at universities in Switzerland and
Germany before earning an M.D. from the
University of Munich. He is best known for his
1840 landmark work, Études sur les Glaciers,
in which he proposed that much of the earth’s
surface had been covered with continental
glaciers during the Pleistocene Era. In 1841
Agassiz emigrated to America and spent the rest
of his life at Harvard University where he
carried out exhaustive anatomical studies of sea
creatures, fishes and mollusks in particular.
Late in life he devoted much of his energy to
the development of Harvard’s natural history
collections, preserved today as the Harvard
Museum of Comparative Zoology.
For Hitchcock, reading
Agassiz’s treatise on glaciers was nothing short
of an epiphany. By his own admission his eyes
were open by Agassiz’s thesis, and much of the
surficial geology of Massachusetts that he had
been studying and surveying at last made sense
to him. Hitchcock was generous in his praise of
Agassiz, citing the man and his works at least
eighty times in his major geological writings.
Agassiz on the other hand cited Hitchcock only
six times in all his works, and almost
exclusively in footnotes or bibliographies.
Louis Agassiz spent
much of his life in the limelight. His work, his
travels, his personal life, were subjects of
constant interest in the newspapers of his time.
Agassiz did everything he could to thrust
himself into the public eye. He wrote letters to
editors full of humor and vitriol toward other
scientists. He paraded around in public, wining
and dining, often to excess. And he built up his
collections at Harvard as much it seems as a
monument to himself as a contribution to
science.
Agassiz seemed to
revel in controversy, taking every opportunity
to speak out on a range of subjects, knowing
that for many both in the scientific community
and in the public, his word was gospel. He
claimed to be deeply religious, employing
arguments based on Holy Scripture and what he
regarded as Christian fundamentalism. But he was
a racist and bigot, adapting Bible passages to
fit his prejudices about human origins.
By contrast, Edward
Hitchcock seems bland in personality and in
public persona. He lived a quiet life, he valued
home and family, and he wore his Christianity on
his sleeve, living out the principles of his
faith. Agassiz was flamboyant, often crude, a
drinker and a womanizer, while Edward Hitchcock
was a soft-spoken, self-deprecating teetotaler,
utterly devoted to his wife and children. Not
that Hitchcock was uninterested in his standing
in public opinion, but he quietly accepted
criticism and even scorn from non-scientists,
trusting that his research and writings could
speak for him (although his conflict with Dr.
James Deane may be an exception, the one time in
his life when it might be said that he “lost
it”).
Agassiz has long stood
on a high pedestal in the history of science.
But a recent biography by Christoph Irmscher (Louis
Agassiz: Creator of American Science,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) suggests that
much of the credit Agassiz has been given for
some of his works, particularly Études sur
les Glaciers, is undeserved, that he
largely repeated the views of others, happy to
take credit for it as original to him.
And despite his vast
knowledge of animal anatomy and paleontology,
Agassiz fought Darwinism tooth and nail, largely
on religious grounds, contending that, “The
connection of faunas…is not material, but
resides in the thought of the Creator.”
It is true of course
that Edward Hitchcock also recoiled at Darwin’s
hypotheses on natural selection. He wrote
forcefully of his objections to those notions,
both religious and scientific. And yet, late in
life, Edward Hitchcock seemed to admit the
possibility of a crack in his defenses against
Darwinism, even suggesting in his last year that
natural selection might be a part of God’s
creation, like any other law of nature.
Louis Agassiz, on the
other hand, never even hinted that he could
accept Darwinism on any level. And Agassiz lived
more than a decade after Hitchcock’s death, in a
time when Charles Darwin and his revolutionary
ideas had become widely accepted in science.
In a
list of the foremost scientists of 19th century
America, Louis Agassiz would no doubt rank very high,
perhaps number one, with Edward Hitchcock well behind.
But Agassiz’s reputation has taken more than a few
hits in recent times amid questions about his personal
life, his racial attitudes, and his scientific
integrity. By contrast, Edward Hitchcock’s character
has never been in question and his star as a scientist
has only risen in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries.
See Chapters 14, 24,
25, and 29 of All the Light Here Comes from
Above: The Life and Legacy of Edward Hitchcock
for further discussion of the sometimes
contentious relationship between Edward
Hitchcock and Louis Agassiz.
October 22, 2021
FLATTENED PEBBLES CLEFT BY TITAN’S
SWORD

Purgatory Chasm, Middletown, RI
(Source: Picturesque
America, 1872)
On the 13th of May, 1832, Edward Hitchcock
stepped from a hired carriage along the
rockbound seashore at Middletown, Rhode
Island, a few miles east of Newport. He
was immediately enthralled by the wild
scene before him, wind whipping off the
Atlantic driving waves into several
wedge-shaped fissures in the ledge
resulting in a virtual explosion of
seawater and foam. He wrote of the site,
In one spot, in a high rocky
bluff, two of these fissures occur not
more than 6 or 8 feet asunder; and the
waves have succeeded in the course of
ages, in wearing away the intervening
rock, so as to form a chasm about
seven rods in length, and 60 or 70
feet deep; the sides being almost
exactly perpendicular. This chasm is
called Purgatory; and the waves still
continue their slow but certain work
of destruction.
While that dramatic rock formation
and the wild seacoast setting were
naturally of great interest to Professor
Hitchcock, what especially whetted his
curiosity on that day was the rock that
made up those ledges. It went by the very
apt name of “puddingstone,” for it
consisted of a dense substrate much like
pudding, but pudding containing many
lumps. The lumps were smoothed pebbles
ranging from a few inches to a foot long
and displaying a variety of colors
suggesting different mineral compositions.
Those pebbles were set in a matrix of
fine-grained rock much as stones are set
in mortar in a wall or foundation.
Furthermore, the pebbles were flattened
just as if some great weight had been
placed on top of the rock, compressing
them as well as the surrounding “pudding.”

Talcose schist
(Source: Hitchcock et
al., Report on the
Geology of Vermont, 1861)
Also of great interest to the professor
were vertical cracks that passed through
the rock, piercing both the pebbles and
the surrounding cement, separating them
cleanly. Hitchcock wrote, “The cross
seams of this rock have divided the
pebbles as completely as if cloven
asunder by the sword of some Titan–and
an end view of the rock thus divided
presents a quite singular appearance.”
The professor was sufficiently
impressed that he wrote of that “most
remarkable” rock in three reports on his
geological survey of Massachusetts,
adding, “No one can view this
phenomenon without enquiring immediately
into its cause.”
For a long while Hitchcock seemed to have
lost interest in those “flattened
pebbles cleft by the sword of Titan.”
