Stanley felt alternating current was an improvement over the direct current system being used by Thomas Edison. In November 1885 electrical engineer William Stanley, Jr., a sometime Great Barrington resident working for George Westinghouse, began installing a demonstration transformer based alternating current lighting system. World's first alternating current/transformer system Brown, part owner of the New York Daily News, presented Great Barrington with a statue of a newsboy, now a landmark on the western edge of town. Later estates included Searles Castle, commissioned in 1888 by the widow of Mark Hopkins together with her second husband, Edward Francis Searles, and "Brookside", built for William Hall Walker. Leavitt was instrumental in the development of the local Housatonic Railroad, serving as its president. Wealthy families built grand homes called Berkshire Cottages here, as others would in Lenox and Stockbridge.Īmong the earliest estates was one built by New York City banker, industrialist and art patron David Leavitt, who built an elaborate 300-acre (1.2 km 2) estate, and was soon followed by those of his sons nearby. With the arrival of the railroad in the late 19th century, Great Barrington developed as a Gilded Age resort community for those seeking relief from the heat and pollution of cities. Due to his time in the area, he established an agricultural interest in the area of Great Barrington. In the winter of 1776, Henry Knox passed through Great Barrington while transporting the cannon from Fort Ticonderoga to the Siege of Boston. In the summer of 1774, 1,500 men shut down the Berkshire County Court in response to British oppression. In 1761, it was officially incorporated as Great Barrington, named after the village of Great Barrington in Gloucestershire, England.
The village was first settled by colonists in 1726 and from 1742 to 1761 was the north parish of Sheffield. The Konkapot River in southwestern Massachusetts is named after him. On April 25, 1724, Captain John Ashley of Westfield, Massachusetts, bought on behalf of himself and a committee of the Massachusetts General Court the land that became the towns of Great Barrington, Sheffield, Egremont, Alford, Mount Washington, and Boston Corner for £460, three barrels of "sider," and thirty quarts of rum from 21 Native American sachems headed by Conkepot Poneyote. Civil War Monument, in front of the town hall Today, a plaque for John Talcott marks the spot where the massacre is believed to have happened. According to reports at the time, Talcott's troops killed twenty-five Indians and imprisoned another twenty. Major John Talcott and his troops chased a group of 200 Mahican Natives west from Westfield, eventually overtaking them at the Housatonic River in what is now Great Barrington. The first recorded account of Europeans in the area happened in August 1676, during King Philip's War. It lay on the New England Path, which connected Fort Orange near Albany, New York, with Springfield and Massachusetts Bay. The Mahican Indians called the area Mahaiwe, meaning "the place downstream".
Burleigh, with listing of landmarks 1676–1995 Print of Great Barrington from 1884 by L.R.
This section needs additional citations for verification.
0 kommentar(er)
