2. South Egremont Village School

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:

The South Egremont School is a one-story wood frame educational building constructed in 1881. The two-room schoolhouse has its classrooms arranged front-to-back with a passage on the west side and a privy wing on the east side. The front façade contains an entrance and porch (replaced) at the west corner and three windows occupying the rest of the wall; an arched window with a cornice and shutters is centered in the gable. The roof overhangs the front and sides with deep eaves distinguished by a tall frieze. The west wall contains four windows and a door at the rear. Three windows are positioned in front of the cross-gable privy wing, which has a door on its front wall. Using a state grant, the tone, which owns the building, in 2018 made major repairs to the foundation and sills. The front porch was replaced and a door and stair added to the west side of the building. It is anticipated that a concrete ramp will be constructed for the entrance on the east side. The building is set back from the highway with grassy play areas on all sides; a driveway enters the west side of the frontage and runs along the lot line and creates a turn-around in front of the school.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:

In late August 1880, William C. Dalzell of the South Egremont axle-making firm Dalzell and Company, sold the town of Egremont a parcel on the north side of Main Street, about 40 rods, “on which to erect a school” for the town for $200.(1) Technically a lease, the deed stated that the lot would belong to the town as along as it was occupied for town school purposes, and it stipulated that the town was to build and maintain a fence around the lot for as long as a school existed there. Also in August the town bought lots in North Egremont and in West Egremont for schools. The three were to replace five district schools in use in the town since at least 1840, and they each had ells with privies.(2) But for one temporary closure, it has been a school since its creation.

The South Egremont School was built in 1881 and ready to be occupied for the fall term that year. It contained two rooms, and it was apparently in use for students from the first to the eighth grades into the mid-twentieth century. The school also served as a site of Berkshire County Cooperative Extension classes, Cub Scout meetings, and Parent Teacher Organization meetings, and the Egremont Youth Council ran a summer program for children there in the 1970s. (3) By 1959, however, the frame building was judged substandard by state education commissioner Owen B. Kiernan. Of three hundred schools in the state that fell into that category, eight were in Berkshire County, including both the South Egremont and North Egremont schools. At that time, South Egremont School taught 42 children. South Berkshire Regional School District superintendent William A. Downie described both schools as “technically uncorrectable fire hazards” because both were wood frame buildings; he also stated that South Egremont School in particular had inadequate playground space was “unsatisfactory and a hazardous environment” because of its location on a state highway. Even though both Egremont schools were judged to be in “excellent condition” physically, they were deemed substandard in terms of students’ “educational welfare.”(4)

By 1969, South Egremont school housed nineteen second-graders, while first-graders went to North Egremont School; third- and fourth-graders attended school in Sheffield Center. Later that year the regional school district voted to convert the one-room school in Alford to a kindergarten and to send its first- and second-graders to Egremont schools. In 1972 South Egremont had 25 students and was the only school in the Southern Berkshire district where enrollment had not declined from the previous school year.(5)

By 1993 South Egremont School educated pre-kindergartners and kindergartners, and the school was teaching 15 kindergartners and first-graders in 2016; seven of those students paid $5,000 each in tuition to attend the school, which reduced its annual operating budget to about $65,000. In that year, however, the regional school district’s budget omitted funding for the school, and while the district stated that the school was “on hiatus,” the town argued that its agreement with the district did not include such a status as distinct from a school closure. In mid-April 2017 the town sued the district on two counts of breach of contract. The town stated that the district had failed to follow its own district agreement by providing notice of its decision to close a school, holding two public hearings on the subject, and having four of the five member towns ratify the decision. The district settled the case that year and agreed to provide $175,000 in annual operating funds to the school, which was to reopen in September 2018. The town allocated $350,000 for a renovation of the building, completed in summer 2018.6 A grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission contributed a portion of the cost.