But a quarter century later in 1859 the
full significance of what he had observed
on the coast of Rhode Island began to come
into focus. Edward, his sons Charles and
Edward, Jr., and geologist Albert D. Hager
had undertaken another geological survey,
this one for the state of Vermont. Much to
his surprise, they found rocks in the
Green Mountains very similar to those on
the coast of Rhode Island. To be certain
Edward and Charles returned to Newport to
reexamine those curious puddingstones at
Purgatory Chasm.
What those flattened pebbles and sharp
clefts in the Purgatory puddingstone
revealed, he concluded, were fascinating
and important details on how rocks are
modified by heat and pressure over
millennia. Those pebbles, he now realized,
were formed much earlier, perhaps millions
of years before the puddingstone. Each was
composed of minerals present in some
ancient lake or sea, rolled and abraded to
a spherical or elliptical shape, then
deposited on the lake or sea floor
surrounded by fine sand, silt, or mud. And
then, perhaps millions of years later,
that sedimentary rock was compressed under
enormous heat and pressure, probably from
hundreds of feet of rock accumulated above
it. Finally, the newly created rock was
fractured, possibly during cooling. The
result was a metamorphic rock known as
gneiss.
What Professor Hitchcock had stumbled upon
that day in May of 1832 was what we know
today as metamorphism, a term referring to
a variety of effects that have occurred
over the millennia, effects that deform,
abrade, and often reshape rocks.
Hitchcock was not the first to describe
metamorphism. Many earlier geologists such
as James Hutton, Abraham Werner, and
William Maclure had recognized the effects
of heat and pressure on rock formations.
Englishman Sir Charles Lyell, the most
influential geologist of Hitchcock’s day,
seems to have been the first to use the
term “metamorphic rock” in its
modern sense in his 1833 Principles of
Geology. But Edward Hitchcock is
often credited as the first scientist to
infer the details of the process from
simple observation of gneiss in the field.
In 1861 Edward Hitchcock published his
most detailed account of the phenomenon in
the American Journal of Science in
an article entitled “On the Conversion of
Certain Conglomerates into Talcose and
Micaceous Schists and Gneiss by the
Elongation, Flattening and Metamorphosis
of the Pebbles and the Cement.” To many
geologists of his day and later, that
paper represented a milestone in the
understanding of metamorphosis. Geologist
J. Peter Lesley, in his memoir for
Hitchcock read before the National Academy
of Sciences in 1866 wrote,
…Hitchcock's theorem—that
gneiss is nothing more nor less than
metamorphosed old conglomerates,
wherein the pebbles have been pressed
into laminae composed of sections of
the original matrix, themselves also
pressed flat and thin…is a bold
assertion [that] will demand abundant
proof…It is consistent with the now
accepted view of metamorphism by
pressure, under the conditions of a
moist, low heat…its ample discussion
and copious illustration by Dr.
Hitchcock and his son, in the pages of
his report of the Geology of the State
of Vermont, will remain a part of the
classics of our science.
Nearly thirty years later Charles L.
Whittle of the U. S. Geological Survey
referred to Hitchcock’s “…revolutionary
ideas concerning the production of
gneisses from conglomerates by
metamorphism” as a “…most
valuable contribution to the science of
geology.” In 1906, George P.
Merrill, an early curator at the
Smithsonian, wrote of Hitchcock’s 1861
article, “This paper, as a whole,
marks a long stride in advance along the
line of metamorphism…”
How does a 21st century geologist regard
Hitchcock’s views on metamorphism
formulated more than a century-and-a-half
ago? Tekla Harms, Professor of Geology at
Amherst College, argues that Hitchcock was
right in some respects, wrong in others.
She believes he was correct when he
suggested that conglomerates like the
Purgatory puddingstone could be
transformed by heat and pressure into
schists and gneisses. But as to the exact
mechanism of that transformation, she
argues, on that score he was mistaken. The
pebbles in that conglomerate were not
subject to simple mechanical flattening
and elongation as Hitchcock suggested, but
to a process called pressure solution in
which particles migrate from areas of high
concentration to low concentration.
Furthermore, while Professor Harms admires
Hitchcock’s observational skills, she
takes issue with his assertion in that
1861 article that metamorphosed rocks
undergo compositional change. She writes,
“…Hitchcock’s observations and the
conclusions he draws directly from
observations are almost unfailingly
sound and stand the test of time. His
ideas in this paper regarding
compositional change during metamorphism
are not based on observation but rather
are hypothetical. Here, he is less
successful.”
Early in his career in a discourse before
scientists in Pittsfield, Massachusetts,
Edward Hitchcock warned against
“extravagant theories” based on mere
conjecture. He added,
But the present
constellation of
European geologists are
men of a very different
stamp—men whose grand
object is the collection
of facts, and who are
extremely cautious of
hypothesis; adopting
none, except such as
seem absolutely
necessary to explain
appearances.
Edward Hitchcock was just such a
“collector of facts” who was normally
careful not to get too far ahead of the
facts, not to tinker with vague theories
insufficiently supported by observation.
Perhaps in the matter of those fascinating
puddingstones, he should have taken his
own advice.
* * *
I wish to thank Professor Tekla Harms
of the Department of Geology, Amherst
College, Amherst, Massachusetts, for
sharing with me her expertise and
insights regarding Hitchcock’s views on
metamorphism.
September 1,
2021
THE HITCHCOCK LEGACY
LIVES ON
Robert
McMaster, Emily Hitchcock, and Sawyer Hitchcock
I am not as a general
rule a believer in the supernatural. Nevertheless,
on a recent August day on the campus of Smith
College in Northampton, Massachusetts, I could
have sworn I saw before me an emanation of the
spirits of Edward and Orra Hitchcock. Maybe the
near record heat was responsible, but the vision
quickly passed, and what at first appeared as an
effusion from a wormhole in the space-time
continuum turned out to be a close encounter of a
more conventional kind with Emily Hitchcock and
Sawyer Hitchcock, great-great-great-great
grandchildren of Edward and Orra.
Emily Hitchcock, daughter of Valerie Walton
and Edward Hitchcock of Methuen, Massachusetts,
graduated from Smith in 2019. An Environmental
Science and Policy major, she is currently working
as an intern at Nasami Farm in nearby Whately, a
nursery of indigenous plants operated by the
Native Plant Trust. Pride in their Hitchcock
forebears runs deep in Emily's family. While she
shares her name with a noted Hitchcock forebear, Emily Hitchcock
Terry, her parents actually had another
Emily in mind, Emily Dickinson. Her sister,
Sharlow, was named after their great grandmother
and 1920s opera star, Myrna Sharlow Hitchcock.
