"Each man equipped on Sunday morn With psalm-book, shot and powder-horn, And looked in form, as all must grant, Like th' ancient, true Church militant."
This renowned pastor was of majestic appearance, and as good a fighter as he was a preacher. He never hesitated to lead his people in their Indian wars, and once he is said to have got into an ambush, but the awestruck savages, impressed by his noble bearing, hesitated to shoot him, telling their French allies, "That is the Englishman's god." The present stone church is the fifth built on the original site. During nearly a quarter-century the noted Jonathan Edwards was the Northampton pastor, but he was dismissed in 1750, because, owing to the growing laxity of church members, he insisted upon "a higher and purer standard of admission to the communion-table." Northampton is famed for its educational development, the chief institution, endowed by Sophia Smith in 1871, being Smith College for women, having a thousand students and possessing fine buildings, with an art gallery, music hall and gymnasium. There are various attractive public buildings, including an Institution for Mutes and the State Lunatic Asylum. The level land of Nonotuck raises much tobacco, the Connecticut River winding in wide circular sweeps among the fields and meadows, but making little progress as it goes around great curves of miles in circuit. Upon an isthmus thus formed, with the broad river loop stretching far to the westward, is "Old Hadley," the Connecticut having made a five-mile circuit to accomplish barely one mile of distance. Across the level isthmus from the river above to the river below, stretching through the village, is the noted "Hadley Street," the handsomest highway in natural adornments in the Old Bay State. Over three hundred feet wide, this street is lined by two double rows of noble elms, with a broad expanse of greenest lawn between, and nearly a thousand ancient trees arching their graceful branches over it. This very quiet street has perfect greensward, for it is almost untravelled, and its inhabitants grow tobacco and make brooms. Another of these wayward river loops is the great "ox-bow" of the Connecticut, where the river used to flow around a circuit of nearly four miles and accomplished only one hundred and fifty yards of actual distance, until an ice-freshet broke through the narrow isthmus and made a straight channel across it, which has become the course of the river. The abandoned channel of the "ox-bow" is now usually stored with logs awaiting the sawmill. Hadley was the final home and burial-place of Goffe and Whalley, the regicides, who fled there from New Haven. When their house was pulled down, it was said the bones of Whalley, who died in 1679, were found entombed just outside the cellar-wall. It was the house of the pastor, and they were concealed in it fifteen years, from 1664 to 1679, their presence known only to three persons. Once, during the hiding, Indians attacked the town, and after a sharp fight the people gave way, when there suddenly appeared "an ancient man with hoary locks, of a most venerable and dignified aspect," who rallied them to a fresh onslaught, driving the Indians off. He then disappeared, the inhabitants attributing their deliverance to a "militant angel." This was Goffe, and the tale is the chief legend of "Old Hadley." General Joseph Hooker of the Civil War was born in Hadley. At South Hadley is the Mount Holyoke College for girls, almost under the shadow of the mountain, amid magnificent scenery, a noted institution with four hundred students, where, during the past century, have been educated many missionary women for their labors in distant lands.