1 William C. Dalzell to inhabitants of Egremont, 25 August 1880, SBCD 140:498.
2 See “Schools of Egremont” in Egremont 1756-1976 (Great Barrington, MD: Egremont Bicentennial Committee, 1976), unpaginated. The only newspaper account of the school replacement so far located appeared in Springfield Republican, 16 March 1880, 6: “Egremont, which voted to abolish school districts last year, finds itself in something of a muddle about it, and several new school-houses are needed, which will make a lively town meting net week.”
3 See Berkshire Eagle, 25 January 1950, 12; 23 January 1952, 24; 15 July 1978, 18.
4 “Eight County Schools Listed as Substandard by Kiernan,” Berkshire Eagle, 7 May 1959, 1, 19.
5 “Supt. McDonald Favors Closing of Alford School,” Berkshire Eagle, 19 June 1969, 20; “1970 Budget Up 5.9%,” Berkshire Eagle, 19 December 1969, 20; “Enrollment Down by 48 in S. Berkshire Schools,” Berkshire Eagle, 7 September 1972, 24.
6 Disputes about air quality from the presence of lead on the buiding exterior delayed the school’s 2018-19 opening. See Kristin Palpini, “South Egremont School remains Closed as Officials Wait for Lead Test Results,” Berkshire Eagle, 28 September 2018; Terry Cowgill, “Egremont Files Legal Action against SBRSD over Closure of Local School,” Berkshire Edge, 17 April 2017; Town of Egremont v. Southern Berkshire Regional School District, complaint, 13 April 2017, https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BwHiJrd_j0eRTG05UExKRFpDd1k/view.

MACRIS Inventory No. EGR44

3. South Egremont Congregational Church Parsonage

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:

The South Egremont Congregational Church property contains a church building (EGR.47) built in 1832-3 and later altered and a parsonage (EGR.48) built in 1848 and also later altered.

The church was designed in a plain New England meetinghouse manner typical for the early 1800s. It has a tall rectangular mass at its core fronted by a pedimented entrance pavilion and surmounted by a gable roof and two-stage tower—a large square base topped by a balustrade and octagonal bell tower with louvered arched openings—with a narrow octagonal steeple mounted on an octagonal base. A single doorway is centered in the pavilion with corner pilasters and a simple pediment the only other ornament. The original entrance was replaced with the current one in 1870 featuring twin paneled doors beneath a tall compound-arch window of Romanesque design. Each side wall contains five windows four tall ones in arched openings reflecting the style of alterations made in 1870 and an oval window with a sunburst pattern of lights that replaced a fifth matching the others in 1896 when the choir loft at the south end of the interior was altered for the installation of a new pipe organ. A three-sided addition, fifteen feet deep was constructed on the north end of the building to provide an apse for improvements to the pulpit area inside.

In 1852 what appears to have been a schoolhouse or small store building with a front gable decorated with scroll-sawn vergeboards in the Gothic Revival style was moved from its original site across Main Street and connected to the northeast corner of the church for use as a lecture room. A three-bay front façade has a center entrance and two windows occupy the east side wall. On the west side, the annex is connected to the rear of the church by a hyphen, which contains windows with 12-over-12 sash that may have been components of original side windows in the church. A shed-roof wing has been constructed across the entire rear of the church and wing more recently.

The house on the property was constructed as a story-and-a-half wood frame tenant dwelling by Wilbur Curtis in 1848-50. In 1856 it was sold to the church and used as a parsonage, and it achieved its current appearance after being raised to two full stories in 1883. It has an asymmetrical front façade with an off-center entrance distinguished by a five-sided arcaded porch with chamfered posts and turned balustrade associated with the era in which the house was enlarged. A Classical cornice with short returns on the gable ends more reflect the construction data and may have been preserved in the second-story renovation. Fenestration on the ends also is irregular, and a one-story cross-gable wing has been added to the rear.

The church is sited on an L-shaped lot indicating the dimensions of the two parcels that combined to create it. The parsonage lot is the deeper one, forming one leg of the L. The church is set back from the street behind a large yard but, with additions, is located very close to the rear lot line. A driveway and parking area occupies the west side of the parcel. The parsonage is set back behind a smaller yard, and a driveway runs along the western side to a parking area in the rear. The leg of the L extending northward is a wooded hillside.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:

In May 1832 South Egremont merchant Levi Hare, who lived with his wife Rhoda Curtis Hare in a house near the site of 26 Main Street, deeded to the Congregational Church and Society of Egremont 100 rods of land just west of his house for $75.(1) The deed stipulated that the Congregational Society use the land “to erect a Meeting house with such necessary appendages as they may think proper,” not to build a dwelling on the lot, and to use the meeting house as a “place of worship.” It further stated that should the society one day demolish the church it was to build and fail to build another within ten years, Hare or his heirs would have the right to regain the property for the 1832 purchase price. Hare also reserved the right to cross a strip of the land to gain access to a “water trough supplied by an aqueduct” and to gather apples from three trees on the lot. Three years before the General Court released Egremont residents from paying ministerial taxes to Sheffield’s second parish (Great Barrington), Egremont Congregationalists had set aside a plot of land on Town House Hill for an eventual meetinghouse. This first church, built in 1767, has been described as a “square barn-like structure with galleries around the three sides.”(2) The society had begun with only six members. It seems likely that Baptists, organized in Egremont in 1787, were then more numerous, and according to local historian Edith Brewster Spurr, a “considerable number” of Methodists in the southwest part of town were then being served by itinerant ministers. The Congregational society had been troubled by dissent and declining attendance since the post-Revolutionary Shays Rebellion, and by 1795 it had all but ceased to exist.

Then, in November 1816 under the leadership of the Rev. Aaron Kinne (1744-1824), thirteen Egremont Congregationalists including Kinne himself revived the society as the Congregational Church of Christ in Egremont. Kinne had never been called to settle as a pastor, but during his time at the church membership grew; by 1820, when Gardner Hayden became the town’s Congregationalist minister, it stood at twenty persons. In 1821 Hayden founded the town’s first Sunday school, and, with the original Town House Hill meetinghouse in disrepair, he initiated a campaign to build a new meetinghouse in South Egremont. Forty persons contributed $2009 to the campaign, a committee was formed to identify an appropriate site, and the Hares sold the property to the Society. The South Egremont First Congregational Church has occupied this site ever since.

The church appointed a committee to plan the new sanctuary, which was constructed by local builder Plynna (or Pliny) Karner at a cost of $2500. The church was designed with an arched ceiling, a gallery (removed in 1870 in order to install a choir loft), and south-facing seats (turned north in an 1854 renovation). It was ready for use in August 1833, as was a carriage and horse shed at the rear of the building (moved in the 1960s to 7 Sheffield Rd. EGR.145). The society incorporated in late February 1834.

The church building has undergone numerous renovations since its construction. In 1839, according to church records, the congregation determined it “expedient to lower the breastwork of the gallery, also to enclose the present singers’ seats into a separate apartment and to build a gallery for singers seats at the north end of the house and to make some other less expensive alterations and to paint the meeting house inside and out.”(3) In 1854, at the urging of the Ladies’ Aid Society (originally called the Young Ladies’ Sewing Society), the interior was reoriented: the pulpit was moved to the north end and the seats reversed to face it. Spurr has documented that the interior furnishings were auctioned at this time: manufacturer Chester Goodale bought the “old pulpit” for 50 cents, while Samuel B. Goodale paid $2.05 for the pulpit cushion. In 1869-70 the congregation raised $2000—and was compelled in the end to borrow another $1500—to add 15 feet to the north end of the sanctuary, extend the galley on the south side for the church orchestra to use, lower the ceiling, move the former porch wall back to allow another row of seats, acquire a new roof and bell, and install a furnace. The revamped building was rededicated on 16 February 1871.

The Ladies’ Aid Society was responsible as well for the church’s first organ. The women held strawberry festivals and secured “liberal private subscriptions” for a pipe organ, built by renowned New York City organ builder Henry Erben and installed in the summer of 1858. In 1896, under the direction of Martha Goodale Dalzell Taft, the women’s group again raised most of the $1000 needed to buy a new organ, this one built by J. W. Steere and Son of Springfield. This new Opus 413 organ, according to the Berkshire Courier, was to “to “occupy the entire center space at the back of the gallery. The large gallery window will be closed, and two new oval windows will be put in, one on each side.” Its inaugural use appears to have been on 23 July 1896.(4) The organ has itself been the focus of much work: in 1920 an electric organ blower replaced the local “bellows boy” who had pumped the organ manually for a quarter a week; in the late 1960s the Winsted, Connecticut, firm Richard M. Geddes and Company electrified the playing action; and in 2006, after extinguishing a steeple fire caused water damage to the organ’s pallet valves, the entire instrument was taken apart, boxed up, and taken to Northampton, where the organ maintenance firm Czelusniak et Dugal completely repaired and restored the Steere and Son organ. By 15 August 2009, the organ was back in place and ready for its rededication concert.