Emily first became interested in her Hitchcock
forebears when she and her family attended the
2011 opening of an exhibit of the artwork of Orra
White Hitchcock at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst
College celebrating the publication of Orra
White Hitchcock: An Amherst Woman of Art and
Science by Daria D'Arienzo and Robert L.
Herbert.
Emily's cousin, Sawyer Hitchcock, son of
Daniel and Janice Hitchcock of Fishers, Indiana,
graduated from Ithaca College in 2016, majoring in
English while also starring on the college's
cross-country team for four years. He is currently
working on an organic farm in Indiana. He has two
siblings, Evan and Amanda. While visiting with his
cousin, Sawyer traveled around the Connecticut
Valley to some Hitchcock landmarks including
Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, the original
Deerfield Academy building where Edward and Orra
first met. I guessed that he was named after his
great-great uncle, Dr. John Sawyer Hitchcock, but
Sawyer wasn't sure how he came by the name.
The two young Hitchcocks wanted to know what
had drawn me to study the lives of their
forebears, so I described my meandering career
path. I wanted to hear about their educational and
career pursuits, and how they came to their
similar interests in agriculture, sustainability,
and natural science.
While reading All the Light Here Comes
from Above, Sawyer had wondered what his
famous nineteenth century forebears would think if
they could travel through time to visit the world
of 2021. We agreed that Edward and Orra would
likely have been amazed at the technological
progress all around them, but worried by the
perilous state of Planet Earth.
To Edward Hitchcock science and technology
were essential tools of human progress, full of
promise, untainted by risks or dangers. The fruits
of those endeavors he witnessed in his
lifetime—expansion of the railroads, improvements
in manufacturing, advances in agriculture and
medicine—were in his mind unambiguous goods. Words
like "environmental," "conservation," "pollution,"
and "sustainability" were not in his or anybody's
vocabulary. In all Hitchcock's writings I find not
so much as a hint that he saw any possible
downsides to science and technology, not in the
mining and burning of coal, nor deforestation, nor
air or water pollution, nor species decline and
extinction. The only reservation he ever expressed
about science was its possible effects on faith in
God, on trust in religion, on morality. One of his
principle objections to Darwin's theories on
evolution and natural selection was that they
threatened to diminish the importance of God's
creative power in the minds of people of faith.
If the spirits of Edward and Orra Hitchcock
were hovering above us on that sweltering August
afternoon, I feel certain their worries about the
state of the planet would have been balanced by
the realization that their sixth generation
descendants were as passionate and committed to
forging a brighter future for humankind in the
twenty-first century as they were in the
nineteenth.
See also The Hitchcock
Progeny: Three Generations and The Descendants of
Edward and Orra White Hitchcock.
GO TO TOP
July 15, 2021
CARS
READY: THE ARRIVAL OF THE
RAILROAD AGE IN AMHERST
Edward and Orra
Hitchcock grew up in a time when horse, buggy,
and wagon were the main modes of local
transport. For longer journeys stages ran
between major cities, although travel was slow
and schedules sometimes inconvenient.

"The earliest I
can remember about travelling facilities was
the stage route through Amherst between
Hartford & Hanover," wrote Edward
Hitchcock, Jr., in his memoir. In the 1830s
there was one stage a day, he recalled,
alternating northbound and southbound. Horses
were changed at Boltwood's Tavern. The journey
to Hartford took 12 hours, to Hanover some 18
hours with an overnight stop. The stage to
Worcester departed from Amherst at 2:00
am, arriving in Worcester at 2:00 pm.
The arrival of the railroad soon made
intercity travel considerably faster and more
convenient. In 1839 the Western Railroad began
operation from Boston to Springfield; three
years later it was extended to Albany. In the
same year the Hartford and New Haven Railroad
began providing service to Springfield; by 1842
it was extended northward to Northampton.
According to a published schedule, the trip from
Springfield to Boston ran to three hours and
fifteen minutes.

Despite an outcry from some of its
citizens, Amherst was bypassed by both lines.
Thus a trip to Springfield or Hartford began
with a stage ride to Northampton; a trip to
Boston required a stage from Amherst to Palmer
to connect with the railroad. In his memoir
Edward, Jr., writes of going the latter route on
his first rail trip to Boston with Professor
Charles B. Adams, probably in the 1840s.
Amherst finally saw
the arrival of direct rail service in May 1853
with the completion of the Amherst and
Belchertown Railroad from Palmer to Amherst.
The arrival of the railroad was anticipated
with considerable excitement. In 1852 Jane
Hitchcock, then 19, wrote to her brother,
Edward, Jr., "The railroad is
progressing...it will, in all human
probability be finished as soon as next
autumn. Perhaps by the time you get settled
off in Michigan or California we shall have
a great town here."

The trip to Palmer on the new line
took about an hour and a quarter, the tracks
passing just to the east of the Amherst College
property. The depot constructed off Main Street
(see the start of Chapter 26) stands to this
day; the Amtrak "Vermonter" continued to travel
that line until 2014.

With the completion of the
Massachusetts Central Railroad in 1867 direct
rail service was finally available from Amherst
to Boston. But it was never competitive with the
Western Railroad and ceased operation in 1917.
Most of the track is gone, but the right-of-way
still exists. The section through Amherst, now
the Norwottuck Rail Trail, forms the southern
boundary of the Amherst College campus today.
Edward Hitchcock,
Sr., was a vocal advocate for expansion of
rail service in the Connecticut Valley. He
wrote several newspaper articles and letters
to editors on the subject. And he was
outspoken in support of the construction of
the Hoosac Tunnel which by 1875 was providing
rail service across northern Massachusetts.
Edward Hitchcock, Sr.'s first extended
rail journey was to Washington, DC, in 1844. His
anxiety about that trip was apparent in a letter
written to his daughters Mary and Catherine in
which he tried to reassure them that he was
alive and well despite riots and murders in
Philadelphia and a rail collision on that line
just a few days earlier. Six years later he was
an old hand at rail travel. In June 1850 as he
and Orra journeyed through Europe, he wrote to
his brothers from Dublin, "I have traveled a
good deal by railroad and sometimes fast
enough—53 miles in 53
minutes!"
In December 1855 Edward embarked on a
lecture tour in the Midwest, traveling by rail
some 3000 miles in six weeks (see Chapter 23).
