By Jacqueline T. Lynch, Vice President
July 4, 1876 was the Centennial celebration.
There were 37 states in 1876, though Colorado would become the 38th in the following month of August. Ulysses S. Grant was President, with no vice president after the death of Henry Wilson.
Chicopee’s population was over 10,000. Our brick Gothic Town Hall was about five years old, and more waves of immigrants arrived, the largest group were French Canadians. Around 35 percent of our citizens were foreign born. Most people in town were mill workers.
The once 15-hour workday was reduced by 1876 to 12 hours, but in 1874 a state law required that women and children under 18 years old were to be given no more than a 10-hour workday. But the 1870s were also years of economic depression, where wages were cut and unemployment rose.
Our town government was run by a board of selectmen in open town meeting. It would be another 14 years before we became a city.
Since our last Revolutionary War veteran, Reuben Burt, had died in 1860 just shy of his 100th birthday, there were no more soldiers from that war among us. Only their graves.
However, there was one Revolutionary War soldier, from Chicopee, who made national news in 1875, just in time for the coming Centennial. He was The Minute Man statue, sculpted by Daniel Chester French, and cast in bronze at the Ames foundry.
The bronze department at Ames was under the direction of Silas Mosman, Jr., who had been employed at the factory since 1830, and was the oldest man there. His son, Melzar, trained under him as a bronze founder, but was also, himself, a sculptor, who’d had classic training in Europe after his service in the Civil War. They both worked on The Minute Man statue.
The figure represented a citizen soldier, a farmer who was leaving behind his plow and taking up arms against the British Empire. It has become an iconic symbol, used in promotions, found on the 2000 Massachusetts state quarter, and universally known as an emblem of the Revolutionary War.
Daniel Chester French finished the plaster model and sent it to the Ames foundry September 1874. It would have arrived by train, on the spur along Front Street that was torn out years ago.
The seven-foot-high bronze statue was placed atop a 7 ½-foot high granite pedestal and installed on the Concord side of the newly replaced bridge, and unveiled on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, April 19, 1875. From an account in the Springfield Republican…
“The true heroes of the 19th of April were the farmers and mechanics…These men still survive in their descendants, and the modern generation of them were at the centennial, with their wives and children, in great numbers, — driving in from their farms and shops, sometimes twenty or thirty miles, to take part in the celebrations at Concord bridge and Lexington green. Many of them brought the weapons that their ancestors carried 100 years ago, or some other relic of the day…”
President Ulysses S. Grant attended as well as other dignitaries, and a crowd of tens of thousands of people. Daniel Chester French, himself, was out of the country at the time, continuing his art training in Europe.
The following year, July 4th, 1876, was the long-awaited Centennial, with a famous exhibition in Philadelphia, and celebrations across the country.
July 4th in Chicopee was described by the Springfield Daily Republican as quiet, with a procession, and “short speeches” presided over by George D. Robinson, our former Chicopee High School principal, noted attorney, and future Governor of Massachusetts (and future defense lawyer for the infamous Lizzie Borden). There were “illuminations” and fireworks in the evening.
Next week – July 4, 1901 – the 125th anniversary of the nation’s founding, and the 20th century.
Sources
Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War (Boston: Massachusetts Office of Secretary of the State; Wright and Potter Printing Co., State Printers, 1896).
Shlakman, Vera. Economic History of a Factory Town – A Study of Chicopee, Massachusetts (NY: Octagon Books, rept. 1969)
Springfield Daily Republican, September 17, 1874; June 27, 1874; April 19; 1875; April 23, 1875; April 20, 1875; July 5, 1876.
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The Chicopee Historical Society is currently looking for a new treasurer. Anyone interested in applying for that position on our board of directors may contact us at: TheChicopeeHistoricalSociety@gmail.com.
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