The church lot has over time been the site of other structures. The parsonage, just east of the church building, was built between1848 and 1850 on 0.95 acre that Levi and Rhoda Hare sold to South Egremont merchant, banker, and politician Wilbur Curtis, Rhoda Hare’s older brother.(5) The 1850 census shows Curtis as a bank president—he was first president of Great Barrington’s Mahaiwe Bank, founded in 1847—with $2500 in real property in a household with his wife Maria and their children Joseph W., Josephine, and Irene, and an Irish immigrant domestic servant, but the order of enumeration in this census suggests that he was not then living at the 32 Main Street house. In March 1856 Curtis sold the lot and the 1.5-story house he had built upon it to the Congregational Church and Society of Egremont. Curtis was then living in Hudson, New York, and the deed makes clear that merchant Calvin Wells Benjamin was living in the house.(6) In 1883 the church voted to raise the parsonage roof.

In 1852 the South Egremont Congregationalists bought a building across the street from the church and moved it to the rear of the meetinghouse east of the horse sheds to serve as a “lecture room.” It is now the church chapel. In 1867 the Young Ladies’ Sewing Society donated $52.25 to buy “waste slabs” of marble from Chester Goodale, left over from the marble his quarries had furnished for the construction of Philadelphia’s Girard College. These slabs were laid from the sidewalk to the chapel door.

Between its reorganization in 1816 and 1958, the South Egremont church had 30 settled pastors, the longest serving of them was Gardner Hayden, its first, from 1820 to 1831. By 1860 the Rev. James B. Cleaveland (1821-89) occupied the 32 Main Street parsonage with his wife Elisabeth Hannah Jocelyn Cleaveland (1824-1911) and their children Jocelyn P., Susan F., and Livingston W., and a domestic servant. Cleaveland, an 1851 graduate of Yale Divinity School, appears to have served as the South Egremont church’s pastor from about 1858 to 1863, when he left to become pastor in New Hartford, Connecticut. While in South Egremont Elizabeth H. J. Cleaveland wrote and published a volume of verse titled No Sects in Heaven and Other Poems.(7)

By 1869 Winthrop H. Phelps was minister at the South Egremont Congregational Church. The census lists Phelps as a property owner, however, and the 1876 Egremont map attaches his name to a house just west of the church that stood on land he acquired in 1867. Phelps, probably from Monterey, married Lucy F. Benjamin of South Egremont in 1848, but his first pastorate was in Stockbridge, and he and his wife and children lived in Monterey in 1855 and 1860. Both the 1870 and 1880 Egremont censuses list Phelps as a clergyman. His son Winthrop E., born in 1850, was a dry goods clerk in town in 1870 and a grocery merchant in 1880. It is possible that the church rented the parsonage for income during Phelps’s pastorate, if not in later years as well.

1 Levi Hare to Congregational Church and Society of Egremont, 7 May 1832, SBCD 71:305.
2 Mrs. Ray W. Spurr, First Congregational Church South Egremont, Massachusetts: History 1833-1958 (125th anniversary booklet, 30 August 1958), 2.
3 Spurr, First Congregational Church, 8.
4 Berkshire Courier, 21 May 1896, quoted in J. W. Steere & Son Pipe Organ Rededication Recital (South Egremont, MA: First Congregational Church, 2009).
5 Levi and Rhoda Hare to Wilber Curtis, 6 September 1848, SBCD 95:261.
6 Wilber Curtis, Hudson NY, to Congregational Church and Society of Egremont, 28 December 1855, SBCD 106:555. The deed stipulates that Benjamin could live on and use the property until 1 May 1856.
7 See Two Hundredth Anniversary, Kensington Congregational Church, Organized December 12, 1712 (Kensington, CT, 1912), 79-80, which includes a brief biography of Cleaveland by his son Livingston W. Cleaveland, also a minister and later a judge.

MACRIS Inventory No. EGR48

4. Karner, Jacob and Lucy Kellogg - Crippen, Joel Jr. and Elizabeth Loomis House

ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:

The Karner-Crippen House is a story-and-a-half, end-gable hall-and-parlor house with end chimneys and a saltbox wing on the rear. It has two extensions off its west end, one older than the other, both set back from the main house and sharing a single roofline that is lower than that of the house. The whole house is clad with clapboards. The façade of the main volume is five bays wide with an off-center entrance flanked by two windows. It is framed on the sides by narrow corner boards and top by a simple frieze board and molded roof eave. There likely was once a second entrance immediately adjacent the existing entrance, which is common to older hall-and-parlor houses and would explain the irregular spacing of the entrance. The entrance has a simple wood surround with a transom above a wood paneled door, which is recessed within the opening. The windows have historic twelve-over-twelve sashes protected by exterior wood storm windows. Two eyebrow windows are aligned with the window bays adjacent to the entrance. The east elevation, where the house’s saltbox wing is most evident, has three windows—two on the first floor and one in the attic—of the same size with nine-over-six windows. The saltbox wing has added in the mid-20th century with concrete foundation and modern framing; it may have replaced an earlier appendage. The partly exposed west elevation of the main volume has a single window of similar size and type as on the opposite elevation at the first floor and smaller square window in the attic. The first extension off the main volume was, according to history received by the current owner, once a freestanding building moved from a nearby site, possibly across the street. This assertion is supported by the awkward joining of the two as evidenced by the differing roof slopes at junction of the two sections on the rear. This extension has a field stone foundation and two window bays spaced wide apart. An unembellished doorway with a solid vertical board door, now fixed, is at the east end of the extension adjacent to the main house. The second extension, added in the mid-20th century, has two garage bays at ground level and a second story with two windows with nine-over-six windows. A chimney is engaged to the west end of this extension. The current owner has added a skylight on the rear slope of the roof for a studio inside.

The internal structure of the house is H-bent timber framing, a common construction technique of 18th century New World Dutch houses that is found in houses built by German Palatines in eastern New York and Berkshire County. This is indicated by finished ceiling beams exposed in the westerly of the two principal rooms. A cooking hearth and chimney was removed from the west gable end, the support for which survives in the basement. The easterly room retains a fireplace. Wall finishes and woodwork in both rooms were updated in the early 19th century; plaster ceilings added over the beams. A second entrance probably entered the easterly room; it was removed and an entry created inside the remaining entrance with doorways into the rooms and an enclosed stair behind. The fireplace in the easterly room has a fancy Neoclassical-style wood mantel and remnants of stenciling with a botanical pattern on the walls and doors in the manner of Moses Eaton. The doors have hand- forged H-hinges and door latches that feature ivy-leaf-shaped plates with curved points—similarly fashioned handles have been found in German Palatine houses of Columbia County, NY. The original fireplace and chimney in westerly room was replaced with a small chimney for a stove. This change was made when the wing was added to the westerly end, into which the kitchen was moved. The plaster ceiling added in the 19th century has been removed to expose the original ceiling beams. There is evidence of lath having been nailed to the underside of the beams; there is now plaster between the joists. The attic space has plaster walls and ceilings; the house’s framing is not visible.

A gravel driveway on the east side of the parcel leads to a late 19th century gable-front shingled domestic barn with a large grain door centered above the carriage entrance. All elevations have fixed-sash windows with divided lights.

The house is situated on a modest incline overlooking the intersection. While near the road, trees screen the house from public view. The mostly forested parcel backs onto the southwest corner of Marsh Pond.

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:

The Karner-Crippen House is most likely a pre-Revolutionary War house built by a German Palatine descendant. Suggestive clues include the use of H-bent timber framing and its two-room, hall-and-parlor plan with separate entrances—the second entrance was later removed—both commonly associated with building practices of Palatine settlers. Indeed, the house is situated on land that was originally part of a grant for Jacob Karner. Karner (1733–1817) was born in Kinderhook, Columbia County, NY, to Lodowick and Catherine Karner, Palantine descendants. The Palatines were refugees from the Middle Rhine region of Europe who were brought over by the English in 1710 to work as indentured servants in the production of naval stores. Palatine families were settled in work camps in Livingston, Germantown and Saugerties, NY, but the venture quickly failed and many families migrated to different parts of the region, including Berkshire County. Members of the Karner family arrived in Egremont in 1730 or earlier. Jacob is recognized in the Shawenon Purchase made in 1756 with the Stockbridge Indians. He married Lucy Kellogg after his first wife, Mary Sheldon, died in 1766. He and Lucy had eight or nine children. He also served in the Revolutionary War. According to the History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts, Jacob’s house was in Guilder Hollow, south of the subject property.(1) The house on Hillsdale Road likely was built for him either for his own use or his family’s or another Palatine settler..