He wrote to Orra on January 2, 1856, from
Chicago, "I reached here before 10 o'clock
this evening in safety having traveled 210
miles since noon. Most of the road all the way
from Cincinnati is very rough and the cars
rock about almost as much as our steamer did
in crossing the ocean."
Edward's rail travel
experience evoked a different sort of
commentary in an 1848 sermon published by the
American Tract Society entitled "Cars Ready."
He described the scene at Union Station in
Springfield as travelers waited anxiously for
the arrival of their train, prepared to board
and start their journey as soon as they heard
the announcement, "Cars ready." But is the
traveler ready for a far more consequential
departure? wondered Hitchcock. "As he
hears the summons, 'Cars ready!', 'Boat
ready!', 'Stage ready!', let him be reminded
how soon a more startling summons will break
upon his ear: 'Prepare to meet thy God.'"
May 1, 2021
HITCHCOCK'S
BASALTICK COLUMNS
Edward Hitchcock was
only 22 years old when he published his first
scientific paper, a short article appearing in
the North-American Review entitled
"Basaltick Columns." It describes in just a few
sentences a remarkable rock formation at the
foot of Mount Holyoke in Hadley, Massachusetts,
consisting of a series of vertical columns of
basalt:
"These pillars are uniformly
hexagonal prisms, varying in regularity,
their sides being from eight to thirty
inches wide. They form the side of the
mountain for a distance of ten or twelve
rods, and vary in height from sixty to more
than a hundred feet. Their course inclines a
little from the perpendicular, sloping
gently towards the mountain."
Some years later Hitchcock dubbed this
formation "Titan's Piazza"; another a short
distance away on the shores of the Connecticut
River he named "Titan's Pier." (It is said that
the local names were previously the Devil's
Piazza and Devil's Pier, but Hitchcock renamed
them lest the Prince of Darkness be credited
unjustly for part of God's Creation.)
Such geological curiosities are not
unusual in volcanic rock; they occur frequently
in the traprock ridges up and down the
Connecticut Valley. Similar structures make up
the famous Giant's Causeway in Northern Island.
But the basaltic columns of Mount Holyoke are
particularly well preserved and are rendered
even more dramatic by the billowing tongues of
basalt above that appear much like waves
crashing on a beach.
s
The explanation of those curious
hexagonal columns has to do with the cooling
process in molten lava. Some parts of a lava
flow cool before others. As they cool the rock
contracts and fractures. Those fractures often
radiate along parallel lines. When cracks meet
they often form 120 degree angles which results
in hexagonal or six-sided shapes, although
five-sided and seven-sided columns are also
common. As to the overhanging billows, they are
likely the result of lava that cooled more
slowly, allowing gravity to shape the mass, not
unlike molten wax oozing down the sides of a
candle.
I visited "Titan's Piazza" recently
and was astonished at how beautifully those
structures were preserved, just as Hitchcock saw
them. The site is easily accessed from route 47,
just a half mile or so south of the entrance to
Skinner State Forest. But I could not help
wondering how many visitors to Mount Holyoke
ever got to see this remarkable formation. Then
I read Hitchcock's description from his 1841
report on the geology of Massachusetts and
realized I wasn't the first to have that
thought:
"While the summit of Holyoke
attracts crowds of visiters, but very few I
have reason to believe go to this Piazza:
yet I have never known any one visit it who
was not highly gratified."
Then Hitchcock gave credit where he
believed it belonged for this marvel:
...How
can one, who has any taste for Nature
in
her most curious aspects,
remain uninterested as he stands there...
gazing, and takes into his mind and heart,
With undistracted reverence, the effect
Of
those proportions, where the Almighty hand
That made the worlds, the Sovereign
Architect,
Has deigned to work as if by human art.
GO TO
TOP
March 8, 2021
ROBERT
L. HERBERT
1929-2020
One of the first
sources I came across when I began my research
on Edward Hitchcock was The Complete
Correspondence of Edward Hitchcock and
Benjamin Silliman, 1817-1863. I was at
once awed by the scope of the manuscript that
included transcriptions of some 250 letters
between the two scientists. Equally impressive
was the seventy-page introductory essay that
placed Hitchcock and Silliman in the context
of nineteenth century American science,
tracing the evolution of their friendship and
their views on science and religion over
nearly half a century. The document was
supported by no fewer than 670 footnotes,
striking testimony to the thoroughness and
attention to detail of its author, Robert L.
Herbert, retired professor at Mount Holyoke
College. At the time I was unfamiliar with
Professor Herbert but guessed that he must be
a geologist or historian of science. I was
surprised to discover that that impressive
opus was the work of an art historian.
Professor Herbert produced at least
eight works related to the Hitchcocks between
2008 and 2014. Besides Complete
Correspondence he transcribed two travel
diaries of Orra White Hitchcock, edited an
exquisite reproduction of her watercolor
album, Fungi, Selecti Picti, authored
an article on the artistic inclinations of
Edward Hitchcock in the Massachusetts
Historical Review, and co-authored
biographies of three important contemporaries
of Edward Hitchcock, Roswell Field, James
Deane, and Dexter Marsh, in collaboration with
Sarah L. Doyle and others. In 2011 he and
Daria D'Arienzo, then archivist at Amherst
College, co-authored Orra White Hitchcock:
An Amherst Woman of Art and Science, a
handsome volume that includes a biography of
the artist and a catalog of her paintings and
drawings that appeared in an exhibit at the
Mead Art Museum at Amherst College.
(Bibliographic information for these works is
provided below.)
Long before he became interested in
Edward and Orra White Hitchcock, Robert L.
Herbert was a distinguished professor of art
history at Yale University where he earned a
reputation as one of the world's foremost
scholars on the Impressionist period. He
developed his own distinctive approach to art
history, examining in depth the lives of the
artists and the social and political context
in which they lived and painted, thus infusing
a once sterile field with flesh and blood.
Upon his retirement from Yale in 1990,
Professor Herbert joined his wife, historian
Eugenia Herbert, at Mount Holyoke College in
South Hadley, Massachusetts. Both retired in
1997 but remained in South Hadley where he
pursued his interests in the out-of-doors and
New England history. There too he was
introduced to Orra White Hitchcock and her
art, then to her husband Edward and his
scientific, religious, and artistic
sentiments.
Professor Herbert scoured the
letters and diaries of Edward and Orra just as
intensely as he had examined the lives and
works of the great Impressionists, searching
for subtle clues to their personalities. In
his introduction to Orra's travel diaries, he
exhibits this talent most strikingly. Orra, he
asserts in the introduction, was a dutiful
mother and wife, a devout Christian, and a
doer of good deeds. But those hand-written
manuscripts, intended for no one but herself,
provide a rare opportunity to fill out our
understanding of her personality. "Hidden
from view until now," wrote Herbert, "her
more complete self finally emerges from her
diaries."
Orra's wry, self-deprecating humor
comes through on the first page of her account
of their European trip in 1850. As she settled
into a tiny cabin on their transatlantic
steamer in Boston, she managed to ascend to
her tiny upper berth only with the aid of "a
little Yankee ingenuity" and "a
little boosting from my husband." While
a lover of art, Herbert notes, she paid more
attention to the lavish furnishings of Windsor
Castle and figures of Madame Tussaud's
waxworks than to the classical works of art
they saw at the National Gallery and the
British Museum. She was a good-hearted
Christian, to be sure, and was shocked at the
squalid conditions of life in rural Ireland at
the time, but regularly attributed poverty
there and elsewhere in Europe to Catholicism.
She was not immune to the prejudices of her
time, likening the dark skin of the black
workers she saw in Richmond, Virginia, to the
filthy streets they cleaned.
The differences in the personalities
of Orra and Edward, noted Herbert, were
clearly on display in contrasting letters
written to their children while vacationing on
the coast of Maine. Of an excursion to Plum
Beach with a party of friends, Orra wrote, "There
were two gentlemen with us and we ducked and
spattered each other and had the greatest
frolic you can imagine." Meanwhile her
sometimes saturnine husband, writing of the
same trip, could only report to his children
that he was suffering greatly, first from the
cold on one of the coastal islands, then from
the intense heat back on the mainland. Orra's
cup, it seems, was always half-full; Edward's
was half-empty.
Robert L. Herbert passed away in
Northampton on December 17, 2020, at the age
of 91, just a month before my book went to
press. I immediately decided to dedicate the
book to him—it seemed the least I could do.
After all, hardly a day passed during the four
years of my research that I did not consult
one of Professor Herbert's works. They were
invaluable to me and I will always be grateful
for his scholarship.
References
Herbert, Robert L.
The Complete Correspondence of Edward
Hitchcock and Benjamin Silliman, 1817-1863:
The American Journal of Science and the Rise
of American Geology, transcribed and
annotated with an introductory essay. Amherst
College Archives and Special Collections,
2012. Link
________ and Sarah L. Doyle. The
Dinosaur Tracks of Dexter Marsh:
Greenfield's Lost Museum, 1846-1853.
Mount Holyoke College Institutional Digital
Archive, 2013.
Link
________ and Sarah L. Doyle. Dr.
James Deane of Greenfield: Edward
Hitchcock's Rival Discoverer of Dinosaur
Tracks. Mount Holyoke College
Institutional Digital Archive, 2014.
Link
________. Fungi Selecti Picti,
1821: Watercolors by Orra White Hitchcock
(1796-1863). Northampton, Mass.: Smith
College, 2011. The original album is held by
Smith College Special Collections.
________, Sarah L. Doyle, Joel
Fowler, Lynda Hodson Mayo, and Pamela
Shoemaker. Roswell Field's Dinosaur
Footprints, 1854-1880. Mount Holyoke
College Institutional Digital Archive, 2013.
Link
________. "The Sublime Landscapes of
Western Massachusetts: Edward Hitchcock's
Romantic Naturalism." Massachusetts
Historical Review 12(2010): 70-99.
________. A Woman of Amherst:
the Travel Diaries of Orra White Hitchcock,
1847 and 1850. New York, iUniverse,
Inc., 2008.
________ and Daria D'Arienzo. Orra
White Hitchcock: an Amherst Woman of Art and
Science. Hanover, NH: University Press
of New England, 2011.
February 1, 2021
THE HITCHCOCK PROGENY: THREE GENERATIONS
In an 1823 sermon entitled
"Duties of Children" delivered by Reverend
Edward Hitchcock in Conway, Massachusetts, he
reminded the youth of his church that nearly
half of them would perish by the age of twelve
(see Chapter 8). He was not exaggerating.
Childhood was a hazardous time of life in
those days; illnesses such as scarlet fever,
diphtheria, typhoid fever, dysentery, and
pneumonia were widespread and essentially
untreatable. Edward and Orra lost two young
sons, a 2-year-old in 1824 and an infant who
died within a few hours of birth in 1832.
The six Hitchcock children that
survived to adulthood lived remarkably long
lives, three into their eighties, well beyond
the average lifespan of Americans of that
period. This may seem surprising considering
their father's lifelong battle with poor
health. Perhaps his children were fortunate to
inherit their mother's vigor and emotional
stability rather than their father's frailty
and mercuric disposition.
As to the Hitchcocks' twenty
grandchildren, seven perished before the age
of six. But those who survived childhood lived
relatively long lives, eight into their
seventies or eighties. As to the third
generation, Edward and Orra's ten
great-grandchildren, nearly all were born
after 1890. There were no childhood deaths in
this generation. Eight of the ten lived longer
than seventy years.
Aside from the scourge of childhood
ailments, the three generations of Hitchcock
descendants enjoyed many advantages. They grew
up in stable homes in prosperous and
forward-thinking communities such as Amherst,
Massachusetts, Hanover, New Hampshire, and
Orange, New Jersey. They were well-educated.
Nearly all the males attended either Amherst
or Yale while the females were enrolled at
Mount Holyoke, Smith, Pratt Institute, or
Cooper-Union. Several earned graduate degrees.
Three male descendants pursued careers as
scientists and college professors, two as
engineers, two as medical doctors, two as
attorneys, two as stockbrokers. At least five
Hitchcock women were teachers, two artists,
one a nurse, and one a social worker.
Several Hitchcock descendants earned
reputations as leaders in their fields: Edward
Hitchcock, Jr., in human anatomy and physical
education, Charles H. Hitchcock in geology,
Jane E. Hitchcock in community nursing, Edward
B. Hitchcock in journalism, and Charles
Hitchcock Allen in chemistry. Charles B.
Storrs served in the New Jersey state
legislature. Dr. John S. Hitchcock
distinguished himself as head of the
Massachusetts Division of Communicable
Diseases during the influenza epidemic in
1919. At least three Hitchcock men served in
the armed forces.
In The
Descendants of Edward and Orra White
Hitchcock,I
present brief biographical sketches of each
of the couple's thirty-eight children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. I am
indebted to a number of archives and
newspaper for photographs, obituaries, and
other documents which are attached. Readers
who find errors on those pages or have
additional information to offer are welcome
to submit them to me at robertmcmaster24
[at] gmail.com.
See also The
Hitchcock Legacy Lives On.