It does not appear that the Karner family owned this portion of their grant for long. A 1795 conveyance encompassing the subject farm references an earlier conveyance for the same land, made in 1781 between Soloman Tremain and Thomas Heath.(2) Tremain (b. Egremont, 1758 – d. Canaan, OH, 1836) was a private in the Revolutionary War; he was a resident of Alford by 1779 and by 1787 was living in Oneida County, NY, where he founded “Tremaine’s Corners.”(3) The 1781 acquisition consisted of two adjacent parcels, one 36 acres in size and the other 10 acres, with the Marsh Pond and Capt. William Joyner’s land serving as the north and east bounds respectively.(4)

Thomas Heath (b. New London, CT, 1755 – d. Sharon, CT, 1842) was a son of Bartholomew Heath and Mehitable Fuller Crippen. He married Mary Polly Calkins in Sharon, CT, in 1780. They apparently lived in Egremont for a short period of time; he appears in its 1790 U.S. census. In 1795 Heath conveyed the property to his first cousin, Joel Crippen, Jr. (5) Joel Crippen, Jr. (1769 –1853) and his wife, Elizabeth Loomis (1766–1840), had been married for about five years by that time and were raising the first three of their eventual nine children. (Crippen’s mother may have also been named Elizabeth Loomis.(6)) The couple was likely responsible for adding the Neoclassical mantel and other Federal period details.

It is not clear when members of the Crippen family first settled in Egremont. Joel’s father, Joel Sr., was likely born in North Egremont in the 1730s. His parents, Jabez Crippen and Thankful Fuller, had migrated westward through Connecticut in the first half of the 18th century having originated in Cape Cod. (7) The first ten of their 13 or so children were born in New London, CT. They eventually resettled in Sharon, CT, where Jabez was an original proprietor in 1740. Joel Sr. may have been the only child to have been born in Egremont, which is directly north of Sharon along present-day Route 41. Four of his older siblings settled in Amenia in Dutchess County, NY, which for a time may have been called “Crippentown.” Their father eventually removed to Bennington, VT, where he died. Little is known about Joel Sr.’s life in Egremont.

Curiously, neither Joel Crippen, Jr. nor Sr. appears in the U.S. census of 1790 for Egremont. Joel Jr.’s brother, Reuben, does appear as living alone. He assisted Joel in purchasing the land from Thomas Heath.(8) Joel Jr. appears to have been a small- scale farmer by Egremont standards. Probate records filed after his death in 1853 show that he had $5,080 worth of real estate, of which, his son Edmund was given the homestead, likely 14 acres in size and valued at $3,000.(9) Another son, Milo, inherited a smaller unspecified tract of land valued at $600. In addition to that his estate included undivided land: 15 acres of plow field; 23 acres of meadow, and a 13-acre wood lot “on the mountain.” Joel Jr. was residing with Edmund’s family at the time of his death.

Edmund was possibly the one who undertook the updates to the parlor soon after his father’s death. Edmund Crippen (1810–1877) continued farming the land. The agricultural schedule of the 1850 U.S. census notes that his farm consisted of 60 acres “improved” and 60 acres “unimproved,” and a cash value of $3,600, which appears to be on the lower end of Egremont farm values. In addition to three horses, he had 5 milk cows, 5 beef cattle and 15 swine, and grew rye, corn and oats.(10) The schedule of 1860 shows that his farm by then had shrunk to 45 acres “improved” and 45 acres “unimproved,” and he had produced 800 lbs of butter in the previous year. The 1870 schedule records 95 acres of land with 70 acres being improved, however, total output is greatly reduced from the previous decade. Curiously, it notes six horses, a high number for such a small farm.

One of Edmund’s brothers was Milo Crippen, a blacksmith who, according to the 1858 atlas of Berkshire County, had his smithy next door to Edmund’s house. Milo lived across the street at 224 Hillsdale Road (see MHC Building Form EGR.107). Edmund’s wife was Louisa Newman (1811–1890), who was a granddaughter of Samuel Newman of nearby 184 Hillsdale Rd (see MHC Building Form EGR.105). They had two children, William F. and Mary Frances. Edmund’s will stipulates that Louisa was to inherit his estate for her use during her natural life with William and Frances to divide it equally after her death. The siblings are enumerated separately but consecutively in the agricultural census of 1880—his farm being 95 acres in size and hers 100. The value of Louisa’s, $3,000, was twice that of Edmund’s, although production was about the same. Records show that Frances, who never married, was managing her father’s farm while sharing the homestead with her widow mother. Frances died at age 47 from severe burns while supervising the “burning over” of a “marsh tract on her late father’s farm” in 1889.(11)