GO TO
TOP
EDWARD'S
MASSACHUSETTS GEOLOGICAL SURVEY
1830-1833

Edward Hitchcock
did nothing in life by halves. Each new task
he undertook, each new assignment he accepted,
he threw himself into with every ounce of
strength he could muster. We can see this in
the meticulous crafting of his sermons early
in his career, his far-ranging travels in all
seasons as an itinerant preacher, his
intensive preparations for teaching chemistry
at Amherst College, his ambitious pursuit of
several state geological surveys, and his
headlong rush to investigate those enigmatic
fossil footmarks.
This trait in Edward Hitchcock, this
indefatigable force, derived I believe from
several sources within, intellectual
curiosity, ambition, religious zeal, and a
deeply-held conviction that his health
depended on vigorous activity. Of course,
throughout his adult life he was also
convinced that his time was running out, his
death was imminent. Of his "desponding nature"
he wrote to Edward, Jr., late in life, "It
is this trait in my character [that] has
enabled me to do what little I have done as
a literary man."
So it is no surprise to learn that
within a month of receiving his commission to
carry out the first geological survey of
Massachusetts in 1830, Edward Hitchcock was
off and running, notebook in one hand,
mineralogical hammer in the other. Over the
ensuing forty or so months, he visited every
corner of the state, observing, recording,
collecting specimens, and pondering the
implications of his findings for his notions
of geological history and God's plan for
earth. It proved to be a life-altering
experience for Hitchcock and a pivotal event
for American geology (see Chapter 14).
How was it possible, we might
wonder, that he could give up his college and
family obligations for so many weeks over
those four field seasons? The college
apparently was happy to accommodate him. And
Orra's steady hand and even temperament no
doubt kept affairs under control on the home
front. (Orra missed her husband, of that I
have no doubt, but I can't help but wonder
whether his absence may have made running the
household a bit easier!)
In reading Edward's notebooks from
those expeditions, I was fascinated both by
the geological insights they offered and by
some geographic curiosities revealed along the
way. More than fifty of the state's modern-day
municipalities had not even been incorporated
in 1830, including a number in western
Massachusetts: Holyoke, Chicopee, Agawam,
Hampden, and Erving. The names of several
towns have since changed: Troy to Fall River,
Ward to Auburn, Western to Warren, Gay Head to
Aquinnah. And of course four towns that Edward
visited not far from Amherst, Enfield, Dana,
Greenwich, and Prescott, are no longer, their
territories having been inundated by the
waters of the newly created Quabbin Reservoir
in the 1930s.
To get a sense of the scope and
intensity of Edward's first geological survey
of Massachusetts, click on the map below to
see an animation of his travels.

October 22, 2020
RUTH SHERMAN WHITE: REQUIESCE IN PACE
The
Hitchcock monument in Amherst's West Cemetery
is one of the largest in the cemetery but by
no means the most visited. That honor goes to
Emily Dickinson, whose grave is situated just
a few feet away from Edward and Orra's. Almost
any time you pass, you're likely to meet one
of Emily's admirers paying their respects, or
perhaps you'll find some small tribute left
for the "Belle of Amherst," a bouquet of
flowers, a lock of hair, or a handmade journal
and pencil offered in the hope that the
poetess might show her appreciation by
inscribing a little verse from the beyond: "Unable
are the loved to die, for love is
immortality."
Anyone interested
in the Hitchcocks will find Edward's and
Orra's names on a tall granite obelisk nearby
along with daughter Mary and infant son Edward
(Little Edward was actually interred in
Conway.) On the plinth is inscribed a
Hitchcock epigram that aptly sums up the man:
"The cross in nature and nature in the
cross."
Not far from the Hitchcock monument
are the graves of Orra's family, the Whites,
marked by a row of badly eroded stones for her
father, several of her brothers, and one
sister, all of whom passed away decades before
Orra. But one grave is missing here, that of
Orra's mother, Ruth Sherman White. And therein
lies a small mystery.
Ruth Sherman was born in
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, in 1763. She
married Jarib White in 1794 and the couple
first settled in Hadley before moving to
Amherst. Ruth gave birth to eight children
between 1794 and 1806. Jarib, a wealthy farmer
and businessman and one of the early
benefactors of Amherst College, died in 1821,
as his stone in West Cemetery attests. But
curiously, his wife's grave is nowhere to be
found.
While doing
research for my book, I sought out
information on the death and burial of Ruth
from a number of sources without success.
Even the Amherst Town Clerk's office had no
record of her death. Her name appears in
several places in the Hitchcock family
account book, showing that she lived with
the Hitchcocks or nearby in the late 1830s
(see Chapter 15). But still no mention of
her death.
The mystery was finally solved by
Edward Hitchcock, Jr., in his memoirs (more on
those fascinating volumes in a future post).
"Doc" Hitchcock, as he was known during his
half a century on the Amherst faculty, writes
of attending his grandmother's funeral at the
home of her daughter-in-law, Caroline White
Sprague. Caroline, the wife of Jay White,
lived briefly with the Hitchcocks in Amherst
after her husband's death. In 1829 she married
Reverend Daniel G. Sprague; the couple lived
for a time in Hampton, Connecticut.
I contacted Hampton Town Clerk
Leslie Wertam who located the hand-written
burial record for Ruth White. She died on
November 5, 1839, in Hampton at the age of 76.
The line above her name carries the death
record for the Spragues' 19-month old son,
Henry W. Sprague, who passed away only a week
earlier. Her grave in North Cemetery is marked
by a small, nondescript stone—no words of
praise, no mementos of tribute from admirers,
just a simple inscription: RUTH WHITE BORN
JULY 1763 DIED NOV 5 1890.
The memory of Emily Dickinson is
held dear by many even 135 years after her
death. Edward and Orra Hitchcock have been
honored as well, not perhaps with the passion
of Emily's followers, but by scholars of
history, science, religion, and art.
But Ruth Sherman White has never
been afforded her due. She was neither a
scientist nor a philosopher nor an artist, so
far as we know. What we do know is that she
devoted a good part of her adult life to
caring for children, first her own, three of
whom died before their first birthdays. Then
she helped care for her grandchildren. And
finally, in the last year of her life, she
traveled from Amherst to Hampton, Connecticut,
to assist in the care of the Sprague children.
It may well be that she succumbed to the same
illness that took little Henry, her
daughter-in-law's son. Whatever the cause of
her death, it is clear that Ruth Sherman White
gave her all for her family.
Requiesce in pace, Ruth.
GO TO
TOP
October 15, 2020
FREEDOM OF RELIGION, MASSACHUSETTS STYLE
The Pilgrims, as we all
learned at an early age, came to the New
World to escape religious persecution. When
Massachusetts enacted its first constitution
in 1781, the right to worship God according
to one's conscience was further enshrined. A
few years later the First Amendment of the
U. S. Constitution guaranteed all citizens
the right to their religious beliefs and
prohibited government interference in
religion.
So it might come
as a surprise to learn that, even in Edward
Hitchcock's time some forty years after
enactment of its constitution, Massachusetts
had one official religion,
Congregationalism. In those times the
Congregational church in a Massachusetts
town was referred to as "the meetinghouse."
Not only was it a house of worship, it was
also the seat of town government, the place
where town meetings were held. Furthermore,
the minister's salary was funded by taxes
collected from every resident, believer or
nonbeliever. Thus when Edward Hitchcock was
hired as "Colleague Pastor" in Conway,
Massachusetts, in 1821, the decision to hire
him was made by the church membership, but
approval of his salary had to be secured at
a Town Meeting (see Chapter 7).
With the
"Religious Freedom Acts" of 1811 and 1824,
the legislature did allow members of other
churches to have their Minister's Tax
abated, so long as they could prove they
were supporting that church. In the records
of the town of Conway for the 1820s you can
find page after page filled with statements
of residents attesting to their membership
in another church for that very purpose. See
for example this entry in the records of the
Conway town clerk for 1827:

(Image
source: Genealogical Society of Utah,
1972)
"To whom it may concern
this certifies that Mr. Daniel Woodward
Jr. is a member of the Baptist society
in Ashfield and Buckland and doth attend
publick worship with us on the Lord's
day and doth contribute to the support
of the Gospel with us. Enos Smith,
Pastor of the Church, Buckland August 17
1827, Recorded Oct 29 1827, By David
Childs town clerk"
In those times
there was no exemption for nonbelievers; by
default their taxes went to the
Congregational church. Just a few years
after that entry, the Congregational church
was officially "disestablished" when the
Eleventh Amendment to the Massachusetts
State Constitution was passed in 1833.
Massachusetts was the last state to do so.
When I was in
elementary school, I was fascinated by long
words and anxious to know the longest word
in the English language. My parents helped
me to find the answer, not an easy task in
the "Pre-Google Era": the longest English
word was antidisestablishmentarianism.
Of course I had no idea what it meant back
then and to be honest, it wasn't until I
began my research on Edward Hitchcock that I
came to understand a little better. In the
late nineteenth century, some activists in
Great Britain began a movement to
"disestablish" the Church of England—they
were known as disestablishmentarians. Soon
another movement arose in opposition to
disestablishment, and naturally it came to
be known as antidisestablishmentarianism.
It must have have been a challenge, fitting
that name on lapel pins, lawn signs, or
whatever devices were used in those days to
promote a political cause. Nevertheless, the
"Antis" prevailed; to this day the Anglican
church is the official state church of the
United Kingdom.
FUNGAL
FORAGING ON CRICKET HILL
One of the most
beautiful works of art by Orra White
Hitchcock was one of her earliest creations.
"Fungi, Selecti Picti" is an album of 100
miniature watercolors of mushrooms and
mosses found by her and Edward in the
forests and fields of their new hometown,
Conway, Massachusetts, in 1821 (see Chapter
7). They found the sheep pastures and
forests of Cricket Hill on the south side of
town especially rich and they visited the
area again and again during that project.

A century and a
half later, the University of Massachusetts
at Amherst was home to two world-renown
experts on mushrooms, Drs. Margaret E. and
Howard E. Bigelow. The couple lived in
Conway at the time. When they hosted
mycologists from around the world, they
often took them out for some recreational
fungal foraging. According to one
acquaintance, Cricket Hill was their
favorite destination. Whether the Bigelows
discovered the richness of the Cricket Hill
mycoflora on their own or learned about it
from the work of the Hitchcocks is not
known.
(From Deane Lee, Conway
1767-1967,
Town of Conway, 1967)
In autumn 1981,
my wife, Nancy Mosher McMaster, then a
graduate student, enrolled in a mycology
course at UMass taught by Margaret Bigelow.
One of the first sites they visited was
Cricket Hill, much of which by then had been
set aside as Conway State Forest. Professor
Bigelow and her students wandered through
the forest collecting specimens and placing
them in large wicker baskets. Back in the
laboratory at UMass, they immediately
dissected, examined, and drew each fungal
treasure before it was reduced to an oozing,
gelatinous mass.
Orra's original
album came to Smith College thanks to the
generosity of the Hitchcock's youngest
daughter, Emily
Hitchcock Terry (see Chapter 27), and
may be viewed in the Smith College Archives.
In 2011 Smith published a reproduction of
the album, Fungi Selecti Picti, 1821,
edited by art historian Robert L. Herbert.
GO
TO TOP
October 1, 2020
THE
HITCHCOCK HOUSE IN CONWAY
Edward and
Orra Hitchcock moved to Conway,
Massachusetts, in June 1821, within days
of Edward's installation as the junior
pastor of the Conway church. They lived in
that town for four years, and the house
they eventually purchased from John and
Nancy Williams still stands on Whately
Road. But that purchase did not take place
until May 1824, as the deed in the
Franklin County Registry of Deeds attests.
This raises the interesting question,
where did the Hitchcocks live for the
first three years of Edward's Conway
pastorate?
I have found no specific
references to the Hitchcocks' housing from
1821 to 1824, but I have come across
several hints that suggest that they may
have lived in the Williams house for a
time before they purchased it. In an 1825
letter Edward makes reference to "the
house" in which they lived in Conway,
implying that they lived in just one house
in that town. Furthermore, the deed drawn
up in 1824 makes mention of the
Hitchcocks' well, a hint that they may
already have lived there long enough to
dig a well.
Edward's
predecessor, the Reverend John Emerson
(who by the way was the great uncle of
Ralph Waldo Emerson), lived in a home on
Baptist Hill on the north side of town.
That house is referred to in several
places as the church parsonage, but deeds
show that it was actually owned by
Reverend Emerson and his wife.
In
investigating later ownership of the
Hitchcock house I discovered that while
the church never purchased a home for a
pastor in those days, on several occasions
church members purchased a house that was
subsequently occupied by the pastor and in
at least one instance eventually bought by
the pastor. So it seems possible that John
Williams, who was a church deacon, and his
wife provided that house to the
Hitchcocks, or perhaps agreed to board
them, until they could buy it.