The 1904 atlas of Berkshire County shows William Crippen (1837–1926) as the owner of his father’s farm. A 1900 mortgage agreement describes two parcels, one being 110 acres in size and lying on both sides of Hillsdale Road (Route 23) west of his father’s house. The second parcel is 14 acres in size and is described as the former premises of Edmund Crippen.(12) He also served for a time as a local cattle inspector.(13) William and his wife, Julia Hollenbeck, had two daughters, Maud and Mary, and a son, Edmund. According to the U.S. census of 1910, William and Julia were residing alone at 216 Hillsdale Road, and his occupation was still farmer. William had retired from farming by 1920. His son, Edmund, did not continue the farm; by 1910 he was working in Canton, CT, as a factory worker in a tool works.

It is not clear who occupied the farmhouse in the first decades after William Crippen’s death in 1926. It seems his immediate neighbors, Herbert A. and Mabel McCallum, held a mortgage for it from 1909 to 1926 when they sold it to Herbert S. Boyd, an antiques dealer, who never have resided there as city directories note his residence as being in Alford. In 1940 he sold the Crippen house to Charles P. Fowler, Jr. and his wife Mary M. City directories from the period show the couple residing on Hillsdale Road and in Sheffield. (14) In his early career, Charles (b. NYC, 1911–death unknown) worked as an editor at McGraw- Hill Publishing Co. in Manhattan, and the couple resided in Englewood, NJ. By 1959, he was the president of Great Barrington- based Audiocom Inc., which published High Fidelity magazine. According to its Wikipedia entry, it was a source of information about high fidelity audio equipment, video equipment, audio recordings, and other aspects of the musical world, such as music history, biographies, and anecdotal stories by or about noted performers. Fowler sold the company to Billboard, publisher of Billboard Magazine, in 1957.

In 1964 Fowler sold the Crippen house to Valentine Michalski, who still lives there today with his partner, Margot Trout. They are artists and art restorers. The garage addition houses their studio. The deed for the 1964 conveyance describes the parcel as 2.25 acres in size.

1J.E.A. Smith, ed. A History of Berkshire County, Massachusetts with Biographical Sketches of Its Prominent Men (J.B. Beers & Co., 1885): 679-680.
2 Berkshire County [Massachusetts] Register of Deeds, Southern District, Book 29, 154 (Oct. 27, 1781.)
3 Ebenezer Mack Treman and Murray E. Poole, The History of the Treman, Tremaine, Truman Family in America (Ithaca NY: The Ithaca Democrat, 1901). 87-88. Once primary source that was not referenced for this research (due to pandemic restrictions) are the Proprietor Records for Egremont. These records, held at the Register of Deeds office, contain a description of survey work for the Twelfth Massachusetts Turnpike (Route 23), completed in 1757, which mentions properties and houses along the route.
4 Register of Deeds, Book 33, 72 (March 25, 1795.)
5 Thomas Heath (b. Sharon, CT, 1755 – d. Sharon, CT, 1842) appears in the 1790 U.S. census for Egremont. His maternal grandparents were Jabez Crippen and Thankful Fuller. Joel Crippen’s father, Joel Sr., was an uncle of Heath’s.
6 Elias Loomis, The Descendants (By the Female Branches) of Joseph Loomis (New Haven: Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, 1880), 693.
7 Jabez’s grandparents, Thomas Crippen and Frances Bray, immigrated from England, sometime in the 1660s. They eventually settled in East Haddam, CT, south of Hartford after first residing in the Plymouth Colony.
8 See Register of Deeds, Book 33, 72 (March 25, 1795.)
9 For will, see Southern Berkshire Probate Records, Vol. 54, 469. For homestead parcel size, see quit claim filed by Milo Crippen and others in Register of Deeds, Book 103, 458 (March 2, 1855.)
10 The second page of the schedule is missing.
11 The Columbia Republican: 16 May 1889, page unknown.
12 Register of Deeds, Book 179, 454 (February 1, 1900.)
13 The Berkshire County Eagle: 8 November 1905, 13.
14 See “Fowler” in South Berkshire Directory 1959-60 (New Haven, CT: Price and Lee Co., 1959).

MACRIS Inventory No. EGR106