When
the Hitchcocks finally purchased the house
on Whately Road, the records indicate that
they purchased it from John and Nancy
Williams, but made mortgage payments to
one Epaphroditus Champion. Champion was a
wealthy businessman from Connecticut who
had long-time business ties with John
Williams. Williams's journal shows that he
was in debt to Champion and agreed to have
the proceeds from the sale of the house go
directly to Champion.
One other
amusing note has to do with the name
"Epaphroditus." Champion was much admired
by John Williams. When John and his wife
had a son, they named him Epaphroditus
Williams. I spent quite a bit of time
trying to track down Epaphroditus
Williams, where he lived, married,
children, date of death, etc., without
luck ¦until I discovered that shortly
after he turned 21 he changed his name.
Who can blame him!
(Note: Many thanks to Sarah
Williams of the Conway Historical
Commission for assisting me in tracking
ownership of the Hitchcock house. I am
also indebted to Historic Northampton
for providing access to the papers of
John Williams.)
HITCHCOCK'S
GIANT BOWLDERS
In the course of my research I was
astonished to learn that in November 1856
Edward Hitchcock agreed to undertake a
geological survey of the state of Vermont.
He had spent several decades earlier in
life surveying Massachusetts. Now, at age
63, he had agreed to survey the Green
Mountain State, nearly as large as
Massachusetts and with far more rugged
terrain. Furthermore, three geologists had
undertaken the project before him...all
three died before completing the work.
What, we might ask, was he thinking?
In his final
report on the Vermont project (see
Chapters 23 and 24), Hitchcock devotes
several pages to some of the interesting
natural features of the state of Vermont.
Prominent among these are two very large
glacial erratics—one in Whitingham, a
small town on the Vermont-Massachusetts
state line, the other just a few miles
away in Florida, Massachusetts.
Recently I set
out to relocate Hitchcock's bowlders. I
soon learned that just as there are those
who enjoy seeking out very large trees to
hug, there are also big rock aficionados.
Thanks to the miracle of the World Wide
Web, I found that both of Hitchcock's
erratics were well known to modern day
boulder enthusiasts.
My quest began
on a snowmobile trail in the
Atherton Meadows Wildlife Management
Area in Whitingham with a map of the
refuge in hand. Less than a mile north of
route 100, as I approached the highest
point in the refuge, I spotted what looked
at first like the roof of a large house or
barn looming in the distance. As I drew
closer I realized that I was seeing the
top of a boulder, a very large boulder, a
very, VERY large boulder. Soon I was
standing awestruck before the Green
Mountain Giant.

Woodcut from Hitchcock's
Vermont survey report
The
Green Mountain Giant today
In Hitchcock's words:
"The most
gigantic specimen with which we have
met, lies on the naked ledges on a high
hill on the farm of Jonathan Dix, in the
west part of Whitingham. From this hill
we look westerly into the valley of
Deerfield river, which must be over 500
feet deep and from the character of the
rock, corresponding to that of the Green
Mountains (a highly micaceous gneiss),
we feel sure that the bowlder was
transported across this valley. Yet its
length is 40 feet; its horizontal
circumference 125 feet; its average
width 32 feet; its cubic contents 40,000
feet, and its weight 3400 tons...Until a
larger bowlder shall be found, we
propose for this one the name of Green
Mountain Giant." (Source: Hitchcock, et
al., Report on the Geology of Vermont. 2
vols. Claremont, NH: Claremont
Manufacturing Company, 1861, p. 59)
Just fifteen
miles southwest of Whitingham and perched
on one of the highest ridges in
Massachusetts is the ironically-named town
of Florida. An unmarked trail leaves route
2 just a mile or so above the Hairpin
Turn. The route is an old logging road
that has been badly rutted by all-terrain
vehicles, but in less than a mile I had
another encounter of the glacial kind.
This "bowlder" Hitchcock dubbed "The
Vermonter" as he explains:
Woodcut
from Hitchcock's Vermont survey
report
The "Vermonter" today
"There is
one bowlder of this granite, however,
which from its size and situation we
would point out, although it has been
carried a little distance over the line
into Massachusetts. Ascending Hoosac
Mountain from North Adams into Florida
on the Greenfield road, and turning
northerly at its top so as to pass near
the edge of the mountain a mile and a
half in an unfrequented path, we come at
length, in the midst of the woods, upon
the huge bowlder of Stamford granite
figured below from a hasty sketch. It
lies nearly all out of the ground,
resting on the ledges of slate beneath
the thin soil. Its height is 15 feet,
and it is 76 feet in circumference,
weighing by estimation 510 tons...On its
northwest side rises Oak Hill, which is
some 200 feet higher than the bowlder,
and where the granite is in place, from
which some agency has torn it off and
transported it many miles across the
intervening valley 1300 feet deep."
(Source: Hitchcock, et
al., Report on the Geology of Vermont. 2
vols. Claremont, NH: Claremont
Manufacturing Company, 1861, p. 57)
That he refers
to "some agency" responsible for carrying
such an enormous boulder a distance of
several miles shows that, even in 1861
when the report was written, Edward
Hitchcock was still unconvinced of
Agassiz's "glacial theory."
It is amazing
to me that these two ancient artifacts are
still intact and surrounded by wild lands.
The landscape in those two locations has
changed little since Hitchcock's time
except, of course, for the forests. In his
day nearly all of southern New England had
been deforested and converted to
pastureland.
If you would
like to visit these two Hitchcock
landmarks, you'll want to locate them on a
map using the coordinates below. The
trails are not marked, and muddy ruts and
trees blown down across the path are all
part of the adventure. Both boulders are
visible on the Google Earth® view of May
10 2014.
Green Mountain Giant: 42°
46' 29.32" N 72° 54' 7.42"
W
The Vermonter: 42° 42'
27.74" N 73° 3' 33.71" W
GO
TO TOP
|

QUICK LINKS
Previous
Posts
October
22, 2021
Flattened Pebbles Cleft by
Titan's Sword
September 1, 2021
The Hitchcock Legacy Lives On
July 15, 2021
Cars Ready: The Arrival of the
Railroad Age in Amherst
May 1, 2021
Hitchcock's Basaltic Columns
March 8, 2021
Tribute to Robert L. Herbert
February 1, 2021
The Hitchcock Progeny
December 18, 2020
Edward's Massachusetts
Geological Survey
October 22,
2020
Ruth Sherman White:
Requiesce in Pace
October 15, 2020
Freedom of Religion,
Massachusetts Style
October 8, 2020
Fungal Foraging on
Cricket Hill
October 1, 2020
The Hitchcock House in Conway
September 21, 2020
Hitchcock's Giant Bowlders |